{"id":102756,"date":"2020-05-24T15:44:18","date_gmt":"2020-05-24T22:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=102756"},"modified":"2020-05-24T15:44:18","modified_gmt":"2020-05-24T22:44:18","slug":"lack-of-equality-among-member-nations-using-hr-to-selectively-target-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/05\/24\/lack-of-equality-among-member-nations-using-hr-to-selectively-target-countries\/","title":{"rendered":"Lack of equality among member Nations: Using HR to selectively target countries"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sugeeswara Senadhira Courtesy Ceylon Today<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

It is no secret that the hypocritical Western lobbies use human rights as a tool to target selectively against countries that resist their undue interferences. They selectively attack the Governments they perceive as too self confident and not amenable to their policies. This is contrary to the United Nation’s principle of equality. The Article 1 of the UN states that the mission of the organisation is to “develop friendly relations among Nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Realising the biased nature of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Foreign Relations Minister Dinesh Gunawardena  announced that Sri Lanka would withdraw from the resolutions 30\/1 and 40\/1 titled ‘Promoting Reconciliation, Accountability and Human Rights in Sri Lanka’ co-sponsored by Sri Lanka 2015 and 2019 respectively. The Resolution 30\/1 co-sponsored by the then Government in 2015 was described by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa as a ‘historical betrayal’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The UNHRC was established by the UN General Assembly on 15 March 2006 (by resolution A\/RES\/60\/251) to replace the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR, herein CHR) that had been strongly criticised for taking biased decisions by picking on countries on a selective basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former UN Secretaries General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon, former President of the council Doru Costea, the European Union, Canada, and the United States have accused the UNHRC of focusing disproportionately on selected countries. One charge was that there was an anti-Israel bias. The Council has passed more resolutions condemning Israel than the rest of the world combined. The new Council (UNHRC) also came in for criticism from many quarters. It came to a crisis situation when the United States announced its withdrawal from the 47-member body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 19 June 2018, President Donald Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced that the United States was pulling out of the UNHRC, accusing the council being ‘hypocritical and self-serving’. The issue they cited was the UNHRC’s ‘chronic anti-Israel bias.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When the Human Rights Council treats Israel worse than North Korea, Iran, and Syria, it is the Council itself that is foolish and unworthy of its name. It is time for the countries who know better to demand changes,” Haley said in a statement at the time, pointing to the council’s adoption of five resolutions condemning Israel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka was a member of the UNHRC from its inception in 2006 to 2008. However, the country failed to get sufficient number of votes to get reelected as the influential Western countries did not support the Government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa because of its continuation of war against LTTE terrorists. The US and Western Europe wanted to stop the war, which had then reached the final stage. The US withdrawal from UNHRC was due to Washington’s policy of protecting Israel at any cost. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israel has been condemned in 78 resolutions by the UNHRC since its creation in 2006\u2014the Council has resolved more resolutions condemning Israel than the rest of the world combined. The UNHRC voted on 30 June 2006 to make a review of alleged human rights abuses by Israel a permanent feature of every council session. The council’s special rapporteur on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is its only expert mandate with no year of expiry. The resolution, which was sponsored by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, passed by a vote of 29 to 12 with five abstentions. Human Rights Watch urged it to look at international human rights and humanitarian law violations committed by the Palestinian armed groups as well. Human Rights Watch called on the Council to avoid the selectivity that discredited its predecessor and urged it to hold special sessions on other urgent situations, such as that in Darfur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ccusing SL armed forces and ignoring LTTE brutalities<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US and the Western lobbies called for an international probe on alleged human rights violations during the last phase of the war in Sri Lanka. While accusing the armed forces, they turned a blind eye on the brutal killings of innocent civilians by the LTTE. While the US President called the UNHRC a “cesspit of biased politics,” the US and the West have already launched the above strategy in Sri Lanka as well through the Joint UNHRC Resolution 30\/1. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has proven that allegations on Human Rights violations have been used as a common strategy by the US and the West to interfere with internal matters of countries which they have identified as vulnerable in the process of enforcing global power politics. They have been used to implement their own agendas on the pretext of regularising Human Rights records of those countries, the end result of which would be disastrous to the very existence of the countries concerned. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the Government came to power in November 2019, Sri Lanka reviewed the credibility of the Joint UNHRC Resolutions 30\/1 30\/4 and decided to withdraw from the resolution in March 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The announcement of withdrawal from the UNHRC resolutions was followed by very convincing arguments elaborated by Minister Dinesh Gunawardena, who does not tolerate injustice, particularly when the integrity of the Motherland is at stake. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Sri Lanka’s announcement, the perturbed pro-LTTE front organisations in the West doubled their disinformation campaign using gullible politicians who swallow their fabricated stories on the alleged human right violations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McDermott absurdities <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most recent allegation came from Australia’s Hugh McDermott MP, State Member for Prospect in New South Wales. He accused the armed forces ‘conduct of genocide against Tamils’ and claimed that ‘150,000 persons were killed’. Such totally false absurd statements coming from a parliamentarian is rather surprising. In these circumstances, it is essential for Sri Lanka to be absolutely vigilant regarding attempts to sully the good name of the country aboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Government is determined to protect the image of Sri Lanka and its armed forces. Hence, the significance of the statement made last week by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa that Sri Lanka will not hesitate to withdraw from any international forum if the members of armed forces were targeted or harassed. “Our troops were up against the world’s most feared terrorist group who paid no respect to the law. Even the world’s most powerful countries have said they would not subject their troops to be harassed by anyone,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As President Rajapaksa pointed out, because of the exceptional sacrifices made by the war heroes, today all the communities have the opportunity to live in peace and harmony in a unitary state and it is the duty of everybody to withstand undue pressures from within or outside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sugeeswara Senadhira Courtesy Ceylon Today It is no secret that the hypocritical Western lobbies use human rights as a tool to target selectively against countries that resist their undue interferences. They selectively attack the Governments they perceive as too self confident and not amenable to their policies. This is contrary to the United Nation’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}