{"id":111735,"date":"2021-02-16T17:06:35","date_gmt":"2021-02-17T00:06:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=111735"},"modified":"2021-02-16T17:06:35","modified_gmt":"2021-02-17T00:06:35","slug":"ex-un%e2%80%88assistant-general-secretary-wont-comment-on-confidentiality-clause-preventing-verification-of-war-crimes-allegations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/02\/16\/ex-un%e2%80%88assistant-general-secretary-wont-comment-on-confidentiality-clause-preventing-verification-of-war-crimes-allegations\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-UN\u2008Assistant General Secretary won\u2019t comment on \u2018confidentiality clause\u2019 preventing verification of war crimes allegations"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Shamindra Ferdinando Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

AFormer UN\nAssistant Secretary General and the author of \u2018the report of the\nSecretary-General\u2019s Internal Review Panel on UN action in Sri\nLanka\u2019 Charles Petrie has declined to explain why the UN deliberately\nthwarted verification of unsubstantiated allegations against Sri Lanka by way\nof a controversial confidentiality clause. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nIsland raised the issue at a webinar titled \u2018Sri\nLanka: Quest for Justice, Rule of Law and Democratic Rights\u2019 co-hosted by the\nGlobal Tamil Forum (GTF), Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice \u2013 New York\nUniversity, Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice and the Canadian Tamil\nCongress (CTC). The webinar was part of a campaign against Sri Lanka undertaken\nby interested parties ahead of the 46th sessions of the Geneva-based\nUnited Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) scheduled to commence on Feb 22.\nThe sessions will continue till March 23.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked\nwhether the panelists could explain why a UN confidentiality clause prevented\nverification of war crimes allegations till 2031 and why a UN report prepared\nwith the support of ICRC and Vanni based NGOs in 2008-2009 hadn\u2019t been considered,\nformer British diplomat Petrie said: Just\u2026the confidentiality issue\u2026 I\u2019m not\nvery\u2026I would not be able to address.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having\ndeclined to respond to the query, Petrie said that he would like to follow up\non what former US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice A said\nin response to The Island query. Rapp who first responded to the\nquery posed to the panelists through moderator Melissa Dring of Sri Lanka\nCampaign for Peace and Justice conveniently refrained from at least referring to\nthe UN confidentiality clause or UN report that placed the number of persons\nkilled at 7,721 (August 2008-May 13, 2009)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Petrie said\nthat there were a lot of documents pertaining to war crimes accusations,\nincluding those of the UN. Petrie, one-time investment banker alleged that the\nthen Sri Lankan government exploited an incident involving a UN convoy to set\nup No Fire Zone in the Vanni east region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group\nof panelists included Pablo de Greiff, a former UN Special Rapporteur, M.A.\nSumanthiran, PC, MP, attorey-at-lawBhavani Fonseka of the Center for Policy\nAlternatives (PTA), Ameer Faaiz, Director of International Affairs of the Sri\nLanka Muslim Congress, Ambika Satkunanathan, a former Commissioner of the Human\nRights Commission of Sri Lanka and Shreen Saroor, a civil society activist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melissa\nDring interpreted The Island query as denial of war crimes\naccusations, a strategy similar to that of the government of Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According\nto the Panel of Experts\u2019( Kangaroo court in any reasonable person\u2019s rule book\nas Sri Lanka is prevented from, leave alone cross examining the accusers, but\neven to see their faces) Report released on March 31, 2011 even after the\nmandatory 20 year prohibition (2011-2031) on the releasing of material received\nof an assurance of absolute confidentiality, relevant information couldn\u2019t be\nreleased without declassification review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nfollowing is the full text of the question forwarded to Dring: The alleged\nkilling of 40,000 civilians (PoE report\/137 paragraph\/March 2011) remains the\nprimary accusation against GoSL. The AI placed the number of deaths at 10,000\n(a few months after PoE report), In between PoE report and the AI report, the\nUK Parliament was told 60,000 LTTE cadres and 40,000 civilians perished in the\nfinal phase of the assault ( Siobhain McDonagh, MP). In addition to those\nreports and various other claims, a UN study (Aug 2008-May 2009\/POE\/paragraph\n134) estimated the number killed at 7,721 and wounded at 18,479. Can you please\nexplain why UN failed to verify various reports\/claims particularly against the\nbackdrop of Lord Naseby\u2019s disclosure in Oct 2017 (Lord Naseby\u2019s claim was based\non British HC diplomatic cables)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nfollowing question addressed to Pablo de Greiff was not answered  at all:\nYou addressed issues relating to monitoring of international action and\naccountability. Can you, please explain the status\/outcome of UN fact-finding\nmission on the Gaza conflict (Goldstone report) against the backdrop of the\nhead of the mission contradicting his own report?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UK based\nAmal Abeywardena asked the panel about Sri Lanka not having confidence in the\nUN inquiring into LTTE atrocities and how could the international community\nprobe violations on all sides, including those committed during JVP uprisings\nas well as the IPKF period and investigating the role of the supporters of the\nLTTE who supplied material resources to the Tigers when Human Rights violations\nwere committed. Rapp who responded to the query conveniently side-stepped the\naccountability issues pertaining to the deployment of the Indian Army in Sri\nLanka (1987-1990). A full recording of the live webinar can be found in\nthis link: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0muPVjyF7E8<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Shamindra Ferdinando Courtesy The Island AFormer UN Assistant Secretary General and the author of \u2018the report of the Secretary-General\u2019s Internal Review Panel on UN action in Sri Lanka\u2019 Charles Petrie has declined to explain why the UN deliberately thwarted verification of unsubstantiated allegations against Sri Lanka by way of a controversial confidentiality clause.  The Island raised […]<\/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-111735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111735","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=111735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}