{"id":47860,"date":"2015-09-15T20:45:47","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T02:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=47860"},"modified":"2015-09-15T11:17:56","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T18:17:56","slug":"ending-kafkas-trial-can-good-governance-name-the-unnamed-accusers-used-by-the-darusman-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/09\/15\/ending-kafkas-trial-can-good-governance-name-the-unnamed-accusers-used-by-the-darusman-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Ending Kafka’s trial: Can “Good Governance”\u00a0 name the\u00a0 unnamed accusers\u00a0 used by the Darusman report ?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Chandre Dharmawardana, Canada <\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Let us recall that the United Nations secretary general appointed a committee of four individuals to ADVISE HIM about the human rights situation in Sri Lanka. This report, known as the Darusman report has since then assumed a role that the secretary general never intended it to have.\u00a0 It has become one of the\u00a0 key weapons used against\u00a0 Sri Lanka by the UN human rights commission. This September we see the return of the gladiators where the trial\u201d was delayed because of the change of government in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR),\u00a0 Zeid Ra\u2019ad Al Hussein, making his opening address at the 30th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva,\u00a0 claimed that there had been serious violations and loss of civilian life in the last months of Sri Lanka\u2019s battle against LTTE. He did not even bother to say that there is credible allegations\u201d, as stated in the Darusman report.<\/p>\n

Al Hussein said,\u00a0 “Six years ago, we were confronted with serious violations and loss of civilian life in the last months of Sri Lanka\u2019s long civil war. This Council has been deeply engaged with the need for accountability, as a necessary step towards reconciliation in that country. On Wednesday I will release the report of the comprehensive investigation that OHCHR was mandated to conduct in March 2014, including my recommendations\u201d.<\/p>\n

Critics of the UNHCHR’s office claim that the\u00a0 UNSG\u2019s Panel of Experts\u201d on Accountability in Sri Lanka\u00a0 arrived at conclusions deemed credible allegations\u201d, using one-sided information coming from pro-LTTE sources which they recommended should be locked away from scrutiny for 20 years.\u00a0 Critics of the report point out that this was an unofficial report which was surreptitiously leaked by the UNSG\u2019s office and used by Ms. Navi Pillay (former UNHCHR), who attempted to table it but failed to do so.\u00a0 However, it became the basis the\u00a0 Geneva sessions aimed at bringing to trial the leaders of Sri Lanka . They stand accused of\u00a0 alleged war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law which\u00a0 have not been proven according to the Drausman report).<\/p>\n

However, the language used by Mr. Zeid Ra\u2019ad Al Hussein has even dropped the nuance of credible evidence\u201d, and asserts that there had been serious violations and loss of civilian life in the last months of Sri Lanka\u2019s battle against LTTE\u201d.\u00a0 The mounting crescendo of accusations orchestrated by the successive\u00a0 channel-4 movies, the transformation of an advisory report to an official document which would have normally required a higher level of scrutiny, and now the shift from credible allegations\u201d to\u00a0 assertions of certain guilt surely reveal a high degree of unfairness. The principle that the accused also should be given a chance to answer the allegations at every level where the allegations are made has been suppressed.<\/p>\n

In fact, the UNHCHR is seen to be orchestrating a process which should appear to many as a version of Kafka’s trial. Who are the accusers? What are these credible allegations\u201d that have now become credible evidence\u201d? Is this credible evidence\u201d based on\u00a0 just what is contained in the Channel-4 movies?<\/p>\n

Interestingly enough, both sides in the debate have brought our scholarly as well as technical evidence to support, or question, the allegations of the Darusman report and the channel-4 movies. The pro-Darusman-Channel-4 community has had the upper-hand in the propaganda war, even getting the movies shown in parliamentary assemblies. The critics of the Darusman report and the channel-4 moves have had less success in capturing the attention of the West, even though some excellent, scholarly analysis have been carried out. Here we mention the work of the UK-based\u00a0 Engaged Sri Lanka\u201d group has published a comprehensive analysis in book form entitled Corrupted Journalism: Channel 4 and Sri Lanka\u201d (www.amazon.ca\/gp\/product\/0992684544?redirect=true&ref_=cm_cr_ryp_prd_ttl_sol_0<\/a>), and this may be considered a convenient single source for the claims of the critics of the Darusman report.<\/p>\n

Further more the Report of the International Jurists, Paranagama commission,\u00a0\u00a0 should be tabled at the Geneva sessions as an independent view of the legal position in regard to the conduct of the war. However, the critics of\u00a0 the UNHCHR\u00a0 have had\u00a0 no\u00a0 success with Western governments\u00a0 precisely because the Western governments have been spear-heading the accusations against Sri Lanka as a part of the American and NATO\u00a0 foreign policy initiatives in South-Asia.<\/p>\n

The coming in to power of the Sirisena-Ranil government fits into the agenda of the\u00a0 NATO powers.
\nHowever, the Srisena government claims to stand for the\u00a0 millions of\u00a0 Sri Lankans who voted for the new president last January.\u00a0 Good governance, justice to all, and in\u00a0 particular, freedom from fear of state reprisals against critics of the government were emphasized. Mr. Sirisena himself came forward as a critic of the previous regime.\u00a0 He wanted to breakaway from a tradition that may well have\u00a0 been a continuation of the methods of the war years.,\u00a0 when fighting a foe that always brutally assassinated its critics, and shut the Sampanthans into a state\u00a0 of total obedience to the Tiger Talaivar.<\/p>\n

Even the US secretary of state has expressed satisfaction at the new government’s restoration of confidence\u201d and the removal of fear of reprisals\u201d of opponents. Thus, there is no longer any reason what so ever for continuing the 20 year moratorium on revealing the sources of the credible allegations\u201d that are mentioned in the Darusman report, especially as these allegations have now been morphed into accepted war crimes\u201d in the loose language of Mr. Zeid Ra\u2019ad Al Hussein.<\/p>\n

Hence this nightmare of a Kafka’s trial faced by Sri Lanka can be made into a more transparent process if the UNHCHR’s office puts into place the due process of justice. This involves\u00a0 (a) the release of the sources of the war crimes allegations (b) making a thorough international investigation to establish\u00a0 the veracity of these allegations. (c) Once that is done, a suitable investigation of the alleged crimes should be put in place.<\/p>\n

It is the duty of the Good Governance movement to ensure that justice is done in Geneva.<\/p>\n

By<\/p>\n

Chandre Dharmawardana, Canada<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Chandre Dharmawardana, Canada Let us recall that the United Nations secretary general appointed a committee of four individuals to ADVISE HIM about the human rights situation in Sri Lanka. This report, known as the Darusman report has since then assumed a role that the secretary general never intended it to have.\u00a0 It has become one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chandre-dharmawardana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47860","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=47860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}