{"id":48053,"date":"2015-09-21T20:55:48","date_gmt":"2015-09-22T02:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=48053"},"modified":"2015-09-20T15:02:32","modified_gmt":"2015-09-20T22:02:32","slug":"absolutely-nothing-happens-if-sri-lanka-disregards-unhrc-report-and-dictates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/09\/21\/absolutely-nothing-happens-if-sri-lanka-disregards-unhrc-report-and-dictates\/","title":{"rendered":"Absolutely Nothing Happens If Sri Lanka Disregards UNHRC Report and Dictates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dilrook Kannangara<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

UNHRC report is out. It recommends Sri Lanka comply with its dictates. However, if Sri Lanka refuses to comply with them and disregards all dictates, nothing will happen. UNHRC cannot enforce its decisions as Sri Lanka is not a party to the Rome Statute and doesn\u2019t come under the International Criminal Court.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The UNHRC has handed over a sharp knife to Lanka to commit self-harm. If Lanka refuses to comply, absolutely nothing happens. The matter will be escalated to the UN Security Council where it can be vetoed by China and\/or Russia. That would be a massive loss of face for the West and India.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The West and India may impose own trade restrictions or even sanctions on Sri Lanka which is self-defeating. Rescinding trade with India immensely benefits Sri Lanka. All imports from India can be imported from China and Pakistan so there is no impact. Exports to the US and the EU can hurt Sri Lanka unless they can be channelled to the growing Chinese, Latin American and other markets. Sanctions will only push Lanka into the waiting arms of China. In fact, Sri Lanka is one of only a handful of Asian nations where China is not its main trading partner at the moment. USA and India would not want it changed. The net gain on garment and other exports to the US and the EU are minuscule and nothing much will be lost anyway. Knowing these economics, they will not impose sanctions if Lanka failed to comply.<\/p>\n

As there are no political or economic impact of noncompliance with UNHRC dictates, why should Sri Lanka bother?<\/p>\n

It comes to wrong legal opinion, undue fear of politicians, vested interests and petty politics. The children\u2019s story of the deer and tiger (reproduced below) describes very well the situation.<\/p>\n

Driven by fear of concocted war crimes charges, the previous government did heaps of self-harm. LLRC, near-complete implementation of 13A, promise of 13 plus, not resettling Sinhala and Muslim IDPs in Jaffna, continuing with racist south Indian laws like Thesawalamei Law, wasting 90% of borrowed development funds on the north and east, wasting $6.5 million on PR agencies, releasing 11,000 hard-core LTTE terrorists, letting the TNA, ITAK and TULF off the hook for instigating violence and terrorism since the 1940s, allowing a free hand for Arabic institutions to spread in the island and not implementing the provisions of 6A are some examples. Most LLRC recommendations were implemented without any mandate from the people or the parliament to do so. None of the implemented LLRC recommendations has any worth to Sinhala and Muslim people.<\/p>\n

All these were done out of fear of concocted war crimes charges when UNHRC could not have harmed Sri Lanka anyway.<\/p>\n

These moves were very unpopular among Mahinda\u2019s core voters, which eroded his support among Sinhala voters from 68% in 2010 to 58% by 2015 defeating him at the January election. It was this defeat that has exposed him, Basil and Gotabhaya to possible war crimes charges.<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, it is a different game today. The current UNP regime is driven by vested interests and petty politics to pander into UNHRC dictates. UNP regime change operation was financed by USA, India and Singapore and the UNP leadership feels indebted to them. For this reason, it will also pander into these dictates. Further, it is wary of the popularity of the former defence secretary and the former president. Their fear of war crimes charges is manipulated by the UNP to silence them.<\/p>\n

Eventually they will be found guilty of concocted war crimes charges and punished. The regime change operation was heavily supported by Tamils by voting against the former president en masse. If the UNP regime doesn\u2019t punish the Rajapaksas, it will lose the next election for sure as its most faithful Tamil voters will desert it.<\/p>\n

Sadly, the nation is held hostage by cowardly politicians who are willing to even divide the nation to save their skin. It has nothing to do with war crimes as none was committed by security forces apart from the ones punished soon after they were detected by the forces themselves.<\/p>\n

The story of the deer and the tiger \u2013 A deer sought temporary shelter in a tiger\u2019s cave for her young when she heard the approaching tiger. She told her young loudly not to cry as she would feed them tiger meat. Hearing this the tiger feared for its life and ran away. The story continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dilrook Kannangara UNHRC report is out. It recommends Sri Lanka comply with its dictates. However, if Sri Lanka refuses to comply with them and disregards all dictates, nothing will happen. UNHRC cannot enforce its decisions as Sri Lanka is not a party to the Rome Statute and doesn\u2019t come under the International Criminal Court. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dilrook-kannangara"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48053","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=48053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}