{"id":51838,"date":"2016-02-06T23:25:36","date_gmt":"2016-02-07T05:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=51838"},"modified":"2016-02-06T16:03:13","modified_gmt":"2016-02-06T23:03:13","slug":"five-questions-for-zeid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/02\/06\/five-questions-for-zeid\/","title":{"rendered":"FIVE QUESTIONS FOR ZEID"},"content":{"rendered":"

DHARSHAN WEERASEKERA<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

UN Human Rights High Commissioner Zeid Al Hussain is in Sri Lanka.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure whether he has given a press conference yet, but when he does, I hope someone asks him one or more of the following questions:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Your report to the Human Rights Council in September-2015, is the only official UN report to conclude that Sri Lanka as a State may have committed war crimes, (i.e. that a case for \u2018Command Responsibility\u2019 can be made). On the other hand, there are two reports commissioned by the Government, one of which included international legal experts who had been consultants to the UN in war crimes investigations in other countries.\u00a0 The latter reports have concluded that no case for war crimes can be made against the State.\u00a0 Under the circumstances, would you be willing to submit your Report to an independent assessment of experts picked by the General Assembly?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
      \n
    1. Normally, in private life, if a person makes baseless allegations against another person, the person against whom those accusations are made has actions in law, including actions for defamation, which he can bring against the accuser in order to gain compensation. A country that is submitted to baseless allegations obviously does not have such an option.\u00a0 If, after an independent assessment such as the one mentioned above, it is established that your allegations against Sri Lanka are baseless, or lacking in merit (according to standards of evidence recognized in civilized countries) what would you recommend as a way that Sri Lanka should proceed against you, the Human Rights Council, and the UN, to gain compensation for what has been done to this country?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
        \n
      1. You are scheduled to travel to Jaffna for the obligatory confab with the Tamils. They will no doubt give you their usual \u2018sob story\u2019 about how they are \u2018victims\u2019 in this country, that they have \u2018grievances\u2019 that remain unresolved, that the Sinhalese don\u2019t let them live in \u2018dignity\u2019, and so on.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Are you aware that the Tamils have a repulsive caste-system that, to this day, allows the higher-castes to treat the lower-castes as if the latter were no better than animals?\u00a0 Are you aware that to this day the higher-castes don\u2019t let a person from a lower-caste enter a Hindu Temple through the front door?\u00a0 Are you aware that to this day the lower-castes are not allowed to use wells used by the higher-castes?\u00a0 Are you aware that as a rule Tamils belonging to the higher castes refuse to eat at the same table as Tamils of the lower castes?\u00a0 And so on.<\/p>\n

        The Tamil \u2018leaders\u2019 who will come to meet with you in Jaffna are, needless to say, from the higher castes.\u00a0 These are the same scumbags (I\u2019m sorry, \u2018gentlemen\u2019) who are complaining that the Sinhalese don\u2019t let them live in \u2018dignity.\u2019\u00a0 Let\u2019s leave aside the Sinhalese for a moment.\u00a0 Will you make some inquiries about the state of the lower-castes in Tamil society, and ask the said Tamil \u2018leaders\u2019 who will flock to meet you in Jaffna, when they plan on treating their own people with dignity?<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. The census held most recently reveals that there are roughly 250 or so Sinhalese people in Jaffna. The census held in the 1980\u2019s reveals a much higher number of Sinhalese living in Jaffna and its environs.\u00a0 Some suggest as many as 20,000 Sinhalese lived in these areas. \u00a0As one goes back even further, for instance to the surveys carried out at the time of Independence, one finds an even larger population of Sinhalese in the said areas.\u00a0 Of course, the decline of the Sinhalese population in these areas can be attributed to natural causes, such as migration, and so on.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          But, such a precipitous decline also suggests another cause, ethnic cleansing.\u00a0 Since you are the High Commissioner of Human Rights, and since the Sinhalese, as human beings, are presumably also entitled to \u2018human rights,\u2019 will you take steps to launch an immediate inquiry into the demographic changes in the Northern Province, say, in the last hundred years or so, with an eye to determining if in fact the Sinhalese have been ethnically cleansed from that province?<\/p>\n

            \n
          1. Are you willing to make available to the public a list of the occasions, from the time you took office to the present, where you or any other official of the OHCHR met representatives of the TNA, the GTF (Global Tamil Forum) or any other group specifically advocating on behalf of Tamils? And, just for purposes of comparison, can you also make available the number of times you met the official representatives of Sri Lanka, during the same period?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            Dharshan Weerasekera is an Attorney-at-Law. \u00a0He is the author of two books:\u00a0 The UN\u2019s Relentless Pursuit of Sri Lanka (2013), and The UN\u2019s Subversion of International Law:\u00a0 The Sri Lanka Story (2015)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            DHARSHAN WEERASEKERA UN Human Rights High Commissioner Zeid Al Hussain is in Sri Lanka.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure whether he has given a press conference yet, but when he does, I hope someone asks him one or more of the following questions: Your report to the Human Rights Council in September-2015, is the only official UN […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51838","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=51838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}