{"id":51947,"date":"2016-02-11T22:59:21","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T04:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=51947"},"modified":"2016-02-10T05:27:30","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T12:27:30","slug":"zeid-dictates-harsh-terms-to-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/02\/11\/zeid-dictates-harsh-terms-to-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"Zeid dictates harsh terms to Sri Lanka"},"content":{"rendered":"

By A.A.M.Nizam – MATARA<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra\u2019ad Al Hussein who ended a four day visit to Sri Lanka yesterday and extensively listened to the views and opinions of the Tamil community and failed to hold discussions with the Sinhala community organizations or joint opposition members said that it was the sovereign right of Sri Lanka to decide on the judicial process to investigate into alleged war crimes or on the involvement of foreign judges.<\/p>\n

He cautioned that at the end of the day whatever Sri Lanka did, it should make sure that justice were served to all the victims, whose human rights have been violated.<\/p>\n

Zeid said Sri Lanka has many excellent judges, lawyers, and law enforcement officials but over the years the judiciary had become highly politicized, unbalanced and unreliable<\/strong> and that the country\u2019s history over the past few decades had been littered with judicial failures. He said that therefore it is essential to establish a Hybrid judicial process to investigate into the alleged war crimes.<\/p>\n

He pointed out that the Prime Minister has also commented on it at great length and with admirable candour in Parliament. He said virtually every week provides a new story of a failed investigation, a mob storming a court-room or another example of a crime going unpunished. Particularly, sexual violence and harassment against women and girls is poorly handled by the relevant State institutions — especially when the alleged perpetrators are members of the military or security services <\/strong>— and, as a result it remains all too widespread.<\/p>\n

The UNHR Chief said it was for these reasons that his report and the Human Rights Council resolution suggested international participation in the accountability mechanisms set up to deal with international crimes and gross human rights violations committed by individuals on both sides.\u00a0 He asserted that Devolution of power is a must.<\/p>\n

It must be pointed out that by co-sponsoring the American initiated resolution against Sri Lanka in the UNHRC last September our western slavish infantile Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera has undertaken the following responsibilities to be implemented by Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

*In Operative Paragraph 1, the government has agreed to accept the report against Sri Lanka prepared by the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) which had accused Sri Lanka of committing unlawful killings of civilians, torture, rape, deliberate starvation of people and other such war crimes. With this Sri Lanka has officially accepted that war crimes were committed in the country.<\/p>\n

*In OP 4 the government has agreed to allow the war crimes tribunal that was going to be set up and related institutions to obtain funding directly from foreign sources. Accordingly, the Judges and prosecutors who will be jailing members of the Sri Lankan armed forces will be paid directly by foreign powers.<\/p>\n

*In OP 6 the government has agreed to set up a judicial mechanism to try our war heroes with the participation of Commonwealth and other foreign judges, prosecutors, investigators and lawyers.<\/p>\n

*In OP 7 it has been agreed that the Government of Sri Lanka would reform its domestic law to ensure that it can implement the commitments made in this UNHRC resolution.<\/p>\n

*In OP 8 the government has undertaken to remove through administrative action members of the armed forces suspected of having committed human rights violations and war crimes but against whom there isn\u2019t enough evidence to place before a war crimes tribunal.<\/p>\n

In OP 12 the government has undertaken to review the Public Security Ordinance and repeal the PTA and replace it with internationally acceptable anti-terrorism legislation.<\/p>\n

In OP 16 the government has undertaken to bring about a political settlement through the devolution of power and to ensure that the Provincial Councils were able to function effectively.<\/p>\n

In terms of OPs 18 and 20 all the above were to be implemented under the supervision of the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights.<\/p>\n

Fortunately members of the joint opposition, who are patriotic citizens of this country, rightly observed the dangers being posed to our war heroes and unleashed a vibrant campaign against the UNHRC resolution and Mr. Wimal Weerawansa even carried out a series of lectures in foreign countries to enlighten the danger to Sri Lankans resident in those countries while they held a series of workshops, seminars and meetings locally with the participation of leading members of the joint opposition.\u00a0 If it was not done so the matter would have been hushed up by the western stooges such as Ranil and Mangala as they succeeded in misleading puppet Bra \u00a0Sirisena who brought shame to the country by telling BBC and Al Jazeera that there were no accusations of war crimes against Sri Lanka in the UNHRC resolution.\u00a0 It is claimed that the Foreign Ministry taking advantage of the poor English literacy of Sirisena has given him a doctored translation of the UNHRC resolution and based on this he has uttered this nonsense to BBC and Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

When Sirisena says we don\u2019t need to import foreign judges; we have enough expertise in this country, and that he will not agree to foreign judges, he is repudiating his government\u2019s own position taken in Geneva. Meanwhile Ranil is taking a different view and insists that there is no change in the commitment made in Geneva.<\/p>\n

Other than the UNHRC resolution, there are allegations of war crimes in the OHCHR report against Sri Lanka submitted by Zeid as well. The allegations include the \u2018widespread\u2019 unlawful killing of civilians, widespread and systematic enforced disappearances, rape, torture and the repeated shelling of hospitals.<\/p>\n

Zeid has categorically emphasized that he is keenly watching about the progress being made by Sri Lanka and his next report will be submitted to the UNHRC in June this year.\u00a0 Legal luminaries point out that Sri Lanka need to change many of its existing Laws to fully implement the UNHRC resolution co-sponsored by Sri Lanka.\u00a0 Will this happen soon or will Sri Lanka face accusations of breach of trust and some form of sanctions in June due to the absurd folly made by our western puppets?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By A.A.M.Nizam – MATARA UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra\u2019ad Al Hussein who ended a four day visit to Sri Lanka yesterday and extensively listened to the views and opinions of the Tamil community and failed to hold discussions with the Sinhala community organizations or joint opposition members said that it was the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aamnizam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51947","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=51947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}