{"id":80116,"date":"2018-08-12T15:12:59","date_gmt":"2018-08-12T22:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=80116"},"modified":"2018-08-12T15:12:59","modified_gmt":"2018-08-12T22:12:59","slug":"geneva-never-dealt-with-unsg-panel-of-experts-allegations-fm-response-to-rti-query","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/08\/12\/geneva-never-dealt-with-unsg-panel-of-experts-allegations-fm-response-to-rti-query\/","title":{"rendered":"Geneva never dealt with UNSG Panel of Experts\u2019 allegations FM response to RTI query:"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Shamindra Ferdinando\u00a0Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) hadn\u2019t dealt with UNSG Panel of Experts (PoE) allegations. “Allegations in the Secretary General\u2019s PoE report, if at all, are for a local investigation process in Sri Lanka to examine,” Director General (Legal) of the Foreign Ministry C.A.H.M. Wijeratne said.<\/p>\n

Wijeratne said so in his capacity as the Foreign Ministry Information Officer, in response to the \u00a0The Island\u00a0query: “The House of Lords was told in Oct 2017 of the existence of wartime British High Commission dispatches (Jan-May 2009) from the Office of its Defense Attach\u00e9 in Colombo which contradicted PoE allegation pertaining to deaths of 40,000 civilians. Would you be requesting members of UNHRC to reexamine allegations directed at the Government of Sri Lanka in the light of this fresh evidence?”<\/p>\n

\"article_image\"<\/p>\n

The Island\u00a0raised the inordinate delay on the part of the Foreign Ministry to take up British dispatches with the UNHRC in terms of the Right to Information (RTI) Law enacted in early 2017.<\/p>\n

The PoE comprising US, South African and Indonesian nationals in March 2011 accused Sri Lanka military of killing 40,000 civilians on the basis of what it called \u2018credible sources.\u2019<\/p>\n

The Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms (CTFRM) in early last year called for full participation of foreign judges, and other foreign personnel, including defense lawyers, prosecutors and investigators, in transitional justice mechanism to address accountability issues. CTFRM endorsed the Oct 2015 Geneva Resolution recommendation in respect of foreign judges.<\/p>\n

Foreign Minister Tilak Marapana in late Nov 2017 assured parliament that Lord Naseby\u2019s statement based on British military dispatches would be used at the appropriate time.<\/p>\n

As the Foreign Ministry hadn\u2019t so far made representations to Geneva,\u00a0The Island\u00a0sought a clarification in this regard in accordance with the RTI Law. The Foreign Ministry said that “Resolution 30\/1 of 1 Oct 2015 and Resolution 34\/1 of 23 March 2017 can be accessed online as the Resolutions are public documents, and the actual provisions of the Resolution can be ascertained accordingly.” As for information on process of implementation, the Foreign Ministry provided copy of the statement made by the Leader of the Sri Lanka delegation to the 37th\u00a0session of the Human Rights Council. Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tilak Marapana on March 23, 2018.<\/p>\n

The Foreign Ministry was responding to the following The Island query: “UNHRC gave Government of Sri Lanka two years in March 2017 to implement its Resolution 30\/1 adopted in Oct 2015. What is the status of the implementation process? Would it be possible to fulfill obligations, including the finalization of the new Constitution by March 2019?”<\/p>\n

The copy of the speech made no reference to credible evidence in the form British HC dispatches from Colombo.<\/p>\n

However, Farhan Aziz Haq, Deputy Spokesperson for the then UNSG Ant\u00f3nio Guterres in Nov 2017 told\u00a0The Island\u00a0that the UNHRC could revisit Resolution\u00a030\/1 titled \u2018Promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka\u2019<\/p>\n

Haq said that decisions regarding actions taken by the UNHRC were solely in the hands of the members of the Human Rights Council. Haq said it would be up to the member states of the Human Rights Council to decide whether to revisit Sri Lanka\u2019s case on the basis of representations made by a country.<\/p>\n

The UNHRC comprises 47 countries divided into five zones.<\/p>\n

The UN spokesperson said so when\u00a0The Island\u00a0asked him whether there was a possibility in UN revisiting Geneva Resolution in the wake of Lord Naseby assertion during a debate that the maximum Vanni death toll was 7,000 to 8,000 not 40,000 as reported by PoE and GoSL never targeted civilians purposely.<\/p>\n

The Island\u00a0raised the issue with the UN in the wake of Sri Lanka parliament taking up the issue twice since Naseby\u2019s\u00a0Oct 12\u00a0bombshell statement in the House of Lords.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Shamindra Ferdinando\u00a0Courtesy The Island The Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) hadn\u2019t dealt with UNSG Panel of Experts (PoE) allegations. “Allegations in the Secretary General\u2019s PoE report, if at all, are for a local investigation process in Sri Lanka to examine,” Director General (Legal) of the Foreign Ministry C.A.H.M. Wijeratne said. Wijeratne said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80116","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=80116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}