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Sri Lanka's Response on Archbishop Desmond
Tutu's Gaza Report
The Permanent Mission of
Sri Lanka to the United Nations Office at Geneva
18th September 2008
Statement made on behalf of Sri Lanka by Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha, Secretary
of the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, during the
Interactive Dialogue on the Report of the High-Level Fact Finding Mission
to Beit Hanoun
Sri Lanka welcomes the report of the Fact-Finding Mission to Beit Hanoun
and the presentation of Archbishop Tutu. The Mission appreciated the
need for thorough investigation before pronouncing on so worrying a
situation, and we are sorry that Israel did not feel itself able to
cooperate with the Mission. The terrible suffering of the Palestinian
people over so many decades is an issue that has worried the world,
and we believe Israel, set up through the United Nations, and legitimately
concerned about terrorist threats to its existence, should make it clear
through cooperation with the United Nations that it subscribes to international
norms and law, in its efforts at self defence.
Discussion with Israeli personnel was intended to redress the imbalances
perceived by Israel, and such discussion should not be denied in a context
in which, as even the European Union had indicated, disproportionality
was feared.
The issues of disproportionality and compensation raised by the Mission
should, Mr. President, make clear the need for a more committed and
consistent approach on the part of those who were largely responsible
initially for the sufferings of the Palestinian people. Sri Lanka recognizes
the horror of what was perpetrated by several European countries against
the Jews over many centuries, and in particular, during the Holocaust,
and we are glad that such anguish will not recur. For this reason alone,
the current commitment of the European Union to Human Rights is welcome.
We also understand the need to compensate for earlier aberrations felt
after the Second World War. However, that this compensation should have
been at the expense of innocent others is something we still cannot
understand, and which only could have been possible in a context in
which the current concern with equality of rights did not obtain.
But for this reason, we believe it is imperative that compensation
for the Palestinians, restoration of lands that were not sanctioned
by the United Nations when it established Israel, insistence on strict
adherence to social and economic rights as well as political and civil
ones, should be promoted by all member states. We hope the report of
the Mission will draw attention to lapses, and that Israel, recognizing
kinship of suffering, will move swiftly to a political settlement that
recognizes the willingness to compromise displayed by democratic Palestinian
forces in the midst of so many difficulties. We call then upon those
who exercised power sixty years ago, who continue to exercise power
now, to temper power with justice and work with commitment and consistency
to end the suffering that, perhaps unwittingly, they created so many
years ago.
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