R.K. RADHAKRISHNAN
in Colomb
JOE KLAMAR/AFP
INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLE at the Manik Farm refugee camp in Cheddikulam on May 23, 2009, when Ban Ki-moon visited it.
ON May 19, 2009, soon after President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared that Sri Lankan forces had defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), spontaneous celebrations broke out all over the island, barring the Tamil-dominated North. “We have liberated the whole country from LTTE terrorism,” he said, addressing the country's Parliament in Tamil and declaring the following day a national holiday to celebrate the armed forces. “We all must now live as equals in this free country,” he said.
Joy, relief and a sense of triumph marked every engagement of the Sri Lankan state since the guns fell silent in the last theatre of battle, Mullaithivu.
Just as Sri Lanka makes elaborate preparations to celebrate the second anniversary of its victory over the LTTE, three separate reports/analyses have brought to life ghosts of what now looks like a distant past. All the three – the Human Rights Watch's (HRW) April 7 account of those who disappeared during the war; the United States' State Department Report, which was released on April 8; and, the last and most significant one, the Report of the United Nations Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka, which was submitted to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on April 12 and released on April 25 – hold both the LTTE and the Government of Sri Lanka responsible for the death of innumerable civilians caught in the conflict during the last stages of the war. Full Story>>>
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The Rise and Fall of International Human Rights
Lecture by Louise Arbour, President & CEO of the International Crisis Group, on the occasion of the Sir Joseph Hotung International Human Rights Lecture 2011, at the British Museum, 27 April 2011. Louise Arbour | 27 Apr 2011
Introduction
At no other time in recent history has there been as much hope and promise for the people of the Arab world to obtain the full enjoyment of their rights as citizens. This is so primarily because they are claiming their rights, loud and clear, and also because they are getting a response, sometimes loud, sometimes not so clear.
Anyone commenting on these unfolding events would be wise to do so modestly, prudently, and with an open mind. There are similarities but also many significant differences between the various uprisings, and between their transformative potential. After the initial shock wave of Tunisia and Egypt, in retrospect, they now seem the easier cases (which is a different thing from saying that they are easy cases).
The transformation of protests into an armed insurgency in Libya and the effect of the international involvement there; the sectarian undertone of the government’s response to the protests in Bahrain, the multiplicity of actors in Yemen and the regional implications of the future of Syria make these more complex, less predictable and, in the cases of Syria and Bahrain, potentially more significant in the broader regional context. Full Story
The transformation of protests into an armed insurgency in Libya and the effect of the international involvement there; the sectarian undertone of the government’s response to the protests in Bahrain, the multiplicity of actors in Yemen and the regional implications of the future of Syria make these more complex, less predictable and, in the cases of Syria and Bahrain, potentially more significant in the broader regional context. Full Story
