The Advisory Panel Report: In Search of a Response

  Thursday, 05 May 2011 00:00   

I hope and trust readers of the column will indulge me. Over the past years I have referred to a coterie of self-defined earnest patriots and defenders of the current regime as apparatchiks and toxic hacks. Over the past few days I find that they hold me responsible for writing what they refer to as the Darusman Report, in whole or part or at the very least of being the principal source of information to the hated troika of Darusman, Sooka and Ratner. On an earlier occasion Prof Wijesinha wrote of me as the wannabe/would be foreign minister in the event that Ranil Wickremesinghe won the presidency and if I remember correctly they subscribed to the opinion that I was chiefly responsible for the loss of the GSP Plus concession.
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SRI LANKA: Cleaning up the Act

05-May-2011

Col R Hariharan

The report of the three-member UN  panel of experts set up to advise UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on alleged war crimes and human rights violations committed during the final stages of the Eeelam war has produced two reactions – both on expected lines.

In the report made public by the UN on April 25, the panel found many of the allegations “credible” against both the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). This has vindicated the suspicion of all those who had been accusing Sri Lanka government of committing these crimes. This section includes many liberal governments of West, INGOs, Tamil Diaspora, human rights activists both within and outside Sri Lanka and of course the rump of the LTTE still trying to revive the defunct organisation amidst Tamil Diaspora. (One will notice that I have omitted India and Tamil Nadu where attitudes are not crystallised as the issue is inexorably mired in domestic and national politics, not unlike Sri Lanka.) However, this disparate section has neither a common agenda nor a forum for collective action; it constituents widely differ on the follow up action to be taken on the report. These range from increasing diplomatic pressure to bring it up in the UN Security Council to indicting President Mahinda Rajapaksa for war crimes.    

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