Rajapaksa’s Crimes And Complicity Of The International Community
Mahinda Rajapaksa
Rajapakse’s illegal impeachment by Parliament of the Chief Justice,
against the ruling of the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal , and his
subsequent campaign of intimidation and violence have brought Sri Lanka
to a more new low. The truth of course is that it is a continuation of a
process that has been in the making over many years, and could have
been easily foreseen by anyone —- except by the so called International
Community, especially the hypocritical UN, Western democracies , India
and Japan, who did not want to see it coming , because they would then
have had to acknowledge their own “accountability” for Sri Lanka’s
descent into a failed terror state and into genocide. And the worst is
yet to come.
At the same time, the courage and commitment to justice now displayed by
judges of the Supreme Court and High Court, and the expressions of
support for them, especially from the legal community and political and
civic leaders crossing ethnic divisions, give reason for hope in the
otherwise dismal Sri Lankan landscape.
It is now a matter of absolute urgency , and at a minimum an act of self preservation, for the leaders of the protest movement against the illegal impeachment of the chief justice , especially the organizations of the legal profession, like the Lawyers Collective, to send a public letter to leaders of the International Community, especially the UN Secretary General, UN high Commissioner for Human Rights and President Obama, holding them to account for their support for Rajapakse — despite credible allegations of his serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, subversion of democracy , rule of law, human rights and national reconciliation in contradiction of his solemn commitments to the UN Secretary General and the UN Human Rights Council ( UNHRC) in May 2009— and requesting them to support an independent international investigation of Rajapakse Government’s actions during and after the war. President Obama bears a special responsibility, not least because key members of the top Government leadership responsible for the alleged violations are either US citizens or Permanent Residents.
The protest leaders cannot be easily dismissed by the International Community (IC) as proxy for the deadLTTE.
This is not to excuse the responsibility of the LTTE for their huge
blunders , crimes against civilians, and their misguided role in helping
elect Rajapaksa, which Mr. Sampanthan has courageously acknowledged.
This is now an opportunity for all everyone involved — including the
international community — to seriously and honestly acknowledge and
redress their mistakes — and to bring those responsible to justice
There is a general consensus that the Rajapaksas will not participate in
such an effort, and that their promises are meaningless. Therefore the
initiative must come from the Sinhala polity, and more importantly and
urgently from the so called International Community in accordance with
their responsibilities under international human rights and humanitarian
law. The IC has been complicit in Rajapksa’s crimes without
accountability, not only in the final months of the war, but also for
years before and after ward – in the latter instance even after the LTTE
had been decisively vanquished.
The Rajapksas have reacted to the protests against the illegal
impeachment of the chief justice with their characteristic brutality.
They will use every means possible to retain their authoritarian hold
on power, through the usual mix of terror, guile, barefaced lies,
corruption and patronage , while maintaining a false façade of a
democracy and its trappings to fool the International Community.
What better example of their success does one need than the spectacle of Catholic Cardinal Malcom Ranjith singing the praise of Gotabhaya,
the executioner in chief of thousands of Tamils in his own flock, at a
public meeting in Mannar to announce the forced expropriation of land
belonging to impoverished and cast out Tamil Catholic villagers. It was
not too long ago when the same Cardinal appearing before the LLRC,
cautioned the Rajapksa government against “mass colonization” and
forced “change in the ethnic ratio of the Northern and Eastern
Provinces”. Clearly the Rajapksas have the ability to perform miracles
even with a Prince of St Peter’s Church !
Complicit International Community (IC)
The truth, which has not been recognized in current commentaries, is
that the Rajapakses’ success so far has been due not only to their
total control of all internal levers of power untrammeled by
considerations such as of rule of law, the Constitution and natural
justice, but also, perhaps even more importantly, to the support and
protection provided by the so called International Community, even
after the demise of the LTTE.
The following quote from the former foreign minister of Australia sums up the failure of the IC.
“One of the worst atrocity crime stories of recent decades has barely registered in the world’s collective conscience. We remember and acknowledge the shame of Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. We agonize about the failure to halt the atrocities being committed almost daily in Syria. But, at least until now, the world has paid almost no attention to war crimes and crimes against humanity comparable in their savagery to any of these: the killing fields Sri Lanka in 2009” — Gareth Evans— Remembering Sri Lanka’s Killing fields” -October 26, 2012.Project Syndicate
In fact, comprehensive evidence of Rajapaksas’ war and other crimes
and IC’s complicity is readily available in the reports of the UN
Panel of Experts on Accountability, the UN Internal Review of UN
Actions in Sri Lanka, and in the WikiLeak US embassy cables compiled by in the Colombo Telegraph and other sources.
It is now also imperative that commentators and activists of the standing of Dr. Saravanamuttu, Tisaranee Gunasekara and
others s use these sources to draw public attention to Rajapksa’s
crimes and to the complicit actions of the IC , especially those
governments with democratic credentials , and ask them to take
urgent and specific remedial actions on Sri Lanka during the
forthcoming meeting of the UN Human Rights Council, as they have done in all other recent cases of mass atrocities against civilians
Perhaps those in Colombo Telegraph who have been compiling the WikiLeak
cables will do a serious analysis of them. It will be an important
complement to the UN’s internal review of UN actions in Sri Lanka which
exposed the concurrent failures of the UN. Such a study will also
doubtless reveal the malign role played particularly by Mr. Robert Blake as
the pivotal figure in US policy on Sri Lanka, as Ambassador and as
Assistant Secretary for South Asia, for almost the entire eight year
period of the Rajapaksa presidency to date. Accountability never had a
chance.
The UN Internal review has spelled out in detail the grave and
deliberate failures of the UN, (including senior officials close to the
Secretary General) and its Member States to protect “hundreds of
thousands of civilians and in contradiction with the principles and
responsibilities adopted by Member States and the Secretariat, agencies
and programs.” The UN review Panel has also noted that the UN’s
failures in Sri Lanka reflected effective control exercised over UN
actions by major Member States, including their overriding concern to
avoid any mention of potential war crimes and other violations of
international human rights and humanitarian law by the Sri Lankan
Government.
This would not be news as far as China and Russia are concerned, but
the same pattern has been followed by other countries with democratic
credentials in other contexts as well, , as is evident from
wikileak US cables, past statements by the Co Chairs, and
infrequent public statements by US officials, — at least since 2006
when Rajapakses assumed control of Sri Lanka.
Anyone who needs convincing should read at least Mr.Blake’s horrific WikiLeak cable of May 18, 2007, (WikiLeaks – US embassy cable (18 May 2007) : Sri Lankan government accused of complicity in human rights abuses
The Guardian ) about grave crimes committed with impunity and with
the complicity of the Defense Secretary , against civilians in the
North East , including systematic use of sexual abuse and rape. Blake’s
cables during the months long massacre of civilians in 2009, show that
the Sri Lanka Co- Chairs deliberately chose not to make public, even
at the UN, their knowledge, including satellite imagery, of the ongoing
massacre of Tamil civilians and the repeatedly failed promises of the
Rajapaksa Government that heavy weapons will not be used and that an
adequate supply of food and medicines would be delivered.
The International community was complicit in Rajapksa’s crimes not only
during the war but also in the four years after, in his flagrant
failure to meet his commitments to the international Community in May
2009 on accountability , human rights, democracy, rule of law and
reconciliation, resulting in serious and ever widening violations with
impunity and consequent destruction of democratic institutions, rule of
law , and of judicial independence, inevitably leading to the present
crisis. Unfortunately, IC’s complicity was helped by the Sinhala
polity’s silence, as long as the victims of Rajapaksa’s genocidal
policies were the Tamil or Muslim minorities.
Not surprisingly, therefore, the Rajapkses have been emboldened to
present a so called “ Action Plan” to UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) ,
which, as noted by the Center for Policy Alternatives and the
International crisis Group, make clear that the Government has no
intention of taking credible and concrete actions to enforce
accountability for the alleged war crimes or to implement the
recommendations of theLLRC.
If the IC, and especially the US, is to retain any shred of credibility
of their own, they must, in the context of the forthcoming meeting of
the UNHRC, finally and firmly establish an appropriate international
process to make the Government accountable for its alleged crimes, and
to implement its commitments made to IC in May 2009 as well as the
LLRC’s recommendations.
The reality is that what happens next will depend almost entirely on
what the US does to redress the damage it has done to Sri Lanka
through its complicit relationship with the Rajapakse Government. The
Rajapakses, for all their bluster, have a healthy concern about
what the US could do to them if it really wanted to, having given
them more than enough rope to hang themselves — especially with
Gotabhaya andBasil Rajapaksa being
either US citizens or Permanent Residents. They also know too well
that the US war Crimes Office almost certainly has heavy dossiers on
them and others in the Sri Lankan Government and military.
It is now long past time for the US to do the right thing and bring
the the Rajapakses to justice , taking into account Sri Lankan pleas
for relief from Rajapaksa’s failed terror state, and in accordance
with US responsibilities under US law and international human rights
and humanitarian law.
