Human Rights
UN Secretary General committed to Panel’s recommendations – Spokesperson
Spokesperson for the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon told Lanka Independent this week the UNSG was committed to the recommendations in the Panel of Experts Report on Sri Lanka.
“…precisely because he instituted this report he takes it extremely seriously and far from distancing himself from it he is very much committed to the report,” Spokesperson Martin Nesirky said.
Meanwhile the Human Rights Council commenced its 17th sessions at the Palais des Nations in Geneva today(May 30). Human Rights organizations have already called for the findings of the UN Panel of Experts on alleged war crimes in the last stages of the Sri Lanka’s war, to be taken up at these sessions, but the government of Sri Lanka has expressed confidence that would be unlikely.
"I find it hard to believe that there is any member state or any part of the UN system that is not aware of this report"-Nesirky
Some NGO representatives now in Geneva agree. One reason they say is that the Council is waiting for the domestic mechanism – The Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) Report. The Commission has been given a six-month extension by the government of Sri Lanka to complete its findings.
In Sri Lanka domestic mechanisms for accountability have been considered notoriously untrustworthy. The UN report makes this point. “The LLRC is deeply flawed, does not meet International standards for an effective accountability mechanism and, therefore, does not and cannot satisfy the joint commitment of the President of Sri Lanka and the Secretary-General to an accountability process,” it states.
For its part the government of Sri Lanka calls the UN panel report illegal, that the UN Secretary General has acted outside his authority and says it finds the “UN report fundamentally flawed in many respects. Among other deficiencies, the report is based on patently biased material which is presented without verification.”
Meanwhile last week on May 26th Sri Lanka’s Special Envoy for Human Rights and Minister of Plantation Industries, Mahinda Samarasinghe briefed diplomats in Geneva pointing out that while mistakes had happened in Sri Lanka the country needs time to correct them. He assured them the LLRC report will change the landscape regarding a range of issues now raised by the UN panel report.
With an easy disingenuousness, Mahinda Samarasinghe had also stated that the imprisonment of former Army Commander Gen Sarath Fonseka was an example of government action against military impunity. He had further said a process of reconciliation was taking place in the North and East of the country and that the government was ready to work with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Minister had invited the UN-HCR and Special Rapporteurs to visit Sri Lanka.
The High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay however has welcomed the report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on accountability in Sri Lanka. She has noted the report concludes there are credible allegations of a wide range of serious violations of international law committed by both the Sri Lankan Government forces and Tamil Tigers in the final stages of the conflict. Pillay maintains it is incumbent on the Government of Sri Lanka to investigate these allegations and to implement the measures recommended by the Panel to establish an international mechanism to monitor national investigations and undertake its own as necessary. In her remarks she also encourages the Human Rights Council to reflect on the new information contained in the panel report in light of its previous consideration of Sri Lanka and efforts to combat impunity worldwide.
Despite heavy lobbying from the Sri Lankan embassy it is expected that several governments will respond to this call, flag the Sri
The UN Headquarters in New York
Lankan issue and endorse the remarks made by the High Commissioner.
Last year, on June 22, 2010 United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon appointed a panel of experts to advise him on accountability issues relating to alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the conflict in Sri Lanka. According to the UNSG the panel was to advise him on implementing the commitment on Human Rights accountability made in a joint statement by both the Secretary General and President Mahinda Rajapakse in May 2009.
The three member panel comprised former Indonesian attorney general Marzuki Darusman, American lawyer Steven Ratner, and South Africa’s Yasmin Sooka, who served on that country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. On April 12 this year the report was handed over to the Secretary General by the Panel and later made public but the reaction to its findings by the Sri Lankan government have been predictably rabid.
Below are excerpts of our interview with Secretary General Ban ki Moon’s spokesperson Martin Nesirky at the Office of the Secretary General in New York this week.
Lankaindependent: There is a sense the Secretary General is attempting to distance himself from the report, what is his commitment to this report?
Martin Nesirky: The key point is that precisely because the Secretary General asked for this panel of experts to provide him with the report that looks into accountability questions with regard to Sri Lanka, precisely because he instituted this report he takes it extremely seriously and far from distancing himself from it he is very much committed to the report. He has done a number of things already. One of them and most importantly I think and what is important to the people of Sri Lanka is that he made it public- the entire thing from beginning to end. He was under considerable pressure from some quarters not to publish the report. He did. That’s not distancing, that’s making it available. Secondly of the four recommendations in the report one of them specifically refers to the Secretary General and what the Secretary General should do with regard to the conduct of the UN itself during the coming up to the end of the conflict. He has already said he accepts that recommendation and will work to set up an internal review…with regard to the key part what happens next, precisely by making it public and the statement that went out with the report, it is there for member states to look at. For the international community to look at and he is sure they will take it very seriously including the recommendations in there.
LI: The government of Sri Lanka has rejected the report and states the UN has abdicated its responsibility towards a member state….. the Sri Lankan government too has been accused of trying to distance the Secretary General from the UN panel report engaging in semantics and calling it the Darusman report instead.
MN: ……There are 192 member states all with different national interests, however there are common universal principles that are at stake in this case and many other cases and that’s why the Secretary General was insistent that this panel of experts should provide him with a report that looks at accountability with concern related to Sri Lanka. Obviously we are aware that the Sri Lankan authorities, the government in Colombo has taken exception to the report perhaps inevitably. However what we’ve also said is that if there are concerns, if there are points that they wish to raise then this needs to be done in an official way in an official response which they can provide. What ever the report is called it is a report that was commissioned by the Secretary General of the United Nations to advice him on accountability matters. Because of the gravity of the contents of that report it was made available to the government of Sri Lanka and what really needs to happen is that those parts of the report that refer specifically to what the authorities in Sri Lanka needs to do, that needs to be taken very seriously by the authorities in Sri Lanka and obviously the Secretary General is very keen to ensure that the voice of the international community is heard and that the authorities in Sri Lanka will respond constructively to the recommendations to the report.
What’s really important here is that there should be an accountability process no question and that’s obviously something that the Secretary General has made clear, it was made clear in the report and to quote the report…. the commission that exists at the moment the Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission(LLRC) falls far short of the the international standards for a full fledged investigation into alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes so what the Panel of Experts recommends is that there should be a full investigation and of course an investigation is about due process its at that point that you can then name and shame if you like, it should be a part of a judicial process…
LI: Has the report been officially sent to the Human Rights High Commissioner Ms Navi Pillay?
MN: Well as you know it’s in the public domain it specifically refers to the Human Rights Council and the Resolution taken in 2009 and says that should be revisited. So it’s in the public domain and one of the reasons why I’m answering you this way is because the Secretary General said when the report was issued that he wanted to ensure that he could hear the response from the Sri Lankan authorities and that he would also be reviewing the findings that there are and the recommendations that there are and this is what the SG is doing.
LI: Has he received any response from the SL government as yet?
MN: Not an official written response. He has had at least one conversation with the Sri Lankan authorities on this topic but what we are suggesting is and what we have offered including to have it printed and published alongside the report…that offer was there. It was not taken up. That offer was there, that offer was there. It was not taken up, the offer still stands. Certainly the offer still stands for any official response to be placed alongside the report that we have published.
LI: True the Report is in a the public domain but will the Secretary General send it officially to the Human Rights Council for consideration at its current sessions. If it is just out there in the public domain but the Secretary General shies away from directing its course is he not distancing himself?
MN: Two elements here. Precisely because it is in the public domain already it has been widely discussed, widely read and member states are taking it extremely seriously including in Geneva where the Human Rights Council is based as you know. The second point is that the Secretary General has repeatedly said that the accountability process is something that should be nationally driven but that the UN will continue to monitor what is happening especially regarding the LLRC because there are concerns in the international community as expressed in that report. If that doesn’t work, if the international community feels strongly that that does not work then there are member states of the UN who could take action if they so wished on the basis of the report of the panel of experts. ……because it is in the public domain. I find it hard to believe that there is any member state or any part of the UN system that is not aware of this report. One of the gravity of the content and two of the recommendations that the report makes.
Photos by LI desk
5 Comments to “UN Secretary General committed to Panel’s recommendations – Spokesperson”
September 14, 2011 at 11:03 am
[…] by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Peter Graff)GENEVA (Reuters) – Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip violates international law, a panel of …e Israeli raid of May 2010 that killed nine Turkish activists said earlier this month that Israel […]
September 4, 2011 at 12:04 am
How then , by the ‘logiC’ of that same argument, is it possible tO forge [slowly or accelerated] ethnic reconCiliation, by or in the VERY PROCESS, OF ANYTHING THAT SMACKS OF VICTIMISING THE TAMIL PEOPLE.
WHAT A STUPID, SELF-OPINIONATED AND CRUDELY, EVEN EGOTISTICALLY,CALLOUS ANSWER THAT REFLECTS THE MINDSET OF A MAJORITARIAN SUPERIORITY COMPLEX. AND, TO CLARIFY MATTERS FOR THOSE WHO STUBBORNLY, AND MISCHIEVOUSLY ATTEMPT TO MAKE IT APPEAR THAT THE ENTIRE SRI LANKA ARMY IS BEING LAMPOONED WITH ALLEGED WAR CRIMES AND OR HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, LET IT BE REPEATED THAT WHEN THE THE SO-CALLED CREDIBLE ALLEGATIONS ARE SAID TO REFER TO THE SRI LANKA ARMY AS SUCH, WHAT THEY OBVIOUSLY REFER TO IS THAT THE ALLEGED VIOLATIONS WERE COMMITTED BY UNIDENTIFIED PERSONNEL FROM THE ARMY. ONE CAN SPLIT HAIRS OVER THAT AS INFINITUM BUT ALL ARGUMENTS WILL BE MERE COSMETIC APPLICATIONS BY PAID WORDSMITHS OTO UNCONSCIONABLY ROUSE UP MOB FERVOR AGAINST THE ALLEGATIONS BY SUGGESTING THAT THEY ARE AGAINST THE ARMY OF THE SINHALA MAJORITY AND BY IMPLICATION ” AGAINST THE BUDDHIST ARMY” AND THEREBY STIR UP EXTREMIST EMOTIONALISM AGAINST THE INITIATION OF A JUST PROBE, INTERNAL OR INTERNATIONAL.
THIS DASTARDLY CAMPAIGN SUSTAINED BY THESE SHAMELESS WORDSMITHS FORGETS ONE THING : THAT GOVERNMENT SPONSORED ATTEMPTS ARE BEING SUSTAINED TO PREVENT A JUST, CREDIBLE AND TRANSPARENT PROBE TO DELIVER JUSTICE TO THE RELATIONS OF LOVED ONES ALLEGEDLY KILLED IN THE COURSE OF THE LAST STAGES OF THE WAR THROUGH METHODS WHICH, ACCORDING TO THE UNSG’S PANEL REPORT, WERE SUGGESTIVE OF BEING VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS EVEN TO THE EXTENT OF THEM BEING POSSIBLE WAR CRIMES. THE CALL FOR SUCH A PROBE WOULD BY ANY YARDSTICK IN DOMESTIC OR INTERNATIONAL LAW, APPEAR TO BER QUITE A VALID CRY. THAT BEING THE CASE A TRANSPARENT PROBE WOULD CLEAR THE GOOD NAME OF THE ARMY AND ALSO RUBBISH ANY ALLEGATIONS OF WRONGDOING ALLEGEDLY COMMITTED BY THE AUTHRORITIES.
SANE AND OBJECTIVE PEOPLE SEE NO HASSLE IN THIS. WHAT’S MORE IS THAT A PROBE COULD VERY WELL EVEN SHOW, PERHAPS, THAT EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES WOULD EXCULPATE THE ALLEGED WRONGDOERS.DO INTELLIGENT, OBJECTIVE PEOPLE HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THIS ? APPARENTLY OUR PSEUDO-INTELLECTUALS DO HAVE A PROBLEM AND IT IS THEY WHO EXTEND PERCEIVED INJUSTICES AND PERVERT THE COURSE OF JUSTICE.
July 6, 2011 at 7:00 am
I quote Dr.Dayan Jayathilake from his article ‘Enough’ found in this website which is ;’WHAT MAKES ANY INTELLIGENT PERSON THINK THAT PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY(SRI LANKA)WILL NOT DEFEND FROM THOSE DEEMED INTERVENING OUTSIDERS AND THEIR LOCAL LACKEYS ,THOSE WHO DEFENDED THE COUNTRY -AND DO SO BY ‘ANY MEANS NECESSARY’…HOW CAN ANYONE SERIOUSLY BELIEVE THAT INTER-ETHNIC RECONCILIATION IS POSSIBLE, STILL LESS ACCELERATED BY OR IN THE AFTERMATH OF ANYTHING THAT SMACKS OF VICTIMIZING THE POPULAR ARMED FORCES’
I do not think the Sec.General needs any more answers after reading the above.
September 6, 2011 at 3:15 pm
LK…
self-incriminating slips such as DJ’s ” THOSE WHO DEFENDED THE COUNTRY -AND DO SO BY ‘ANY MEANS NECESSARY’ are precisely one of the predominant reasons as to why the UNSG does want a specific probe into specific allegations.putting one’s foot into one’s mouth can be pretty dangerous for the health you know!
July 5, 2011 at 11:46 pm
[…] Read the full interview here […]