The real loser in Geneva

March 17, 2013, 7:31 pm

Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, who is currently in Geneva to defend Sri Lanka at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), has asked why the international community is silent on LTTE atrocities. This, we believe, is a rhetorical question. The answer is only too well known to the minister as well as others. Some members of the world community do not give a tinker's damn about investigating those crimes simply because that does not serve their purpose.

Sri Lanka is in the present predicament in Geneva because its incumbent government is not in the good books of the West. Most of its critics are the worst perpetrators of war crimes who deserve to be bracketed with Pol Pot, but they, ably assisted by the international media, are on a quixotic mission to defend human rights! Sri Lanka is not considered pro-western enough to be of any use to the capitalist bloc in the throes of a mega politico-economic crisis vis-a-vis an emergent bipolar world with China and Russia acting as a countervailing force against the post-Cold War new world order. The end of Sri Lanka's armed conflict has put paid to the efforts by some meddlesome western governments to remain actively engaged in the affairs of this country and thereby have a strong presence in the region.

The US-led forces striving to retain their global dominance even through illegal military campaigns do not consider Sri Lanka a strategic ally. Ironically, the interests of India, which once threw in its lot with the Soviet Union, have come to dovetail with those of the western bloc. It is not only adversity that makes strange bedfellows; strategic interests also do! India may be wobbling on the US resolution against Sri Lanka at present but it is bound to vote with the US in Geneva not so much because of coalition compulsions and pressure from Tamil Nadu but because of its heavy dependence on the US in view of China's rise and attendant challenges which it is not capable of tackling under its own steam. Last year, it made a mockery of its principled stance that it would not vote for country specific resolutions at the UNHRC by voting against Sri Lanka even at the risk of a similar resolution being passed against it over Kashmir.

One need not be surprised that in Geneva a concerted global effort to defend human rights is conspicuous by its absence. Instead, various countries and strategic alliances are abusing the UNHRC and human rights to promote their own interests or to settle scores. The US, which is all out to have allegations of war crimes against Sri Lanka probed, has no qualms about defending Israel to the hilt or carrying out drone attacks on civilians in Afghanistan or using torture as an interrogation method. It has even gone so far as to scuttle UNHRC efforts to call Israel and some other allies like Bahrain to account. The fate of the Goldstone report and UNHRC Chief Navi Pillay's recantation of a strongly-worded statement against the suppression by Bahrain of human rights may serve as examples.

That said, most of those who defend Sri Lanka against the US-led diplomatic offensive in Geneva do so not out of any conviction that it committed no war crimes but because it is considered one of their strategic partners to be protected anyway.

Allegiance, not any concern for human rights, having thus become the basis of a plethora of resolutions adopted or rejected at its sessions with even its CEO being at the beck and call of some world powers that unflinchingly violate human rights and use them as a bludgeon to beat their opponents with, the UNHRC has, we are afraid, forfeited its raison d'etre and rendered itself irrelevant and meaningless in today’s global context. It has gone the same way as the UN Security Council. The real loser in Geneva has been human rights! Minister Samarasinghe is whining in vain.