Dethroned for violations or...?

Sri Lanka has lost its seat in the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) due mainly to a disrespecting of the world system, arrogance, complete lack of counter propaganda against LTTE and bungling and rantings by a group of theoreticians and technocrats.

International norms dealing with torture, disappearances, and political killings have emerged due mainly to the atrocities committed elsewhere. Human Rights groups, pioneered by the work of Amnesty International have used fact finding, consensus building, principled norm construction, norm application etc paving the way for HR standards and measures broadly described as 'principled norm emergence'.

In times of war, the principle Jus in Bello (Justice in War) is said to apply to regulate the conduct of military forces. The rules of warfare aim to safeguard human life and some other fundamental Human Rights, and to ensure that war is limited in its scope and level of violence. It is the premise that combatants have voluntarily forfeited some of their rights whilst civilians have not and carry at all times the full rights under the UN Charter.

Although international law suggests that the inhabitants of non-occupied territory, who take up arms on the approach of the enemy and resist the invading troops, even if they have not had time to organize themselves, count as armed forces, a guerrilla or insurgent force fighting mostly without uniforms are miles apart and cannot be easily distinguished from unarmed civilians.

Some have maintained that in these cases, the burden is on the government to identify combatants, while others argue that "the nature of modern warfare dissolves the possibility of discrimination."

The most fundamental failure that occurred in the hands of the Sri Lankan technocrats who ignored important developments in the world order is that International Organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have changed the international political system in fundamental ways. They are often more powerful, more so than weak states like Sri Lanka who have little say in global politics.

The government has failed miserably to present their case, let alone a case against its foe. We have on this blog, repeatedly demonstrated with statistics-- from Sri Lankan peace NGOs, the rise-in-scale of violations in Sri Lanka directly attributable to the LTTE.

But some, so-called disappearances and abductions are unaccounted for and the government may have to accept either full responsibility, or that the system of law and order has failed.

The most prominent of violations in the charge-sheet against the Sri Lankan state remains to be the 17 dead employees of French NGO action contre la faim organization. The said organization, and many International NGOs routinely risk the lives of 'Local Staff' but are quick to retract its 'Expatriate Staff' once the danger level increases to Orange.

In the case of Mutur, that danger level was red, but no orders were issued for the employees to return. Moreover, by that time, the LTTE was in complete control of Mutur, as Counsel Gomin Dayasiri's cross-examination of survivors indicated. Foreign investigators claimed the government was uncooperative in the examination of the truth.

On September 16th US Defence Contractor Blackwater worldwide killed 17 civilians at Nisour Square. The New York Times, in an article last year states that "Investigators who arrived more than two weeks after the shooting could not reconstruct the crime scene, a routine step in shooting inquiries in the United States...investigators did not have access to statements taken from Blackwater employees, who had given statements to State Department investigators on the condition that their statements would not be used in any criminal investigation like the one being conducted by the F.B.I."

However, a good and honest look at the overall picture says a million words. The two graphs below indicate the overall effects of state-rule and improvement in Human Security in the Eastern Province as opposed to the generally deteriorating situation during the same period in the North.

Political Killings in the East upto April 2008

Political Killings in the North upto April 2008