By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/untrip9may3srilanka101409.html
UNITED NATIONS, October 14 -- The UN will send Canadian Major General Patrick Cammaert to Sri Lanka from November 8 to 13, and "internally displaced children will be one of the issues raised," UN children and armed conflict official Radhika Coomaraswamy told the Press on Wednesday.
Inner City Press had asked Ms. Coomaraswamy about her reported meeting with Sri Lanka's Prime Minister during the UN General Debate in late September. Video here, from Minute 42:26.
Ms. Coomaraswamy replied that she "met the Prime Minister more socially," but had officially met with the Foreign Minister and Secretary Minister of Defense (apparently referring to presidential brother Gotabhaya Rajapaksa). She said that the rights of IDP children were one of the issue raised.
Inner City Press asked if she thought that the condition of IDP children in the Menik Farm camps in Vanni and elsewhere complied with the "Rights and guarantees for internally displaced children" which is Annex I to her Office's report to the UN General Assembly.
Ms. Coomaraswamy replied that on "freedom of movement" and other issues, she believes the camps are "in violation of principles." She called Sri Lanka's response "draconic" or draconian.
Inner City Press has previously interviewed Cammaert, who used to serve a UN military commander in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He told Inner City Press it was an outrage that the UN stands by while indicted war criminal Jean Bosco Ntaganda walks freely around Goma in North Kivu, and has a role with the Congolese Army which the UN assists. What outrages while Cammaert witness, and have the courage to speak about, in Sri Lanka and after he comes back?
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's Ambassador to the UN Palitha Kohona was to be found down in the basement of the UN, where Sri Lanka was sponsoring a lunch time session on desalinization. Kohona appeared recently on BBC's Hard Talk program, and said that no investigation of war crimes in Sri Lanka is needed, because people just want to move forward.
Which, some noted, is among the defenses being offered in the Security Council today, and in Geneva tomorrow, by Israel, for its acts in Gaza earlier this year. Click here for that story.
Footnote: more seriously, there is a boat en route to Australia, now in Indonesian waters, full of asylum seekers from Sri Lanka. The way the ship and refugees are being treated does not seem to comply with international law. And where is the UN High Commissioner for Refugees?
And see, www.innercitypress.com/untrip9may3srilanka101409.html