By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, March 22 -- After a series of surreal speeches, a belated resolution on Sri Lanka was adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday morning, with 24 in favor, 15 against and eight abstaining.
At issue is the killing of some 40,000 civilians in 2009. There were some votes that might be called surprising.
The Philippines recently pushed and got one of its nationals a judgeship on the International Criminal Court, and tried to explain its abstention on a General Assembly resolution on Syria by referring to its expatriate workers in that country.
But the Philippines voted against the Sri Lanka resolution, without any reference to or impact on its expatriate worker there.
By contrast, Nigeria said it has just opened a diplomatic mission in Colombo, and partners with Sri Lanka in the Commonwealth and Non-Aligned Movement. Nevertheless Nigeria voted for the resolution.
There were references to issues ranging from the Obama administration's failure to closed down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay to its use of drones. These are topics that should be considered, but hardly a reason to grant impunity for the killing of 40,000 civilians.
More pointedly it was said that 40% of the weapons used by Sri Lanka were sold to it by the US, UK and Israel, and that Western intelligence services assisted the Rajapaksa government. There should be accountability for this too.
Sri Lanka's representative, with G.L. Peiris behind him, claimed his country shared information with the UN Human Rights Council. But in fact the Rajapaksa government in 2009 successfully pressured the UN to withhold OCHA death statistics until they got leaked to and published by Inner City Press.
Uganda said it would vote no, because one must "exhaust domestic mechanism" before such a resolution. But the Museveni government referring the Lord's Resistance Army's Joseph Kony, now of #KONY2012 fame, to the International Criminal Court.
Kyrgyzstan, recently charged with a role in the ethnic cleansing and killing of Uzbeks, said that it would abstain, as did Angola, a country recently visited by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in what at least one wag calls Ban's impunity roadshow.
Most recently when Sri Lanka pushed as a UN Adviser on Peacekeeping its General Shavendra Silva, whose 58th Division is depicted engaged in war crimes in the "Killing Fields" films and even Ban's on Panel of Expert report, Ban had nothing to say, except that is entirely up to member states. Some leadership.
With a shifting, almost Alice in Wonderland position by India, it now remains to be seen how things will proceed in the Asia Group, which many had expected to bring about at least a switch from Silva to Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative Palitha Kohona, who also had an involvement in the so-called White Flag killings covered by Ban's Panel of Experts report.
But things have become a showdown, due in part to lack of leadership by Ban and others. Watch this site.
