By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC - Guardian UK - Honduras - ESPN
SDNY / UN Gate, July 23 – Amid the momentous events in Sri Lanka, the silence and complicity of the UN of Antonio Guterres with the Rajapaksas was for days noted.
Guterres has palled around with Gotabaya. Even when Inner City Press, which reported from inside Sri Lanka in connection with the Bloodbath on the Beach formally informed the UN that it was using as "peacekeepers" soldiers who engaged in summary execution of Tamils in 2008-09, his UN continued to use them.
Now Singapore to which Gotabaya Rajapaka fled without seeking to obtaining asylum has been asked by ITJP to prosecute him for war crimes, under universal jurisdiction. Again, the UN is silent. It is conflicted: Secretary General Antonio Guterres by the same logic should also be prosecuted, as on the Uighurs in China and Anglophones in Cameroon, for aiding and abetting including through censorship to cover up.
For Guterres it's been more than a lack of standards in accepting soldiers as peacekeepers, and paying autocrats for their use. The Rajapaksas, Mahinda and Gotabaya, largely sold the country to China, for their own benefit. Guterres has his own links to China - financial links to convicted UN briber CEFC China Energy Guterres omitted from his financial disclosures, and Chinese support for his first and second terms as UNSG. And so, silence as Gotabaya flees, and documents of war crimes are shredded, burned and disappeared. This is today's UN.
On the morning of July 11, banned Inner City Press in writing asked Guterres and his spokespeople including Melissa Fleming, Stephane Dujarric and Farhan Haq, and UN Peacekeeping's Jean Pierre Lacroix spokespeople mold2 at un.org, "Aditya Mehta [UNHQ] at un.org, hector.calderon at un.org and coutrix at un.org:
"On Sri Lanka, given the video of civilians being shot out over the weekend, what safeguards are in place for UN Peacekeeping to not continue to use forces from Sri Lanka (and elsewhere) engage in human rights abuses?"
No answer, just a canned statement: "The Secretary-General continues to follow developments in Sri Lanka closely. He stands in solidarity with the Sri Lankan people and calls on all stakeholders to engage in dialogue to ensure a smooth transition of government and to find sustainable solutions to the economic crisis. The Secretary-General condemns all acts of violence and calls for those responsible to be held accountable." Accountable? The UN pays war criminals, and is itself not accountable - nor is its UN Censorship Alliance, see here on Sri Lanka. We will have more on this.
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