By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, July 7 -- The UN on Thursday confirmed that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon “discussed the report of the Panel of Experts on accountability in Sri Lanka in his meeting on Tuesday with Ranil Wikremesinghe” -- but refused to say if Ban's chief of staff Vijay Nambiar, involved in the so called White Flag killings of surrenderees in Sri Lanka in May 2009, was present at the meeting.
“We don’t have to give lists of all the senior officials who were present at different meetings,” Ban's deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told Inner City Press. “That’s not what we do.”
But even in the past two weeks, the UN allowed independent media including Inner City Press to observe and photograph the beginning of the meeting of Ban and his aides with Israel's opposition leader Tzipi Livni.
Yet when Sri Lanka opposition leader Ranil Wikremesinghe came, despite a timely request Inner City Press and all independent media were barred from even the beginning of the meeting.
Only for that reason is it unclear if Nambiar, and Ban's top lawyer Patricia O'Brien who like Nambiar has rejected repeated previous requests to brief the press, attended the meeting with Ranil at which war crimes were discussed.
The context is that Ban Ki-moon has not even transmitted his Panel of Experts report on Sri Lanka to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Haq on July 7 said, “Regarding any onward transmission to other bodies, the Secretary-General is considering next steps, and if and when we have further course of action to announce, we will announce it at that point.”
Why would Ban and his spokesperson's office apply a double standard and not allow even independent photographs of Ban's -- and Nambiar's? -- meeting with Sri Lankan figures while allowing such photos of meetings with other countries' opposition leaders, and why has Ban not even transmitted his report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva? We'll have more on this.
