On Sri Lanka at Human Rights Council, Sudan's Math, Philippines' Review, UN Theater

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 15 -- At the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Friday, in speeches that flew by at cross purposes without response, the death of 40,000 civilians in 2009 and “Sinhalese Buddhist triumphalism” since, including attacks on mosques and on human rights defenders, were detailed.

  Sri Lankan minister Mahinda Samarsinghe bragged that his country has accepted 110, then 113, of the 210 recommendations of the Universal Periodic Review process. 

  But what accountability has there been? Military figures responsible for many of the death have been sent to the UNas diplomats.

   Sudan claimed Sri Lanka accepted 210 recommendations. Call it Khartoum math. The Philippines called the Rajapaksas' response “heart-warming.”

   Recently families of the disappeared were blocked from traveling from Vavuniya to the UN in Colombo. In New York, Inner City Press asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman how this is acceptable and was told there are other ways to get information to the UN.

  Ban Ki-moon recently accepted a whitewash report about Sri Lanka from Japan's Ambassador; repeated requests after that for a copy of the report were denied. Ban went on to praise the whitewash report when he was asked about Sri Lanka.

   NGOs got to speak. One of them, Human Rights Watch, has refused to disclose even what topics it raised to Ban Ki-moon during director Ken Roth's March 4 meeting with him. For more on Sri Lanka in the UN theater -- literally -- and continuation, click here. Watch this site.

Sri Lanka Banning Families of Disappeared in North OK with Ban Ki-moon's UN

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 7 -- When the Sri Lankan government bans families of the disappeared from traveling from Vavuniya to Colombo to petition the UN office there, one might expect the UN to be concerned, at least as much as some member states, if not as “deeply concerned” as about, say, North Korea.

  But as to Ban Ki-moon's UN, you'd be wrong.

  Thirteen days after Ban accepted a “whitewash” report about Sri Lanka and went on to praise it in Geneva, without releasing the report, Inner City Press asked Ban's chief spokesperson Martin Nesirky:

Inner City Press: There was a group of families of disappeared people seeking to go to Colombo, it 

said to actually go to meet the UN country team with information, see about their relatives, and they were stopped by the Government in Vavuniya, not allowed to reach Colombo or to speak to the UN, and I am wondering if the UN [is] saying that they shouldn’t have been blocked. Is the UN aware of this? Do they believe people should be able to pass this whatever information they have to the UN, and what’s going to happen with them?

Spokesperson Nesirky: Well, there would be other conduits to be able to provide information if people feel they have information that they wish to hand over to the United Nations. There are other ways to do it if they cannot reach Colombo. So I am sure that that would be possible, to be able to receive information and not just via the country team in the country.

  From this answer it sounds like blocking or banning the families of the disappeared up in Vavuniya, keeping them from access to the UN Country Team, is fine with the UN.

  What ARE these “other conduits”? What was in the“whitewash” report that Ban praised in Geneva? There are many questions about Ban Ki-moon and Sri Lanka and they should be asked and answered. Maybe Team Ban will again find a way to give the answers to other, friendlier scribes. Watch this site.

As Sri Lankan IDPs Shot, UN's Pascoe Says Camps To Be "Thinned Out," Council Should Meet

By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/untrip8may9srilanka092609.html

UNITED NATIONS, September 28 -- Just after the Sri Lankan Army shot people leaving the Manik Farms camps in Vavuniya, Sri Lanka's Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and Secretary of Defense met in New York with the UN's highest officials.

Afterwards, Inner City Press asked the head of the UN's Department of Political Affairs Lynn Pascoe about the shooting incidents, whether the Sri Lankan Army's web site had misquoted him, and why the UN had not convened a meeting about Sri Lankan during the last week's General Debate. Video here, from Minute 55:49.

Of the shooting, Pascoe attributed it to overcrowding in the Manik Farms camps, saying "they need to be thinning it out." He acknowledged that the Sri Lankan Army had put a "different spin" on what he said during his visit this month. Inner City Press asked about the headline "You have better story than is getting out today - Pascoe to President." Inner City Press asked this question ten days ago, without getting any answer.

Pascoe said he was only been referring to de-mining, that he was "surprised" he was quoted "for saying things quite in the way that [he] had said them." But why didn't the UN seek a correction then, as it has when for example Sudan characterized what the UN told them in a bilateral conversation?

Pascoe said that the meeting with Defense Secretary (and Presidential brother) Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayaka and Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama was attended not only by Ban Ki-moon, but also by John Holmes and Vijay Nambiar.

As Pascoe sought to turn to another questioner, Inner City Press reminded him of the unanswered question of why the UN had not set up a meeting during the General Debate, as it did on Myanmar, Somalia and other countries.

Pascoe said there had been some thought "early on" of convening such a meeting about Sri Lanka, but it didn't happen. He added that "it is important for the Security Council to discuss... in their rooms or in the basement." Well, the UN Charter provides for the Secretary General to convene a Security Council meeting, under Article 99. Watch this site.

Footnotes: in continued reporting on the delayed U.S. State Department report on war crimes in Sri Lanka, which was due before Congress on September 21 but was then deferred, Inner City Press has been told that staff for Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont found deficiencies with the report, having nothing to do with the stealth visit of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. Meanwhile, in Europe the possible termination of Sri Lanka's GSP Plus tariff benefit is set to be discussed on October 1, and voted on by October 15. We'll see.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/untrip8may9srilanka092609.html

In 16 Hours in Sri Lanka, UN's Ban To Overfly Zone of Carnage, Dine with President

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/untrip1may9srilanka052309.html

COLOMBO, May 23 -- In the wake of what UN officials called a bloodbath on the beach, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the Press are set for a sixteen hour jaunt around Sri Lanka on Saturday, which some call the victory tour. On military helicopters the entourage will travel to Manik Farm, which the UN's John Holmes has repeatedly called the largest camp for Internally Displaced People in the world. Only Zones 1 and 4 will be toured.

Currently, neither the UN nor non-governmental organizations are allowed to enter the camps with vehicles. A briefing will be given by, among others, Major General G A Chandrasiri and a hospital will be visited.

Next from Manik Farm's helipad, the group will "over fly [the] No Fire Zone," the scene of much firing and dying, including in the days after the government declared victory but neither the Red Cross nor UN were allowed into the zone to search for or help the wounded.

Ban's chief and staff and envoy Vijay Nambiar received a similar fly-over on May 22 and concluded from the air, according to UN officials, that no civilians remain in the Zone. Inner City Press has a camera with a zoom, but there's talk of bodies in bunkers, bodies buried, evidence destroyed.

The group will lunch at the government Air Base in Anuradhapura, the site of a prison in which as Inner City Press has reported UNHCR staff member Mr. Ragushankar Kulathaivelu has been imprisoned since last Fall. He and his mother were arrested on October 5, 2008.

From where he worked for UNHCR, in Mannar, he was visiting his mother in Vavuniya, when the authorities came to arrest his mother for renting a room to an alleged LTTE supporter, who had identified himself as a student.

The mother died in December, in jail. Ragushankar Kulathaivelu nevertheless remains in prison in Anuradhapura. Reportedly, even after the wipe out of the No Fire zone, conditions for such prisoners have grown worse, with verbal and other abuse.

This is a UN system staff member, arrested along with his mother for no reason, and still in custody. UNHCR's country representative has said nothing publicly about it, and has not responded to written questions on the matter. Inner City Press on the plane to Sri Lanka asked the UN's Holmes about the case. What will be done? Perhaps it will be a working lunch.

Ban's entourage includes not only Holmes and Nambiar but also the head of the UN Department of Political Affairs Lynn Pascoe, Ban's spokesperson Choi Soung-ah and Director of Communications Michael Meyer, as well as Department of Public Information staff. Much administrative work has gone into the trip, but its outcome is far from certain, in fact is heavily maligned from many quarters.

The group then flies en masse to Kandy, where Ban will meet with President Mahinda Rajapaksa then hold a half-hour press conference in the Queen's Hotel. Then Ban will dine with President Rajapaksa, as Ban told Inner City Press the two did in Seoul, before that sharing a helicopter ride over a port since re-development by the Chinese.

At the Sri Lankan Mission to the UN in New York, an official who restricted this reporter's passport to two days and said for any longer, a background check would be performed in Colombo told Inner City Press of the mixing of Sinhanese hoppers with Tamil those, "in food you see we fix," she said. What or who is on the menu and agenda at Ban's and Rajapaksa's dinner is not known.

Will Mr. Ban raise the incarceration of the doctors who remained in the No Fire zone offering treatment and casualty figures? Will he ask about Tissainayagam, a journalist held without charges for more than a year? Will the two discuss Amendment 13 to the Sri Lankan constitution, which promised too-limited devolution or powers but nevertheless was never implemented, and reportedly might now be further undermined?

What about the long-promised investigation into the killings of newspaper editors and aid workers, from Action Contre la Faim and elsewhere? What about what's called the government's blacklist of 837 internationals?

What about the Memorandum of Understanding now being demanded from NGOs by the government of Sri Lanka, which requires them to provide "all information" to the government? (See Inner City Press' exclusive report. here.)

What about Bousa prison, where witnesses tell of routine torture of those detained?

Unless something changes, the whole group will be packed back on the UN plane, at Katunayake International Airport, and will leave the country before Saturday at midnight. Watch this site for updates, whenever and wherever the Internet can be found.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/untrip1may9srilanka052309.html

On Sri Lanka, of Human Rights, Victors and Doctors Still Detained, Ban to the Zone

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un3may8srilanka052009.html

UNITED NATIONS, May 20 – In Sri Lanka, access to the interment camps has been further reduced, the conflict zone still unvisited, doctors who worked there still detained. The day before the UN's Secretary General Ban Ki-moon gets on a series of plane with the Press to Colombo, his Deputy Spokesperson acknowledged the reports of the doctors' detentions, and that she had no update on the Red Cross getting access.

Inner City Press asked, to be sure, that Ban will be going to what was called the conflict zone. “He said he expected to go to the conflict zone,” she answered. Video here, from Minute 56:03.

With this understanding, the circus will leave the UN's host country on Thursday afternoon. Early Friday morning, a UN plane will continue on from Frankfurt. It will arrive, near midnight, in Colombo. The following day, Saturday, Ban and the Press will apparently be whisked north in government helicopters, to IDP camps in Vavuniya, and then expectedly to the conflict zone. Who is still alive there? What has been done to clear or cover up?

Wednesday in the UN, the main political adviser of a Security Council Permanent Member which supports Colombo's moves told Inner City Press, “Why are you going? The government has already won.”

When Inner City Press countered that the UN should be concerned about hundreds of thousands of IDP, now being denied basic aid, he replied that of course the government must screen for the LTTE. But are the NGOs whose vehicles are now barred from the camps accused of being LTTE? To this, he had no answer.

Nor did the spokesman for the President of the UN General Assembly answer, when Inner City Press asked for a read-out of his meeting Wednesday morning with India's new Abmbasssador to the UN. It seemed fair to ask what they dicussed, for example Sri Lanka. But the PGA's spokesman said, we don't provide read-outs of such meetings. Video here, from Minute 58:35.

In Geneva on Monday, the UN Human Rights Council has scheduled a session on Sri Lanka. There is talk of satellite photos being used, to show deep mortar craters in the “No Fire” Zone. There are stories of senior LTTE leaders trying to surrender, carrying white flags, shot to death.

The government's assumption, sources say, is that any civilians that remained last weekend in the conflict zone were “Tiger through and through,” and hence the action and blocked access. An evidentiary hearing or investigation would get to the bottom of these points. But where would one be possible? Colombo in Colombo, we'll call it, referring to the rumbled detective show in re-runs on American television. Watch this site.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/un3may8srilanka052009.html

In Sri Lanka, UN Spokesman Has Last Visa, Press In For 2 Days, Banned From Conflict Zone?

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un3may6srilanka051909.html

UNITED NATIONS, May 19 – In the run up to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's visit this weekend to Sri Lanka, the UN in New York could not say Tuesday whether it or the Red Cross had gained access to what was called the “No Fire Zone,” where are reports of untended wounded dying. Nor did the UN describe any steps take for the doctors who had remained in the No Fire Zone, and whom the government now acknowledges detaining and interrogating.

Inner City Press asked UN Deputy Spokesperson Marie Okabe what Mr. Ban's envoy Vijay Nambiar was doing in the country: had he attended President Mahinda Rajapaksa's speech on Tuesday morning? Ms. Okabe wouldn't say, but noted that Nambiar “went on a field visit to the displaced area today.” Video here, from Minute 14:46.

It is anticipated that Mr. Ban and the accompanying Press will be taken to the Menic Farm camp in Settikulam in Vavuniya. Some waiting in the Sri Lankan Mission to the UN for visas for the trip groused that “everyone” has been to that camp, that it would be more newsworthy if Ban goes somewhere “no one else has been.”

Senior Ban advisers who Inner City Press spoke with cringe at the idea of Ban in the conflict zone. At least the camps, they said, would not be about the battle, “but the future.” But it will smack to some of a victory tour, regardless. Maybe some of the reported wounded could still be found in bunkers. And as UN humanitarian John Holmes was asked, if the government barred the UN from the conflict zone for so long, to at least go there now would be a statement, to show the UN flag belatedly.

The roles and rights and self-respect of the UN in Sri Lanka are still all in question. Inner City Press asked the UN's Ms. Okabe about reports that Sri Lanka's Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona, himself the former head of the UN's Treaty Division, has said that UN system spokesman Gordon Weiss will not have his visa extended because of his public statements.

While Ms. Okabe said she was unaware of the comments, and that Weiss had just given an interview to the UN's own radio station, online Secretary Kohona was quoted that, “It is not the role of the UN officer to say anything in public to embarrass the host government.” Inner City Press asked Ms. Okabe if this is the Secretariat's understanding of the UN's role. She did not answer. Time will tell, even the next few days.

Footnote / full disclosure: this reporter has been granted a visa, albeit for only two days, gratis by the Sri Lankan mission. A request for more than two days resulted in instructions to write a letter, which will be considered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs “after a background check.” Watch this site.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/un3may6srilanka051909.html

In Sri Lanka, Access UN Claimed Nambiar Won Is Denied, Arrested Staff UNspoken For, IMF Loan and UK

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/sc4srilanka042709.html

UNITED NATIONS, April 27 -- While Sri Lanka's government's claim it had not been using heavily artillery is called into question by its own subsequent admission, the United Nations' statements are also questionable. On April 22, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that his envoy Vijay Nambiar had gotten a commitment from President Mahinda Rajapaksa to allow a humanitarian assessment team into the conflict zone. Five days later, Ban's Spokesperson acknowledged that what was presented as a commitment has not been implemented:

Inner City Press: On Sri Lanka, I wanted to know in light of the Secretary-General’s announcement last week that there will be a mission into the conflict zone by a humanitarian assessment, is that going forward or has it, as some of the reports have it, been blocked by the Government?

Spokesperson Montas: This is what John Holmes is trying to arrange.

Inner City Press: Currently, it was announced that it had been agreed to. Was it then un-agreed to?

Spokesperson Montas: It was agreed to. We don’t know where things are at this point. Mr. Holmes is there and he is the only one who has the answer to your question.

Inner City Press: And just also on Sri Lanka, I learned, and maybe you won’t know this off hand, but that in late 2008 two UN staff members were arrested by the Government. It now seems or I have been told and the UN didn’t say anything publicly, but some think they’re still being held. One is a UNHCR protection officer in Vavuniya; and the other one is a UNOPS driver; both arrested by the...[inaudible].

Spokesperson Montas: I don’t have that information. We can certainly have it for you. All I can say is that right now we have 13 staff members who are in the zone of conflict; and that is really all I have. [Video here]

This last is another indication of why the UN is not to be believed, particularly when it comes to Sri Lanka. When the government detained 13 UN system staff members and their families in "IDP" camps, the UN said nothing publicly until after Inner City Press asked about it at a UN noon briefing. Of the two arrests alluded to, Inner City Press has been told that the mother of a UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) staff member, the protection officer for Vavuniya, was charged with renting a room, unknowingly, to someone allegedly connected with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Both she and her son were arrested, and the mother reportedly died in prison.

The UN, local staff say, never spoke out on this, nor on a UN system driver from Kilinochchi who was arrested "for not speaking Sinhala." UN local staff have been arrested and detained on an ethnic basis, and the UN for all of its "never again" bluster said nothing.

With the foreign minister of the UK, France and Sweden slated for a whirlwind tour to Vavuniya on Wednesday, we question again the UK's Ambassador to the UN's statement that there is no connection between the $1.9 billion loan Sri Lanka is seeking from the IMF and the government's behavior. Perhaps there's no connection in the UK's approach...

Footnote: We continue to wait for the UK's formal answer to the first of the two questions which Inner City Press asked the UK Mission to the UN two questions on Sri Lanka early on April 15:

Does the UK believe that international law and the rights of UN humanitarian staff are being violated by the now-acknowledged detention of UN staff in the Sri Lankan government's “IDP” camps?

It has been reported this morning that Sri Lanka's “minister also told the British Foreign Secretary that there was concern that the LTTE would continue to consolidate its fortification of the No-Fire Zone.” Please confirm the accuracy of that, and of this and if so, does the UK interpret it as saying that an offensive on the No-Fire Zone and the civilians in it will begin? What did the UK Foreign Secretary say?

As of this press time 12 days later, the formal answer has been referral to Minister Miliband's April 12 statement, and this. On April 21, Inner City Press put the question to U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, whose spokesman the following day cleared this response: "UN personnel should have freedom of movement and be treated with respect." But they are still detained as of this writing. As more answers arrive or are released we will report them on this site.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/sc4srilanka042709.html