On Banning of Sri Lanka Film, UN's Ban Ki-moon Says It's Up to States, As Silva Lectures?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, February 25 – Ban Ki-moon's United Nations' ambivalent approach to war crimes in Sri Lanka continues. 

 Last week, Ban's spokesman told Inner City Press Ban is aware of the photographs showing the Army's execution of a 12 year old boy in 2009. The photos are in the new Channel 4 film, “No Fire Zone: Killing Fields of Sri Lanka.”

  Now the government is trying to ban the film from the session of the UN Human Rights Council that opened today. Inner City Press asked Ban's deputy spokesman Eduardo Del Buey if Ban thinks the film should be blocked from screening in UN premises.

  Del Buey had a prepared statement, which used the word “accountability” but again referred to a "national process" and said it is up to member states. Video here, from Minute 21:40.

  This is what Ban told Inner City Press when asked why he accepted Sri Lankan general Shavendra Silva as Senior Adviser on Peacekeeping Operations: "it was the member states that decided," he told Inner City Press: in that case, the Asia Group of states.

  (Now when the Asia-Pacific Group is Palestine as one of its three vice presidents for the upcoming Arms Trade Treaty, Inner City Press is reliably informed that a representative of Ban's Secretariat opined in closed door informal consultations that Palestine despite the November General Assembly vote that it is now a non-member observer STATE should have no more right to participate that last summer, when it sat in the corner. 

 Why isn't THIS up to the Asia Group and member states?)

 Sri Lankan sites are abuzz and a-Tweet with a photograph of Shavendra Silva with US military personnel, alternatively called Naval or Marines, giving a talk about defeating terrorism. Where did it take place? Did the US government allow it?

Footnote: The last “Killing Fields of Sri Lanka” film was not screened inside the UN in New York, though Sri Lanka's Mission to the UN including Shavendra Silva were invited in to present what they called their rebuttal. Click here for coverage by the Sri Lanka Campaign. This outrage reverberates still, here, this week, click to view. Watch this site.

Ban Ki-moon's UN Casts Doubt on Palestine as Vice Chair in Arms Trade Treaty Talks, Shavendra Silva of Sri Lanka and Asia Group Cited

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, February 19 -- Palestine'd bid to be a vice chair of the upcoming Arms Trade Treaty talks at the UN, first reported by  Inner City Press on February 7, proceeds but now problematized by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's Secretariat.

  At the most recent "informals" on the ATT, the UN Secretariat changed its position that it will be in the "all states" format, which since November 29, 2012 includes Palestine.
   Rather, Ban's Secretariat -- on behalf of the US, as several sources put it to Inner City Press -- is pointing to the seating arrangements at the ATT meeting before last November's vote.

  Then, Palestine and the Holy See sat in the corner. That was then, this is now, the Palestinian argument goes. And so far in the Asia Group no candidate has come forward to challenge them.

   If it remains so, the precedent should be Ban Ki-moon's and Herve Ladsous' acceptance as the Asia-Pacific Group's representative on the Senior Advisory Group on Peacekeeping Operations of Shavendera Silva, a general depicted in Ban's report on Sri Lanka as engaged in war crimes.

  If Ban deferred to the Group on Silva -- Ban told Inner City Press that was a "decision of member states" -- than it would seem he would have to similarly defer to the Asia Group on Palestine as ATT Vice Chair.

 Or does the US care more about Palestine's placard than war crimes?

  On a story Inner City Press published earlier today, about the one week delay in the UN even answering Inner City Press' February 12 question about Palestinian hunger strikers, another gloss has been offered.

  Rather than that Ban was only moved to answer by protests in Ramallah, the gloss is that "Ban spoke with Bibi [Netanyahu] and it didn't go well, so Ban spoke out." Better late that never, the source said.

 But telling, notes Inner City Press, just as the denouement on the ATT Vice Chair bid will be. Watch this site.

Sri Lanka & Kohona Gun for UN Budget Post While Press Is Threatened

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, July 9 -- Earlier this year, after a backroom process involving Saudi Arabia, the Asia Group at the UN nominated Sri Lanka for its seat on Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's Senior Advisory Group on Peacekeeping Operations.

  Then Sri Lanka named as its representative to SAG General Shavendra Silva, whose battalion is depicted in Ban's own experts' report on Sri Lanka as engaged in war crimes in May 2009.

 Now, Inner City Press has exclusively learned, Sri Lanka is gaining the Asia Group nomination to head the UN's Fifth (Budget) Committee, in the person of Palitha Kohona, who also figures in Ban Ki-moon's report and had a described role in luring surrenderees out, where they were killed.

 Beyond Inner City Press' reporting on Silva and Kohona,see this profile of Kohona and war crimes in the Sidney Morning Herald in Australia, where Kohona is also a citizen, click here to view.

  While Sri Lanka has circled the wagons and maintains that Silva is on the SAG, chairperson Louise Frechette has ruled he cannot participate. Silva has been conveniently "out of town" during at least the last two sets of two-day meetings of the SAG. This would not be acceptable on the Fifth Committee.

  Questions are beginning to arise if this is now the right person to head the UN's budget committee. Projects in the UK led to a recent cancellation of a speech with the Queen by Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa.

 Over this past weekend, his brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa the defense minister shouted as an investigative journalist, "the people will kill you!" 

  Inner City Press asked Ban's deputy spokesman about it, and was told that of course Ban hasn't heard of it. Fifth Committee here we come? Watch this site.

In Asia Group, Sri Lanka Says Stands Behind Silva, Group Letter Not Agreed To

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, February 24 -- Two days after Sri Lankan General Shavendra Silva was ruled "inappropriate" to participate as the Asia-Pacific Group's representative on the UN Senior Advisory Group on Peacekeeping Operations, the Asia Group met Friday behind closed doors about the controversy.

For four weeks, Inner City Press has questioned the UN Secretariat of Ban Ki-moon and diplomats from Asian countries how they could accept Silva as adviser on peacekeeping, given how he appears in Ban's own Panel of Experts report on Sri Lanka, as commander of the 58th Division shelling hospitals and killing people trying to surrender.

And so on Friday afternoon Inner City Press stood outside UN Conference Room 4, posing questions to the Ambassadors who went in and out of the meeting. Then and afterward, a picture of the meeting emerged and is exclusively reported here.

Sri Lanka, represented in the meeting by Permanent Representative Palitha Kohona, Deputy Permanent Representative Shavendra Silva and other staff, wanted the Asia Group to write a letter to SAG chairperson Louise Frechette as well as to Ban Ki-moon. (Sri Lanka may also want to write to another on-the-record UN official; many have off the record condemned Silva's nomination, and Ban Ki-moon's silence.)

Kohona reportedly said, you have to draw a line or only the small and weak will be targeted. Then he said that he had told "the capital" -- Colombo, the Rajapaksa government -- and the capital determined to stand behind Ambassador Silva.

Kohona was chided for having "made representations" about solving the embarrassing standoff. But now he said that while those representations had been made, they weren't valid, only the Group could change its endorsement.

Inner City Press has already reported that there was no vote on Silva, after Sri Lanka talked Saudi Arabia and Nepal, and now some say Fiji, into withdrawing their candidacy.

Now, Inner City Press has learned that it was "Sri Lanka" that was "endorsed by the Group" on January 19, to participate in the first meeting of the SAG, held January 19 and 20, 2012 -- this according to the Asia Group's own minutes.

Kohona has argued publicly that it was Silva who was endorsed, personally. Strangely, it was Deputy Permanent Representative Silva who negotiated with the Permanent Representative of Saudi Arabia on January 9 and 18. Still, after that, "Sri Lanka" -- not Silva -- "was endorsed by the Group."

In the closed door meeting, Inner City Press has learned, Kohona asked for a decision that the Asia Group send a letter to Frechette and Ban Ki-moon.

This was not agreed to. Rather, the chair of the Group for February, Maldives, said that there was no consensus on a letter, calling the situation a "minefield to maneuver."

Fiji, which has itself chafed when former Secretary General Kofi Annan said it might not be able to keep getting paid for sending UN peacekeepers after the coup d'etat there, spoke up for Sri Lanka, saying that there should be consultations including about sending a letter.

Kohona then shifted back and said there was no rush, there were "two months." Leaving the meeting room he told Inner City Press, "three months."

Silva left the meeting room talking with Fiji's representative, with whom Inner City Press not infrequently converses. Silva, too, used to speak.

As Inner City Press has told a Sri Lankan paper which has asked, it was nominating Silva to the SAG which stirred up the recent news here. I'm reliably told that External Affairs minister G.L Peiris was not in favor of Silva's nomination, but people above him were. Thus we can say: it is the Rajapaksa brothers themselves who have of late put civilians deaths in Sri Lanka back in the news, and brought Sri Lanka into some disrepute, now going back on representations and seeking support playing the "small and weak" card.

Already, Maldives -- which suffering what is arguably its own coup d'etat during all this and was represented as chair by a junior diplomat who refused to summarize the meeting at its conclusion -- is preparing to "hand off" the issue to the Group's chair for March, the Marshall Islands. The "small and weak" indeed.

So what of the other states in the Asia Group? We'll have more on this. Watch this site.

Footnote: numerous diplomats told Inner City Press it was "outrageous," as one of them put it, that the Sri Lankan Mission had asked and gotten UN Security to prohibit the Press from covering the February 22 meeting in 380 Madison Avenue as it covered Friday's meeting in the UN North Lawn building.

The same Sri Lankan mission personnel were present Friday but did not try. (There were no other media organization staking out the meeting, despite some belated and opportunistic pick-ups.)

Meanwhile Ban Ki-moon's Deputy Spokesman inserted into Thursday briefing transcript a kneejerk defense of the exclusion of the Press, then abuptly ended the briefing. This is Ban's UN. Click here for Inner City Press' February 24 interview with Ban's chief of staff Vijay Nambiar -- and consider how the UN has come to this.