The UNSG, Ban Ki-Moon has appointed a panel of three to look into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka during the last phase of the war. Sri Lanka has outright rejected this as an “unwarranted and unnecessary interference with a sovereign state”.
When the Sri Lankan government objected to the appointment of this panel and its role to investigate, the UN Secretary General declared that the panel will look into LTTE war crimes as well.
The issue here is that the LTTE is a terrorist organisation banned by nearly 30 countries. As terrorists, they are not answerable to anyone. Therefore, the UN by investigating the activities of an illegal organisation is giving legitimacy to a terrorist outfit.
As such, it could also be argued that by taking this step, the UN is also giving recognition to the LTTE backed proposed Transitional government by the Tamil diaspora. The conclusion is that the UN is labelling the world’s most ruthless terrorists as ‘good terrorists’ and condoning what they did during the last 3 decades.
In this connection, we may recall that during the height of the war when the LTTE lobbyists were parading the streets of UK, US, France and Canada waving the LTTE flag and the respective national flag together, the locals were horrified and protested to their governments about the terror backers giving equal status to their national flag. Now one year after the terrorists have been decimated the UN is giving legitimacy to world’s No.1 terrorists!
Further, the UN Secretary General had been autocratic with regard to the appointment of this panel as he had not consulted neither the General Assembly nor the Security Coucil of the UN. Therefore, Russia, China, Iran and the Chairman (Egypt) of the 118 member Non-aligned Movement(NAM) have expressed their reservations and displeasure over the appointment of the panel. They have also argued that Sri Lanka had already appointed its own commission and the responsibility of investigation lies with Sri Lanka.
Iran, strongly opposing the UN move had observed, “… Imposing conditions and panels against a country which is moving forward after eradicating terrorism is clearly unacceptable…”
Therefore, the UNSG, Ban Ki-Moon should go and do his homework without getting directives from terror backers.
Dr.P.A.Samaraweera, Australia