Culprit Seeks to Elude the Indictment

Mysterious are the ways in which the UN system moves. Pitiable is the fate of those who deserve justice. The culprit gets around leaving the victim to waste away.

“The US is concerned that in Sri Lanka, time is slipping away”, said Mario Otero. Tamils say that it is the rogue state that is wriggling out and that too with consummate skill.

As recompense for the Tamils, international investigation was brandished first. The LLRC put paid to it. Sri Lanka will implement the recommendations, came the grandiloquent pledge. A whittled down draft resolution followed. Sri Lanka has started implementation, was the plaintiff’s response spuriously put across. Where? In the very citadel of the UNHRC itself. How? With nonchalance.

What form has governmental response taken? The leader of the EPDP, singled out by the LLRC for crime, a fugitive from justice, pursued by India but accommodated in the cabinet of Sri Lanka is now paraded in the UNHRC, an international forum of 47 nations. What a tragic irony. An arch violator of human rights recommended by the LLRC to be brought to justice, stalks into the arena of the very HRC that is urging implementation of the LLRC recommendation.

A war guilt government has the hardihood to place a prime culprit on display and the international community looks askance at his repulsive presence. How does the world take it? Cheat, chicanery or casuistry? This lapse would be invoked by the GOSL, to foreclose an inquiry demanded by the LLRC. After seeing such exploits, which rogue state will not pluck up courage to beguile the world or to diddle the UN? Who will continue to have faith in an international forum? It is not time slipping by, but Sri Lanka slithering away.

The LLRC urged in clear language that illegal armed groups should be dismantled. This was 15 months ago, in the Interim Recommendations, in a language that was unambiguous. Tamils have cried with their parched up throats that this be done. The TNA, the only authority mandated to speak for the Tamils, has voiced this demand repeatedly. The LLRC has reiterated the need explicitly in it’s Final Report in very strong terms.

Humanity would see it as the starting point of rule of law. The American Resolution while expressing disappointment that the LLRC had ignored certain important areas has glossed over a very crucial recommendation. The Commission had stated forthrightly that the menace of illegal armed groups be eradicated. The Resolution is conspicuously silent on this critical issue.

The Resolution is craftily worded. As if unaware of oriental cunning, an escape route is provided with just one phrase, ‘constructive recommendations’. The LLRC sought to bifurcate the diaspora into constructive and adversarial. Perhaps taking the cue from the Report, the UN Resolution ventures to bifurcate the recommendations into constructive and not so constructive. Sifting the grain from the chaff is left to the propensity of the culprit. How will a reluctant government take it otherwise than to turn it to it’s advantage.

Devolution is not constructive, but is destructive of Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity. So the argument will run. It is a precursor to separation will be the chorus. Dismantling the illegal armed groups is not constructive since without their murderous scrutiny, Eelamists will sprout and Tigers will reemerge. The politically mature would not touch such a destructive proposition, will be the cry of the wiseacre. Both ethnic entities of Sri Lanka work in inscrutable ways. Both groups know it well. Even after decades of exposure, the international community seems to be yet unaware of it.

Brigands of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your fear!