Villains as heroes

Monday 8th March, 2021

Pro-democracy protesters in Myanmar have dug their heels in. Demonstrating remarkable resilience in the face of the military junta, they have urged the US to intervene to save their country from the clutches of the power-hungry Generals. Why they are making such desperate appeals is understandable; any port in a storm! But they would find themselves in a far bigger crisis if the US ever decided to make an intervention. The plight of the people of Libya, who enlisted US backing to get rid of their eccentric dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, serves as an example.

Human rights violations are a global phenomenon, which needs to be addressed. But the UN institution created for that purpose is ineffectual thanks to the servility of its officials and some meddlesome global powers. Today, the UNHRC has become a cat’s paw used by the western states to promote neocolonialism. Swayed by the geo-political interests of strategic alliances, it has become a playground for the world powers.

China sought to make light of the recent military coup in Myanmar by initially calling it a Cabinet reshuffle, of all things. Military takeovers in Pakistan did not matter to the US, at all, while Washington could use Islamabad to advance its geo-strategic agenda vis-à-vis India, which was not in the good books of Uncle Sam at the time. The US did not welcome the ouster of Shah’s repressive regime, in Iran, and backed evil military dictatorships to the hilt in several countries it considered its allies, Chile under General Pinochet being a case in point. Now, Washington is weeping buckets for the people of Myanmar! Had the Burmese Generals been pro-American, Washington would have had no qualms about defending them, and the human rights groups dependent on western funding would have chosen to ignore the coup.

The UK has taken upon itself the task of protecting human rights across the globe despite being one of the worst human rights violators in the world. One may recall that Britain expelled more than 10,000 people of the Chagos Islands between 1967 and 1973 for the US to build the Diego Garcia military base; it has refused to comply with a UN ruling that the displaced people’s right to return be respected. Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth has gone on record as saying that the jurisdiction of the ICC will be invoked against Britian’s crimes against humanity. There is irrefutable evidence that Tony Blair, as the British PM, together with US President George W. Bush, carried out an illegal war in Iraq, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths. The Chilcot Report, too, has revealed that military action against Iraq was not justified, but no case has been filed against Blair or anyone else for war crimes in Iraq. The British Parliament has introduced an indemnity law to protect its military personnel against war crimes probes. Senior LTTE leader, Adele Balasingham, who brainwashed thousands of LTTE child combatants, turned them into human bombs, and thereby committed war crimes, is living comfortably in London; the UK pretends that she does not exist while insisting that war crimes must not go unpunished! Some British politicians are dependent LTTE activists for votes and funds to win elections. Thanks to diplomatic cables disclosed by Wikileaks, the world is aware that it was due to domestic political calculations and compulsions that, in 2009, the then British Foreign Secretary David Miliband remained intensely focused on Sri Lanka’s war and even rushed here in a bid to save Prabhakaran.

UNHRC chiefs have also compromised their credibility by being servile to the western bloc. A few years ago, the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay succumbed to US pressure and withdrew a statement she had issued condemning human rights abuses in Bahrain, which is a close ally of the UK and the US. Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, who once described missing UAE Princess Latifa as a ‘troubled young woman’ has now admitted that she was ‘horribly tricked’ by the victim’s family. Isn’t it possible that Robinson was tricked into issuing a strongly-worded statement on Sri Lanka as well? Incumbent UNHRC chief, Michelle Bachelet, has manifestly failed to act independently and impartially; she has prepared what can be described as a political report on Sri Lanka and blotted her copybook further in the process.

Perhaps, the only thing the Trump administration got right was its assessment of the UNHRC, which it called a cesspool of political bias. But, having pulled the US out of the cesspit, Washington continued to make other nations wallow in it, and the Biden government has plunged head first into it.

The UNHRC in the clutches of the worst human rights violators in the world, masquerading as champions of democracy, has faced a fate similar to that of Sri Lanka’s Police Narcotic Bureau, which has been infiltrated by criminals to further their interests. It looks as if human rights had to be protected against the UNHRC.