War crimes

Tuesday 2nd February, 2021

Several civil society outfits have embarked on a campaign to protect human rights and bring about reconciliation, in this country. They deserve praise, but they did not take up the issue of crimes against civilians while Prabhakaran was around. If they had done so during the war, they would have been dead. Instead, they cranked up pressure on successive governments to negotiate with the LTTE despite its war crimes such as civilian massacres, political assassinations, child conscription, abductions and the bombing of civilian targets.

It is being argued in some quarters that Sri Lanka should present a stronger case in Geneva and draw the UNHRC’s attention to Lord Naseby’s revelations in the British Parliament, giving the lie to the claims, on which the UNHRC allegations against Sri Lanka are based. But the UNHRC does not go by facts or evidence as such. Its decisions are determined by strategic alliances. The US was right when it called the UNHRC a cesspool of political bias and pulled out of it.

UNHRC Chief Michelle Bachelet has already made up her mind and does not want to be confused with facts. So are the other UNHRC grandees who are at the beck and call of the Western bloc. No amount of reasoning is going to make them change their minds. The only way a smaller state in their crosshairs can escape is to side with the US and its allies. It may be recalled several years ago, when the then UNHRC Chief N. Pillai issued a statement condemning human rights violations in Bahrain, a staunch US ally, she came under enormous pressure to retract it; she complied while bashing other nations. If Sri Lanka brought itself to compromise its national interest and sign the MCC and other pacts, enabling US troops to land here and do as they wish, it would be off the Geneva hook.

The UNHRC has become a metaphor for duplicity. It has not taken any action against the worst war criminals in the world—former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former US President George W. Bush. It has now been established that the duo falsified intelligence dossiers and fraudulently created a casus belli to invade Iraq as part of their war for oil. More than 500,000 Iraqi children reportedly died in that illegal war, which also left hundreds of thousands of others dead. The UK is campaigning against war crimes!

It will be interesting to see if universal jurisdiction, advocated by the UNHRC chief, will apply to Adele Balasingham, the former trainer of female LTTE suicide cadres. There is irrefutable evidence that she was a senior leader of the LTTE, which, the UNHRC says, has also committed war crimes. She is living in London, and the UK, which is determined to ensure that the alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka will not go unpunished, ought to take legal action against her. The provision for invoking universal jurisdiction will be a worrisome proposition for former LTTE combatants and Tiger activists who made Prabhakaran’s war crimes possible by raising funds overseas for his terror campaign.

Here is a question for the US, the UK, France and other states that have taken upon themselves the task of protecting human rights in this country. Some UN documents, crafted at their behest, have, in a bid to look balanced, said the LTTE also committed war crimes. If so, why did they go all out to remove Prabhakaran to safety shortly before the conclusion of the war? Sri Lanka’s war lasted for more than two and a half centuries, and they failed to stop it through political means. Their purported efforts to resolve the conflict only helped the LTTE gain legitimacy and emerge stronger. Had their plan to save Prabhakaran succeed, the war would have dragged on, causing death and devastation, and it would not have been possible to put an end to forcible child conscription, political killings, extortion, civilian massacres. Rekindling democracy in the North and the East would have been a will-o’-the-wisp if the LTTE’s military muscle had been spared.