UNHRC: Sri Lanka - Yes; Yemen - No
The sword of Damocles continues to hang over Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva.
Despite the main co-sponsor of Resolution 30/1 pulling out of the Council on grounds of “political bias” against Israel, other Western countries, notably Britain and Germany have weighed in to continue with the big stick to get Sri Lanka to be on its best behaviour as a respecter of human rights and transitional justice, reconciliation, rehabilitation etc.
Sri Lanka has been given time till March next year to show how well it has progressed in terms of responding to the charges levelled against it at the UNHRC. This week, at the UNHRC sessions in Geneva, Sri Lanka’s ambassador had to pledge his country’s “constructive engagement and dialogue” with the Council and to provide “unfettered access and necessary cooperation” to visits by Working Groups of the Council to see how it is progressing according to the will of the Council.
Sri Lanka has conceded that the “technical advice” provided by these Working Groups has been considered “seriously and some of which have been already implemented”. The OMP (Office of Missing Persons) is cited as an example.
A draft 77-page Counter Terrorism Act (CTA) to replace the existing PTA ( Prevention of Terrorism Act) was rushed through Cabinet this week so that Sri Lanka’s envoy to the UNHRC can include the fact in his speech in Geneva and tick another of the boxes that contain the demands of the Council.
The draft CTA is consistent with human rights safeguards and international standards, and the draft law was discussed with several “stakeholders” including the UN Counter terrorism Executive Directorate, the OHCHR and the International Red Cross, says our ambassador. A de-facto moratorium preventing new arrests under the PTA remains in effect. So these are the “stakeholders’ of terrorism in Sri Lanka.
Several other laws seem to be entering Sri Lanka’s statute books based on the dictates of the UNHRC, though many of them are for the good of the country. It is just that it would have been better if the country’s legislators drafted these laws on their own volition without having some Western powers dogged with their own problems of combating terrorism, breathing down this country’s neck.
Why is it that Germany and Britain are maintaining a ‘deafening silence’ over the crisis in Yemen unfolding right now. That country is being ripped apart in a pro-US/Saudi anti-Iran proxy war with more than 6,600 civilians killed and thousands of people’s lives hanging on a thread right here and now.
Of course, the UNHRC is expected to have an “interactive dialogue” on the issue on September 26 while the poor Yemenis are getting bombed to smithereens by pro-West forces in the process.