Reject Sri Lanka from Rights Body, Say Experts

Tue., May. 20, 2008

WASHINGTON, May 20 (OneWorld) - Re-electing Sri Lanka to serve a second term on the UN Human Rights Council would represent a severe blow to human rights and the United Nations itself, according to an impressive array of world leaders and human rights watchdog groups.

Displaced people at the Nanthurai welfare camp in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. © United Nations' Integrated Regional Information Network

UN member states will vote Wednesday on which Asian nations should sit on the Council, which is the primary world body responsible for addressing human rights violations with governments. Four seats are open, and six countries (Bahrain, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Timor Leste) are vying for the spots.

Three Nobel Peace Prize laureates -- South Africa's Desmond Tutu, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and Argentina's Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who stood up to military leaders during that country's "Dirty War" -- oppose the re-election of Sri Lanka, which gained membership in 2006.

In Tutu's words: "the systematic abuses by Sri Lankan government forces are among the most serious imaginable."

The Carter Center noted in a statement Friday that: "Sri Lanka has one of the highest rates of enforced disappearances in the world."

Urging Latin governments to oppose Sri Lanka's re-election bid, Perez-Esquivel agreed: "As Latin Americans know all too well, there are few crimes more horrible for a government to commit than summarily removing its own citizens from their homes and families, often late at night, never to be heard from again."

Rules governing membership on the UN Human Rights Council were modified in 2006, with the aim of ensuring commitment by members to a high standard of human rights. Instead, Sri Lankan human rights groups argue, the government has used its seat on the Council to protect itself from scrutiny.

A coalition of more than 20 human rights organizations from every continent is working to prevent Sri Lanka's re-election. In 2007, a similar coalition successfully opposed the candidacy of Belarus for memership on the Human Rights Council.

In a letter sent to all UN member states in early May, the NGO Coalition for an Effective Human Rights Council accused the Sri Lanka regime of a wide range of serious abuses, including hundreds of extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances, widespread torture, arbitrary detention, and forcing citizens displaced by conflict to return home while war was still raging.

Sri Lankan poet and journalist S. Bose was murdered in May 2007. © Global Voices Online

Sri Lanka has long been the scene of a bloody civil war between the government and a separatist group known as the LTTE, or Tamil Tigers. While both sides stand accused of violating the rights of civilians, "abuses by non-state armed groups do not justify rights violations by government forces," Coalition members argue.

The Sri Lankan government also refuses to accept outside monitoring of the situation there, and has insulted high-ranking UN personnel; for example, calling UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes a "terrorist." When Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called such comments "unacceptable and unwarranted," a Sri Lankan cabinet minister said that he "didn't give a damn" what the UN secretary-general had to say, according to the Coalition letter.

Given Sri Lanka's record and the important global role of the Human Rights Council, the Carter Center stated: "To re-elect states with deteriorating human rights records would undermine the Council at a time when it should be taking steps to shore its credibility as the principle platform for addressing human rights violations."

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