The resolution should be voted on only as a first step in the right direction, and not as a final step to water down scrutiny or as a tactic to delay urgently needed justice in Sri Lanka,” said Maja Daruwala, Director of the New Delhi-based Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) in a feature appeared in The Indian Express, Friday. She urged India to seize the opportunity and sway votes at UNHRC in favour of accountability in Sri Lanka.
The article argues that stability in the neighbourhood is in the interest of the regional power.
“Stability requires that alienated populations experience justice for the past and in the future. Denials, diplomatic spin and cosmetic efforts that paper over past misdeeds cannot achieve this. Today, only a negative peace exists in Sri Lanka,” the article said.
Even India’s other considerations –the need to contain China and to be sensitive to the aspirations of Tamils– could also be served by supporting accountability, the article further argued.
Denouncing the LLRC as “deeply flawed” and Sri Lanka’s military board of inquiry as handing over the investigation to the very accused, Ms Daruwala said, “It is these kinds of sleights of hand that will need to be addressed by all, including India.”
The growing stature of India in international affairs demands a leadership position and India has to be bolder and more confident on human rights at international level. India should seize the excellent opportunity at the current UNHRC session and enhance its stature by swaying votes in favour of accountability, the New Delhi-based organisation said.
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Commenting Eezham Tamil civil activists said that stability doesn’t come merely by ‘accountability’ if it doesn’t lead to the right to self-determination of the genocide-affected nation.
The civil activists in the island also expressed serious disappointment over the political and media circles even among the Tamils that blindly uphold the US-resolution without taking note of the dangerous features in it that seals justice and permanently blunts political aspirations of Eezham Tamils.
In an informal consultation in Geneva on Thursday, the US Permanent Representative to the UN, Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe was asked why the resolution appears rather benign.
According to the ambassador the resolution was not a move to condemn Sri Lanka. Bringing Tamil population “back into the national life of Sri Lanka,” was the thrust deducible from her discussions.
Roping in Eezham Tamils first by a genocidal war and now by diplomacy is the strategy of the architects of the US-Sri Lanka partnership, civil activists said, adding that these are not the views of a people who disbelieve in everything.
Several civil groups and activists in the island have already told the US government with irrefutable evidence that whatever the USA considers ‘positive’ in the LLRC recommendations were semblances incorporated into the report by a commission that has no faith in whatever it was telling, just for the sake of hoodwink and for buying time to go ahead with the agenda of structural genocide.
How could a resolution upholding such a hoodwink, bailing out the genocidal state from international accountability as well as from constitutional restructure, bring in justice, peace and stability to the region, is perhaps known only to the architects of strategic partnerships of our times, the civil activists commented further.
Tn