An Internal Affair

A report in the Times is claiming that more than 20,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the final throes of the Sri Lankan civil war, most as a result of government shelling. In light of the extraordinary resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council praising Sri Lanka for its victory, and condemning the rebels for using human shields, it's worth reading today's editorial:

“Deeply disappointing” was how a human rights group yesterday described the vote in the United Nations Human Rights Council hailing the victory of the Sri Lankan Government. This is a breathtaking understatement. It was an utter disgrace. The 47-member body, set up in 2006 to replace the previous corrupt and ineffectual UN Commission on Human Rights, has abjectly failed one of its first and most important tests.

It was asked by its European members to investigate widespread reports of atrocities and war crimes committed by both government troops and the Tamil Tigers in the final weeks of the conflict. The council chose instead to debate a one-sided, mendacious and self-serving motion put forward by the Sri Lankans. This welcomed the “liberation” of tens of thousands of the island's citizens, condemned the defeated Tigers, made no mention of the shelling of civilians and kept silent on the desperate need to allow the Red Cross and other humanitarian groups into the camps where some 270,000 Tamil civilians have been interned.

Support for this deeply flawed resolution came from the usual suspects - China, Russia, India, Pakistan and a clutch of Asian and Islamic nations determined to prevent the council ever investigating human rights violations in their own or any country. It was sad to see Israel, for obvious political motives, joining in this charade, claiming that massacres, violence, repression and internment are an “internal affair”.

To her credit, Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, insisted that there needed still to be an inquiry into “very serious abuses”. Those abuses, it now emerges, are far, far worse than the outside world imagined. The UN estimated that 7,000 people were killed in the first four months of this year; the figure now appears to be at least 20,000. Thousands of these victims died as a result of the shelling by the Sri Lankan Army of the strip of coastline where the final remnants of Tiger resistance were trapped, along with at least 100,000 civilians.

Photographs taken by The Times present clear evidence of an atrocity that comes close to matching Srebrenica, Darfur and other massacres of civilians. In the sandy so-called no-fire zone where the trapped Tamil civilians were told to go to escape the brutal army bombardment, there are hundreds of fresh graves as well as craters and debris where tents once stood. This was no safe zone. This was where terrified civilians buried their dead as the shells landed - after the Government had declared an end to the use of heavy weapons on April 27.

Update: that reference to Israel in the third paragraph has now been removed. See Norm's post.

Update 2: A correction appears in today's Times: "Israel is not a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council and did not take part in the council's vote on the actions of the Sri Lamkan Government (leading article, May 29). We apologise for the error."

A strange error to make. It's not as though they just listed Israel as another backer of the resolution: they actually went out of their way to draw attention to their support.

Comments

[Dom]

Any idea how the error (about Israel) was made to begin with?

[Mick H]

No idea, no.

[Cleanthes]

Could you find out?

I'm assuming that you are in a better place to do so than the rest of us, given that you write for them and stuff. There's got to be an interesting article in how this happened...

[Mick H]

Are you confusing me with Oliver Kamm, Cleanthes? I don't write for the Times. So far I've turned away all their blandishments, but I suppose I might reconsider if the price was right.