Ambassador Prasad Kariyawasam
The prestigious US newspaper “The New York Times”carried an Editorial under the heading”sri Lanka’s Intransigience”on August 23rd 2014.Sri Lanka’s Ambassador in Washington,Mr.Prasad Kariyawasam responded to it by writing to the newspaper on August 26th 2014 complaining that there were “insensitive assertions about my country” in the editorial. This was published by the NYT on September 2nd 2014 under the heading”Sri Lanka and Human Rights: An Ambassador’s View”.
Both the NYT Editorial and Ambassador Kariyawasam’s response are posted here in full.
Sri Lanka’s Intransigence
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, said Tuesday that his government would not cooperate with the United Nations investigation begun last month into suspected human rights abuses, including possible war crimes, committed during Sri Lanka’s civil war. Mr. Rajapaksa’s intransigence puts Sri Lanka in the company of North Korea and Syria, two countries that also barred access to United Nations human rights investigators.
Mr. Rajapaksa claims Sri Lanka can handle the inquiry on its own. This is doubtful. It was the Sri Lankan government’s failure over several years to prosecute and punish perpetrators of abuses during the civil war that prompted the United Nations Human Rights Council in March to request a comprehensive investigation.
Both the rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or L.T.T.E., and the Sri Lankan military are thought to have committed war crimes. The United Nations estimates that 40,000 Tamils died during the final weeks of the conflict. Hundreds of thousands of people were interned in camps under military guard after the war ended in 2009. People suspected of being linked to the L.T.T.E. were tortured. Thousands simply disappeared.
The safety of witnesses is a major concern. People demanding accountability for those who disappeared have faced threats and arrest. Sri Lanka’s Prevention of Terrorism Act is being used to detain people without trial. After the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, visited Sri Lanka last year, she reported that she had never seen such a “level of uncontrollable grief” as that of families of the disappeared in Sri Lanka, and that people with whom she met were promptly visited by security forces.
Ms. Pillay has said that the United Nations investigation would go forward despite Mr. Rajapaksa’s denial of access. If Mr. Rajapaksa’s goal is truly, as he claims, truth, justice and reconciliation, he should cooperate with the investigation. Failing to do so will only feed international suspicions that his government has much to hide.
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Sri Lanka and Human Rights: An Ambassador’s View
To the Editor:
Your Aug. 23 editorial “Sri Lanka’s Intransigence,” about the government’s refusal to cooperate with the United Nations investigation into suspected human rights abuses during the country’s civil war, makes insensitive assertions about my country.
Sri Lanka has enjoyed uninterrupted democracy since 1931. Last September we held the first election to the Northern Provincial Council, delayed by more than two decades because of the refusal of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to politically empower people in the North. Now, the Tamil National Alliance is in control of provincial administration. To compare Sri Lanka to human rights and humanitarian emergencies elsewhere in the world is unjust.
We reject the United Nations investigation because its intrusive nature exceeds its mandate. It challenges the sovereignty of our country; violates basic principles of international law; vitiates the atmosphere needed for reconciliation; and ignores substantial and progressive socioeconomic and political progress already achieved, including the resettlement of 300,000 displaced people and the reintegration of 11,000 armed cadres.
The three-decade-long conflict with many failed attempts at peace because of L.T.T.E. intransigence affected the whole country. Local accountability mechanisms, now strengthened with international experts, are respectful of inherent social, cultural and ethnic susceptibilities, unlike the United Nations-driven process, which serves externally motivated interests and will destabilize the intricate balance of the national reconciliation process.
PRASAD KARIYAWASAM
Washington, Aug. 26, 2014
The writer is the ambassador of Sri Lanka to the United States.