OHCHR should be more transparent, says SL Permanent Mission in Geneva
[Thursday, January 17, 2008 - 4.25 GMT] 

The OHCHR should be more transparent in its funding and decision-making, says a statement issued by the Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka to the United Nations Office at Geneva on January 15 rejecting UN Human Rights High Commissioner Louisn Arbour's "warnings, veiled threats" in connection with the Sri Lankan Government's withdrawal from the Ceasefire Agreement with the LTTE.

It said:

"The Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka rejects as gratuitous the statement issued by Madame Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, on the occasion of Sri Lanka's withdrawal from the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) of 2002.  

"The title of her statement refers inaccurately to "End of Ceasefire in Sri Lanka". The ceasefire ended quite some time ago, when the LTTE unilaterally returned to full-scale hostilities in December 2005 after having already committed thousands of violations -- including hundreds of lethal violations ­-- from the outset of the CFA in 2002, as recorded by the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM). The event Madam Arbour’s statement laments is not the end of the ceasefire but the withdrawal from the CFA, and that too in terms of the ceasefire agreement itself.  

"The CFA of 2002 was not an agreement between two or more sovereign states, or between a sovereign state and the international system. It was an agreement between the Government of Sri Lanka and an armed, violent non-state actor, the LTTE, which has been described just last week by the FBI as “one of the most dangerous extremist organizations in the world”; one which pioneered the suicide belt and the woman suicide bomber, and the only terrorist organization in the world to be responsible for the killing of political leaders of two countries.  

"From the outset, the validity of the CFA was called into question within Sri Lanka, not least because its nationally elected Executive refused to sign it. Withdrawal from the CFA is a sovereign decision of the Government of Sri Lanka.  

"This Mission does not recall Madame Louise Arbour issuing a warning similar to her current one when the LTTE was bloodily violating the ceasefire agreement to the extent of assassinating Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister Hon Lakshman Kadirgamar, or planting Claymore mines against civilian buses, or leaving parcel bombs at crowded shopping centres, all of which intentionally caused the deaths of hundreds of civilians.  

"Sri Lanka was not in violation of international criminal law in the years of armed conflict before the signing of the CFA and after, is not now, and will not be in the future.  

"Sri Lanka is firmly committed to a political solution to the legitimate grievances of the Tamil people, based on the devolution of power. It will not be deterred by thinly veiled (if pathetically unenforceable) threats, attempting to undermine the morale of its military, deter its military campaigns and save separatist terrorism from elimination.  

"It is unfortunate that the High Commissioner's statement does not seem to have taken into account the reports produced by various Special Rapporteurs of the Human Rights Council who visited Sri Lanka, most recently the Eastern Province, weeks after it was liberated from the LTTE by the   Sri Lankan military.  

"Instead she has thought it appropriate not only to communicate her concern at the abrogation of the CFA but also to issue a warning on 'individual criminal responsibility under international criminal law’ despite the fact that there was no indication in any of these reports that such a warning to the Government of Sri Lanka was warranted.  

"Reading her statement, Sri Lanka is curious to know whether similar warnings (as distinct from statements of concern or condemnation) have been issued by the High Commissioner to other States in their conduct of wars much more serious both in scale and impact on International Humanitarian Law than the Sri Lankan situation.

"The High Commissioner has once again proven one point – how unqualified the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is in monitoring and reporting human rights in Sri Lanka as an independent actor.

"In the light of this obvious bias, Sri Lanka feels strongly that the OHCHR should be more transparent in its funding and decision-making and more representative of the world's peoples and regions in its composition, all of which have been repeatedly called for by the member States of the UN Human Rights Council."