http://www.defence.lk/new.asp?fname=20110902_02

of that human rights void - Island Editorial
Where have all champions of human rights gone? Their silence is deafening! Is it that they have chosen to see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil like those proverbial monkeys as they are wary of ruffling the feathers of the western governments by taking up the humanitarian catastrophe in Libya? They seem to know which side of their bread is buttered, don't they?
The western media may have succeeded in downplaying Libya's humanitarian crisis in the run-up to the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime, but no longer can they cover it up. NATO's mission was to oust Gaddafi regardless of the human cost their military campaign entailed. Even Norway, which once advocated peace talks at any cost in this country in spite of brutal terror attacks including high profile political assassinations, readily joined its western allies in carrying out air strikes in Libya!
Never mind the international human rights crusaders! Commander of the Libyan rebel forces, Col. Hsham Buhagiar himself has admitted that about 50,000 people have been killed since they rose in rebellion against Gaddafi six months ago. The figure must be much higher, according to independent observers. Anyway, let the benefit of the doubt accrue to Buhagiar. The number he has given is sure to increase exponentially when his men mount attacks on the city of Sirte, which is currently under the control of the pro-Gaddafi forces determined to hold out. Rebels backed by NATO airpower began to encircle that city on Wednesday night and all signs are that an unprecedented bloodbath is inevitable. Their strategy, as we reported yesterday, is to starve Gaddafi's last bastion into submission. Disrupting food and medical supplies is a blatant war crime, but NATO and the UN do not care a damn about it!
Having endorsed military action against Libya at the behest of the West, which is desperately seeking a boost to its crisis-ridden economy from a post-war construction boom in that country and access to black gold at concessionary rates, the UN has at long last woken up to the need for a controlling/monitoring mechanism to keep violent rebels on a tight leash. But, they have rejected out of hand the UN's plan to send international troops and a police force to help stabilise Libya. Now, what do the omniscient UN bigwigs propose to do?
The Libyan rebels are a group of strange bedfellows brought together by adversity and their antipathy towards Gaddafi, who has now been ousted. Without a common enemy to fight, their unity is not likely to last long, given their many differences, which are bound to surface sooner or later when they are out of action and jostle to share the spoils of war.
The architects of the Libyan war should take cognisance of the fact that there are battle-hardened al-Qaeda combatants among the victorious rebels and if they are given free rein, Libya is likely to go the same way as Afghanistan, where the Mujahideen used by the US to get rid of the Russians morphed into a monster paving the way for the rise of Taliban as well as al-Qaeda as a countervailing force.
Now that it has come from the horse's mouth that about 50,000 people have been killed during the past six months alone, the question is why UNSG Ban Ki-moon should not call for a probe into those killings. There have been many instances of mass executions and all of them cannot be blamed on Gaddafi. Shouldn't the UN chief at least appoint an advisory panel on accountability issues in Libya? The UN Security Council is duty bound to have the allegations against NATO and its pet rebels investigated.