http://www.priu.gov.lk/news_update/Current_Affairs/ca201203/20120308why_resolution_right_second_showdown_geneva.htmThursday, March 08, 2012 - 6.03
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Why the resolution isn’t right
Second showdown in Geneva :By Dr. Dayan
Jayatilleka

The US resolution at the UN HRC in
Geneva has deepened the schisms in Sri Lankan society. That resolution will have
the same polarising function as did the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA), in defining
each political tendency in the popular mind for a while to come.Today
the country is tragically dividing between those who accuse the Government of
mounting protests against the US resolution at the UN HRC resolution against Sri
Lanka as a diversion from issues of the rising cost of living, and those who
claim that the demonstrations against the rising cost of living are wittingly or
not, part of a foreign plot to de-stabilise the government which is defending
national sovereignty.That’s a debate easily resolved. If the government
is using protests against the HRC resolution to mask the cost of living, that’s
no excuse not to protest against such a resolution. Rather, it is a reason to
protest either independently against that intrusive resolution while also
protesting against the cost of living, or moving in parallel with the government
on this issue while proceeding against it on the domestic front. Any other
stance and tactic would only be tantamount to support of a move against one’s
country; a move which has doubtless incensed the vast majority of or
citizens.Conversely, if oppositional protests (allegedly involving NGOs)
are helping de-stabilise the government and undermine our defence of national
sovereignty, then the answer surely is to cease and desist from those policies
and actions that generate those protests, and to never meet such protests with
responses that can only trigger more protests and international criticism which
help the project of undermining our sovereignty.The dominant elements of
the centre-right Opposition, the UNP (apart from its ‘Reformists’, that is)
opine that there is nothing wrong, or particularly anti-Sri Lankan, with a
resolution that calls on the state to implement its own LLRC recommendations.
The TNA has, after a sporadic show of realism, finally taken the line of the
Tamil Diaspora’s pro-Tiger lobby by calling on the member states of the UNHRC to
support the resolution. For the most part, the cosmopolitan civil society
commentators are cheering the resolution on. On the left, the JVP opposes the
resolution but opposes the government still more, on economic issues and
dismissively terms the government’s anti-resolution mobilisation, a mere tactic.
The breakaway Movement for People’s Struggle (Jana Aragala Vyaparaya) is
strangely silent and submerged. Both these currents of the radical Left make no
reference and give insufficient attention to the stand of China, Russia, Cuba
and the NAM on the Resolution, and are ambiguous on the LLRC. For their part,
the leftists within the government are firmly against the US move and for the
LLRC’s implementation.The reasoning of the Opposition’s leading
ideologues is flawed. The problem with the resolution is not that it calls for
the implementation of the LLRC recommendations. The problems are (a) where the
Resolution is coming from, (b) the body of the text that precedes the seemingly
innocuous points about the LLRC and (c) the sleight of hand where it expresses
disappointment about the LLRC report and goes beyond it to issues of
‘accountability’. Furthermore, a resolution would provide a UN mandate – as was
sought, and would have done, had we not outdrawn and shot it down at the UNHRC
in May 2009. UN resolutions are notoriously elastic (Russia and China haven’t
forgiven the endgame in Libya, behind the mask of UNSC 1973, meant to institute
a no-fly zone for the protection of civilians in Benghazi). Even without the
mandate of a resolution, the UN SG’s Panel of Experts report on Sri Lanka ,
originally meant to advise him on standards and norms of accountability,
monstrously mutated into a 190 page indictment. The three ‘expert panellists’
co-authored a piece in the New York Times a few days ago, calling for stringent
action on Sri Lanka by the UN HRC at this session, thereby amply demonstrating
the partisan prejudice and politics of their project.Certainly the
implementation of reform recommendations of the LLRC report must be
fast-tracked, and a compressed time–frame committed to by the government,
preferably so swiftly as to pre-empt the US resolution by removing its purported
basis. Even if it fails in prevention, this would help us rally the support to
defeat it. However, this commitment must be made to and in the Sri Lankan
Parliament. The Government of the Republic of Sri Lanka is primarily responsible
to the citizens of Sri Lanka . That is what popular sovereignty in a res
publica, a republic, is about. The popularly elected government of Sri Lanka is
not responsible in the first or last instance to any international forum or
intergovernmental body comprised of governments responsible to their respective
citizenries. Sri Lanka ’s Opposition may do well to move a resolution demanding
a time frame and suggesting one for the implementation of the LLRC report. The
push or indeed drive for implementation of reform must be from within our
society, with the international solidarities and multipliers of our
choosing.I rather doubt that the vast majority of Sri Lankan people want
Karunanidhi, Jayalalitha and Vaiko, still less the Tiger flag waving
demonstrators who will camp in Geneva from March 5th to the 23rd, to help
guarantee and hasten the implementation of the LLRC reforms. With support like
this, the LLRC does not need enemies.None in Sri Lanka and India , who
were supportive of the war against the LTTE, are on the side of the resolution.
Conversely, those who practised appeasement of the LTTE, were against the war,
were fellow travellers of the Tigers (e.g. Vaiko, the TNA) or were lukewarm and
vacillating with regard the war and considered Mahinda Rajapaksa a greater enemy
than Prabhakaran, are all supportive of the resolution. This congruity, and the
presence of Tiger flag bearing demonstrators outside the UN HRC in Geneva , will
not be lost on the vast mass of the Sri Lankan people. The people will also
remember who in the world community stands with and who stands against a
Resolution which has so greatly roused the enthusiasm of the Diaspora
Tigers.As for accountability, the number of civilians killed in North
Vietnam by the US bombing campaign named Rolling Thunder, commencing February
1965, was 182,000. The number of children who died in the sanctions on Iraq ,
according to Denis Halliday, the administrator of that programme who resigned in
disgust, was 5,000 a month. Guantanamo , the vast prison camp located on the
soil of a foreign country against the wishes of that country, still remains open
despite a presidential pledge to close it. The National Defence Authorisation
Act has provisions only describable as draconian.These are the guys
whose draft resolution seeks to preach to us about the observance of
international law in the fight against terrorism? Of course it must, but who are
they to tell us that, when they are serially responsible for the most egregious
violations of international law, ranging from the invasion of sovereign states
on false pretexts, to the practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’. Doesn’t the
hypocrisy just get to you? And if it does not, what does that say about
you?In my closing remarks at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva after
the special session on Sri Lanka in May 2009, I equated the allegation of war
crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Sri Lanka, with the charge that
Iraq possessed WMDs and asked whether we should buy a used car from the guys who
sold the world the Goebbelsian Big Lie on WMD.None of this is to say
that all is well in Sri Lanka ; far from it. Let me explain by way of analogy. A
stable functional piece of furniture usually needs four legs. If it is to rest
firmly, it needs these four legs to be even. Politics and political discourses
in Sri Lanka remind me of furniture which either doesn’t have four legs or which
have one or more legs shorter than the others.Analogous to the four legs
of a piece of furniture, the four pillars that a strong successful state and a
good society must rest upon equally, are national sovereignty, popular
sovereignty, individual rights and self-determination.National
sovereignty means that a nation-state (or a pluri-national state) is a political
unit or community entitled to its unity and territorial integrity, and has the
right to determine its own path, regulate its own affairs, without external
domination, intervention or interference in its internal affairs.Popular
sovereignty means that the right to rule rests with the people, who decide who
rules, how and for how long. If the rulers violate this social contract, this
sacred trust, the people have the right to replace, even overthrow them. The Sri
Lankan Constitution makes explicit that as a republic, sovereignty is vested in
the people, who exercise it through a regularly and periodically elected
Executive president and legislature.Individual rights pertain to the
sovereign individual person; to the equality of every citizen, who is
inalienably possessed of a stock of rights and freedoms which must not be
transgressed upon.Self-determination refers to the right of a collective
to determine its own destiny. The structural coordinates of that collective or
community impose limitations upon the degree to which the right of self
determination is exercised. The right to set up an independent state belongs to
a nation, not a national minority. An established nation-state possesses the
right of self determination. The entire (multiethnic) nation and not one part of
it, is the legitimate agency of self determination. A nation which is under
colonial occupation or annexation has the right of self determination (e.g.
Occupied Palestine). An ethno-national minority, on the other hand, has a
structurally more limited right to self governance and self administration,
which may be termed the right to autonomy.A society must rest on the
equal recognition of all four of these principles, rights and fundamental
values. Though at different points of history, one or the other may find itself
emphasised due to the threats posed and the tasks at hand, all four must be held
in equilibrium; never abandoned or counter-posed to one another.This may
require much struggle, change, transformation. But that will be undertaken one
way or another, by the sovereign citizens of Sri Lanka at a time and on issues
of their choosing, and with the solidarity of allies of their choice.