Obama White House announces third Lanka resolution

The Obama administration has declared that it will present a third consecutive resolution on Sri Lanka to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) meeting next month, calling for a probe into human rights violations. The focus will be on abuses during the final months of the Sri Lankan government’s 26-year-long war against the insurgent, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that ended in May 2009.

The 2011 report of a UN expert panel estimated that around 40,000 civilians were killed in the months before the LTTE’s defeat.

Rajapakse and his ministers flatly rejected the UN report and deny that any war crimes took place in what they describe as the military’s “humanitarian operation” to “liberate” the Tamil population. Despite its denials, the government is desperately appealing to US officials to hold back the resolution and is seeking international support to block its passage. Sections of the Colombo media justify the Sri Lankan military’s use of torture, arbitrary detention, killing of civilians and other human rights abuses by pointing to what the US record in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Moreover, Washington fully backed the Rajapakse government when it renewed military offensives in 2006. While denouncing the LTTE, the US, along with India and China, provided vital military assistance to the Sri Lankan army and remained silent amid mounting evidence of its atrocities. The US implemented its own ban on the LTTE by hunting down its supporters and fund raisers, and strong-armed the European Union into doing the same.

The US and its European allies only began to raise concerns about the Sri Lankan military’s “human rights” abuses as it became apparent that the LTTE was heading for defeat. The Obama administration was preoccupied, not with the fate of hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians, but the rising influence of China, which had emerged as the supplier of military hardware, loans and aid to the Rajapakse government.

A December 2009 US Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, “Sri Lanka: Recharting US strategy after the war,” warned that “this strategic drift [by Sri Lanka toward China] will have consequences for US interests in the region.” It bluntly concluded that the US cannot afford to “lose” Sri Lanka and called for “an integrated strategy that leverages political, economic, and security tools” to secure US interests. John Kerry, now secretary of state, chaired the Senate committee.

The Obama administration’s stance on Sri Lanka was bound up with the developing shift in US foreign policy known as the “pivot to Asia”. Washington has been restructuring and building up US military forces in Asia and stoking up dangerous flashpoints, such as the maritime disputes in the East China and South China Seas, as a means of isolating China.

Over the past four years, Washington has maintained a steady pressure on Colombo. Its previous UNHRC resolutions gave credence to the Rajapakse government’s own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission. Now, however, the US has taken a harder line, hinting at the establishment of an international probe—a move that could lead to putting Rajapakse in the International Criminal Court’s dock on war crimes.

While acutely aware of the US threat, Rajapakse confronts a deepening economic and social crisis and therefore depends heavily on China for economic aid and investment. In a bid to shore up his position, Rajapakse has stepped up his claims of an “international conspiracy,” declaring that the West is plotting to put him in the “electric chair.”

The opposition led by United National Party (UNP) has lined up with the US “human rights” offensive and is waging its own phony campaign against the Rajapakse government. The UNP, which was responsible for launching the war against the LTTE in 1983 and has defended all of the military’s crimes, nevertheless now declares that “the country must not pay for the government’s mistakes.” This signals UNP support for tougher measures against Rajapakse over human rights abuses.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which functioned as the LTTE’s parliamentary mouthpiece, has issued a statement backing an international war crimes investigation. In return, TNA is seeking Washington’s support for a power devolution package. The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, which helped Rajapakse come to power and backed his war, now criticizes the government’s “human rights” record for opening the country to potential US intervention.

The most cynical supporters of the US “human rights” juggernaut are the Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP) and United Socialist Party (USP). The NSSP leader Wickramabahu Karunaratne last week declared that he would go to the UNHRC gathering in Geneva next month to add his voice to Washington’s calls for justice and democratic rights in Sri Lanka.

—-By K. Ratnayake