The UNHRC's duality and duplicity of treatment, holding responsibility and accountability for missing persons and number of casualties during Sri Lanka's war against Tamil Tigers during the 30-years of terror is apparent and highlighted.
It is inconceivable how the UN singled out the phrase "during final stage of the war - last 48 hours before the end of the war", to conveniently disregard and discount every killing and massacres carried out by LTTE in the frontier villages as well as in the cities around Sri Lanka during the 30-year period.
It is unfortunate that no government of Sri Lanka pointed that out in protest, as the time-window of focus of atrocities obviously has been shifted to the final phase of the battle just before peace was dawned upon the people of Sri Lanka.
This brings into question as to why UNHRC has disregarded the cable to UK Foreign Office by British High Commission's Defense Attache in Colombo and the final estimates by International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) who were at the war zone during this phase of war, to be around 7,000 or less. Lord Naseby of the UK's House of Lords has repeatedly declared that the casualty figures match after tallying numbers and established identities of post-war refugee camps, rehabilitation camps and arrested LTTE operatives. The 7,000 casualty figure includes LTTE cadres in uniform as well as in civilian clothing, civilians got caught to cross-fire between Sri Lankan security forces and LTTE leadership and their militants. LTTE was firing heavy artillery placed in the middle of 200,000 kidnapped innocent Tamil civilians cornered into a tiny sliver of land between a lagoon and the sea. The UN has disregarded that these civilians were being used as a human shield against Sri Lankan security force's fire and that LTTE leadership has refused to concede to a 48-hour buffer to lay down weapons and surrender.
The UNHRC seems to have conveniently disregarded that the LTTe-captured civilians held as human shield braved LTTE fire and suicide bombers and ran across the lagoon TOWARDS Sri Lankan Army, pleading and begging to rescue them, and NOT back towards their kidnappers Tamil Tigers. There was no appreciation or mention from the UN Human Rights Commission on how Sri Lankan military personnel shared their food ration packs, drinking water and medicines with the exodus of those civilians until proper shelter, food and medical aid could be provided. They deliberately did not want the world to know how HUMAN RIGHTS were upheld by Sri Lankan forces.
On UNHRC High Commissioner Michelle Bacheler's Report on March 20th 2019, she states the Mannar "Mass Grave Site" which was excavated with the support of OMP where 300 skeletal remains were found. She apparently exercises "preconceived judgement" to suspect these skeletal remains as belonging to missing Tamil civilians. However, forensic Carbon-14 analysis of skeletal specimen by Beta Analytic in Florida USA found those belonging to 1499-1719 era! The High Commissioner of UNHRC must retract her statement and make a public apology for misrepresenting facts and having judged unfairly and impartially on Sri Lanka's matter.
The UNHRC must acknowledge that Sri Lanka was fighting a guerilla war against a secessionist and separatist ideologist group with extremely heavily armed four-dimensional ground army, naval operation (black tigers), an air arm (albeit small light aircraft modified with bombs and guns) and a submarine force, which was used by LTTe to smuggle ammunition, weapons communication equipment from their own ships berthed in international waters. The FBI in the US has defined Tamil Tigers as the most ruthless terror outfit in the world. Sri Lankan armed forces have exercised every possible effort to minimize civilian casualties during defensive and offensive operations, while LTTE deliberately targeted civilians in their suicide bombing operations. The UN has again "conveniently" disregarded LTTE's suicide missions that killed two world leaders from their report, as it was focusing only on the final phase of war perhaps to protect and cover LTTE's atrocities from the world!
The UN's silence on other powerful nations having committed deliberate war crimes in other target nations is indeed deafening. The UNHRC is yet to investigate and criminalize the US and UK for its illegal invasion of Iraq without UN Security Council approval, their war crimes against Iraqi civilians, its ghastly treatment of captured Iraqi prisoners at Abu Gharib prison, by violating International Laws on POW's, using radioactive Depleted Uranium shells in Iraq, US and French invasion of Libya, killing its leader Ghaddafi and civilians and then bombing the country into rubble and dust, US military's deliberate bombing of MSF hospital in Afghanistan which killed every patient and medical staff, using of banned White Phosphorus in Syria, Saudi Arabia's killing spree of Yemeni civilians supported by US, UK and Canada, and many more. Yes, the UNHRC High Commissioner seems quite focused on poorer and least powerful nations to bully with the help of global superpowers that help funding to keep the UN itself afloat. It is also not too well understood as to how UN advises violators of the sections 41 and 42 of Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Protocols when Western Diplomatic agents in Sri Lanka interferes with internal affairs of the country, taking a partisan approach towards specific side of political parties to meet, discuss and make statements to advise the government or opposition on how to govern.
The UN should be about impartial settlement of conflicts, helping to ending wars and bringing PEACE!
Not a meddling global policing force!! Nor an arm of globalist dominance agenda!!!!
(The author Warna Hettiarachchi is a Nuclear Physicist and an AIP Scholar. He led Commercial Energy Storage Development at Panasonic Eco Solutions. Warna has had an illustrious management career, developing Engineered RF solutions for Raytheon Radar systems and test systems for Blackberry. He has worked at NASA’s space program and been a visiting lecturer at University of Moratuwa.)