CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

Mixing up Human Rights Violations, and appointments to International Organisations.

By Charles Perera

Every International Organization has its mechanism of accountability, and knows of their responsibility to the member states and any interested third parties, without having some one coming round to prod at it.

Most of us are willing to speak out against violation of human rights not because we have a responsibility towards an employer, or a duty towards an Institution. We feel it more towards our own people, when it is they who are at the receiving end of the violations of their human rights, without having some one else to come around and remind us of it.

We feel as much pain for other people in the world, when their human rights are violated. We also feel it when justice is made a mockery to condemn a man to death in a court which is not properly set up, and sentences are manipulated for political gain. We also feel for those clandestine immigrant, young and old , women and children taken into custody, and put in camps without proper facilities, such as in Sangatte, until some of them clandestinely enter another country , while others are awaiting government decisions.

We also feel sad when terrorists let loose their campaign of terror and kill innocent people, men, women, and children, kidnap young children boys and girls using them as human suicide bombs, and as gun fodder, violating their human right of peaceful existence, and use civilians as human shields.

We also feel sad when the women, men and children, in Gaza are killed in artillery fire, for the sin of their having been born and living in Gaza.

Human rights of living people are being violated and no body is their to defend them, before the actual violations take place causing them injustice, injury or death. After their death the defenders of Human rights move into accuse those who have failed to punish the perpetrators of the crimes.

We also do not like when our leaders, are compared to others who lived in different conditions, under different situations, and violated human rights of their people, in different ways, for different reasons. Each person is different, acts according to different conditions, under different circumstances. Therefore, each should be judged as he or she is, not
because he or she seemed to have acted like some one else or resembles
one of them. AHRC may have really stretched its mind to compare JR Jayawardhana to Bocassa. ( who it is said had human flesh in the refrigerator). These reports would be more effective, and even readable, if
comparisons are dropped. Chandrika Kumaratunga is certainly different to
Marcos or Suharto.

There were no reports of human rights violations during Chandrika K’s term of office. If Sri Lanka is a lawless state it is primarily because of the LTTE terrorists. Human rights organisations and the Amnesty International should really accuse Prbhakaran and his terrorists for Sri Lanka being a lawless state today. It is best that these Organisations meet Prabhakaran and his terrorist group to discuss these matters, without accusing the Heads of Governments. They should also appeal to the International Community to help the government to solve the problem of terrorism, that would be a positive action to end problem of human rights in Sri Lanka.

Choura Raegina may be a best seller among a selected public, but that book is not to go by to accuse Chandrika for the crimes the Editor imagines she committee.

There are lots of really more important cases of violation of human rights to attend to instead of splitting hair about a political leader supposed to be responsible for human rights violations, from being appointed to a post in an International Organisation.

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