Myth of 'Free Media' and Fake News in the Post-Truth Era by Seneviratne Kalinga;

Author:Seneviratne, Kalinga; [Seneviratne, Kalinga]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SAGE Publications India Pvt, Ltd.
Published: 2019-10-19T00:00:00+00:00

UNHRC’s Bias against Sri Lanka

In June 2018, the USA announced that they would leave the UNHRC after the UN body voted to probe the killing of Palestinian civilians by Israel in Gaza. It accused the UN body of ‘chronic bias’ against Israel. ‘We take this step because our commitment does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical and self-serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights’, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said standing alongside former CIA Head and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington. Such comments could be music to the ears of many African and Asian governments that have accused the organization of such bias.

As a Sri Lankan, I must admit that I smiled when I heard Haley’s statement. Many Sri Lankans see the UNHRC as carrying out a witch-hunt against Sri Lanka since the LTTE was eliminated in 2009. It is the cynical use of a UN human rights mechanism to interfere in the domestic affairs of a country to serve Western geopolitical interests. While many Sri Lankans would agree with the US statement, it is also puzzling why they are leaving an organization that has served US geopolitical agenda very well. The same campaign they have carried out against Sri Lanka is being repeated against Myanmar of late, both strategically located countries in Asia.

Sri Lanka’s former ambassador in Geneva described the role of the UNHRC in these words in 2009, when the witch-hunt was started:

Mr President Sri Lanka noted with some degree of amusement that the EU, the United Kingdom, Ireland and France were all cheering on the notion of an international inquiry into allegations of human rights violations conducted by all sides as they put it to the Sri Lankan conflict so here’s the deal—Sri Lanka will be prepared I think to regard this a little more charitably if we start from the human rights situations that precede the Sri Lankan conflict, let France institute an impartial independent inquiry into the millions of deaths in so-called French Indochina, and then in Algeria including those who are submitted to electroshock during the Battle of Algiers. Let it also have an independent inquiry into the disappearance of Mary Jane Barker from the streets of Paris and possible complicity with of all sorts of personalities in that disappearance. Let Great Britain and Ireland have an international inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday 1972 in Londonderry but there was no fog of war like in the closing stages of Sri Lankan conflict, but dead civilians were strewn on the streets of Londonderry and after two Commissions of inquiry the only result has been the promotion of every single soldier (who) was there on that day and the commanding officer being given some sort of honors by Her Majesty the Queen. Now if these countries set an example to Sri Lanka and submit their own conduct to so-called impartial or independent international inquiries of the sort that they have commanded us, Sri Lanka would be ready (to talk).

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