UN Commissioner Navi Pillai’s report calling for an International Independent Investigation should be rejected as her impartiality is questionable due to obvious conflict of Interest.

 

UNCommissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillai meets President Mahinda Rajapakse in Sri Lanka

The Honourable Delegates to the 25^th Session of the UNHR Council, Geneva.

Your Excellencies,

UN Commissioner Navi Pillai’s report calling for an International Independent Investigation   should be rejected  as her  impartiality is questionable due to obvious conflict of Interest.

Delegates to the 25 Session of the UNHR Council in Geneva have been hearing complaints against Sri Lanka from  various Tamil individuals, Tamil groups and their  supporters from  NGOs and some UN Member States.  All those complaints  are for no other reason but for the elimination of terrorism under which  the Tamil civilians themselves suffered   for over three decades.  Those complaints which may have no direct connection to the elimination of terrorism are nevertheless its off shoots.

You may have noticed that those Sri Lankan Tamils who complain against Sri Lanka and support the US Resolution, and the report of the UNCHR Navi Pillai are not ordinary Tamil people who really suffered under terrorism, but these  are Tamils who have a vested interest in discrediting the Government of Sri Lanka, to provoke the Member States to react against Sri Lanka to help them eventually to establish a Separate Tamil State.

Those Tamils who have come from Sri Lanka presenting their complaints  against Sri Lanka are from the  Sri Lanka Tamil political party Tamil National Alliance, which was the political party set up by the terrorist leader Prabhakaran to represent him in the Parliament of Sri Lanka.

The Government after elimination of terrorism did not disband the Tamil National Alliance hoping that with the elimination of terrorism, they will turn out to be a reconciliatory force to bring together the divided Communities. But unfortunately  they turned out to be the heirs to the eliminated terrorists, and continue with the  separatist agenda of the Terrorists in  breach of  the Constitution of Sri Lanka.

This itself shows the positive attitude of the President of Sri Lanka who the Tamils now accuse  to have discriminated against the Tamil people and violated their human rights.

President of Sri Lanka could have used his executive powers and moved to take action against the Tamil National Alliance for the breach of the Constitution.  He did not do so.  The  President  never discriminated against the Tamils of Sri Lanka. He deployed his Armed Forces against the Tamil terrorist, and never against the Tamil people. 

The Armed Forces in fact protected the Tamil people from the terrorist who had kept them as a human shield, and rescued 300,000 of them from the teeth of terrorists risking their own lives.

This shows that the propaganda that is being carried out by the Sri Lanka Tamil politicians and their supporters are false,  and the government ever since the elimination of terrorism had been doing every thing possible to improve the living conditions of the Tamil people of the North and East and reconcile them with the rest of the Communities.           

But it is the Tamils led by the Tamil National alliance and the Tamil Diaspora  who are now very much present in the UNHR Council premises in Geneva carrying out  false propaganda against the Government and the Armed Forces,  refusing to cooperate with the government in its genuine and sincere effort to  reconcile the Communities in Sri Lanka, and bring real peace to the people of the Sri Lanka.

Honourable Delegates you may have met, seen or observed  a vociferous Tamil Woman from the Tamil National Alliance –now a Provincial Councillor who has come to UNHRC Geneva and makes lot of Allegations against  the Government of Sri Lanka and its Armed Forces.  She is  Mrs. Anandhi Sridharan. She is none other than the wife of a terrorist Elilian, who was in charge of  recruiting  Tamil children to be trained as child soldiers for terrorists. 

The “recruitment” was in fact taking away children  by force from the parents or kidnapping them from  schools. This person Anandhi Sridharan as the  wife of a terrorist had been an active supported of terrorism. And she is now trying to complete vengefully the unfinished work of her terrorist companions, accusing the Armed Forces. 

This is evidence that the Government of Sri Lanka has not restricted the freedom of the Tamils after the end of terrorism even if some of them  were closely connected with terrorism. This  shows the extent to  which these Tamils led by Tamil National Alliance are ready to go with their false accusations to incriminate the Government and its Armed Forces.  .

The Tamil are only a 13 percent of the population of Sri Lanka.  Of this,  55 percent of the Tamils lives in the South with Sinhala people.  If  the whole of the Tamil population supported the terrorists, the Government would not have been able to defeat them. But not all the Tamils were with the terrorists.

The terrorist were ruthless and did not hesitate to kill any one who opposed them .  Therefore those  Tamils who opposed terrorism did not speak up against terrorist for fear of their lives.  Even today this fear exists,  and the Tamils opposed to terrorism still prefer to keep silent.

Many Tamils in the diaspora lived in fear of being denounced by the terrorist Front Agencies, and made their contributions to the terrorist  Fund Collectors through  fear for themselves and their kith and kin in Sri Lanka.  

Though the terrorists were eliminated by the Government of Sri Lanka,  the  local sympathisers of the terrorists and those pro-terrorist Tamils in the diaspora want to realise the creation of a separate Tamil State which was the object of the terrorists,  and for which the pro-terrorist Tamil diaspora had financially and actively  contributed and still continue to do so.

The Sri Lanka  Tamil politicians led by  the Tamil National Alliance ,  and those Tamils of the diaspora,  are supported by all “well to do” Tamils, and Tamil  politicians the world over  even if they knew nothing of the ground situation in Sri Lanka during terrorism, and nothing of  the governments  contribution to the welfare of the Tamils after terrorism,  merely because they are also  Tamils. 

Their attachment to their Tamilness is such  that they blindly cast their lot with the pro terrorist Sri Lanka Tamils, unconcerned  whether the Tamil terrorists were right or wrong.

Thus you have the Tamils from Mauritius forcing their government to sponsor the US Resolution against Sri Lanka. 

The Tamils in Malaysia, as much as the Tamils of the Tamil Nadu of India  supported  the course of terrorism, and now they are all supporting the efforts of the Pro-terrorist Tamils of Sri Lanka- Tamil National Alliance  along with the Tamils of the diaspora to set up a separate Tamil State in the North and bring the Government and the Armed Forces in Sri Lanka before a tribunal accused for violation of human rights and war crimes in the course of elimination of terrorism.

The Tamils in South Africa supported  the course of the  Sri Lanka Tamil terrorists, and continue to so with Archbishop Desmond Tutu taking a leading role.  Hence all Tamils where ever they are  tend to support Tamils, and  help them to take revenge from the Government of Sri Lanka for elimination of Tamil terrorist.

Navi Pillai  the UN Commissioner for Human Rights  is a Tamil from South Africa.  Hence, being a Tamil her sympathies are with the Tamils of Sri Lanka, her  allegiance is to the course of the Tamils of Sri Lanka to take vengeance from the Government of Sri Lanka and its armed forces  for the elimination of Tamil terrorists.

Navi Pillai the UN Commissioner of Human Rights , who is a Tamil is no different from  other Tamil.  She is in the correct place to help her Tamil counterparts in Sri Lanka to take revenge from the Government and its Armed Forces for the elimination of  their “beloved” Tamil terrorists.  That is the  motivation  behindNavi Pillai’s call for  an International Independent Investigation into the elimination of terrorism, to examine the violation of human rights, and war crimes.

Navi Pillai was the wrong person to have been invested with the authority to investigate to what an extent the Government of Sri Lanka is responsible for any violation of Human rights in the course of the elimination of terrorists. 

There is an obvious conflict of interest and she being a Tamil she stands with the Tamils of Sri Lanka and support their call   for an international  investigation and indirectly support the efforts of her Tamil counterparts to set up a separate Tamil State.

Therefore, her report  and her call for  an International Independent Investigation which has now been “copied” by USA should be rejected,  as her report does not show that she had been able to obtain reliable evidence from her investigations,  and therefore she has  come to very partial and therefore unacceptable conclusions.

Navi Pillai visited Sri Lanka on an invitation by the Government of Sri Lanka and stayed on for a week. She visited most of the places in the North of Sri Lanka interviewing people from all levels of Society, and anti- government press offices in the North. 

But as an independent UN Official and an impartial investigator, she did not to visit the South of Sri Lanka and interview the Sinhala people who also suffered from terrorism.  Therefore her conclusions after her investigations are incomplete, and partial towards the Tamils of the North. Moreover, in her visit to the North  she had not been able to collect any valid reliable evidence to accuse Sri Lanka and its armed forces for violation of human rights.

Hence the report of UNHRC Navi Pillai  presented to the 25 Session is not based on  evidence she collected in her investigations, but based on a  very controversial report issued  by a Panel appointed by the Secretary General  Ban Ki Moon, and a faked film produced by UK Channel TV. 

This report of the Panel cannot be accepted as it is first not an official report and secondly the evidence on which the report is based is questionable, as a condition of the release of the report was that the identity of the witnesses on whose evidence the report was prepared should not be released before twenty years after the issue of the report.  The report of the Panel  lacks transparency, and therefore not a reliable document.

This Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka consisted of Mr.Darusman from Indonesia, Yasmin Sooka from South Africa, and Steven Ratner an American.  This report becomes one of Navi Pillai’s sources  for her report now presented to UNHRC.  Ms. Navi Pillai had accepted the document as valid undoubtedly because the Panel which drew the report  consisted of  her compatriot and a friend Ms.Yasmin Sooka of South Africa.  The report has not been officially accepted as a UN Document.

Her second source of information is a supposed to be Documentary prepared by the UK Channel 4TV.  This documentary consists of images juxtaposed  without any eye witness evidences showing scenes of   atrocities the film recounts as committed by the Sri Lanka Armed Forces against the Tamils.  This is a sort of “ horror film” prepared using modern film technology which  gives the images a realistic dimension.  It could move persons, and acceptable to those  people who have not scene documentaries made using modern technology and virtual reality. 

sort of things that could be done with modern technology

The Channel 4 films cannot be accepted as evidence of any sort. Such documents will not be accepted in a court of law as evidence. No person with a knowledge of modern film technology will accept them as authentic.

Therefore as a concerned Sri Lankan, I appeal to the Honourable Delegates to reject the report presented by the UN High Commissioner Ms.Navi Pillai and also reject the US Resolution against Sri Lanka which also includes Ms.Navi Pillai’s  call for an International Independent Investigation.

Yours Respectfully,

Charles.S.Perera