By Rajpal Abeynayake – The state run Daily News Editorial – On Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Rajpal Abeynayake

The events that are taking place in Syria now show abundantly clearly that the world’s powers that be — and that includes the top civil servants of the U.N — do adopt double standards when it come to human rights issues, and that’s despite the denial by Ms. Navinathem Pillai the U.N High Commissioner for Human Rights at her closing press conference in Colombo, that there is no such thing as ‘oversight by favour.’

She said that if we’d scroll down on her Office’s website highlighting U.N’s human rights enforcement work, we would find that the U.N has initiated investigations into U.S drone attacks — the inference being that the organization is even handed and rigorous in its work!

It does seem odd that there were no resolutions passed against the United States on the UNHRC floor, when the violations by that country have been by any yardstick glaring, compared to alleged rights violations by any other country on earth. Suffice to say that we in this newspaper that asked her the question at the press conference on U.S drone attacks were not in any position to enter into a debate with Ms. Navi Pillai on this issue, and that she had the last word by having a monopoly over the microphone.

Scroll Down Your Website: A free Laptop from President to Daily News Editor Rajpal Abeynayake

Else, we would have had the opportunity to tell Ms. Pillai that the U.S had invaded many countries on the pretext of looking for weapons of mass destruction etc., despite the fact that there were no Security Council approvals for such interventions or any kind of U.N resolutions granting the country the right to invade those countries that were overrun on false pretexts. (Please see article below by Shenali Waduge.) There was nothing substantive that Navinathem Pillai did in terms of censure despite the fact that there were such blatant incursions, and ‘investigating into drone strikes’ or coming up with what are equivalent to U.N term papers do not militate against the UNHRC doing nothing at all in practical terms about the military adventurism of the U.S.A.

Today the U.S is poised to invade Syria, and the Nobel peace prize winning President that claims he is war weary, stated he is awaiting the approval of the two houses of Congress to strike against that country’s government!

He says that’s because of the all important need to obtain the approval of the people of the United States for such a military incursion. If that is to be understood right, if a country is to be invaded, it is the people of the United States that need to decide on the justification for it, and not the people of the nation that is facing the imminent threat of incursion, or the world’s people that are represented in the UN.

It is good for the ignorant and the purblind to be dazzled by the assertions of Navinathem Pillai that the UN is even handed and that as an oversight mechanism her office does not believe in persecuting small fry nations, while the bigger fish continually violate human rights in an atmosphere of blatant impunity.

In point of fact what’s happening now is hilariously representative of the fact that U.N civil servants such as Navi Pillai know on which side their bread is buttered, which is why they do not make so much as a stifled noise when Obama sabre rattles.

The U.S President in his so called Rose Garden speech two days ago in the White House made it clear that as far as his administration is concerned, the United Nations is not worth bothering about. He is not awaiting U.N Inspector test results on chemical weapons, he is not hoping for the U.N imprimatur – he is not interested, period.

That makes the U.S a serial violator of international law, and that makes the U.S by far the most transgressive force as far as human rights are concerned. But yet, Ms Navi Pillai says we have to scroll down to see how even handedly she has treated all comers along with all her U.N civil servant compatriots.

Someone else may have told her she must go and tell that to the US marines, but suffice to say that we politely advice her to know her own organization — not just scroll down and read up on what appears on its website.

Related posts;

Pillay Advises State Media Rajpal: “Read More To Dispel Myth About UN Bias”