{"id":103070,"date":"2013-09-01T00:04:03","date_gmt":"2013-08-31T18:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=103070"},"modified":"2013-09-08T21:41:33","modified_gmt":"2013-09-08T16:11:33","slug":"morality-of-navi-pillays-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/morality-of-navi-pillays-visit\/","title":{"rendered":"Morality Of Navi Pillay’s Visit"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Udaya Prabhath Gammanpila<\/a><\/span>\u00a0–<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>

Udaya Gammanpila<\/p><\/div>\n

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navinethem Pillay<\/a><\/span> is now in Sri Lanka.\u00a0 For Tamil separatists and the opposition, she is the savior.\u00a0 Some ministers have rushed to make announcements expressing their confidence in the High Commissioner for her impartiality.\u00a0 However, nationalists are against her visit for several reasons.\u00a0 It is our duty to place the rationale for our protest before the public as well as Pillay.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Pillay is the Chief Executive of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC<\/a><\/span>) which passed two resolutions against Sri Lanka in this year and the last year.\u00a0 According to the resolution passed this year, she should present an oral update to the UNHRC at its 24th<\/sup>\u00a0session and a comprehensive report at its 25th<\/sup>session on the implementation of the UN resolution by Sri Lanka.\u00a0 Hence, this is a fact finding mission on how best Sri Lanka has implemented the resolution passed by the UNHRC.<\/p>\n

The UNHRC resolutions against Sri Lanka have alleged that Sri Lanka had violated international humanitarian and human right laws during the last stage of the war by committing war crimes on Tamil civilians.\u00a0 These resolutions primarily based on the report produced by a panel appointed by the Secretary General of UN, Ban-ki Moon.\u00a0 The panel consists of three members, namely, Marzuki Darusman, Yasmin Sooka and Steven Ratner.\u00a0 This panel leveled several serious allegations against Sri Lanka including killing of 40,000 Tamil civilians.\u00a0 Hence, Pillay is duty bound to report to the council the veracity of the report of Moon\u2019s panel.<\/p>\n

Pillay is not only a lawyer but an ex-judge in South Africa.\u00a0 Sri Lanka and South Africa are the only countries in the world which practice Roman Dutch Legal system.\u00a0\u00a0 Hence, she must be familiar with natural justice principles.\u00a0 One of such principles is Nemo iudex in cause sua in Latin, meaning no person can judge a case in which she has an interest.\u00a0 That is because justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done.\u00a0 Pillay has grossly violated this principle.<\/p>\n

Although Pillay is from South Africa, she is of Tamil ethnic origin.\u00a0 She is a community conscious activist as reflected in her struggles against discrimination of Indian community and women in South Africa.\u00a0 Since her graduate studies were sponsored by her community because of her humble background, she has an emotional attachment to her community.\u00a0 In this backdrop, being a Tamil, she has no moral right to be in any fact finding mission on alleged killing of 40,000 innocent Tamils.<\/p>\n

When she faced racial riots in South Africa in 1949, she was just eight years.\u00a0 Pillay recently recalled her shocking memories about the riots to explain how she became a victim of it in her interview with Vino Reddy on 11th<\/sup>\u00a0August 2002.\u00a0 She was deprived of education, employment and social opportunities because of racial apartheid policy of then South African government.\u00a0 The government officially segregated the people according to their skin colors such as white, brown, black and mixed and assigned different rights and privileges to each group.\u00a0 Pillay belonged to less advantaged brown or Indian origin group.<\/p>\n

Because of her enormous suffering as a minority in South Africa, she has become a sympathizer of minorities.\u00a0 She looks at Sri Lankan conflict in South African perspective although the Government never adopted such discriminatory policies.\u00a0 For her, Sri Lankan government is a reminder of apartheid South African governments.\u00a0 Tales of killing of innocent Tamils remind her of 1949 racial riots and her lifelong struggle for justice for oppressed ethnic groups.\u00a0 Hence, she is prejudiced with her own experience in racial discrimination.<\/p>\n

Pillay\u2019s husband, Gaby Pillay was arrested in 1971 under Terrorism Act of 1967.\u00a0 She wept, mourned and finally fought a successful legal battle to secure the release of her husband.\u00a0 Thereafter she became the most sought after lawyer for terrorist detainees.\u00a0 She has later explained sorrowful tales of these terrorist suspects under apartheid regime.\u00a0 Because of this experience, she must be seeing her husband in every terrorist.\u00a0 Her husband may have fought for a just cause under apartheid regime.\u00a0 However, generalization of circumstances may cause irreparable damage to anti-terrorist activities.<\/p>\n

Yasmin Sooka, the second member of Moon\u2019s Panel, is an NGO activist in South Africa.\u00a0 She is the Executive Director of Sooka Center for Human Rights.\u00a0\u00a0 As the two leading women right activists in South Africa, Pillay and Sooka maintain a very close relationship.\u00a0 Pillay used to function as an advisor to Sooka\u2019s NGO.\u00a0 Further, Pillay has frequently written to the international magazine titled \u201cTransnational Justice\u201d of which Sooka serves in editorial board.\u00a0 There was a strong rumour that Sooka was appointed to Moon\u2019s panel on the recommendation of Pillay.\u00a0 In this backdrop, Pillay has visited Sri Lanka to verify the contents of the report submitted by one of her best friends.<\/p>\n

Pillay has already displayed her prejudiced mind towards Tamil separatism.\u00a0 She was very critical about the conduct of Sri Lankan forces during and after the war.\u00a0 When the Western superpowers forced Sri Lanka to declare a ceasefire in early 2009, she supported the move.\u00a0 Pillay issued a media release on 13.03.2009 stating that the current level of civilian casualties was truly shocking.\u00a0 She warned that the loss of life may reach catastrophic level unless hostilities were suspended.\u00a0 She mentioned in this statement that both sides of the war may have committed war crimes.\u00a0 She confidently said that the government had repeatedly shelled the designated no fire zones for civilians.<\/p>\n

She went on to mention that more than 2,800 civilians may have been killed and more than 7,000 injured since 20.01.2009.\u00a0 Although she stated that her figures were from a credible source, she was careful enough not to disclose her \u201ccredible source\u201d.\u00a0 In this backdrop, she may use the present tour in Sri Lanka to justify her statement made in 2009 which was full of unfounded facts.<\/p>\n

Because of the above reasons, Pillay should have abstained from involving in Sri Lanka by tasking this assignment to one of her subordinates.\u00a0 In fact, if she is genuinely interested in human rights, she should have visited countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Lybia and Tunisia before visiting Sri Lanka.\u00a0 Although western allied forces have killed more than one million civilians alone in Afghanistan and Iraq, Pillay has conveniently ignored these grave crimes.<\/p>\n

The so called liberators in Lybia killed Muammar Gadafi, the President of Lybia, in a brutal manner in presence of hundreds of people.\u00a0 His female bodyguards were raped and tortured before killing publicly.\u00a0 Although there are hundreds of eye witnesses and video footages as evidence, Pillay does not want to take any action since these gangsters were blessed and supported by the USA.<\/p>\n

Recently, military and judiciary of Egypt acted in concert to topple the democratically elected government to establish military rule with the blessing of the West.\u00a0 It was a gross violation of human rights of all citizens of Egypt.\u00a0 However, the so called guardian of human rights, Navi Pillay, is yet to talk about it.<\/p>\n

In the light of above, Navi Pillay is racially prejudiced, influenced by her friend Sooka and also controlled by Western superpowers.\u00a0 Hence, she has lost her credentials to be in a fact finding mission in Sri Lanka as mandated by the resolution adopted at the UNHRC.<\/p>\n

*Udaya Prabhath Gammanpila<\/a>\u00a0is the Western\u00a0Provincial Minister of Environment and a leader of Jathika Hela Urumaya\u00a0This article appeared in his official website<\/span>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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