{"id":60568,"date":"2012-11-16T20:32:42","date_gmt":"2012-11-16T20:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=60568"},"modified":"2012-11-21T11:18:22","modified_gmt":"2012-11-21T11:18:22","slug":"un-internal-report-bbc-newshour-interview-with-rajiva-wijesinha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/un-internal-report-bbc-newshour-interview-with-rajiva-wijesinha\/","title":{"rendered":"UN Internal Report: BBC Newshour Interview With Rajiva Wijesinha"},"content":{"rendered":"

Razia Iqbal: Why (did) the Govt of Sri Lanka want the UN to go? Was it because you couldn\u2019t protect them or did you have another reason?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rajiva Wijesinha: Well in fact we didn\u2019t want them to go.\u00a0 In Sept we asked the\u00a0NGOs to leave, one of them had actually been\u00a0supplying vehicles to the Tigers.<\/p>\n

We specifically asked, and that letter is available, UNFPA and UNHCR to stay along with the Red Cross.\u00a0 I\u2019m afraid the then UNDP rep was galvanised by some people who wanted almost to blackmail us to say \u201cNo no, if we can\u2019t all stay them we are going to leave\u201d. So the Sec Defence said then leave. But\u00a0the ICRC stayed right through\u00a0and we have got all the details of the ICRC interventions during that period.\u00a0 We also have the UN interventions \u2026<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TqLa6WFzZ2w&feature=plcp<\/p>\n

RI: We\u2019re not talking about the ICRC Sir, if I, if you wouldn\u2019t mind \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

RW: Hold on let me finish. The UN was there through convoys right through January, and its nonsense to say the UNDP rep didn\u2019t bother \u2013 they were very concerned.\u00a0 I remember my Minister (Mahinda Samarasinghe) being rung up\u00a0one morning and told\u00a0that the people in the No-Fire Zone were being fired on, but in the evening they sent us an sms saying their information was that the firing came from the Tigers \u2013 I don\u2019t think they were lying, but\u00a0unfortunately junior members of the UN have complained about their bosses and lied about them<\/p>\n

RI: Sir, this internal report of the UN says that under intense pressure from the Sri Lankan Govt the UN did not make clear that a large majority of deaths were caused by govt shelling, and that you put the UN under that pressure<\/strong><\/p>\n

RW: The panels of inquiries have not been transparent. We have got the letters through which the UN dealt with us and I think this is an attempt to\u00a0undermine senior members of the UN.\u00a0 I am sorry you can\u2019t share the leaked report with me, but recently I saw something by a Britisher Julian Vigo which quoted young people in the UN \u2013 they are liers \u2013 for instance I checked with IOM about the person called Suzanne \u2013 they said there was no such person called Suzanne \u2026. I\u2019m afraid these people are not only determined to push a political agenda, but they are not truthful \u2013 I mean I don\u2019t mind people being anonymous but don\u2019t claim to have a name which turns out to be false.\u00a0 Why don\u2019t you\u00a0check with the senior leadership\u00a0of the UN? I have to say that the Sri Lankan govt has failed because\u00a0when the Darusman report came out I personally checked\u00a0\u2013 Sir John Holmes had not been contacted, except very briefly initially, Neil Buhne was the UNDP head and worked very well with the Sri Lankans, was not contacted. He can testify that the Tigers did not allow something like 600 Sri Lankan (UN) workers to leave, but at the end of the war all of them were safe \u2013 so this is hardly indiscriminate attacks.<\/p>\n

RI: Well let me ask you about the issue that both sides in this conflict have been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.\u00a0 What do you as a representative of the Sri Lankan govt have to say about that \u2013 that there was widespread indiscriminate shelling of civillians.<\/strong><\/p>\n

RW: Well who are the people who make these attacks? For instance in the East, where I followed very carefully, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said \u201cindiscriminate attacks on civillians\u201d but\u00a0their report recorded only one instance of civillians being killed and that was because of mortar locating radar.<\/a>\u00a0 We took full responsibility and said we are sorry but we had mortar locating radar, and HRWgranted the Tigers had been with weapons in a refugee camp but said they were not heavy weapons.\u00a0 How dare they allow these people to shoot from amongst refugees.<\/p>\n

RI: Do you not Sir take responsibility \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

RW: I was head of the peace secretariat, I monitored TamilNet every day and I would ask for explanations<\/p>\n

RI: How do you account for tens<\/strong><\/p>\n

RW: Let me finish please<\/p>\n

RI: You are not answering the question<\/strong><\/p>\n

RW: Of 425 sorties by the air force, in only 29 of them were there allegations of civilian deaths<\/p>\n

RI: How do you account for tens of thousands of civilians being killed?<\/strong><\/p>\n

RW: It is not tens of thousands because even the UN report \u2013 which the UN then said we cannot talk about because its not verifiable, Sir John Holmes said that, he was accused of suppressing but he was trying to be accurate \u2013 said 7,000. The larger figure is obviously exaggerated, and\u00a0you\u2019re relying on people like the Times who started this figure of 20,000.\u00a0\u00a0 They first said it was on the basis of extrapolations.\u00a0 When I pointed out that it was not true they said it was on the basis of graveyards.\u00a0\u00a0The graveyards were looked at aerially by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and their report was suppressed because they said the graveyards barely expanded during those days.<\/a>\u00a0So why don\u2019t you look at a few facts instead of mentioning the exaggerations of people who simply cannot cite dates and times.<\/p>\n

RI: Is it not also the case Sir that you do not allow journalists to, have not allowed journalists to report on this story freely which makes it very difficult to verify some of the things that you are claiming?<\/strong><\/p>\n

RW: Don\u2019t be ridiculous.\u00a0 During the war I was head of the peace secretariat \u2013 I kept asking journalists to come in.\u00a0 The Indians came and reported very fairly and I must say in fairness to the BBC it was not outrageous, they tended to cite people but they always said they were citing \u2013 it was\u00a0Channel 4 and the Guardian\u00a0that came out with such outrageous lies and\u00a0when I questioned the Guardian guy he sort of said to me \u2018I now realise that source was not reliable.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0This is the source that told him there were\u00a013 women with their throats cut\u00a0\u2013 there was not 1, I checked with all the protection agencies.<\/p>\n

RI: OK OK Sir we have run out of time.\u00a0 Thank you very much indeed for joining us.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Related posts;<\/p>\n

UN Failures In Sri Lanka On 128 Pages: US And And The RC Did Not Stand By The Casualty Numbers<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Tamils Want Inquiry After UN Says It \u2018Failed Civilians\u2019 In Bloody Sri Lanka Civil War \u2013 CNN<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Following Report On Activities In Sri Lanka War, Ban Determined To Strengthen UN Responses To Crises<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

BBC Report: UN Failed Sri Lanka Civilians Says Internal Investigation<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":38830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2187,1,2375],"tags":[6512,6513,6511],"class_list":["post-60568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-most-popular","category-news","category-stories","tag-rajiva-wijesinha-on-un-internal-report","tag-sri-lankan-government-response-on-war-crimes","tag-war-cries-sri-lanka"],"yoast_head":"\nUN Internal Report: BBC Newshour Interview With Rajiva Wijesinha - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/un-internal-report-bbc-newshour-interview-with-rajiva-wijesinha\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"UN Internal Report: BBC Newshour Interview With Rajiva Wijesinha - 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