Rights of the people and the rhetoric of their leaders

Foreign Affairs Minister Ali Sabry was in Geneva twice during the recently concluded 51st session of the Human Rights Council to present the position of the Government, which was overwhelmingly rejected. Tweeting soon after the resounding defeat at a resolution that was passed at the HRC with 20 votes in favour and only 7 against, Minister Sabry says, “It is time for all Sri Lankans to stand as one and move forward together to avoid external interference.”

There is much to unpack from this statement. Sabry, as many in Government had attempted before him, attempts to project the demands for accountability for crimes committed by the Sri Lankan State as an affront against the people of Sri Lanka. This is furthest from the truth. The fact that international efforts to hold the Sri Lankan State accountable is a result of the failures to provide the minimum levels of protections to its own people. As a signatory to all nine-core international human rights treaties, Sri Lanka has assured the international community that it will protect and foster the fundamental rights of its citizens. Inability to do so is not only a contradiction of international law but more significantly a violation of the social contract between the citizens and those who represent them.

Sri Lanka has one of the most abysmal human rights records of any country. It is a rare democracy that has not confronted its bloody past. In the 1971 southern insurgency at least 12,000 mostly Sinhala youth were subjected to enforced disappearance or extra judicial killings. This number is as high as 100,000 for the 87-89 period. The number of people killed during the ethnic conflict from 1983 to 2009 is in excess of 100,000 with many of them subjected to enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and civilian deaths in violations of humanitarian law.

Addressing these violations and bringing those accountable to justice is by no means a threat to sovereignty or national security. On the contrary such accountability will strengthen the Sri Lankan State, offer victims and their families closure, usher in reconciliation and a possibility of greater harmony among the numerous communities living in the country that will eventually deliver a stable country at peace with the ability to prosper.

The attempts by Minister Sabry and others of his ilk to project the accountability mechanisms as ‘external interference’ is a diabolical misrepresentation. Not too long ago the same minister while holding the portfolio of Justice Minister remained silent while Sri Lanka became the only country in the world to implement a purely racist policy of forcefully cremating Muslim victims of the COVID pandemic. His current efforts are also clearly an attempt to safeguard the perpetrators of heinous crimes committed against the people of Sri Lanka. It is no secret that Minister Sabry is the personal lawyer to former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa who is accused of ordering war crimes and perpetrating violence against numerous individuals including the killing of journalists.  

If Minister Sabry and his Government want to avoid ‘external interference’ all that they have to do is to adhere to the international commitments signed by the Sri Lankan State. No external force will be able to interfere in Sri Lanka’s domestic affairs if the State delivers justice to the victims. No Sri Lankan, other than perpetrators of human rights and humanitarian law violations should fear the mechanism established under the UN high commissioner to “collect, consolidate, analyse and preserve information and evidence…for gross violations of human rights or serious violations of international humanitarian law in Sri Lanka.”  

There is clearly a choice between protecting the rights of the people of Sri Lanka and protecting the perpetrators who had committed crimes against them. Minister Ali Sabry and the current administration have shown which side of the divide they are on. What is required is for justice to prevail. If that justice cannot and will not be delivered domestically then there is no alternative but to seek it internationally.