Who is the Core Group against Sri Lanka at UNHRC? | Sunday Observer

Who is the Core Group against Sri Lanka at UNHRC?

14 February, 2021

History will one day be witness to the lies, deceit and hypocrisy in the halls of the UN and in particular the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). All resolutions since 2009 claiming to be based on how Sri Lanka ended the battle against terrorism and claiming to have intentionally killed 40,000 people do not make any reference to these allegations but are following intrusive and non-conflict related demands that violate the UN Charter.

All these nations passing resolutions against Sri Lanka must ask themselves what they did to prevent the LTTE committing crimes over 30 years. Why are these countries suddenly bothered about how the battle against terrorism was fought after LTTE’s defeat? This itself is a precedent being created by the UN and will impact other countries in the future.

UK

At one time, the UK was the world’s biggest empire, invading and ruling all but 22 countries. UK’s crimes thus constitute that which were committed in the name of the King/Queen by the UK military that ruled, invaded nations, murdered the natives, destroyed their cultures, livelihoods and plundered their resources to build their nations back home and are now making money from displaying stolen artefacts in their museums while their Queen adorns herself with riches and gems from the former colonies.

The UK’s rule of Sri Lanka ended only in 1972 with the Republican Constitution. From 1948, Sri Lanka accepted Dominion Status, nominal independence as the Queen remained Head of State. UK Privy Council was the highest court and military presence remained in Sri Lanka.

The colonial crimes committed by the British in then Ceylon have never been acknowledged, accounted or compensated. This is the country preaching human rights. The crimes committed by colonial Britain come nowhere near what they accuse countries of today. The Uva-Wellassa massacre resulted in the British Governor Brownrigg declaring to kill anything that moved and even babies.

The scorched-earth policy meant burning everything that was in sight to starve natives to death. These were crimes against humanity, these were genocides, not the handful of propaganda filled- evidence less fairytales hiring witnesses and training them to cry to a camera taking place today. India that joins the UK in its modern geopolitical bullying may well like to go through how India suffered under colonial Britain where British governors publicly said the only good Indian is a dead Indian.

The UK demanding Sri Lanka to account for LTTE defeat – is hiding the Chilcot Inquiry report into UK’s war crimes in Iraq.

Why doesn’t the UK account for the bloody Sunday in Ireland in spite of two reports pointing to UK’s bloody role!

It was in the UK that the LTTE opened its first international headquarters in mid 1970s.

It is also in the UK that an LTTE Australian nurse kidnapped Tamil low caste and poor children to train them as child soldiers to kill people and even to commit suicide.

What more do we need to say about the UK that allows its Parliament to be lit to remember LTTE dead. Yet the UK has the audacity to preach Human Rights and not even bothered about filing a case against Adele for her crimes against children!

Canada

Canada’s history is just over 151 years created by the UK in 1867.

Canada is a ‘rich’ country today only because it was created after forcibly acquiring indigenous lands and resources and confining the natives to that of aliens, discriminating them, making them ill, destroying their livelihoods, denying them basic human rights, forcibly sterilising them, sexually assaulting their children, subjecting them to torture and starvation in ‘residential schools’. This was how the ‘immigrant invaders’ cleared lands for them to farm, for them to mine, for them to extract oil. This is how Canada became a rich nation.

Simply saying ‘sorry’, Canada thinks all of its human rights violations, crimes against humanity can be erased. The obnoxious nature of Canada is such that it is patronising other countries while its dark past remains one that continues to subtly carry forward violations to these natives in the present what was done proudly and openly in the past.

https://nowtoronto.com/news/canada-s-150th-a-celebration-of-indigenous-g...

The author says that the “Famous Five” women long celebrated as champions of women’s rights are having their hero status questioned because of supporting sterilisation of indigenous women. This is no different to how Velupillai Prabakaran kidnapped and turned children into LTTE child soldiers.

Canada is guilty of ‘cultural genocide’ (as referred to by former PM Paul Martin) just as the LTTE and Prabakaran was guilty of the same crime too.

Canada which is today part of a Core-Group against Sri Lanka is preaching to Sri Lanka about Human Rights, gender rights and children’s rights. Canada regarded women as ‘persons’ only in 1929 and all women in Canada was given to vote only in 1960. Sri Lanka’s women gained right to vote in 1931. The year all women in Canada got a right to vote, Sri Lanka produced the World’ first female Prime Minister in July 1960.

The LTTE lobby in Canada is strong. Toronto holds the largest Tamil speaking population outside Asia. Canada is accommodating internationally proscribed terrorist organisations. Prabakaran is a regular feature for window shoppers.

The two new countries on the bloc against Sri Lanka are New Macedonia with a history of 30 years and Montenegro

Montenegro 

This Balkan country became independent in only 2006 with a new Constitution formed in 2007. Its history as an independent nation is just 15 years while its leader Milo Djukanovic had led for 26 years and coined dictator too! Montenegro is a member of NATO since 2017. Freedom House in its May 2020 political rights and civil liberties worldwide report declared Montenegro as a hybrid regime and not a democracy. These are the countries passing resolutions against Sri Lanka!

Montenegro is known as Europe’s Mafia State.

New Macedonia

New Macedonia with a population two million is locked between five countries – Kosovo and Serbia on the north, Bulgaria on the East, Greece on the south and Albania on the west. Its independent history is just 30 years having split from Yugoslavia in 1991.

About 66 percent of the population are Christians and 33 percent Muslims.

The OHCHR report on New Macedonia is nothing for the country to boast of either: 900 inmates without identification cards, limited judicial independence, politicisation of the judicial oversight body, 112 persons (26 families) remained displaced from the 2001 internal armed conflict

Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2019 report stated that “while the media and civil society are active, journalists and activists face pressure and intimidation.”

It is also interesting that while EU countries demanded the release of all IDPs following the end of LTTE – The 2018 Helsinki Committee for Human Rights Annual Report stated, “The provision limiting the freedom of movement of asylum seekers was retained. Namely, Article 63 prescribes that freedom of movement shall be restricted in extraordinary circumstances, to determine the identity and citizenship, and establish the facts and circumstances of the asylum requests, particularly if a risk for escape has been determined, to protect the order and national security or when a foreigner is retained for the purposes of initiating a procedure for his return or removal.”

Germany

It is unfortunate that Germany, one of the most powerful nations in Europe has chosen to align with this core group given that Germany has been a victim of the Allies during both World Wars and suffered immense loss of lives and human rights violations. Germany should remember that immediately following the defeat of Hitler and Nazi rule, the Allies held a Victor’s Tribunal where only the crimes of Germany and Germans were put on the dock. None of the crimes committed by the Allies never made it to the court room.

That Victory is celebrated as Victory Day even in the 21st century, while these same nations tell Sri Lanka not to be triumphalist despite becoming the only nation to end a globally banned terrorist organisation. 

When Sri Lanka declared all LTTE are Tamils but all Tamils are not LTTE, the Allies declared all Germans to be Nazis and they were subject to much humiliation and torture.

Germany may well like to go back in time to count how many Germans were expelled from the European countries they were living in.

Three million Germans died after the war ended (two million were women and children one million were prisoners of war) – British historian Giles MacDonogh in ‘After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation” details how Germans and Austrians were systematically raped and robbed and those Germans who survived were killed in cold blood or deliberately left to die of disease, cold, malnutrition or starvation. These statistics come with evidence and proof unlike the UNHRC fairy tales of ‘genocide’ in Sri Lanka.

To this day, the US and the UK have a military presence in Germany because of the status of forces agreement signed. The UK and the US occupied Germany eight years after the war ended!

It would be good for Germany to read how Sri Lanka treated the LTTE and how Germany was treated by the countries that Germany is so close with today

As a victim of the UK, the US and Allies, it is unfortunate that Germany is part of this core group because we, in Sri Lanka, empathise with all that Germany and Germans had to undergo during and after the World Wars.

Sri Lanka is only an observer nation of the UNHRC – why should we travel to UNHRC annually to be humiliated?

Sri Lanka should exit from the UNHRC.

Sri Lanka is a sovereign nation – the UK cannot be dictating to Sri Lanka any longer. Having left the EU, the UK is on its own and desperate to secure ties for its existence. If Sri Lanka decides to leave the Commonwealth, many other Commonwealth nations will be inspired to do the same. The UK will find itself a toothless lion!

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