UNHRC SESSIONS: WHAT LANKA SHOULD HAVE DONE

The United Nations Human Rights Council is in session and Sri Lanka is among the countries that have come before its scanner. It is a slur on Sri Lanka’s reputation when it is being lumped together with big-time human rights violators such as Israel, Syria and North Korea, with member states after member state taking the floor to act like prosecutor, the jury and the judge.

- Ameen Izzadeen

They do so as though they have not done any sins.

There is no motto to adore the UNHRC’s dove and olive branch logo, which, together with the colors used, signifies, among other things, the peaceful intention of the council, the universality of human rights and the urgency and the attention human rights deserve. Given the duplicitous nature of world politics and the reality that most nations have politicized human rights as a tool to demonize countries they hate, perhaps the motto should be the New Testament saying, “Let the one among you who has not sinned throw the first stone.” To use another Biblical term, the UNHRC is a forum where some nations, while carrying huge beams in their eyes, look at the speck in the eyes of other nations.

If Britain, which is leading the charge against Sri Lanka at the ongoing UNHRC sessions, is squeaky clean with its human rights record, can it say aloud that its soldiers did not commit war crimes in Iraq?

Is it not a huge human rights violation when Britain drove away the indigenous people from the Chagos Island and gave the Indian ocean atoll to the United States for it to set up a military base? What about the 1917 Balfour Declaration that let the European Zionists to set up a state in Palestine? By this declaration, Britain committed the original sin that fathered Israel’s multiple sins against the Palestinian people.