OHCHR’s Lanka report and fig leaves for some View(s):Last week’s UN report on Sri Lanka from the Office of its High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), if one was to use a Churchillian phrase, was a ‘riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’. Significantly, the report has also failed to research the OHCHR archives relating to the disappearances allegedly perpetrated by the Indian Army (IPKF) in Sri Lanka. Coinciding with the OHCHR report on Sri Lanka, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, however, applied for arrest warrants against the Israeli Prime Minister and Defence Minister, and the Hamas group leaders over ongoing events in Palestine. In the case of Sri Lanka, it is clear that some overseas activists sympathetic to the LTTE have realised that this is an opportune moment to capitalise on the Western silence on Gaza for an overdrive on Sri Lanka. Some have seen an advantage in timing the OHCHR report from Geneva with the Srebrenica resolution at the UN in New York, and the anniversary of the end of the conflict in Sri Lanka.

Source: Sunday Times May 26, 2024 13:16 UTC