SRI Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has begun marshaling his supporters here and abroad to counter a scathing attack on the country's human rights situation by a UN panel, and wants people to come out in their thousands on May Day in protest against the accusations. Two days before leaving on an official tour of Bangladesh, Monday, Rajapaksa told a group of ruling party organizers that the governing party's May Day rally should be a massive show of strength to send a strong signal to the UN which last week accused his government of committing war crimes. The UN report sent to the government last Wednesday was leaked on Sunday by the administration to newspapers which carried the entire executive summary and recommendations. The report is yet to be made public by the UN. Political analysts believe the rationale in leaking sections of the report to the media was to stimulate public discussion and help the government mobilize its “patriotic” forces against the UN. The UN panel comprising Marzuki Darusman (Indonesia), Yasmin Sooka (South Africa) and Stern Ratner (United States) was appointed in mid-2010 to advise UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on whether or not Sri Lanka committed war crimes during the last stages of the ethnic conflict which ended in May 2009. Rajapaksa and his government have repeatedly denied allegations from the West and rights groups of human rights violations and that civilians were targeted during bitter fighting between government forces and Tamil rebels in the weeks leading up to May 2009 when the latter was resoundingly defeated. The Sri Lankan leader has rejected the panel, refused permission to its members to visit Sri Lanka to carry out the probe and claimed the UN was being manipulated by some superpowers to act against the former war-torn country. While much of what is said in the lengthy report has been already stated in many ways in the past by human rights groups and international NGOs, such as attacks on civilians fleeing the disaster zone or attacks on hospitals in conflict areas, the report is the first formal statement from a UN body accusing the government of complicity in war crimes. In its recommendations, the panel has urged the government to issue a “public, formal acknowledgement of its role in and responsibility for extensive civilian casualties in the final stages of the war”. It has also urged the UN Secretary General to establish an independent international mechanism to probe accountability in civilian casualties during that period in early 2009. Prof. S. I. Keethaponcalan, Head of Department of Political Science and Public Policy at Colombo University, says that while internationally this is a serious setback to the country, locally the development will see the government mobilizing its supporters in support of Sri Lanka's war effort. “The government had a slight setback at the recent local council polls and although it won the councils, the main opposition United National Party was able to increase - slightly - its vote base, and needs to woo back support,” he said. Presidential and parliamentary polls in early 2010 were won handsomely by Rajapaksa's ruling party based purely on success in winning the war. However the past few months has seen Rajapaksa's popularity drop as rising cost of living and economic issues take precedence over war euphoria and rhetoric which has tapered off. Another political analyst, Jehan Perera says that there was nothing new in the report (from what was known or has been reported earlier) but this was because the UN team was not allowed into Sri Lanka. “The government blocked the verification process and didn't allow the panel to come here to check whether the allegations were true (or false),” he said. WHILE Perera, Executive Director of the National Peace Council and a newspaper columnist for an English daily, agrees that the debate over the report will play to the government's advantage in mobilizing what is likely to be the biggest May Day rally and other support, it would result in only short-term gains. “In the long term, Sri Lanka will continue to be isolated by Europe and North America, could suffer from lack of foreign investment and may even see the refusal of visas (to key government personnel) to visit those countries,” he says, noting that Sri Lanka needs to reopen a dialogue with the West. The independent Sunday Times newspaper in Colombo quoted Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, younger brother of the President, as saying that Sri Lanka will launch a diplomatic initiative in friendly countries to counter the allegations by the UN panel. Defense Secretary Rajapaksa told the paper that the government would send teams to India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the other Non-Aligned countries including those in Africa and Latin America to explain why Sri Lanka had no option other than to use military force to liquidate the LTTE's military capabilities. “He said a white paper would be prepared outlining the justification for military action; the civilian casualties caused by the LTTE (rebels); the benefits that have accrued to the people of Sri Lanka both in the north and south from the elimination of terrorism; and the humanitarian measures taken by the government during that final offensive against the LTTE and thereafter for the displaced civilians during the final stages,” the paper said. Since fighting escalated in 2004-05 and ended in May 2009, Sri Lanka has relied on the support of countries like China, India, Iran, Libya and Russia for assistance while relations with critics like the US and Europe have been strained. The author is a senior political analyst based in Colombo. __
