17 August 2024 12:00 am Views - 675
By Resolution 46/1 on “Promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka”, the UNHRC tasked the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) “to collect, consolidate, analyse and preserve information and evidence and to develop possible strategies for future accountability processes for gross violations of human rights or serious violations of international humanitarian law in Sri Lanka.
The US co-sponsored a resolution led by the UK on “Promoting Reconciliation, Accountability, and Human Rights in Sri Lanka.”
The basis for the resolution were charges that during the closing stages of the war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan military, around 40,000 or more Tamil civilians were killed by the military.
No one denies that if it was proved to be true, such a crime could be termed a Crime Against Humanity. The final battle between the military and the LTTE was fought on the strip of land beside the Nandikadal lagoon.
As yet there has been no physical evidence that such large numbers were killed as for example mass graves etc. The claims largely stem from charges by international nongovernment organisations on charges based on media reports of the LTTE media and interviews with traumatised civilians caught up in the final stages of that war.
However, there is no doubt that several civilians did die in the crossfire and will forever remain a stain on this nation. While a few -like the then Rajapaksa administration- deny these deaths, subsequent governments admitted large numbers were killed during that war and one of our presidents apologised.
Unfortunately, killing is the natural consequence of war. However, if crimes against humanity were committed the perpetrators need to be tried and punished.
During its war in Vietnam, the US bombed and targeted civilian populations and used banned chemical weapons on civilian targets. In addition, it bombed civilian targets in Cambodia and Laos. About 2 million Vietnamese civilians were killed in the fighting.
The U.S. dropped around 500,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia killing an estimated 150,000 civilians. In Laos from 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped more than 2.5M tons of ordnance on Laos during 580,000 bombing sorties - equal to a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years – making Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. Over 25,000 people have been killed or injured by unexploded ordnance (UXO) in Laos since the bombing ceased.
Sadly the UN has as yet not passed any Resolutions condemning these mass killings or called on the U.S. to develop possible strategies for future accountability processes for gross violations of human rights or serious violations of international humanitarian law.
Since 7 October 2023 Israel has killed over 40,000 Palestinian civilians. It has cut off supplies of water and electricity to the civilian population of Gaza in addition to preventing supplies of food and medicine into that city.
As of March 16, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said at least 180 of its staff have been killed by Israeli attacks since October 7. Twenty-six hospitals were destroyed and hundreds of medics were killed. According to the UN, 80% of schools have been destroyed or damaged in Gaza since 7 October 2023. This systematic destruction of Palestinian education amounts to scholasticide, the organisation said.
The Israeli army has killed 2,100 Palestinian infants and toddlers under the age of two, out of the about 17,000 children it has killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of its genocidal war on 7 October 2023.
Believe it or not the co-sponsors of UN Resolution 46/1 on Sri Lanka use their veto to stop any discussion at the UN Security Council of Israeli atrocities in Palestine.
To make matters worse the US keeps providing Israel with more weapons and funds to continue its attacks on Palestine. At the same time the two states keep making pious statements on the need to avoid civilian casualties’.
It’s time the US and the West stopped their hypocritical nonsense and call halt to the ongoing genocide in Palestine. o the ongoing genocide in Palestine.