In a joint statement issued yesterday on behalf of Pakatan Rakyat, Mustafa Ali (PAS), Dr.Tan Seng Giaw (DAP) and Saifuddin Nasution Ismail (PKR) called upon the Malaysian government to support the resolution on Sri Lanka that is before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva for adoption.
The statement reads:
In the following days, the Human Rights Council of the United Nations currently sitting in Geneva will discuss a resolution on Sri Lanka which raises and addresses the following issues:
a. Calls upon the Sri Lanka government to implement the constructive recommendations in the Lessons Learnt and Reconcilation Commission (LLRC) 2010 and to take independent and credible actions to ensure justice for all Sri Lankans;
b. Requests the government of Sri Lanka to present a comprehensive action plan detailing the steps taken and to be taken to implement the LLRC report and address violations of international law;
c. Calls on the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to provide and the Government of Sri Lanka to accept assistance in implementing those steps and to report at the 22nd Session.
Although the proposed resolution has been much watered down from the original version, nonetheless, Pakatan Rakyat calls upon the government to support the above resolution.
It is unacceptable that the gross human rights violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the ending stages of the war in 2009 by any party are left unaddressed with the perpetrators benefiting from a prevailing culture of impunity.
The Channel 4 Documentary “The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka” that went on air on the 14th of June 2011 in the United Kingdom and received wide global publicity subsequently provided shocking corroborative visual evidence of those war crimes in the form of eyewitness accounts, amateur film footage, photographs and mobile phone videos.
The Panel of Experts ( POE) appointed by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon have concluded also in their 2010 report that there is credible evidence of war crimes and called on the Sri Lankan Government immediately to “commence genuine investigations into these and other alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law committed by both sides involved in the armed conflict.” The report also recommends that the Secretary General “immediately proceed to establish an independent international mechanism”.
Approval of the proposed resolution in the HRC is vital to a long-term resolution of the situation in Sri Lanka.
The Malaysian government has rightly supported action on the gross human rights abuses which took place in Bosnia in the 1990s and has criticized the same committed by Israel against the Palestinian people. We are in support of these actions. However the government must act consistently in respect of possibly even worse human rights violations in Sri Lanka – the human rights of the victims in Sri Lanka whether they are Tamil, Sinhalese, Hindu, Christian or Muslim must not be sacrificed for the vested economic interests of a few individuals.
Malaysia must not again abdicate its role as a member of the Human Rights Council as it did when it supported a resolution in favour of the Sri Lankan government in the HRC in 2009.
We call upon the Prime Minister to advise the Foreign Minister and our representatives in the UN accordingly and to make a public stand immediately.
