ICJ accuses: “UN is Useless”


(Sydney, 21 June 2009) - Hon. John Dowd, President of the Australian section of the International Commission of Jurists, speaking to Radio Australia and in a forum at Federal Parliament House this week said the Sri Lanka Government is in breach of the Geneva Convention in its treatment of displaced Tamils held in government-run camps. He expressed his concern that the “UN in its primary issues of the Security Council and the Human Rights Council are useless and against any humanitarian work.”

Hon. John Dowd is Australia’s former Attorney General and Supreme Court judge.

Human Rights in Sri Lanka and Australia’s Role

Speakers: The Hon John Dowd AO QC, President of the Australian Section, International Commission of Jurists, and Chair, Executive Committee of ICJ Geneva; Dr John Whitehall, Associate Professor in Public Health at James Cook University; Mr Bruce Haigh, political commentator and author and a former Australian diplomat.
Venue: Theatrette, NSW Parliament
Date: 16 June
Time: 6.30 to 8.30 pm
Inquiries: Dr Sam Pari on 0433 428 967

Calls made to not forget the Tamils

(By Pip Hinman, Green Left Weekly, Sydney, 21 June 2009) - A seminar at NSW Parliament House on June 16 discussed the current dire situation for Tamils in Sri Lanka and the need for the Rudd Labor government to step up and help protect human rights there.

The 60-strong meeting heard from Tamil leader Dr Sam Pari. Pari said that since the Sri Lankan government reported it had “won” the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on May 19, there had been repeated accusations of human rights violations and war crimes on both sides of the conflict.

“The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has repeatedly called for an international independent investigation into such violations”, she said. “However, Sri Lanka has blatantly opposed such an idea.”

Pari criticised the Sri Lankan government for still refusing unrestricted access for international aid groups or independent observers to visit the government concentration camps. The camps are thought to hold about 300,000 Tamil refugees in Sri Lanka’s north-east.

Pari said: “Allegations of rape, torture and abductions continue to emerge from the concentration camps. An estimated 10,000 Tamils have been taken away for interrogation by security forces and their whereabouts are unknown.”

The non-Tamil guest speakers were John Dowd, president of the Australian section of International Commission of Jurists and president of ActionAid; Bruce Haigh, a former deputy high commissioner to Sri Lanka; and Dr John Whitehall, a paediatrician who had undertaken voluntary medical work in Sri Lanka.

Whitehall gave a moving account of living and working with the Tamils in the north east of the country, including the Tamil Tigers. He said he had come to understand that the struggle for self-determination could not be beaten, or shot, out of an oppressed people.

The speakers expressed reservations about aspects of the LTTE, but they were highly critical of the Australian government for ignoring calls to assist the 300,000 Tamils trapped in the government-controlled camps.

Dowd said he was concerned that Tamils were being transported away from the north-east, where they had traditionally lived, while Singhalese were encouraged to relocate there.

“The movement of people against their will is a war crime”, he said.

Dowd also urged the audience to continue lobbying the Rudd government to do more for the displaced and war-torn Tamil people.

Pari asked supporters of Tamil rights to regularly check www.srilankancrisis.com.

Green Left Weekly

Commonwealth should pressure Sri Lanka on crisis

(Radio Australia, June 17, 2009) - The International Commission of Jurists says the Sri Lanka Government is in breach of the Geneva Convention in its treatment of displaced Tamils held in government-run camps.

Almost 300-thousand Tamils have been displaced since the Sri Lankan military defeated the rebel Tamil Tigers in May. Thousands of former fighters are thought to be held but their whereabouts and fate is unknown. Foreign governments are being urged to pressure Colombo to allow independent aid agencies into the camps and observe the Geneva Conventions that relate to prisoners of war.

Presenter: Karon Snowdon
Speaker: John Dowd, President of the Australian section of the International Commission of Jurists, a former Attorney General and Supreme Court judge

DOWD: As a member of the Commonwealth, it has a very high obligation to ensure that it speaks very loudly about the present crisis. It’s not speaking loudly enough, it did in the UN and it’s got to speak up now to make sure the Australian public understand the seriousness of what’s happening today.

SNOWDON: Why isn’t it speaking up?

DOWD: There is a tendency for Commonwealth countries and internationally for governments to go quietly when dealing with other governments. We have done this over the last decade of so. We’ve gone far too quietly and taken the Sri Lankan line, that time is over. The war is over. The LTTE has been defeated in combat. Now there is 300,000 humanitarian crisis that needs to be dealt with.

SNOWDON: Isn’t this better left to the United Nations?

DOWD: The United Nations through the Security Council is impotent because of Chinese and Russian vetoes. The Human Rights Council is no longer of any use in dealing with totalitarian regimes. The agencies can help, but the Sri Lankan Government has to be forced to let them in.

SNOWDON: So the UN is useless?

DOWD: The UN in its primary issues of the Security Council and the Human Rights Council are useless and against any humanitarian work. What is necessary, is for ordinary nations and ordinary people to force their governments to pressure the Sri Lankan Government to do something.

SNOWDON: At the moment, there might be a problem in Australia in that the image of Sri Lanka and the problems there pretty much equate with the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organisation. It’s changing the whole mind set and that’s a pretty big problem, isn’t it?

DOWD: That’s right. The Sri Lankan Government by suppressing news within and outside about Sri Lanka and only putting the government line has meant that the adverse publicity against LTTE has built up a prejudice. People have to get behind that prejudice. Most of these people are simply civilians with a massive humanitarian need and we’ve got to forget what the LTTE did and get on with helping them now, including the prisoners-of-war that many of whom I suspect are being tortured.

SNOWDON: There is an estimated 10,000 prisoners-of-war that we don’t know where they are. We’ve heard nothing of them since the cessation of the conflict, a breach if nothing else of the Geneva Convention?

DOWD: That’s right. These are protected by the laws we created, the treaties we created after World War Two. They apply to Sri Lanka and to us and we must demand that the be complied with. If Sri Lanka wants to be treated seriously internationally and in the former British Commonwealth. It needs to comply with the laws and treaties.

SNOWDON: So what is it in concrete terms that the Australian Government can and should do?

DOWD: It needs to speak out very loudly now about getting international NGOs, the Red Cross and the UN into Sri Lanka. So it’s got to be an international move and we’ve got to encourage other members of the Commonwealth to treat the Sri Lankan Government like lepers if they do not allow in the international aid agencies to stop a humanitarian crisis.

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Radio Australia

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One Response to “ICJ accuses: “UN is Useless””

  1. Dr C P Thiagarajah - June 21st, 2009 at 8:05 am

    Dr John Dowd has clearly identified that the media in South and South East Asia are publishing what is Sri-Lankan Sinhala propaganda as there is no understanding/publicity of the actual situation of Tamils in Tamil Eelam which is their TH. I had been advocating the engagement of a roving diplomat by the Tamils or the Tamil Eelam government in exile to visit all 192 countries in the UN and explain the cause and present plight of the Tamils particularly the genocide of 50000 innocent civilians. Tamil Diaspora should finance for this diplomacy. Professor Boyle or Prof Somarajah might be our roving diplomat.

    This speech by Dr Dowd should be sent to all NGOs of the world and libraries of all countries with permission to copy and distribute.

    We must thank all participants and Dr Pari for organising such an important event.

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