SCOPP Secretary General Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha gave an interview to the Sunday Leader this week. His comments in response to their questions, largely about the statement by UN Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, are carried below.
Q: UN Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay has accused both the government and the LTTE of possibly having committed war crimes. What is your response?
She stressed the use of the word ‘possibly’ when we met, but our view is that such statements need much stronger evidence than simply assertions by people who have a jaundiced view who have been feeding her information. In the case of the LTTE there is of course well documented evidence of suicide bombs targeting civilians, recruitment of child soldiers etc, whereas in fact the government has an excellent record with regard even to collateral damage on civilians – the accusation, as far as the government goes, as fleshed out in the third and fourth paras of her statement, relates only to firing into zones containing civilians.
I have in a letter explained to her that the wording of those paragraphs suggests, though she told us that she was talking about both sides, that she was talking mainly about the government. It’s a very simple technique, that Ms Pillay and I did not learn, since we are much older, but now people are taught to put the topic at the very beginning of any para or longer piece of writing, since people’s attention spans are so limited. The use of the word ‘Government’ at the beginning of the 3rd and 4th paragraphs conveys a message that perhaps Ms Pillay did not intend, because her claim was that these deaths could be attributable to both sides.
The government does not target civilians but, as it had explained with regard to the Kathiravelli incident, the only one in which civilian deaths were even alleged during the whole operation to free the East, if the LTTE fires from amongst civilians and we have no reason to believe civilians are there, our targeting of the LTTE could lead to civilian casualties. That is not a war crime. It was shown, on the first occasion on which the LTTE claimed that we had fired into the safe zone that we had declared, that it was the LTTE that had done the firing – the UN sent us an SMS that evening to say that the firing most probably came from the LTTE side.
You will note that Ms Pillay’s statement also says that, apart from firing into the safe zone – which you have evidence the LTTE has certainly done, from the UN as well as the Bishop of Jaffna – ‘Other areas holding civilians have also been shelled’. That cannot be a war crime, though it is certainly criminal of the LTTE to hold civilians in these areas and not let them go to the safe areas, just as it is criminal of them (though I suspect this has not been specified by those who define war crimes, since they never had to deal previously with a monstrosity like the LTTE) not to let civilians leave the safe areas and come over to government controlled areas as they want to.
We told Ms Pillay that she should have made this demand clear, and she said she had, but we pointed out the ambiguities in her text and then she said she had made that demand earlier. We told her, as we have told the UN for months, that this is simply not good enough, and ambiguity allows the LTTE to continue with this practice – which should most certainly be defined as a war crime too.
Q: Pillay very specifically says that “certain actions being undertaken by the Sri Lankan military and by the LTTE may constitute violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.” How seriously does the government view this statement?
Very seriously indeed, because Ms Pillay seems a very honourable lady, and it is sad that she should have been subjected to so much pressure. This pressure seems to have arisen between the meeting she had with the Sri Lankan delegation on March 4th, and the issuing of the statement on March 13th. When we asked her why she had not raised these queries then, she told us that she had received information subsequently. She apologized for not having spoken to us about the statement beforehand, since it had been drafted for her on the 11th, and she had been in Berne all day on the 12th. On the 4th itself she explained to us that she had been getting thousands of e-mails, which jammed her blackberry, and she repeated this when the Ambassador and I met her on the 16th – that was the problem, she said, not the emails themselves, because those were looked at not by her but by her office.