Shorn of specifics, the UNHRC resolution on war-crimes probe and other human rights violations in the country has laid the road for, or up to, the 51st session in September 2023, with six-monthly mile-stones, to stop, pause, report and take fresh instructions and/or initiatives. It can mean that the current resolution has given that long a rope for Colombo to make amends, or seek amendments from the rest of the world. It can also mean that the world has decided to prolong Sri Lanka’s agony until at least 2023, and possibly beyond. Whether the glass is either half-full or half-empty is all in the eye of beholder.
Without any further ado or procedure, the UNHRC monitoring of Sri Lanka by the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OCHRC) has commenced, technically at least. Putting men and mechanism on the ground, if needed and possible, will have to wait for budget clearance by the UN General Assembly later this year. But the Colombo dispensation seems to have some hopes on that count, or so it seems, still.
Such hopes, if they are any, comes from Media Minister and Cabinet Spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella is talking about the support for Sri Lanka among voting members in the UN Security Council (UNSC). Needless to point out, Colombo, has two of the P-5 members, China and Russia, backing it. Their support has been consistent. They voted against the West-inspired resolution at the UNHRC, too.
Foreign Minister Dinesh Gunawardena, who is even better authorised to speak on the subject, has since told Parliament, which too matter more, that the resolution itself was illegal – a line taken by the Government almost from day one. Lending greater clarity to Rambukwella’s exposition, Gunawardena has said that they were exploring the possibilities of stalling the $ 2.65-b funding that UNHRC has sought, at the UN General Assembly session, later this year. If so, it could be a unique and possibly an unprecedented step.
Yet, the Nation should remember that once that kind of an UNGA-centric political war is joined, it would become a pawn and ploy for bigger powers on either side to settle their own scores. It applies to the Nation’s Tamil polity, society and diaspora. Going by their perceptions, they have been ‘used’ once again. And now, they cannot stall the UNGA process or initiate or control it, even if they wanted.
The Colombo Government can initiate it, but it too cannot control, stall or defeat it. Sri Lanka will continue to need external support even more. There is a price to be paid and the Nation has already paid more than enough of it, with no real war, even if of the diplomatic and political variety has even been joined. It’s only dress rehearsal, or less, that was/is on display thus far.
The UNHRC vote has clearly demonstrated that the limitations of the out-reach of Sri Lanka’s backers in Russia, and more so China. This is not the first time that the Nation has lost the vote, out there. Rather, since 2012, when the process began, Sri Lanka has not been able to defeat the resolution even once.
If there was truce of sorts during the predecessor Government, from 2014-19, it owed to the ‘consensus resolution’. Sri Lanka gave some, took a lot – and it ended up as a ‘zero sum’ game for the prime movers against Sri Lanka. The latter needed Sri Lanka’s obeisance, it seemed, and they got it, even if not in full measure. Anyway, they did not get what they claimed to have wanted, namely, ‘justice’ for the Nation’s war victims.
No stomach for more
If there is one thing that is clear about the 22-11-14 vote in the UNHRC against the Nation, it is this. A majority of members did not have the stomach for doing more than what was passed in the resolution. Keeping the ‘aye’ voters and the rest apart clearly, nay overs and abstentions are more than the other. Of course, abstentions have a chemistry of their own. Rather, each Nation may have its own reason.
But the very fact that the resolution did not mention sanctions or any other punitive action clearly shows that there was no stomach for it among all yes-voters, either. In the absence of details, it should be assumed that among the yes-voters, too, there were those that would have felt uncomfortable with any punitive initiatives. Translated, it means that they too might have abstained, if not voted against the resolution, if any such measures had got a mention in the final draft.
Condensed, the argument points to a ‘compromise resolution’, which is what global votes of the kind are all about. The West could not have avoided taking their initiative forward this time, after two long years of self-imposed hiatus, as if to help the previous Government avoid the embarrassment of the kind, that too ahead of the 2019 presidential polls that they anyway lost. So, the resolution became inevitable, even without the Rajapaksas in power in Colombo.
The purpose of any resolution is not only to make it win, but also to show the targeted party that as much of the world as possible is ranked against it. That is to say, if and when sanctions targeting a Nation is passes, that many Nations would also be implementing it in letter and spirit. The nay-sayers, or at least some of them, could be expected to violate one provision or the other, but that too is only an assumption.
In the case of Sri Lanka, with not much of mineral and other resources, for the UNHRC monitors or powerful Nations behind the initiative, would not have been difficult to keep track. That is to say, it is not just a political vote that the Nation keeps losing. There could be more, much more, for the people, too, to lose, if and when it came to that.
Significant clause
Empowering and directing the UNHRC mechanism to monitor and collect evidence is only one of the two clauses that hurts Sri Lanka over the medium term, especially. The wanton or purposeful reference to alleged human rights violations of the past year targets the ruling Rajapaksa regime, as if it were personal.
Sentiments apart, there have been huge complaints from domestic constituencies about rights violations. The Tamils, who are the purpose of all the resolutions since 2012, have not stopped complaining since President Gotabaya Rajapaksa came to power. The Muslims are a new crop of minorities who feel hurt, humiliated and worse.
Statements like those of Public Security Minister, retired Navy official, Sarath Weerasekara, on the supposedly non-existent decision on burqa ban frightened local Muslims. Their days of feeling hurt had gone by very long ago. But it provoked some Islamic Nations, whose vote, Sri Lanka could have had for the asking.
If Pakistan voted against the motion, it owes to geo-strategic considerations, where Islamabad cannot be seen away from Beijing especially. It did not owe to Pakistan’s love for Sri Lanka, though in terms of that Nation’s 1971 war with the common Indian neighbour, it still may have cause to continue thanking the other. The reference of course is to the then Sirimavo Bandaranaike Government granting refuelling permission for Pakistan Air Force (PAF) during the ‘Bangladesh War’.
That way, the Bangladesh vote against the motion this time may have owed to the personal equations between Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and Sheikh Hasina, over the past decade and more, and the consequent Rajapaksa visit to Dhanka just ahead of the UNHRC vote. It has had much less to do with bilateral diplomatic relations.
It is another matter that through the past decade or so, given its relatively better economic standing, Dhaka has been seeking to make its physical and political presence felt in the region, even if occasionally. A case in point relates to the supply of river sand for construction work, to Maldives after India as the regular supplier came under a constraint when local Courts ordered against the material’s ‘export’.
Neither Pakistan and Bangladesh has been ‘friends’ of Sri Lankan Muslims. For, despite coming from the same region, local Muslims in the country have little or no individual or institutional connections with these two South Asian neighbours. Their links have always been with the Gulf-Arab region. That includes Wahhabism, or elements thereof, that have wrought near-destruction for local Muslims, especially after the ‘Easter serial blasts’, circa 2019.
Message for the future?
By now, both the policy-maker and the political leadership would have understood that there are wheels within wheels when it came for Nations to vote in international fora. On the face of it, Colombo can celebrate that the prime-movers could not get an absolute majority of 25 or at least 24 Nations to vote for their resolution, assuming that all 47 members had cast their lot without any abstentions.
But then that is only a part of the story. If their hands were forced, or a gun held to their heads, the chances are that those 14 abstentions could have well turned mostly against Sri Lanka. Or, that should be the message on which Colombo should be working for the future.
But there is a catch. Today’s voting members, at least not all of them, are going to be there on the 47-member Council when the next decisive vote became necessary (at least as things stand), in the 51st session in September 2023. India, for instance, abstained this time, but its current term is ending this year.
It’s a merry-go-round, and members keep changing every year, with the result, relationships cultivated with one set of Nations may not hold good at the time of the next vote. It is equally so in the case of periodic changes in domestic Governments, especially in democracies. The influence of the Tamil Diaspora campaigners and voters alike in domestic politics in some of the prime-mover Nations too is for real.
All told, the solution to Sri Lanka’s UNHRC problem, which seems to be hanging on to the Nation’s tail-coats near-eternally, lies nearer home, not in foreign capitals with rotational vote and changing political leaderships. It is thus for Establishment Colombo to decide if they wanted to settled down with ‘irritants’ nearer home, as some of them have come to see the Nation’s minorities, or keep going around in circle, not knowing what to expect next, or whom to canvas now.
After all, Geneva-2023 is far away, and yet so near!
