Shying away from being bold due to lingering possibility of being prosecuted at a special international tribunal

Edited on 17 Feb 2021 : Bare in mind that Sri Lanka is not a signatory to Roman Stature. Though, possibilities of a special tribunal on the basis of violation of HR by the UNHRC is real. 

People like John Fisher, UN Geneva Director in Human Rights Watch, is so determined to keep the war wounds afresh as they happened. Dragging one or two alleged down the aisle of ICC in Hague has been made the goal of his life, not to mentions the crooked entourage behind him supporting in Europe, Asia and in Sri Lanka. He seems to be living on justice not oxygen. He seems to be eating it and outing it. All his reports are to make his egoism colourful, dragging one will make it shine further. For Michelle Bachelet though it is only another topic within hundreds of agendas within a session. But for those who are at receiving ends it is their living lives.

It is always a possibility that someone like Mangala Samaraweera remerge in politics and conspire within and outside to send Savendra, Kamal and Gotabaya to Hague. That exact possibility is the underline craft of UN mechanism by vetoing powers. And that exact possibility may seem to be keeping GR away from being bold and bulky in Sri Lankan politics. That resonates with the grievance of most of needy who asks GR to act like the defence secretary, not like another ‘hitan kenek’.  

This shying away from being bold has many faces. If that is what GR is practicing, he definitely wants to get China on his side if it came to that unfortunate that China can always veto UN resolutions. If he want to get sympathies from ultra and crooked neo-liberals like Mangla, he also have to keep practicing shying away strategy in politics all the way to the end. But that seems to be highly unlikely since the hard-core TNL guys and few extreme Muslim politicians will always lingering there with vicious political ambitions. Sadly though, all these shying away leaves the country dragging again for another four years. This is exactly what the neo-liberal agenda executes by United Nations and by vetoing powers. And that is exactly what any patriotic Sri Lankans do not want to see.

Not a single word is written in the agendas of 46^th session about Black Lives Matter movement in United States and systemic human right violation in United States or those who going through hard winters at European borders.

And these technocrats in UNHRC pretend that they never leant the text book principle of ‘forget the past to move forward’ as a strategy in post-war reconciliation, at least in some cases. They never seems to understand that there are situations like that that your teenage daughter became pregnant and had to have a discreet abortion to make her realise her potential years to come. She will of cause will have learnt the bloody lessons and will remember what she has to but yearly reminders and commemorations will not help her. People like John is the reminders, like the alarms that we always wish that never set.

Now that these alarms are always timely alarming, we have few ways to deal with them.

But shying away is not one of them.

Author - A.V. Anuradha Samapth
MA in International Security and Law from Denmark & BA Hon in International Politics from UK
LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/amarasinghevidanage