Sunday, September 25, 2011

BASL to help govt on war crimes charges

Srian Obeyesekere
The Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) yesterday, while expressing serious concerns as to diabolic overtures by the West to destabilise Sri Lanka on the instigation of the Tamil Diaspora, appointed a high powered committee headed by J. de Z. Gunasekera, PC, to advise the government on matters that should be raised before the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

The six-member committee which include the likes of Razick Zarook PC, Jeff Alagaratnam PC, Dr. Jayantha Pathirana and Mahinda Lokuge, will accordingly meet on Thursday the 29th to evaluate matters relating to Western allegations centering around the massacre of some 40,000 Tamils during May, 2009.

The BASL came to a unanimous consensus that it cannot remain silent and mute while the ‘inimical US, UK, France and the European Union is doing things against the country where Sri Lanka is under threat of Western orchestrated embargos on trade, travel, medicine and petroleum.

The committee was set up on a motion made by Jayantha Gunasekera at a special council meeting of the BASL at which he mooted it on the basis that it could play a viable role in advising the government on what he called ‘certain matters that may have not stuck some of the Sri Lankan delegation in Geneva; for instance like if the Sri Lankan armed forces had killed 40,000 Tamils and if the Channel 4 video was filmed in the last 3 weeks of the war from the beginning of May 2009 to the 19, why did they not produce it when Sri Lanka was called up before the Geneva
Human Rights Commission in September or October 2009.

In that context, it was clear that Channel 4 was a fake. Secondly, that there was ample proof that all related allegations had been doctored by what Gunasekera described as a group of people trying to take Sri Lanka before the Geneva HRC on the grounds that most of them had been largely bribed by the LTTE Diaspora.

Thirdly If 40,000 people were killed in the last stages of the war where was the evidence – the incinerators, bones and graves – in what is alleged to have taken place in the last three weeks of the war.

The Chairman of the committee also cited as a classic example in exoneration of the Sri Lankan security forces – the pointed case of the post-second World War where the two chief prosecutors appointed by the allies, namely Justice Jackson of the US and Sir David Maxwell-Fife (Crown Counsel) adduced to prove with mathematical precision the war slaughter by Adolf Hitler’s regime. In the Sri Lankan context, there was absolutely no such medical or other forms of proof as cited by him.

The committee will be boosted by the impetus Dr. Jayantha Pathirana carries having done extensive research on the UN system and its crises and authored a related book.
 The Nation