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| Dr. Chaloka Beyani, UN Special Rapporteur on Internally Displaced Persons |
By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, The strange treatment of Sri Lanka at and by the UN was on display on Wednesday in New York.
UNITED NATIONS, The strange treatment of Sri Lanka at and by the UN was on display on Wednesday in New York.
The UN's Special Rapporteur on Internally Displaced Persons Mr. Chaloka Beyani gave a press conference. He was immediately asked by a fellow selected to come four months to the UN if he'd praise the government of Mahinda Rajapaksa for relocation of IDPs from the camps set up after the 2009 conflict -- called the "Bloodbath on the Beach" by another UN official -- to land in northern Sri Lanka.
As
Beyani began
answered the
leading
question,
Inner City
Press left its
post covering
the UN
Security
Council and
ran through
the garage to
the Dag
Hammarskjold
auditorium
briefing room.
Video
here, from
Minute 11:36.
There,
Inner City
Press asked a
follow up
question,
based on a story
in the
Washington
Post noting
that "346
people from
110 families
who were last
to leave the
camp could not
return home
because their
lands are
occupied by
the military."
Beyani
said
he'd heard of
it, and that
he was
concerned
about a lack
of
"durable
solutions." He
said it was
like what he
encountered in
a country he
visited, Cote
d'Ivoire --
where IDPs
were
killed after
the government
wanted to
close down the
camps they
lived
in. Click
here for that.
Beyani
acknowledged
he had yet to
visit Sri
Lanka, saying
he had
not wanted to
in order not
to get "in the
picture" with
the
government's
and the UN's
"investigation."
But
what UN
investigation?
There was a
Panel of
Experts
report, based
on
which
Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon asked
first Thoraya
Obaid and
then, without
further
announcement
until Inner
City Press
asked,
Charles
Petrie to
probe the UN's
own acts and
inaction
during the
Bloodbath on
the Beach.
But
that report,
which some say
is already
finished -- Petrie is
already
heading a
Norway funded
project in
Myanmar --
has yet to be
made
public, and
may never be.
Beyani
said
he would like
to visit Sri
Lanka, and we
hope he does.
But the
strange
treatment of
Sri Lanka
continues in
and by the UN.
In the upcoming "Universal Periodic Review" of Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, speakers will get only 72 second each -- the least of any of the countries being reviewed, which have far lower levels of killed civilians than Sri Lanka. Watch this site.
ICP