SL denies intimidating UN workers

14 November 2012 08:45 am

Sri Lanka on Wednesday denied allegations in a leaked United Nations report that it had intimidated UN humanitarian workers during the final stages of the country's Tamil separatist war.

“We consulted with the UN and there was no intimidation of UN officials. How can you intimidate the UN, the USA, Japan or any other country? These are sovereign entities,” the President’s Special Envoy for Human Rights and Minister of Plantation Industries Mahinda Samarasinghe said. Although he refused to comment on the report, prior to its official release, he made the statement in response to a question raised by the media on the alleged intimidation by the government towards UN officials.

The draft report states that officials chose “not to speak up” about violations of international law by the government and the LTTE in order to “increase UN humanitarian access”. There are also suggestions that the UN, under pressure from the Sri Lankan government did not make public the deaths caused by government shelling. The report concludes that the “events in Sri Lanka mark a grave failure of the UN”.

Minister Samarasinghe informing the press about he recently concluded United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review on Sri Lanka stated that a number of countries that had voted against Sri Lanka during the sessions held in March, had appreciated the efforts taken towards promoting human rights in the country, during their introductory remarks.

“Many of the countries that voted against Sri Lanka at the last session appreciated the efforts of the government towards promoting human rights. Austria, Belgium, Benin, Chile, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Spain, Poland and Romania, were some of the countries that made comments and thereafter made their recommendations for improvement. However no country gave us an open ticket they said there was more that we needed to do to,” he said.

He further stated that 110 of the 210 recommendations made by the countries at the UPR had been accepted by Sri Lanka. However he noted that he could not give any assurances with legislation relating to witness protection, since this was yet to be passed by the parliament.

“We only accepted recommendations that were positive towards Sri Lanka and rejected those that did not fall in line wit the government’s agenda,” he said. (DS)