Editorial - UN’s so-called chosen silence

Who would have dreamt of seeing the mother of the world bodies, the United Nations, shedding tears of regret over something the institution could not perform?  A leaked draft of a highly-critical internal UN report says the world body has conceded its failure to protect the Sri Lankan civilians during the last stages of the war. Regret if converted into action would have worked miracles to make life brighter for the war-ravaged citizenry in the north. Even the post-war period would not have been too late for the UN to provide assistance to the newly-resettled northern citizenry.

But lip-service just doesn’t make things happen!
If the UN was forced to keep mum about the supposed reality of the war fought in the island, it is up to the institution to reveal the reasons for its so-called chosen silence. After all, it cannot be that the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) could be as powerful as to silence a global body like the UN.
The report goes on to say the UN is guilty of not revealing Sri Lanka’s situation to the world. One could not help but wonder where this unbound sympathy was when the LTTE was holding hostage hundreds of unarmed civilians as human shields; a stark fact the report concedes.  Did the UN ever try to negotiate with the LTTE for their freedom?



The BBC reporting on the leaked extracts quoted a certain humanitarian worker saying the Government’s security warning made him question the call for his mission—whether to remain or to leave. Perhaps he forgets that if they have become casualties in the LTTE’s list of atrocities, he wouldn’t have been alive to tell this tale; or any other tale for that matter.

If the UN thinks, by abandoning the people in their hour of need, it had let them down; its method of saying sorry should not be executing the very government that brought them liberation.  If the UN calls its humanitarian mission in Sri Lanka a flop; it is up to its officials to make amends.
On the other hand, the Government with its heedlessness in bringing a sustainable relief to the war-ravaged citizenry in the north has left unnecessary loopholes for such teary-tales to creep in.  The report will no doubt provide the much-needed ammunition for the pro-LTTE diaspora who has been waiting to stab the GOSL.

After all, the regime could not eternally be sitting on the pause button; it will have to counter the allegations with a lasting solution to the agonies of the people who had to play the roles of victims, human shields, IDPs and the resettled, in quick succession. Its inability to go beyond the committee reports and hour-long debates only shout aloud the fact that, for such citizenry, end of war is not necessarily peace.  
In that case it is not only the UN that has failed the civilians but also their own government.