UN human rights concerns should be more on Iraq - Rajitha

by Shanika Sriyananda

It is better to allow the UN to have their Human Rights Commission office here provided they ensure to do a sincere job about the human rights situation in the country, Minister of Construction and Engineering Services Dr. Rajitha Senaratne said adding that then they would be able to observe and have a clear understanding about the true situation in Sri Lanka.

In an interview with the 'Sunday Observer' Dr. Senaratne said that human rights violations were prominent when a country was fighting a war against terrorism. "Let them have any mission here. Then the UN may understand that the HR violations here are not like in Iraq, Sudan and Kashmir", he said.

A proposal for an UN Human Rights mission in Sri Lanka has brought by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour during her four-day visit to Sri Lanka on invitation by the government. But the government categorically denying the proposal said that there was no need to open such a mission in the country.

Meanwhile, Dr. Senaratne said that the UN had been misled by the UNP and LTTE. He invited the international preachers on HR violations to look into the records of HR violations in their own countries. He said that the Human Rights Watch must first reveal on what grounds the American Army invaded Iraq and their rights to do so for a search of nuclear weapons.

"What nuclear weapons the Americans have found up to now from Iraq. If there are no such weapons they would have come out of Iraq. Why is the American army still lagging in Iraq", he said. Dr. Senaratne questioned why the UN was so keen about 1,100 disappearances in Sri Lanka when over 600,000 people had disappeared in Iraq and there were over 10,000 disappearances in Kashmir.

He said that some international human rights preachers had their own agendas and if they want to show they are clean on this issue, they must first talk about the violations in Iraq. Dr. Senaratne said that UN did nothing when the USA invaded Iraq and he questioned the UN on the actions that it had taken against the Americans. "That does not mean that if there are human rights violations the UN should keep quiet. But what we say is there are more violations for them to take action first rather than coming here. Then the UN will be accepted by everybody", he added.

However, he claimed that there were genuine HR campaigners in Sri Lanka who were working hard to give relief for people rather than certain NGO HR campaigners who were running around the globe, leading lavish lives and earning millions of rupees monthly.

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