Navi Pillay dismissed outstanding Govt achievements - Prof. G.L. Peiris

External Affairs Minister, Prof.G.L. Peiris expressed the government's strong protests to departing comments made by UN Human Rights Chief, Navanetham Pillay, questioning her lack of fairness and open-mindedness during her visit to the country the previous week.

Addressing a media briefing in London on Monday, Prof. Peiris, who was briefly there to deliver a keynote speech at a Cambridge symposium on economic crime, said her departing report was indicative of a prejudiced mind which should not be the case with regard to an officer taking on a humanitarian mission.

He said the Government invited her almost two-and-a-half years ago to see the change the country had undergone after the end of terrorism, since it had nothing to hide.

The Minister said she dismissed the outstanding achievements in the areas shown during her visit as 'just physical reconstruction' and expressed regret over her continuous assertions adding that 'no discerning observer could say this'.The Minister noted where credit was due in the areas of resettlement, reconstruction and rehabilitation, Navi Pillay was reluctant to admit progress and positive development in any sphere. When she did so, she grudgingly admitted it and moreso belatedly."

At the Defence Seminar on Wednesday, Prof.Peiris reiterated that he was compelled to refute several unwarranted parts of the statement of the Human Rights Commissioner since Sri Lanka is dismayed with her approach.

He said, she ignored not just what state officials reported but a report compiled by her own organisation - UNHCR in Colombo. It was a survey conducted independently by interviewing residents in the North who expressed positive views about the 'salutary nature of the Sri Lankan military'. Dismissing her remarks that the Sri Lanka Government is moving towards "authoritarianism" he said it is the Government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa that is holding elections to the Provincial Council of the North after more than 25 years.

He also referred to Pillay's request to pay floral tribute in Mulliwaikkal and later withdrawn due to protests by the Government, saying it was the place where non other than the LTTE leader Prabhakaran was killed. If she wanted to pay tribute to those who perished in the conflict, there were other places where she could have done so.

At the press conference by the High Commissioner before her departure she acknowledged that paying floral tribute to war victims was a custom that she practised in every country that she visited but she did not offer an explanation about the place that she had chosen.

The Minister expressed his surprise that some segments of the UN system refused to apply accepted global standards on Sri Lanka instead their approach had been highly selective and subjective. He also noted the fact that while the Government of Sri Lanka released the LLRC report in its entirety, a report on the Iraq war has not been released to-date.

- MF