This Your View from MoreMediaNonsense was held over from last week
The situation re Sri Lanka and the UN Human Rights Council really brings to light the attitude of many of the countries in the UN towards human rights. Basically it appears war crimes are only a problem if committed by the West, especially by Israel.
The latest absurdity from the HRC is detailed here
“Sri Lanka claimed a propaganda victory last night after the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution praising its defeat of the Tamil Tigers and condemning the rebels for using civilians as human shields.
China, India, Egypt and Cuba were among the 29 developing countries that backed a Sri Lankan-proposed resolution describing the conflict as a “domestic matter that doesn’t warrant outside interference”. The resolution also supported Colombo’s insistence on allowing aid group access to 270,000 civilians detained in camps only “as may be appropriate”.
Western diplomats and human rights officials were shocked by the outcome at the end of an acrimonious two-day special session to examine the humanitarian and human rights situation in Sri Lanka after the blitzkrieg of the final military offensive that wiped out the Tiger force.
“The vote is extremely disappointing and is a low point for the Human Rights Council. It abandons hundreds of thousands of people in Sri Lanka to cynical political considerations,” Amnesty International said.”
They were shocked – but very wrong in expecting anything else. How
could so many brilliant diplomats be so wrong ? Amazing.
Now the Times also has an article claiming that up to 20,000
civilians may have been massacred by the govt forces. Now I don’t know if that’s right but it looks like noone’s going to find out the truth about the matter soon.
Of course when Israel was accused on war crimes on a much smaller scale it was a very different matter – the HRC was all over it and called for a full investigation.
Can anyone give any sensible reasons what is going on here, or do we just have to put up with the fact that many non-Western countries are totally cynical about human rights and the UN is in danger of losing all moral authority ?
