I was truly shocked today to see on the ITN News after the football today that another MP had been caught out in the expenses scandal.
As f**king if!. I will admit today I was lazy and believing I could gain as much knowledge of world events from television as I could from other sources almost missed out on a huge story. This story is of course Sri Lanka’s escape from War Crimes at the UN 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. This resolution also claimed that the recent events in Sri Lanka are a “domestic matter that doesn’t warrant outside interference”. This seems to me to be a huge misjudgment forced through by the likes of China (hardly a neutral as the aided the Sri Lankan government with weapons). This is surely a judgement also that will ally many in there views that the UN (along with many other groups you would except to speak out) hold an anti-Israel position. Just recently in the Gaza conflict there was world wide condemnation at the UN and from the major anti-war charities when an estimated 700 Palestinian civilians were killed. Compare this to the staggering 70,000 known deaths of civilians since the start of 2009 in Sri Lanka , many caused by the shelling of safe zones in actions similar to Gaza. To follow this up the Sri Lankan government has also contained a huge 250,000 (300,000 by some sources) civilians army run camps were they plan to “weed” out remaining Tamil Tigers. These camps are run in horrid conditions with lack of food and sanitation (maybe this is how they plan to weed out the tigers) and have recently refused entry to aide to enter. The Red Cross must have immediate and full access, according to their mandates, to critical locations – notably at displaced peoples’ registration and screening points, all places of detention and camps for the displaced – in an effort to prevent violations such as arbitrary detention, torture and other ill-treatment, enforced disappearance and extrajudicial executions. This along with a full inquiry on the actions and crimes must be done before either side in this horrific war can escape without charges instead of as has happened before had. So far the UN has come out correctly strongly against the use of civilians as human shields by the Tamil Tigers however until they set up a fact-finding mission to inquire into allegations of serious violations and abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law by Sri Lankan forces and by the Tamil Tigers in the recent military hostilities, with a view to establishing the facts and making recommendations on how best to ensure accountability for those violations and abuses then no state should avoid war crimes.
