As the bombs fall in northern Sri Lanka, the assumption is that the Western members of are doing what they can to help civilians, while developing countries don't care. While it may be, as it seems, that neither care enough, on Tuesday night the Permanent Representative of Security Council member Uganda told Inner City Press of Sri Lanka that for his country "there would be no problem to discuss it in the Council, there is urgency to do something about it."
This is counter to the common wisdom at the UN, that those Council members opposing addressing Sri Lanka include not only China, Russia, Viet Nam and Libya, but also Burkina Faso and Uganda, and Turkey and Japan (the latter two, it is predicted, would abstain). Now, Uganda has said it would have not problem having Sri Lanka on the Security Council's agenda. So why are those countries which supposedly care waiting?
At a panel discussion Tuesday on the European Union and Human Rights, Inner City Press asked the Netherlands' deputy Permanent Representative Piet de Klerk what the EU is going about following up on its favorable tariff treatment to Sri Lankan textiles under the GSP Plus program, on which the EU purportedly considers human rights. DPR de Klerk said he didn't think that human rights were "applicable to this sort of situation." If the killing of thousands of civilians, hundreds in the last weekend alone, does not implicate the EU's notions of human rights, perhaps these notions are bankrupt.
And while the Ugandan Ambassador speaks of the "urgency" of the situation in Sri Lanka, well placed sources tell Inner City Press that while Ban Ki-moon still says he is considering going to Sri Lanka, it would be in days or weeks, when the final offensive is done. As Inner City Press has told senior Ban advisers, that would be too late. If Ban wants to turn over a new leaf or be perceived differently, now is the time.
Courtesy: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press
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