Sri Lanka rejects final draft of US resolution
The Sri Lankan government decided to reject the final draft of a US resolution submitted at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and seek a vote among members, the external affairs ministry said Wednesday.
In letters addressed to foreign ministers of UNHRC member countries, External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris said Sri Lanka believes that drawing disproportionate attention to Sri Lanka’s situation and introducing resolution that seeks to discredit, single out the country are unhelpful and counterproductive to Sri Lanka’s current reconciliation process, reported Xinhua.
The minister noted that the beneficiaries of such action would be none other than the divisive forces that seek to destabilize the hard won peace in the country.
Moreover, he said the precedent created by intrusive, biased and politicized actions such as the US sponsored resolution on Sri Lanka would pose danger for all nations.
“Just as the government of Sri Lanka did not recognize the last HRC resolution, it rejects the new resolution. Sri Lanka seeks the understanding and the support of HRC member states at the vote on this resolution,” the minister said in his letter.
The US Monday tabled the final version of the resolution at the 22nd session of the UNHRC in Geneva, with co-sponsors including Austria, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway and Britain.
In a toned down document as compared to the previous drafts, the resolution, among other points, requests the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to present an oral update on the progress in Sri Lanka at the 24th session of the Council.
Courtesy: Ada Derana
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Can we please reject the whole UNHCR and walk out of it following the example of the USA’s best friend, Israel.
I go with Indra’s brilliant suggestion. GOSL should walk out in protest as the US resolution fails to meet with aspirations of the sinhala speaking citizens as well as the tamil speaking citizens of our land.
The resolution gets us nowhere; it fails to address HR violations and war crime accusations and does not call for an international enquiry.
The rsolution fails to address the continuing white vanning of Vanni and Northern Peninsula residents.
I will wholeheartedly support rejection of the resolution and a walk-out of our delegation.
Sri Lanka the minnow is showing its strong back-bone once again to the Goliath. Well done!
This is a new world, Mr.USA ! Old style bullying and harassing are the things of the past.
USA may “buy” few weak countries to vote for their piece of rubbish and may get passed. But who cares? If it is good for Israel to neglect UNHCR then it must be good for Sri Lanka too. It is up to those voting countries to decide whether to sell their “back sides” for USA to screw in return for “few dollars” of foreign aid (infected with “AIDS”.
UNHRC is a shameless tool of the world dictator USA to punish small nations that do not toe the line with US diktats. UNHRC is unashamedly biased, its chairwoman is a Tamil who is therefore also biased in favour of diaspora Tamils. We should rid the UN of UNHRC as being unfair and biased against small nations to pass resolutions on the diktats of USA, who is the worst war criminal and human rights abuser guilty of crimes against humanity million times more. UNHRC should censure USA for its own war crimes record etc and disallow USA from bringing biased resolutions against SL.