On Sri Lanka, Shots of Shavendra Silva & Scalia, US Supreme Court Justice

Thursday, 25 April 2013

UNITED NATIONS, February 26 – On the eve of a UN Human Rights Council presentation by Sri Lanka, some of the specifics of the “war crimes laundering” campaign of Deputy Permanent Representative Shavendra Silva have become more clear.

Inner City Press has closely covered Shavendra Silva's time at the UN in New York, particularly when he was accepted as a Senior Adviser to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his Under Secretary General Herve Ladsous on Peacekeeping Operations.

Ladsous refused to answer on the propriety of having as an adviser a person who is depicted in Ban's own report on Sri Lanka as engaged in war crimes. Ban told Inner City Press, "it was the member states that decided."

Inner City Press posed questions to Shavendra Silva most recently at a farewell reception for another Deputy Permanent Representative of an Asia Group country -- a country that shortly thereafter appeared with a Columbia University legitimated "whitewash" report for Ban Ki-moon.

As a footnote to our report yesterday on attempts to ban the film "No Fire Zone: Killing Fields of Sri Lanka" from the UN in Geneva, we mused on how Shavendra Silva managed a photograph with US marines.

Now a photograph of Silva with none other than US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has surfaced.

Scalia was the February 23, 2013 awardee of the US Marine Corps University Foundation at an event at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, Virginia. And Silva took this photograph with him.

So was Silva's speech on “defeating terrorism” to or through this US Marine Corps University Foundation?

Footnote: The last “Killing Fields of Sri Lanka” film was not screened inside the UN in New York, though Sri Lanka's Mission to the UN including Shavendra Silva were invited in to present what they called their rebuttal. Click here for coverage by the Sri Lanka Campaign. This outrag reverberates still. Watch this site.

By Matthew Russell Lee

Courtesy - Inner city Express