Sri Lanka, not Sri Lankans, the OHCHR agenda

There is a continuum in the unfolding of events in Geneva. If we fail to comprehend the bigger picture, underestimate Sri Lanka’s strategic importance, and refuse to see ourselves as Sri Lankans, we will find ourselves, again, in a fratricidal war that will provide fertile ground for marauding invaders. It is urgent that the people of Sri Lanka regain their sovereign right to govern themselves from those who, in Geneva, betrayed their trust by surrendering the authority accorded to them to external forces whose interests are antithetical to ours, thus also demonstrating their inability to govern.

by Tamara Kunanayakam

( February 8, 2016, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) It should by now be obvious to any keen observer of events in Geneva and vacillations of Sri Lanka’s ruling class that the ‘human rights’ game being played out has little to do with the Sri Lankan people and everything to do with the island’s strategic location on the Indian Ocean as vital maritime link between a declining West and a rising East, with China at its centre, and strategic observation post, and with Washington’s fundamental commitment to maintaining a unipolar world in which it has no peer competitor. Sri Lankans matter only insofar as they constitute obstacles to that goal, or would-be collaborators, or opportune victims to be used and abused as and when strategy requires.

Yesterday, Sri Lanka got too close to China and Russia, and regime-change was in order. Today, having obtained the support of collaborators within the Yahapalanaya regime to subscribe to a resolution devastating for Sri Lanka’s sovereignty, all efforts concentrate on stabilizing its auxiliaries in Colombo by ensuring implementation of a precedent-setting joint resolution whose reach extends far beyond Sri Lanka’s shores or its relations with Washington.

Washington’s ambitions are not just geopolitical, but the erection of a new international architecture that will permit its unilateral, preemptive, and preventive use of force, anywhere, at any time, unconstrained by the rules and norms of the multilateral system of international relations that is Charter-bound to respect sovereignty. 

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