Criticizing Pillay is a disgrace to the country-UNP

FRIDAY, 30 AUGUST 2013 

The United National Party (UNP) said the country had been disgraced in the face of the world for criticizing the United Nation Human Rights Commissioner Navaneethan Pillay after inviting her to the country.

“It was not ethical to make someone uncomfortable after inviting them to our country. It is our country that being insulted from these actions,” UNP Parliamentarian Lakshman Kiriella told a news conference.

He said it was President Mahinda Rajapaksa who introduced the United Nation Human Rights Council to the country.

“It was Mahinda Rajapaksa who went to the UNHRC in secret with a missing persons list in 1988-89,” he said.

Speaking at the news conference MP K. Velayudham said the final report based on UNHR Chief’s weeklong tour in the country would be harmful to the country. (Lahiru Pothmulla)

Sri Lanka minister accuses UN rights boss of ‘secret meetings’ 

A Tamil woman cries as she holds up an image of her disappeared family member during the war against Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at a protest in Jaffna, about 400 kilometres north of Colombo August 27, 2013  

August 29, 2013

A senior Sri Lankan minister on Thursday accused the visiting UN human rights chief of holding “secret meetings” with activists during her ongoing fact-finding mission.

Housing minister Wimal Weerawansa said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay “gave the slip to her bodyguards,” appointed by the government, to hold unscheduled meetings in the island’s former war zone in the east.

“She broke protocol, gave the slip to her security detail and went for secret meetings in Trincomalee to conspire against the country,” Weerawansa told reporters in Colombo. “She is already planning a very adverse report.”

Three years ago, the minister staged a hunger strike against UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s appointment of a panel of experts to advise on alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka in the final months of a separatist war.

Pillay arrived in Sri Lanka on Sunday for her first official visit after the government dropped its public hostility to her and promised access to the former war zones during the week-long mission.

Pillay, who has previously been accused by Colombo of overstepping her mandate, has told reporters she was only holding Colombo to human rights standards agreed by all nations.

Despite allowing the visit, President Mahinda Rajapakse this week criticised Pillay, accusing the UNHRC of treating his Indian Ocean nation unfairly.

Pillay this week travelled to the island’s former war zones in the north and the east and met with relatives of people who disappeared during and after the government’s crushing of Tamil separatists in May 2009, ending the decades-long civil war.

Sri Lanka has resisted foreign pressure for an international investigation into what the UN says are “credible allegations” that up to 40,000 civilians were killed in the final months of the war in 2009.