Dissolutions and designations

Army Commander Lieutenant General Shavendra Silva

Thursday, February 27, 2020

Sri Lanka’s fifteenth Parliament is now in its last week and is due to be dissolved next Monday as the government goes ahead with plans for a general election at the earliest available opportunity that is constitutionally possible. The poll will be held in late April, within a fortnight of the Sinhala and Tamil New Year.

Domestic political debate is therefore likely to dominate headlines in the weeks to come when campaigning begins for the general election but just prior to that, a drama is also being played out in diplomatic circles, as Colombo announced its intentions to withdraw from the resolution it sponsored at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2015.

However, issues at the UNHRC were preceded by an announcement from the United States that barred Army Commander and Acting Chief of Defence Staff Lieutenant General Shavendra Silva and his family from travelling to the United States.

The US State Department said that, “the Department of State has designated Lieutenant General Shavendra Silva, current Commander of the Sri Lanka Army and Acting Chief of Defence Staff, as required under Section 7031(c) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, due to credible information of his involvement, through command responsibility, in gross violations of human rights, namely extrajudicial killings, by the 58th Division of the Sri Lanka Army during the final phase of Sri Lanka’s Civil War in 2009”.

Allegations of human rights violations

This ‘designation’, meant that neither Silva nor members of his immediate family could travel to the United States. The State Department statement which took Colombo somewhat by surprise also added that “the allegations of gross human rights violations against Shavendra Silva, documented by the United Nations and other organisations, are serious and credible.”

The government in Colombo has responded strongly to the move, noting that even the State Department acknowledges that the charges against the Army Commander were only “allegations” and had not been proved.

Its official stance came in the form of a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “The Government of Sri Lanka takes strong objection to the imposition of travel restrictions on Lt. Gen. Silva and his immediate family members by the Government of the United States, based on independently unverified information,” the Ministry said.

“The Government reiterates that Lt. Gen. Shavendra Silva was appointed as the Commander of the Army by the then Head of State, taking into account his seniority and that there were no substantiated or proven allegations of human rights violations against him. His elevation as the Acting Chief of Defence Staff by the current Head of State President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, was on account of his being the senior most serving military officer,” the Ministry noted.

The Ministry also said that “While the timing of the imposition of this travel restriction six months after Lt. Gen. Silva’s appointment as Army Commander is concerning, it is disappointing that a foreign government should question the prerogative of the democratically elected President to call upon persons with proven expertise to hold key positions on national security related matters,” and called upon the US to “to verify the authenticity of the sources of information and to review its decision”.

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa was to issue a statement that was even more hard-hitting. “Even though we are now in the 21st Century, even members of his family who have not been accused of any wrongdoing have been subjected to a collective punishment reminiscent of the practice in medieval Europe. The people should be the judge of how fair this is. Even though this collective punishment has been meted out on the grounds that the Army Commander had committed violations of human rights, no one knows what these allegations are,” the Prime Minister said.


In his statement, Premier Rajapaksa noted a link between Silva’s ‘designation’ by the US and the resolution adopted by the UNHRC in 2015. That resolution, styled the UNHRC Resolution 30/1, was co-sponsored by the previous government led by then President Maithripala Sirisena and former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.


The Prime Minister was to point out that “the first operative paragraph of that resolution had taken note ‘with appreciation’ the September 2015 Report of the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights which accused the Sri Lankan armed forces of human rights violations”.

The announcement that Sri Lanka would now withdraw from that resolution followed a few days after the declaration regarding Army Commander Lieutenant General Silva. However, it must be noted that this was not purely a consequence of the US decision against Silva. During his presidential election campaign, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had indicated that he would not subscribe to UN resolutions that he perceived to be inimical to the country if he was elected to office.

Making an announcement in Parliament, Foreign Relations Minister Dinesh Gunewardena said that the Cabinet had decided to withdraw from the resolution. The Minister noted that between 2015, when the resolution was adopted and 2019, there was “little progress being made on the pledges to the UNHRC by the previous government and the operation of the resolution 30/1 was extended twice”.

“Through Resolution 30/1, severe impositions were cast on the Sri Lankan state and its security forces. It also negatively affected the ethnic and religious harmony, already challenged by the ravages of the divisive conflict. During the UNHRC session in 2019, belatedly the former government itself sought to qualify the parameters of the co-sponsorship,” he observed.

UNHRC sessions

 

Minister Gunewardena however said that the government remained committed to achieving sustainable peace through an inclusive, domestically designed and executed reconciliation and accountability process through the appropriate adoption of existing mechanisms. He will lead the Sri Lankan delegation to the UNHRC sessions in Geneva shortly.

In addition to conveying the Cabinet decision to Parliament, Minister Gunewardena also met with Colombo based envoys of a ‘core group’ of countries that also sponsored the resolution- the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada- to inform them of the government’s stance. The United States, which was also instrumental in the resolution being moved in 2015 withdrew from the UNHRC in June 2018, on the direction of its President, Donald Trump.

Meanwhile in Geneva, Foreign Secretary Ravinatha Aryasinha was meeting with UNHRC President Ambassador Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberger to convey to her Colombo’s decision to withdraw its co-sponsorship of the resolution.

Colombo’s announcement was to evoke a strong response from the UNHRC. Reacting to Sri Lanka’s decision, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called on the Sri Lankan government to “fully implement the resolution and to continue working with other international human rights bodies”.

In a report that is to be formally released to the UNHRC today Bachelet calls upon Sri Lanka to “to fully implement resolution 30/1 and continue to engage positively with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and United Nations human rights mechanisms to promote reconciliation, accountability and human rights as critical elements for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals”.

The report adds the overall goals of resolution 30/1 must be protected and built upon to provide justice and redress to victims, guarantee the non-recurrence of past patterns of human rights violations, and promote peaceful, inclusive and sustainable development.

The next phase of the conundrum involving the UNHRC resolution will now be played out in Geneva, when the Council meets early next month. That is because the resolution will still be operative, even if Sri Lanka withdraws from it. The US, one of the countries instrumental in moving the resolution in 2015 withdrew from the UNHRC in 2018 but the resolution still stands. It will be interesting to see how Colombo hopes to deal with this aspect of the issue.

General election

The issues related to Army Chief Lieutenant General Silva and the UNHRC are not without its domestic political connotations, especially as these events are unfolding with a general election looming within a few weeks. Political parties will undoubtedly factor this in before taking up a stance on these matters.

That is probably why Sajith Premadasa, Opposition Leader and leader of the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB), the major alliance of opposition parties at the forthcoming election, expressed his support for Lieutenant General Silva.

In a message on social media, Premadasa said that the “imposition of a travel ban on Army Commander Shavendra Silva and his immediate family is regrettable and unfortunate” noting that Silva was “one of the heroic field commanders who spearheaded the national effort to eradicate terrorism”. “All of us stand by him and his family at this hour of need. As a country, we shall always stand with the war heroes that brought about an end to 30 years of terrorism,” Premadasa said.

Observers have noted that this message has come personally from Premadasa and not from either the United National Party (UNP) or the SJB. Whether either of these parties formally endorse Premadasa’s views remains to be seen.

The coming week will see the dissolution of Parliament and the announcement of dates for the general election. As it grapples with these domestic events, Sri Lanka will also have to decisively deal with the fallout from Geneva over its decision to pull out from the UNHRC resolution.