Opinion: Sri Lanka still demands justice

International community seriously misapprehended the facts when it failed to call for an investigation of both sides.

Louise ArbourJune 8, 2010 09:04Updated June 8, 2010 09:29

Sri Lankan commandos march in a parade during a passing out ceremony in Kudaoya, about 125 miles from Colombo, May 22, 2010. Sri Lanka's military on May 18 last year ended a 25-year war against separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which killed over 100,000 people. (Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters)

BRUSSELS, Belgium — If international criminal justice is ever to be effective, its enforcement cannot be selective. We recently marked the first anniversary of the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, yet the international community — in stark contrast to its approach on other conflicts — still has done nothing to address accountability for war crimes committed in its final months.

The difference between the speedy dispatch last year by the United Nations Human Rights Council of a fact-finding mission to Gaza and the deafening silence of the world while thousands of civilians were becoming victims of illegal methods of warfare in Sri Lanka strikes at the heart the international justice project.

On April 3, 2009, the president of the Human Rights Council established the U.N. Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza conflict with the mandate to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law in the context of military operations there between December 2008 and January 2009.

At that very moment several hundred thousand people — civilians of all ages, many wounded, weakened and hungry — were crowded in the second "No Fire Zone" established by the Sri Lankan army in the Vanni, awaiting further shelling by government forces while the remaining cadres of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam among them ensured that they would not be allowed to cross over to the government side.

By the end of May 2009, it was all over. It is difficult to say precisely how many Tamil civilians were killed in these final five months of the 30-year war waged by the Sri Lankan government against the Tamil Tigers. A proper investigation would likely set the figure in the tens of thousands.

On Sept. 29, 2009, Justice Richard Goldstone, head of the Gaza Fact Finding Mission, presented its report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, calling for an end to impunity for violations of international law in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The U.N. mission reported Palestinian casualty figures at between 1,166 and 1,444.

There was never any Goldstone report on Sri Lanka. Rather, on May 27, 2009, the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution welcoming the conclusion of hostilities and "the liberation by the government of Sri Lanka of tens of thousands of its citizens ..."