At
UN
on
Sri
Lanka War Crimes Panel Deadline, Secretariat on 2 Week Vacation,
Ban Ki-moon Silent on Discrimination
By
Matthew
Russell
Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
December
15
-- On Sri Lanka, today is the deadline set by UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's Panel of Experts for written
submissions. The Panel, through an automatic e-mail from its
Secretariat who says he is “out of the office” through the end of
the year, states that it “has a limited time for its work and has
therefore chosen to request contributions in the written form.”
Thus
it
appears
that
the Panel did not speak to anyone, nor did it ever even ask to
travel to Sri Lanka. The government of Mahinda Rajapaksa said that
visas would be denied. This or inertia seems to have been enough to
avoid even a request for visas.
In
the days before
the deadline, as many submitters sent copies of their e-mails to
Inner City Press, they were accompanied by some complaints saying
that submissions were being rejected or bounced back. (See footnote
below.)
To verify or
disprove this, Inner City Press sent in an e-mail which with
including some documents
and suggestions
asked for confirmation of
receipt.
This
came,
along
with
the troubling disclaimer that “I am out of the Office until
December 31, 2010.”
So
of the Panel's
“limited time,” the Secretariat went on vacation for more than
two weeks, at the deadline for submissions until two weeks before the
Report is ostensibly due.
It
has been
impossible to get real answers or transparency from the Panel, or
from the UN. Inner City Press asked:
Inner
City
Press:
on
the Secretary-General’s Sri Lanka panel, there is a
story on something called News Now Sri Lanka, quoting some type of a
release or response by the secretariat of the panel, saying, among
other things, that they chose not to speak to anyone orally, but only
to take written submissions. One, I wanted you to confirm if this is
true that the panel never spoke to anyone, as it seems to say. And
two, what’s the process for putting in, for media organizations
interested in this topic, putting a request to the secretariat and
getting an answer, as apparently News Now Sri Lanka did?
Spokesperson
Nesirky:
Well,
on
the last point, you can ask us at any point. That
doesn’t mean that we will necessarily be able to answer, or that
the panel will be able to answer, because, as we’ve said from the
outset, the panel has a job to do in a certain timeframe, and when
they have something to say to the media they will typically do that
through us. That’s the first point. On the other point that you
raised about the procedure, let me check. I think some of that is
available on the web, where they have information about how people
can submit material to the panel.
Inner
City
Press:
Because
they are quoted now saying an e-mail to News Now
Lanka from the secretariat of the panel, saying that they didn’t
speak to anyone early. So, that’s why I am wondering…
Spokesperson
Nesirky:
As
I
said, I believe, as I understand it, there was an
announcement that submissions could be made by anybody. And I think
it’s in that context that a reply may have been sent. But let me
check.
As
has been the
case throughout this process, there has been no follow up by the UN
Secretariat, no answers provided.
UN's Ban portrayed with gun and Rajapaksa brother,
Secretariat on vacation
On December 13
Inner City Press
asked:
Inner
City
Press:
in
Sri Lanka, the President had a cabinet meeting of
ministers, issued a directive that henceforth the national anthem
will only be in Sinhala, and that previous allowance of it also being
in Tamil would now be eliminated since… so, I just wondered, in
light of that May 2009 statement that Ban Ki-moon issued with the
President, does he view this as consistent with that statement, the
idea that, with the war being over, that it would now be, not just a
single language, but that many Tamils are pretty upset about this? Is
there any comment from the Secretariat?
Spokesperson
Nesirky:
Well,
we’re
certainly aware of the report, but I don’t
have any comment at the moment. If that changes, then we’ll let
you know.
Two
days later,
apparently from the UN Secretary General's Office's perspective,
nothing has changed. Others in the UN are spinning that there is no
language ban, while pointing to “discriminatory” land actions.
But nothing is being done; even the Secretariat in charge of this war
crimes Panel of Expert is on a two week vacation. Watch this site.
Footnote:
Here
is
a sample bounce-back notice forwarded to Inner City Press:
Delivery
to
the
following
recipient failed permanently:
panelofexpertsregistry@un.org
Technical
details
of
permanent
failure:
Google
tried
to
deliver
your message, but it was rejected by the recipient
domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further
information about the cause of this error. The error that the other
server returned was: 552 552 Request not completed, exceeded storage
allocation (state 18)
Many
think
this
should
require an extension of the time to receive evidence. Watch
this site.
* * *
, 
