https://island.lk/the-show-goes-on/

The Show Goes On

Published 3 days ago 

on 2025/10/22

Geneva Circus:

“Bring to me mustard seeds from a family where no one had died, and I shall bring your child back to life”

–– The Buddha to Kisagotami

Exactly one year ago on 13 October 2024, I wrote an essay titled ‘The Geneva Circus’ in the government’s own Sunday Observer suggesting that the government should be ready to handle the regular and unreasonable resolution titled, ‘Promoting Reconciliation, Accountability and Human Rights in Sri Lanka’ at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). However, going by what transpired at the recent 60th session of the UNHRC in September 2025 in relation to that resolution (A/HRC/60/L.1/Rev.1), the government has fallen miserably short in upholding the country’s dignity in the international arena.

Resolution A/HRC/60/L.1/Rev.1 was adopted by the UNHRC earlier this month on 6 October 2025. It extends the mandate of the Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR) and all work requested of it by the Council in its resolution 51/1 of 6 October 2022. This effectively means that the mandate of the external evidence gathering mechanism of the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, a.k.a the Sri Lanka Accountability Project, which was established four years ago despite Sri Lanka’s protest, has been given a further lease of life.

As we know, the resolution is proposed by a core group of countries, with the main sponsors being the United Kingdom, Canada, Malawi, Montenegro, and North Macedonia. The United States, the original proponent, now having withdrawn from the Council yet again under President Donald Trump can no longer be a co-sponsor. The political motivations of the governments of the United Kingdom and Canada against the backdrop of the influential Sri Lankan Tamil diasporic pressure exerted in these countries are evident. However, the presence of Malawi, Montenegro and North Macedonia in the core group makes a mockery of the entire process to put it mildly. Malawi has its own political crises to deal with coupled with an atrocious human rights record, while the opinions of the tiny states of Montenegro and North Macedonia, who saw the light of day as independent states only a couple of decades ago, frankly make no dent. These marionette states only serve to give the farcical illusion that the resolution on Sri Lanka has geographically-extended support beyond the First World.

Going by Sri Lanka’s statement as the country concerned during the consideration of the draft resolution on 6 October, the delegation of Sri Lanka has ‘participated in discussions on this resolution in a spirit of open and constructive engagement’ and it appears some of the ‘language amendments’ have been taken on board, while ‘agreement on certain key concerns for Sri Lanka’ have not been found. This is not the first instance that Sri Lanka has engaged with the resolution. Since 2012 when the resolution was voted into the Council, Sri Lanka has sought engagement. In fact, in 2015, 2017 and 2019 under the Yahapalanya Government’ Sri Lanka went so far as to even co-sponsor the resolution. Yet, we have not been successful in removing the resolution from the agenda of the Council. In fact, the situation has exacerbated with the setting up of the Sri Lanka Accountability Project, further entrenching the country in the UN’s dubious agenda.

So, why are we engaging any further on the resolution? Sri Lanka has been a member of the United Nations for 70 years and named and shamed in the UNHRC for over 13 years. Hence, it cannot be that the futility of engaging with the core group on the resolution is not evident.

For one, as the country at the butt of the resolution, other than anything beyond minor cosmetic changes, there will not be any space for Sri Lanka to mould it substantially in its favour, which would render the holier-than-thou castigating in the text meaningless, and fail to appease the Tamil diasporic voter-banks in the western countries. Two, and more importantly, Sri Lanka is giving fodder to an exercise that is unfair, unethical and — especially in the current global context– reeks of double standards, against its own interest and national dignity. It is no secret that under the Rajapakse regime, the Geneva resolution was a handy tool to influence the malleable domestic voter-banks. But it cannot be fathomed that the current Sri Lankan government would resort to such low-level politics. So, what is it?

There is no question that the resolution should be rejected for the reasons listed earlier. But why first engage in a sham exercise of negotiation, knowing full well that it would not yield an outcome satisfactory for Sri Lanka? Is it the hope that at some point in the future, the drivers of the resolution would feel some sympathy and leave us be? Or is it simply our longstanding timidity in the face of powerful nations and international organizations such as the UN?

Minister Vijitha Herath, in his special statement to Parliament on 9 October 2025, appears to answer the first question. He stated, “… based on the domestic processes we have undertaken and the credibility that we are building among Council members, we firmly believe that we can soon create an environment where this Accountability Project established in 2021, could be concluded and where Sri Lanka is able to address issues through our own national institutions.”

If international politics were not devoid of fairness and national self-interest, this would be a valid statement.

Despite Tamil diaspora politics and their need to keep the pot boiling back in Sri Lanka for their survival based on identity politics in economically advanced countries, the overwhelming support received from the Tamil community in Sri Lanka in bringing the present government to office, notwithstanding the government’s stand on the Geneva issue, is a clear indication of their priorities and their expectations from the government of Sri Lanka. That is, there is a fundamental difference in expectations derived from local experiences of the Tamil community who voted in the last parliamentary election, and those of the diaspora based on their arguably legitimate experiences in another time.

Therefore, in my opinion, there is no need for Sri Lanka to be kowtowing to the whims and fancies of powerful nations, who themselves are the ‘original sinners’, culpable for the violent and disastrous state of the world today beginning from the evils of colonialism to present day neo-colonialism and multiple global crises.

Simply stated, Sri Lanka should not associate itself — in any manner or form — with the resolution in Geneva.

In this context, our Permanent Representative in Geneva in her statement should have clearly stated that Sri Lanka will not be associated with this ongoing witch-hunt given its motivation, inbuilt biases, and blatant double standards.

However, since this was not done, the next best course of action would have been to call for a vote on the resolution when the opportunity was given. And this need not have cost a single cent to the government/taxpayer despite Minister Herath’s lengthy explanation in parliament.

Justifying the decision not to call for a vote, Minister Herath in his statement to parliament said that the government did not want to waste public funds for an exercise that would be lost, and further that “the greater concern [was] by adopting a confrontational stance at the HRC through demanding a vote, we are further narrowing the space that may be left to bring this already internationalised process to the domestic realm and solve our issues through domestic mechanisms.”

This woeful lack of perspective is indeed problematic and unfortunate.

If these arguments are to be taken at face value, then, simply engaging with the core group knowing fully well that no serious concerns of Sri Lanka will be taken on board barring minor changes to the draft resolution not only do not make sense, but also is embarrassing to us as a nation. Moreover, the government’s acceptance — like a dog waiting for scraps — of the so-called commendations that have been doled out to us by countries in Geneva, despite their sponsorship of the resolution, suggests a mind-boggling subservience that is not becoming of a supposedly independent nation.

The main purpose of calling for a vote, which, as the Minister has correctly assessed, cannot be defeated, should be to bring forth and demonstrate that Sri Lanka does not stand for the utter bias at the global level and double standards followed by powerful countries vis-a-vis the less powerful at a time when conditions within the country have changed for the better.

Such a vote would have also allowed the opportunity to see where our ‘friends’ actually stand beyond rhetoric.

In disassociating itself or calling for a vote, or even in the statement made by our Permanent Representative in Geneva on 6 October, Sri Lanka could have questioned the abysmal human rights records of the five core-group countries themselves: Canada’s treatment of indigenous people in establishing the Canadian state; government corruption and arbitrary arrests in Malawi; torture by government officials, problems of judicial independence and significant restrictions on freedom of expression in Montenegro; restrictions on media freedom and crucial state level government corruption in North Macedonia; and United Kingdom’s atrocious colonial track record. It is in this context that the Buddha’s words to Kisagotami quoted above come to mind. Like her inability to find mustard seeds from a household untouched by death, can these countries claim their hands have never been tainted by the blood of innocents? Or as in George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’, are some animals ‘more equal than others’?

Is it not preposterous that this motley crew is given a free hand to stand in judgment against our country, which actually fought a terrorist outfit whose own obliteration of human rights, including of the people it claimed to represent, has never been seriously taken to task in a forum like the UN? Why do we not question or at least point to the situation in Gaza, bombed mercilessly by Israel with US support, without an iota of consideration for human lives, rights or the principle of proportionality codified in the Geneva Conventions? Would the money allocated to the Sri Lanka Accountability Project not have been better spent on the people of Gaza who have been decimated under the convenient blindness of UNHRC itself? In the end, it is not just about winning or losing a vote, it is about how you play the game, which Sri Lanka’s representatives in Geneva still have not mastered.

None of this is to say that Sri Lanka’s past should be forgotten. Two wrongs or many certainly do not make a right. But the past cannot be the only consideration in the present. A year ago, when I initially wrote on the Geneva circus I said: “What is wrong is simply wrong.  If an individual has exceeded authority at any level, that needs to be dealt with irrespective of his position or social standing. It is not that Sri Lanka cannot investigate such matters on its own and deliver justice.  But the political will to do so must exist along with the empathic support from the people, Parliament.  And to do so, local judicial and investigative mechanisms including possible special agencies to investigate these specific issues should be strengthened and protected from interference. This must necessarily come from a revitalised and enlightened leadership that can only come with the legitimacy a new government delinked from the corruption and abuses of the past can bring.”

It seems to me that some of these things have already begun. The excavation of the Chemmani mass grave without undue government interference is one thing. The overwhelming vote given by the Tamil people to the present government to do what is right is another. As a colleague from Jaffna told me in September last year with reference to the past, “justice is important to us. But there are many other things that are even more important to us now.” Can an entire nation be summarily punished perennially by a sanctimonious coterie of nations whose own atrocious track record is a matter of history and muted contemporary discourses, though conveniently forgotten, in the name of the past and violations committed by a group of individuals? And can the Tamil diaspora’s lived experience and sense of justice be the sole determinants of the future of our people including that of their own community in vastly transformed circumstances?

I hope our government will give some thought to these considerations when it draws up its game plan for the circus in Geneva when it is back to perform next.

https://island.lk/the-show-goes-on/

The Show Goes On