LTTE hijacked campaign on HR violations: AI

From Neville de Silva in London

Amnesty International has accused the LTTE of hijacking for political reasons its recent campaign against human rights abuses in Sri Lanka.

The charge is made by AI's secretary-general Irene Khan in a letter this month to President Mahinda Rajapaksa, authoritative sources told The Sunday Times.

Though AI has made this charge the international human rights watchdog is fighting shy of stating this publicly more than two weeks after it was first communicated to President Rajapaksa.

Ms. Khan

This, despite the fact that Sri Lanka's High Commissioner in a letter to AI's Asia-Pacific director Purna Sena drew specific attention to this remiss on the part of Amnesty International.

“Why Amnesty is not going public with its charge against the LTTE is a sign that it is trying to appease the Tigers, a policy that it has been following for some time now,” a member of the Campaign for Peace and Unity in Sri Lanka (CPUSL) said.

AI's campaign launched last month to coincide with the Cricket World Cup in the West Indies drew a barrage of criticism from Sri Lankans in and outside the country. After AI ran into increasing flak from Sri Lankans worldwide, the international organisation now claims that the LTTE has ‘misrepresented this campaign for its own political purposes’ according to Ms. Khan's letter dated April 12 addressed to President Rajapaksa, Government sources said.

Ms. Khan had reportedly said that AI will take up the issue with the LTTE to make certain that its position is clarified.

However Sri Lankans here who were in the forefront of the counter-campaign against AI brushed aside the human rights organisation's explanation and said that AI appears to have initially framed the campaign in such a way that it was bound to be exploited by the LTTE to castigate the Sri Lanka Government and turn the spotlight away from the Tigers.

“Amnesty is now trying to wash its hands off the whole thing by blaming the LTTE when it could have anticipated this if AI's officials had any foresight,” one of those who demonstrated against AI opposite the organisations headquarters in London earlier this month said.

“By blaming the LTTE, Ms. Khan is trying to show that Amnesty is even handed. Equally by doing so it is trying to curry favour with the Sri Lanka Government. If it really believes the LTTE misrepresented its campaign why doesn’t it say so to the public at large. After all, the campaign was carried out publicly in several countries. So AI should say to the public,” the anti-Amnesty campaigner said.

Government sources said that Ms. Khan's letter to the President was not only to shift the blame on to the LTTE for its skewed campaign but also to urge Mr. Rajapaksa to invite human rights monitors to Sri Lanka immediately to deal with human rights abuses.

“She is virtually laying down the law and telling the President how the monitoring mission should be allowed to function, how monitors should be distributed on the ground. She is in fact telling the President what he must do and who should be allowed to do act as monitors. The AI's head is behaving like an imperious super power,” said the angry Government source.

“After what AI has done previously and what it did this time through its soft ball campaign, I don't think we should allow their representatives in unless they are willing to mend their ways and say so publicly,” the source said.

He said AI wants independence of action for international monitors.“Will they get that independence from the LTTE? Remember the LTTE promised the UN's Olara Otunnu that it will halt child recruitment. Have it been done? No, no,” the source said.