Sri Lanka has lodged a strong protest against a statement by the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Baroness Valerie Amos, who last week cited the "unverified figure" of 40,000 civilians killed during the last stages of the conflict with the LTTE.
The fact that the figure of 40,000 was repeated in Amos' statement to the Security Council last Tuesday has enraged the government, a government source said. She made the statement during a debate on the "Protection of Civilians" in conflicts worldwide.
According to the source, her direct reference to material in the UN Panel of Experts Report was "unacceptable" as the report was made only to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and recalled the UNSG’s statement where he said he would not be taking action on the report on his own.
Sri Lanka had objected to this report as being "deeply flawed". By quoting an unverified statistic from the report, she was in essence, contributing to the quoted material gaining currency and authenticity in the public domain.
"We also recalled Sir John Holmes, her predecessor, disowning a UN field office report of 7,000 dead during the end of the conflict due to the absence of proper in-situ verification," says the letter of protest to the UN.
Ms. Amos' willingness to use "an emotionally charged but unsubstantiated segment of the Darusman Report was unacceptable to the government of Sri Lanka," the letter said."By being selective on Sri Lanka, (she had not referred to much larger numbers of civilians being killed in Afghanistan or Iraq, although verified evidence existed in those cases) she was also playing an advocacy role that was not a function of a senior UN official who was expected to be neutral under the Charter. Article 100 of the Charter was absolutely clear on this." |
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