Editorial

The British Government has gone the extra mile to showcase its duplicity when speaking of human rights. It is surpassing its own track record, seeing human rights with a Nelsonian eye.

This week, it announced sanctions against four Sri Lankans directly involved in the downfall of an internationally banned terrorist group. In doing so, the minister making the announcement let the cat—or the tiger—out of the bag, as it were. He said he was doing so to honour an election pledge to his voters.

The timing of this is interesting. At the UNHRC in Geneva, the UK and Canada are spearheading a charge against Sri Lanka’s human rights record. Both countries have substantive vote bases of Sri Lankan diaspora. Ardent advocates for international accountability for Sri Lanka, and whose political careers were marked by pledges to realise this, have been elected to high positions—one now a minister of justice in his adopted country.

While the motivations of the UK Labour Government are self-evident, i.e., to shore up its standing in the face of an avalanche of public discontent at home, many local commentators asked why the Foreign Ministry in Colombo delayed to state the Government’s position. This is despite having repeated in Geneva just this month that Sri Lanka is opposed to punitive international measures on human rights. The British Government must have forewarned Sri Lanka’s headless High Commission in London. Either way, the ministry statement ‘took note’ of the British move, signalling no opposition to it. There was no condemnation or rejection. However, it went on to say that what the UK was doing was not helpful in efforts at national reconciliation—not that Britain cared, because reconciliation in Sri Lanka was not the objective of the sanctions.

There are several distortions in the British announcement that could have been highlighted by the Government. The British minister refers to a ‘civil war’ in Sri Lanka. There was no civil war in Sri Lanka; it was terrorism, no different from what the British people experienced with the IRA.

As for Canada, only a few days ago, the foreign minister told Parliament how happy they were that someone of Sri Lankan origin (and whose dear father, an elected MP from the North, was a vehement critic of the LTTE) was now the minister of justice in the new Canadian Government. He referred to the bonding they have had and wanted to work together. That Canadian minister of Sri Lankan origin is instrumental in relentlessly pursuing the distorted and false narrative of genocide in Sri Lanka, including establishing 18 May as the Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day in the Canadian Parilament. He was among the first to welcome the UK Government for slapping the sanctions on the four Sri Lankans.

What is intriguing is that the British Government “looks forward to working with the new Sri Lanka Government to improve human rights in Sri Lanka”. Colombo’s official reaction to the Minister, notwithstanding its lame reaction, dismisses, however, any suspicion of the two working in cahoots.

The JVP had correctly made reconciliation and strengthening national unity and accountability a key pillar of its national programme. The sanctions imposed by the UK have only complicated its task. Has its recent electoral success in the North and its eagerness to bring about a ‘United Sri Lanka’, constrained its ability to take an unequivocal stand in support of the Armed Forces instrumental in the defeat of terrorism in Sri Lanka?

The follow-up to the UK sanctions will be at the UNHRC in Geneva in September, where the UK holds the pen with Canada helpfully, the paper. This is clearly sequenced in the UK announcement. In addition to the existing caseload, “prior insurgencies” may come into the mix, thus roping in the present JVP/NPP Government due to its own role in these alleged human rights violations in Sri Lanka. The JVP Government has itself chosen to add to its own burden by also highlighting the 25-year-old Batalanda report, which emerged again recently … in London. The JVP’s own role in the lead-up to Batalanda is unavoidable.

Ironically, the UK announcement states ‘that the UK recognises that promoting stability overseas is good for our national security’. Clearly, as we see unravelling in Sri Lanka, these sanctions will have the complete opposite outcome.

If the colonial credo was to ‘Divide and Rule’; is the neo-colonial credo ‘Divide, Destabilise and Rule’ in the 21st century?

More transparency for anti-corruption drive

As reported exclusively by the Sunday Times two weeks ago, the Central Bank has hired a top-level foreign consultant from APG (Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering) to provide advice on compliance with globally accepted measures.

Our Political Editor mentions, in the adjoining space, big-time corruption cases of the recent past in Sri Lanka have emerged in the courts of the UK, USA. Investigations are going ahead in Australia and now the Netherlands of cases involving Sri Lankans, the latter of a hospital project in Sri Lanka where two healthcare firms deposited money in a Virgin Islands-registered company whose beneficial owner is a Sri Lankan businessman. The investigations started in Sri Lanka but never went ahead.

Sri Lanka was on the ‘grey list’ of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an inter-governmental body that sets international standards to combat money laundering (that is, under increased monitoring) but was delisted in October 2019 after addressing the identified issues. To stay off it, any remaining weaknesses in governance and regulations must be fixed.

A Proceeds of Crime Act (PoCA) is in Parliament. Three other laws will be amended: the Prevention of Money Laundering Act of 2006, the Financial Transactions Reporting Act of 2006 and the Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism Financing Act of 2005. The Companies Act of 2007 is also to be changed to include a beneficial ownership register. But offshore and overseas companies are exempt.

As pointed out by anti-corruption specialists, there is no mechanism to verify beneficial ownership information under the law and also limits public access. Both fall short of FATF Recommendation 24, while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) too has urged Sri Lanka to introduce a public register. Transparency, it is emphasised, is key towards enhancing anti-corruption efforts.