Thus spake Prez

Monday 06th November, 2023

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, on Friday (03), flayed the western bloc for its double standards on human rights. Speaking at a ceremony to mark the opening of a new court complex in Welimada, he said that all nations had to abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He pointed out the absurdity of the western nations adopting different approaches to human rights issues in Gaza and Sri Lanka.

Whoever would have thought a few years ago that Wickremesinghe would ever tear into the western members of the international community in this manner? It may be recalled that he used to draw heavy flak from his political opponents, especially the Rajapaksas and their cronies, for being subservient to the western powers.

The SLPP politicians and the nationalistic forces that back them berated him when the Yahapalana government, on his watch as the Prime Minister, co-sponsored a UNHRC resolution which called for a probe into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka. On listening to him on Friday, one may have wondered whether the Rajapaksa’s Medamulana Chinthanaya had rubbed off on him. But his criticism of the West is nuanced and tempered with finesse.

President Wickremesinghe reiterated Sri Lanka’s position on the Gaza conflict and Palestine. Pointing out that Sri Lanka had condemned the Hamas incursion into Israel on 07 October and recognised Israel’s right to self-defence, he said Israel had to act within the confines of internal law. He reaffirmed Sri Lanka’s support for Palestine’s statehood while denouncing terrorism.

The home truths President Wickremesinghe came up with on Friday, for the consumption of the West are of interest, but what is of greater import is how, he thinks, Sri Lanka should prepare a strong defence to be presented in Geneva next year in the context of the ongoing war in Gaza and the reprehensible response of the US-led western bloc to Israel’s disproportionate counteroffensive and the resultant humanitarian crisis. The US has passed a 14.3-billion-dollar military aid package for Israel while thousands of Palestinians are perishing in Israeli attacks in Gaza.

Asking the proponents of the UNHRC resolutions against Sri Lanka to come to Geneva with clean hands, President Wickremesinghe asked rhetorically why Sri Lanka should answer questions posed by anyone whose hands were not clean. He stressed, in the same breath, the need for Sri Lanka also to go there with clean hands and implement the agreement reached between President Mahinda Rajapaksa and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in 2009.

It was obvious that his reference was to President Rajapaksa’s undertaking to implement the 13th Amendment, among other things, although he chose to leave that unsaid. According to a joint statement issued by the UN and the government of Sri Lanka soon after the defeat of the LTTE in May 2009, ‘President Rajapaksa expressed his firm resolve to proceed with the implementation of the 13th Amendment ….”

The purpose of the clean hands doctrine is to protect the integrity of a court of law and ensure that those who seek equitable relief do not have a history of misconduct in the matter they are bringing to the court, as it would be unfair to grant them equitable remedies if they themselves have engaged in wrongdoing. Sri Lanka is likely to try to invoke the doctrine of clean hands in Geneva next year.

President Wickremesinghe said: “So, I thought I would ask the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, together with the Attorney General and our permanent representative at the UN, to consult international legal opinions on this … why shouldn’t it apply to the Human Rights Council?” The UNHRC may not be a court or a tribunal or a quasi-judicial body technically, but the principle of clean hands, one may argue, should apply to it as well, for its resolutions and decisions could have legal consequences and even serve as the basis for economic sanctions.

President Wickremesinghe seems to think that when Sri Lanka prepares its defence vis-à-vis the hostile human rights campaign against it in Geneva, it could also make use of the fundamental tenet in international relations, advocated by the US and its allies—the rules-based order. This guiding principle or the foundational concept, which has gained currency in the world, where sadly the law of the jungle has become the norm, basically means a shared commitment by all countries to conducting their activities in accordance with agreed rules that evolve over time, such as international law, regional security arrangements, trade agreements, immigration protocols, and cultural arrangements. President Wickremesinghe said: “We are all for the rules-based order … but then the rules must apply to everyone. It can’t apply to some and not to others.”

President Wickremesinghe’s arguments about the western double standards on human rights and Sri Lanka’s right to ask the critics of its human rights record to prove that they have clean hands and respect the so-called rules-based order are logical and tenable. But the world powers are impervious to reason and do not care a tinker’s cuss about justice and fair play when they further their interests. They have turned the entire UN system into ‘a cesspool of political bias’, which is the phrase used by US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, to describe the UNHRC while announcing her country’s dramatic exit from it, in 2018.