By Kalinga Seneviratne
Colombo | 17 September 2025 (IDN) – With the visit of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Commissioner Volker Turk to Sri Lanka in June and his subsequent report to the 60th session of the UNHRC presented on September 8th, the UN human rights body has revived its 16 year old campaign of harassment of Sri Lanka on alleged war crimes and demands for foreign intervention in the local investigation mechanisms – while they continue to blink an eye on the Gaza carnage.
In his presentation at the opening day of the 60th session of the UNHRC in Geneva on September 8th, Turk called on the Sri Lankan government to establish a dedicated judicial mechanism that includes an “independent special counsel” (code name for a “western judge”) to investigate alleged human rights violations and breaches of international humanitarian law. He emphasized (as were previous commissioners) that “ensuring accountability” lies with international engagement.
This is a demand that successive Sri Lankan governments have refused to entertain. Responding to the commissioner’s presentation, Sri Lanka’s foreign minister, Vijitha Herath making a statement in Geneva on the same day, said that the “government is opposed to any external mechanism imposed on us, such as the Sri Lanka Accountability project which serves to create divisions and complicate the national reconciliation process underway in Sri Lanka.” And he reminded Turk – an Austrian national – that “we are committed to working towards a country that respects and celebrates the diversity of its people in line with our domestic legal framework.”
Herath, referring to the landslide victory of his governing alliance at the elections in May this year, pointed out that “the people of Sri Lanka voted with one voice, to bring about a transformation and usher in a new political culture. Our democratic traditions have been upheld through timely elections held in a free, fair and peaceful manner.”
Herath also described how the government is creating new legislations in its anti-corruption drive and has taken development initiatives in the opening of roads, infrastructure development, livelihood support and promotion of industries, where all communities are treated equally to address their development needs. Thus, he appealed to the Commissioner to refrain from reviving ethnic divisions in the country that will derail these development initiatives.
The harassment of Sri Lanka at UNHRC, should provide ammunition for advocates that seek to redefine the global human rights agenda based on development rights – a campaign spearheaded by China, and supported by most of the Global South including India.
In July this year at the 59th session of the UNHRC, a resolution sponsored by China and 40 other countries that reaffirms the vital role of people-centered development in ensuring, high-quality development in meeting the growing aspirations for a better life in advancing the full realization of human rights, was adopted by consensus.
This concept of development rights was given a thundering endorsement by the Tamil voters of the northern and eastern provinces of Sri Lanka at the general elections in May 2025, when they voted overwhelmingly for candidates of the National People’s Power (NPP) coalition led by Sinhalese politicians. They voted out Tamil political parties that have been advocating a divisive ethnic agenda for over 3 decades, and instead voted for Tamil candidates that were part of the NPP that advocated for inclusive development rights without ethnic divisions.
“It would be a mischievous misrepresentation to suggest that their vote was based on the expectation that the unsettled scores traceable to the conflict would be resolved by the new authorities”, noted Dr Palitha Kohona, former Sri Lankan ambassador to the UN and China in an interview with IDN. “Like the majority of Sri Lankans, they also wanted development, better health care, better schools, tangible development and an end to corruption.”
But, supporters of Tamil separatism are not giving up. During Turk’s visit, he visited a mass grave site in Chemani in the north of Sri Lanka which was first discovered in 2013. It was a typical theatre staged by some human rights NGOs to focus on alleged war crimes. But, there are 31 other mass graves across the country, some of which are believed to be of Sinhalese activists killed during the Marxist JVP uprising in 1988-89. JVP is now the main component of the ruling NPP alliance.
Such theatre allows Tamil activists to demand so-called “independent” inquiries with western involvement in the Sri Lankan judiciary process. There is no shortage of western spokespeople to promote this line of thinking that infringse on Sri Lanka’s sovereignty.
Writing in Sri Lanka’s Daily FT, former US State Department Senior Advisor on Central and South Asian Affairs, David L. Phillips promotes such intervention. “The exhumation process requires international participation to be credible and effective, especially given the State’s alleged role in the crimes and past failures. International experts must be engaged to preserve the chain of custody and treat the site with meticulous care, safeguarding evidence for future judicial proceedings, whether in Sri Lanka or under universal jurisdiction abroad”, he argues. He recommends that the International Commission on Missing Persons – a western controlled organization – should lead this process to give it credibility.
Minister of Justice and National Integration, Harshana Nanayakkara speaking in parliament on August 22nd called upon some of the Tamil politicians there to refrain from making inflammatory racist statements in the chambers, and instead assist the government in delivering the development needs of Tamil communities in their electorates.
“This Sinhala government is racist. They are not helping the Tamil cause. Now, this narrative is false”, he told the Tamil MPs in the opposition ranks, asking them to stop feeding on hatred. “We want to have an inclusive society and we have extended the hand of friendship to the North”.
The statements on Sri Lanka made at the UNHRC sessions on September 8th reflect the North-South divide on human rights. There were 43 member states of UNHRC – mainly from the Global South plus Russia and India – that expressed solidarity with Sri Lanka emphasizing its sovereignty and opposing the allocation of the UNHRC’s resources to promote “external mechanisms” to address human rights in Sri Lanka.
China came out strongly in calling upon the international community to support Sri Lanka’s sovereign right to chart its own development path. “China urges relevant countries to respect the Sri Lankan people’s own choice of the human rights development path, abandon intervention in internal affairs and political pressure, and return to the right track of dialogue and cooperation”, stated the Chinese representative.
In contrast, the UK statement, while welcoming the Sri Lankan government’s commitments to “human rights and accountability”, pointed out recent discoveries of mass graves in the north, and called upon the Sri Lankan government to carry out the investigations “in line with international standards” (meaning western intervention).
The latest round of harassment of Sri Lanka by western-led war crimes advocates operating under the cover of the UNHRC, is spurred on by the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora based in countries like Canada, the US, the UK and Australia, who have worked themselves up on the political ladder in these countries to use ethnic vote banks to pressure their governments. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) war machine – which these Tamil diaspora groups supported – was defeated on the battlefield by the Sri Lankan army in May 2009, but their formidable propaganda machine still operates from western capitals such as London, Washington, and Toronto. Initially their propaganda claimed the army killed 40,000 civilians during the final push to defeat the LTTE, and the western media and their human rights lobbyists swallowed up the propaganda. Later, United Nations sources brought down the figure to 7,000.
In a commentary published in the Daily FT, Sri Lanka’s former ambassador to the EU and Saudi Arabia, P.M Amza, a Tamil speaker, points out that Sri Lanka’s post-war rehabilitation of captured LTTE combatants is a unique success story the UNHRC nor the western media has acknowledged.
“Among the most remarkable achievements has been the rehabilitation of nearly 12,000 former LTTE combatants – including several hundred child soldiers – who have since been reintegrated into society as productive citizens. This program provided vocational training, education, psychosocial support, and community reinsertion, enabling thousands once involved in violence to rebuild their lives peacefully”, he notes. “Alongside this, the infrastructure in war – affected provinces has been steadily restored – roads, schools, and hospitals now serve communities once devastated by conflict”.
Dr Kohona points out the Commissioner’s double standards in claiming that human rights violations are still taking place in Sri Lanka, while hundreds of arrests that accompanied the pro-Palestine demonstrations in the West or the carnage in Gaza have hardly merited a blink from the Commissioner (Turk). “The standards applied are clearly not the same”, he argues. “Poor developing countries should seriously take these issues up as a group and seek changes in the Human Rights Commissioner’s office to justify their continued participation in the work of the UNHRC, including the provision of funding through the UN General Assembly.”
Image: The annual Vel Cart procession symbolising a major Hindu festival of the Tamil community, ply the main Galle Road of Colombo at night in August. Credit: Kalinga Seneviratne.