Pillay raises concern about Shavendra to Ban
February 14, 2012 06:31 am
UN human rights chief Navi
Pillay said on Monday that she has raised concerns in a letter to
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon about the appointment of a Sri Lankan army
general to Ban’s senior advisory panel on peacekeeping.
Pillay’s worries relate to
General Shavendra Silva, currently Sri Lanka’s deputy U.N. ambassador, who
commanded the Sri Lankan army’s 58th Division during the final assault against
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009.
The Indian Ocean island
nation has come under pressure from Western governments and human right groups
to account for war crimes they suspect it committed in the final phase of a
25-year war against LTTE rebels, often called the Tamil Tigers.
After a U.N. General
Assembly meeting on Syria, Pillay was asked what she thought about General
Silva’s appointment to Ban’s Senior Advisory Group on Peackeeping.
“It’s a matter of concern,”
she told reporters. “The United Nations has very clear policies on vetting and
this is part of the work that my office does.
“We keep a list of
individuals who are suspected of committing human rights violations and I have
addressed a letter of concern to the secretary-general about this individual,”
Pillay said.
U.N. officials say that
General Silva was appointed to the advisory panel on peacekeeping by the Asia
Group, which consists of U.N. delegations from Asia and the Middle East, not by
Ban himself. Ban’s spokesman did not have an immediate response to a request
for a reaction to Pillay’s remarks.
A U.N.-sponsored panel said
in a report that it found “credible evidence” that thousands of civilians died
in the last months of Sri Lanka’s war in 2009 and that both sides committed
atrocities.
General Silva is named in
that report as the commander of one of “six major battalions (that) were active
in the final stages of the war.”
Sri Lanka says that report
simply repeats fabricated charges made by the Tamil Tigers’ overseas networks
and that its soldiers acted in accordance with international law. The Sri
Lankan government has vowed to investigate itself.
The Sri Lankan U.N. mission
did not have an immediate response to Pillay’s remarks.
Earlier this month a U.S.
court dismissed a lawsuit against General Silva filed by people who say they
are relatives of victims of Sri Lankan violence against Tamils, citing his
diplomatic immunity as Colombo’s deputy U.N. envoy, Reuters reports.
