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Video that reveals truth of Sri Lankan ‘war crimes’

Phone video smuggled to Europe bolsters claims that Sri Lankan soldiers murdered Tamil prisoners

By Andrew Buncombe

Thursday, 27 August 2009

The video is on this link : http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/video-that-reveals-truth-of-sri-lankan-war-crimes-1777746.html

The naked man, his hands bound behind his back, is pushed to the ground. Then a man in military uniform delivers a forceful kick to the back of the prisoner’s head with the heel of his boot. As the prisoner slumps forward, another soldier points his automatic weapon and fires a single shot. The man’s body jolts. “It’s like he jumped,” laughs one of the giggling soldiers.

As gunfire rattles, the camera pans left to reveal a further seven bloodstained bodies, all handcuffed and bound, and ? with one exception ? similarly naked, strewn on the ground. The camera then pans right again, as another naked man is forced to the ground and shot in the back of the head. This time the body falls backwards.

These scenes, captured on video, allegedly show extra-judicial killings of Tamils by Sri Lankan troops earlier this year in the bitter and bloody endgame of the country’s civil war. As government forces made a decisive thrust into the stronghold of rebel forces to end the decades-long conflict, a Sri Lankan soldier apparently took this footage, which was then smuggled out of the country by activists. It may constitute the first hard evidence for those who believe war crimes were committed in the effort to crush the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The significance of this footage ? particularly shocking for the seemingly casual way in which the killings were carried out ? is even greater given the way that journalists and independent observers were prevented by the government from reaching the war zone. The UN has estimated that 10,000 civilians were killed in what was, in effect, a war with no outside witnesses.

Last night the Sri Lankan army dismissed the footage as the latest in a series of fabrications designed to damage the country’s image. But campaigners and Tamil politicians said it was vital that a full inquiry be carried out into the alleged killings. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has voiced his support for an investigation into possible war crimes if convincing evidence emerged.

So too has Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific director, Sam Zarifi, who said: “We have received consistent reports that violations of the laws of war, as well as international human rights law, were committed by both sides in the conflict and we call once again for an international, independent and credible investigation into what took place during the final days of the conflict.”

The footage was obtained by Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), an organisation made up of several dozen Sri Lankan journalists who have fled into exile in recent years as the intimidation and killing of media professionals has soared. The group, whose members now live mostly in Europe, said the film was taken by a Sri Lankan soldier in January using his mobile phone as the army was battling to take the LTTE’s de facto capital, Kilinochchi.

A spokesman for the group, who asked not be identified, said: “It was as if someone was filming it for fun. This was being circulated by the soldiers. It has been going round for a while. It was taken as if it was a souvenir.” He said rumours of such footage had existed for a long time but that this was the first time such film had entered “the mainstream”.

There is no way to confirm the authenticity of the footage, first broadcast by Channel 4 News. Likewise, there is no way of proving that the people apparently shot dead are Tamils, as the JDS has claimed. But this is not the first time that images from the war zone, captured on mobile phones, have been circulated within Sri Lanka.

Earlier this year a man in the eastern city of Trincomalee showed The Independent pictures of a naked, dead woman. He said the woman was apparently an LTTE fighter, killed as government troops advanced on rebel positions to the north.

Nor is it the first time that the army has been accused of carrying out summary justice. In May, when the rebels’ final position in the north-east was overrun by government soldiers and the LTTE’s leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was killed, it emerged that two other leading rebels had been shot dead while trying to surrender. Tamils living outside Sri Lanka said the two men were carrying a white flag when they were shot by troops. A senior government official admitted that the two men had been trying to give themselves up for several days. At the time, the EU called for an inquiry into possible human rights abuses committed during the final months of the war.

A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights (UNHCR) said: “If it can be verified, this footage could be evidence of the sort of war crimes we fear were committed by both sides. We have repeatedly said there should be an investigations into the closing stages of the conflict. There needs to be some sort of accountability.”

The final assault on the LTTE ended a war that had raged for almost three decades and cost at least 70,000 lives. The LTTE, fighting for a Tamil homeland, had long waged a brutal insurgency and used suicide bombers to attack both civilian and military targets. Since the war ended, the popularity of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, whose brother heads the powerful defence ministry, has soared among the country’s Sinhala majority.

The resulting peace has also seen a 25 per cent increase in the number of visitors to Sri Lanka, lured by its beaches, tropical forests and gently paced culture. Already about 100,000 visitors from the UK travel to the island each year, according to the Sri Lankan tourist board, and officials are hopeful that the tourist numbers will increase further.

When he announced an end to the war, the president said that Sinhala, Tamils and Muslims must live as “equals”. Yet some Tamils say the government has done little to placate its population or to offer them a political “settlement”. This summer, in local elections held in the north, the government’s party won in the city of Jaffna, but in Vavuniya victory went to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which has previously voiced some support for the LTTE.

Yesterday Sri Lankan opposition MPs urged the government to release nearly 300,000 war refugees held in state-run camps, saying the detentions brought discredit to the country.

“These camps stand as a symbol of shame and disgrace to our proud Sri Lankan history,” said Mano Ganesan, an opposition MP and leader of a group calling itself Parliamentarians for Human Rights. “They are like prisons. People are kept against their will and that’s illegal.”

By Joby Warrick, Peter Finn and Julie Tate
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 26, 2009

As the session begins, the detainee stands naked, except for a hood covering his head. Guards shackle his arms and legs, then slip a small collar around his neck. The collar will be used later; according to CIA guidelines for interrogations, it will serve as a handle for slamming the detainee’s head against a wall.

After removing the hood, the interrogator opens with a slap across the face — to get the detainee’s attention — followed by other slaps, the guidelines state. Next comes the head-slamming, or “walling,” which can be tried once “to make a point,” or repeated again and again.

“Twenty or thirty times consecutively” is permissible, the guidelines say, “if the interrogator requires a more significant response to a question.” And if that fails, there are far harsher techniques to be tried.

Five years after the CIA’s secret detention program came to light, much is known about the spy agency’s decision to use harsh techniques, including waterboarding, to pry information from alleged al-Qaeda leaders. Now, with the release late Monday of guidelines for interrogating high-value detainees, the agency has provided — in its own words — the first detailed description of the step-by-step procedures used to systematically crush a detainee’s will to resist by eliciting stress, exhaustion and fear.

The guidelines, along with thousands of pages from other newly released documents, also show how the CIA gradually imposed limits on the program and eliminated some of the most controversial practices after the agency’s medical advisers protested.

Still, by Dec. 30, 2004, the date of the CIA memo that outlines the guidelines to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, agency interrogators had grown adept at using sleep deprivation, stress positions and sometimes multiple methods to create a “state of learned helplessness and dependence.”

“Certain interrogation techniques place the detainee in more physical and psychological stress and, therefore, are considered more effective tools,” according to the memo, released under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Amnesty International USA and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The CIA on Tuesday declined to comment on the memo, which was written by an agency lawyer whose name was redacted from the document. But agency spokesman George Little noted that the interrogation program operated under guidelines approved by top legal officials of the Bush administration’s Justice Department.

“This program, which always constituted a fraction of the CIA’s counterterrorism efforts, is over,” Little said. “The agency is, as always, focused on protecting the nation today and into the future.”

CIA officials also have noted that harsh techniques were reserved for a small group of top-level terrorism suspects believed to be knowledgeable about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Agency officials believe the methods prevented future attacks.

Medical Concerns

As outlined in the memo, the agency’s psychological assault on a detainee would begin immediately after his arrest. With blindfolds and earmuffs, he would be “deprived of sight and sound” during the flight to the CIA’s secret prison. He would have no human interaction, except during a medical checkup.

In the initial days of detention, an assessment interview would determine whether the captive would cooperate willingly by providing “information on actionable threats.” If no such leads were volunteered, a coercive phase would begin.

The detainee would be ushered into a world of constant bright light and high-volume “white noise” at levels up to 79 decibels, about the same volume as a passing freight train. He would be shorn, shaved, stripped of his clothes, fed a mostly liquid diet and forced to stay awake for up to 180 hours.

“Establishing this baseline state is important to demonstrate to the [detainee] that he has no control,” the memo states.

Interrogations at CIA prisons occurred in special cells outfitted on one side with a plywood wall, to prevent severe head injuries. According to the agency’s interrogation plan, the nude, hooded detainee would be placed against the wall and shackled. Then the questioning would begin.

“The interrogators remove the [detainee’s] hood and explain the situation to him, tell him that the interrogators will do what it takes to get important information,” the document states.

If there was no response, the interrogator would use an “insult slap” to immediately “correct the detainee or provide a consequence to a detainee’s response.” If there was still no response, the interrogator could use an “abdominal slap” or grab the captive by his face, the memo states.

Each failure would be met with increasingly harsher tactics. After slamming a detainee’s head against the plywood barrier multiple times, the interrogator could douse him with water; deprive him of toilet facilities and force him to wear a soiled diaper; or make him stand or kneel for long periods while shackled in a painful position. The captive could also be forced into a wooden box for up to 18 hours at a stretch.

Such techniques raised concerns among some agency officials, particularly members of a medical advisory group known as the Office of Medical Services (OMS). When the interrogation program began, the group “was neither consulted nor involved in the initial analysis of the risk and benefits” of enhanced interrogation techniques, according to a 2004 report by the CIA’s inspector general.

According to the report, the OMS did not issue formal medical guidelines until April 2003, after the waterboarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Over time, however, as the interrogation program was refined and strict guidelines were imposed on the use of certain techniques, the OMS began to play an increasingly pivotal role.

A 2005 Justice Department memo repeatedly referred to December 2004 OMS guidelines in assessing the application of coercive techniques, noting that the “OMS has, in fact, prohibited the use of certain techniques in the interrogation of certain detainees.”

The medical office appears to have been deeply skeptical of the use of waterboarding, a simulated-drowning technique that was suspended by 2004. OMS personnel told the inspector general that “the reported sophistication” of the preliminary review of waterboarding was “exaggerated,” and it said the power of the technique was “appreciably overstated.”

The OMS also raised serious concerns about the medical dangers of waterboarding.

“Most seriously, for reasons of physical fatigue or psychological resignation, the subject may simply give up, allowing excessive filling of the airways and loss of consciousness,” the OMS warned, according to the 2005 Justice Department memo.

Cynthia Henry
is an Inquirer staff writer

POTOCARI, Bosnia - Hatidza Mehmedovic wants to bury her son, but she can’t sort out his bones.

Along with his brother, father, and as many as 8,000 other Muslim Bosniaks, he died in the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica - Europe’s worst mass killing since World War II.

In 2007, DNA from bones in a newly unearthed mass grave matched Mehmedovic, but science can’t tell her whether they belong to 21-year-old Azmir or 19-year-old Almir. So, more than a decade after Yugoslavia’s bloody breakup, she waits, hoping for another discovery that provides closure.

Women in their 60s should be celebrating weddings and birthdays, she says, not “be joyful just to get the remains of our beloved.”

Physically, Bosnia is recovering from the 1992-95 civil war, which birthed the phrase ethnic cleansing. The famous Sarajevo roses - concrete scars caused by mortar shells during a relentless siege later filled by red resin as memorials - are fading on sidewalks, often unnoticed now by passersby. Cranes fill the city sky as shiny new office buildings go up, and malls replace damaged storefronts.

Psychologically, though, the stress of high unemployment, uncomfortable reconciliation, and continual reminders of unresolved war crimes threaten to roil nationalistic passions again.

Ethnic conflict erupted after Bosnia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1992, and the country’s Orthodox Christian Serbs, Roman Catholic Croats, and Muslim Bosniaks fought for land. At least 97,000 people died, and two million were displaced. Bosniak civilians suffered the highest casualties.

The Dayton (Ohio) Peace Agreements, signed in December 1995, ended the war but divided the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina into two entities, the Bosniak-Croat Federation and the Republika Srpska, which has a Serb majority. Each has its own governing and legal powers, often favoring one ethnicity over another.

The legacy of war is harder to see these days, although bombed-out houses and shuttered factories still dot the countryside.

In one Jajce school, Bosniak and Croat elementary students learn on different floors and use separate bathrooms. Muslim children attending the renovated village school in Trnopolje daily pass the ruins of a notorious detention camp and rape house.

In Sipovo, Serb retirees, cradling photos of grandchildren, lamented the lack of jobs and the distance their children had to move to find work. On the verdant hillsides near Srebrenica, once a U.N. safe zone, only women and children were left to harvest berries.

“Bosnia is many things,” a Kozarac imam said - a land of wonderful cuisine, welcoming hosts, and turbulent Byzantine, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian history. Visitors don’t have to stay long to sense tension among townspeople and realize the depth of the shrapnel wounds on building facades.

Journalist Srecko Latal, who covers Bosnia and Herzegovina for the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, recently pondered whether Bosnians could ever shed their ghosts and live in the present.

While waiting for his family to prepare for a Saturday outing, Latal flipped on TV news to find scenes of unearthed skulls and memorial services - quite a contrast to the “chirpy life taking place outside my window on the bustling streets of Sarajevo,” he wrote in his Aug. 3 blog on www.balkaninsight.com.

“From World War II offensives to the 1992-95 war massacres, it seemed that there was not a day in a year in which somewhere back in the history of this country someone didn’t kill someone else,” he wrote. “Are we stuck endlessly reliving our past traumas and horrors? Or are we allowed to have ‘normal lives,’ going to swimming pools after work and to parks, parties, cafes or discos in the evening?”

Indeed, news services this summer revisited a stream of Bosnian horrors:

Forensic experts discovered a remote ravine in central Bosnia believed to contain the remains of 200 Muslims and Croats executed by Bosnian Serbs on Aug. 21, 1992.

In pretrial war-crimes hearings at the Hague, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic sought evidence in an attempt to show the Srebrenica death toll had been exaggerated and suggested Muslim, not Serb, soldiers fired mortars that killed scores in a Sarajevo market.

A U.N. war-crimes court convicted two Bosnian Serb cousins of killing at least 119 Muslims, ranging in age from two days old to 75 years, by burning them alive in their homes in 1992 in Visegrad.

Serbia’s application to the European Union may hang on capturing Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, charged with genocide for his role in the Srebrenica massacre and in the deaths of thousands of civilians during the siege of Sarajevo.

While Vice President Biden warned the Federation Parliament in May that this kind of news could ignite “ethnic chaos,” war survivors such as Mehmedovic say they seek justice, not revenge.

As a leader of the association Mothers of Srebrenica, she shares her life story with visitors to the massacre memorial “aware of the fact that no one can get our families back,” but, she insists, “the war criminals must be punished.”

“What the Serbs did to my family . . . I would not be able to revenge if they would bring any Serb child or the whole Serb people before me,” said Mehmedovic, who lost 140 relatives in the war. “All the kids are the same; they are innocent, as were my children.”

Hope for changing Bosnia’s patterns lies in that innocence. Warily at first but eagerly as days wore on, about 1,200 of Bosnia’s children crossed ethnic lines to play games, sing songs, and eat lunch during summer camps run by Americans in June. Along with teenage interpreters, who rejected nationalism, many seemed open to forging a new path.

“Whoever planned this [1992-95] conflict didn’t succeed, because they planned to plant a seed of hate,” said Emsuda Mujagic, a detention-camp survivor who runs the Srcem do Mira (Through Heart to Peace) nongovernmental organization in Kozarac. “My hope is that other souls are not touched with hatred and that they are open to the world.”

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian Members of Parliament (MPs) have been invited to join a mid-October mission to “break Israel’s siege” and transport humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza to rebuild their homes.

International voluntary human rights movement Free Gaza Movement has called on Barisan Nasional and Opposition MPs to consider joining an international parliamentarian delegation in its next mission to send aid — mainly building materials and school supplies — to Gaza.

The movement’s leader Huwaida Arraf made the call at a meeting with 11 MPs in Parliament here Monday.

“We hope to get as many parliamentarians as possible to come with us so that it will be harder for Israel to refuse lifting its siege. Our aim is not just to send aid but also to break the siege,” she said.

She said having greater participation of high profile people and international organisations in the mission would ensure that Israel would give in and lift the illegal blockade of the Gaza strip, which has cut off supplies of humanitarian aid from the international community.

“Since Malaysia doesn’t have a formal relationship with Israel, boycotting its products won’t be necessary — but by joining Free Gaza’s mission, supplying cargo ships, passenger boats and supplies in defiance of Israel’s policy… that’s a big step,” she said.

Asked what Malaysian civilians could do to show their support, Huwaida said one of the ways would be to join a concerted campaign to boycott international companies doing business with Israel, such as those supplying bulldozers to abolish Palestinian homes and communications materials for Israeli occupation.

On the progress of fund raising initiative, Fund for Gaza, she said enough money had been raised to obtain the cargo ships and now more funds needed to be raised to buy at least two passengers ships.

She said Free Gaza also planned to approach parliamentarians in the Arab world and in Western countries.

Meanwhile, Dewan Rakyat deputy speaker Datuk Ronald Kiandee said it would be up to the MPs to consider joining the mission in their personal capacity.

Thursday, August 13th, 2009 07:46:00

IT is definitely a race against time.

Money has to be raised as soon as possible to purchase a cargo boat to transport construction materials and humanitarian aid to Gaza.

“There is definitely an urgency in raising funds for the purchase of the vessel because with winter approaching, the people of Palestine will be affected,” former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said when launching the Gaza Fund at the Perdana Leadership Foundation in Putrajaya yesterday.

Among those present at the launch were his wife Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, Free Gaza Movement chairman Huwaida Arraf and a Yayasan Salam trustee, Datuk Ahmad A. Talib.

Many private companies and individuals presented their donations to Dr Mahathir at the launch. The Malay Mail, represented by Johan Fernandez, handed over RM10,000.

Dr Mahathir also announced that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s wife Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor, who is patron of the Palestinian Humanitarian Fund, would donate RM1.5 million to the Gaza Fund.

Yesterday’s donations from individuals and private companies came to RM 100,000. The money is needed to buy a vessel that is expected to cost RM3.5 million.

“Apart from that, we will also need to buy supplies, construction materials and other essential items to help Gazans rebuild their cities,” Dr Mahathir said.

Huwaida, who will be leading the next mission to Gaza in October, said: “We have to carry out the mission in early October, before winter. We hope that people around the world will stand with the Palestinians.

“We are concerned about the human rights of the Palestinian people. We need to supply the materials to allow them to rebuild their lives.”

Dr Mahathir welcomed Malaysians to volunteer and join the effort as the Free Gaza Movement needed as many participants as possible.

“Of course, there are limitations in terms of the capacity on board the boat. “We want to carry building materials as we need to rebuild houses, because they (Palestinians) are now living in tents and when winter comes, it will be terrible for the old, sick and children. Many of them may die because of the winter,” he added.

PUTRAJAYA, Aug 12 (Bernama) — Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad on Wednesday launched the Gaza Fund to raise money to purchase a cargo boat to transport aid to Gaza.

He said there was urgency in raising funds for the purchase of the vessel because with winter approaching, the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza would worsen.

He also welcomed Malaysians to volunteer and join the effort since they needed as much participation as possible.

“Of course, there is limitation in terms of the capacity on board.

“But we want to carry building materials as we need to rebuild the houses, because they (Palestinians) are now living in tents and when winter comes, it will be terrible for the old, sick and children. Many of them may die because of the winter,” he told reporters at the Perdana Leadership Foundation, here.

Also present were his wife Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, chairman of the Free Gaza Movement Huwaida Arraf and trustee of Yayasan Salam Datuk Ahmad A. Talib.

Mahathir also announced that the prime minister’s wife Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor, who is the patron of the Palestinian Humanitarian Fund, donated RM1.5 million to the Gaza Fund.

It also received another RM100,000 from individuals and companies after the launching.

“I think we need about RM3.5 milion to buy the boat. Beyond that, of course we need to buy supplies, construction materials and other things so that they can rebuild their city,” he said.

Asked whether boycotting Israel could be one of the solutions, Mahathir said: “Boycotting Israel is nothing because its capacity is quite small but it is the country behind Israel, and that is America.

“America has lots of products all over the world and whether we like it or not, people have to buy, and the attempt to boycott American products had not been successful.

“People still want to drink Coca-Cola, so they just don’t respond (to the campaign). I think that’s not a very good strategy, but this (Gaza Fund) is something really worthwhile and hopefully, it can open the eyes of the world.”

Meanwhile, Huwaida said their next mission to Gaza would be in early October before the winter season and the movement hoped that people around the world would stand with the Palestinians.

“We are concerned about the human rights of the Palestinian people.

We need to supply the materials to allow them to rebuild their lives,” she said.

–BERNAMA

H.E. Mr. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann
President of the United Nations General Assembly
to the United Nations International Meeting
on the Question of Palestine
United Nations Office at Geneva, 22 July 2009

CPR/IMQP/2009/14

I am very pleased to have this opportunity to address the participants of the United Nations International Meeting on the Question of Palestine, and would like to particularly recognize the continuing and important work of the General Assembly’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and the Division for Palestinian Rights in organizing and hosting this meeting.

The theme of today’s meeting is “the responsibility of the international community to uphold international humanitarian law, and to ensure the protection of civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory in the wake of the Gaza war.” But I would remind all of us that in many ways, for the 1.5 million Palestinian civilians who live there, the Gaza war has not ended. In the midst of Israel’s 22-day assault against Gaza that ended on 19 January 2009, the General Assembly passed Resolution ES-10/18 that called not only for an immediate ceasefire but specifically called upon “all Member States to urgently extend the necessary support to international and regional efforts aimed at alleviating the critical humanitarian and economic situation in the Gaza Strip, and emphasizes in this regard the need to ensure the sustained opening of border crossings for the free movement of persons and goods into and out of the Gaza Strip.”

Your meeting convenes today, more than six months later. And yet the blockade continues. And, I am sorry to say, our Organization and the Member States of the United Nations, despite our now six-month-old commitment to “ensure the sustained opening of border crossings for the free movement of persons and goods,” stand silent. The United Nations’ obligations under the Charter and UN resolutions, as well as under international humanitarian law, remain unfulfilled.

There is no “free movement” out of Gaza for patients, students, or children and parents eager seeking care, opportunity or to rejoin families. Building materials, basic foods and other goods are routinely denied entry into Gaza. A host of recent reports from the United Nations and other inter-governmental organizations, as well as from Amnesty International and numerous Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations attest to the still dire conditions on the ground. While perhaps a hundred truckloads of humanitarian goods enter Gaza from Israel each day, UNRWA officials on the ground reported immediately after the ceasefire in Gaza, ?that just 18 months ago, 600 trucks were coming in every day, and there was still a humanitarian emergency in Gaza.’

With governments and the United Nations standing mute, unwilling or unable to provide assistance or protection to the people of Gaza, international civil society has taken the lead. Ships carrying humanitarian aid and human rights activists, accompanied by Nobel peace laureates, parliamentarians and journalists representing people around the world, are stopped in international seas, far outside Israeli territorial waters, by the naval forces of the Occupying Power, the ships taken forcibly to Israel and their passengers accused of illegal entry. The humanitarian goods are taken into custody. Convoys of trucks driven by ordinary people from a host of countries, all committed to human rights, laden with humanitarian supplies are now making their way by land across Egypt, to bring relief and solidarity to the people of Gaza.

We in the United Nations would do well to follow their example in bringing international pressure to bear on the Occupying Power to abide by the requirements of international law, particularly that of the 4th Geneva Convention. Those means are taking shape in the global call for boycott, divestment and sanctions to bring about an end to the violations of international humanitarian law.

We should note that we in the United Nations have our own history of finding non-violent means of pressing for an end to such violations. More than a quarter of a century ago, on April 28, 1982, the General Assembly meeting in Emergency Session passed resolution ES 7/4, which, in Article 9(b) urges all governments “to renounce the policy of providing Israel with military, economic and political assistance, thus discouraging Israel from continuing its aggression, occupation and disregard of its obligations under the Charter and the relevant resolutions of the United Nations.”

The resolution also (in Article “condemns all policies which frustrate the exercise of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, in particular providing Israel with military, economic and political assistance and the misuse of the veto by a permanent member of the Security Council, thus enabling Israel to continue its aggression, occupation and unwillingness to carry out its obligations under the Charter and the relevant resolutions of the United Nations.” And while that obligation of Member States remains largely unmet, I would like to point out the important example of the decision by the Government of the United Kingdom earlier this month, to cancel five contracts involving arms sales to the Israeli military in response to actions taken in Gaza during the assault of December-January earlier this year. The Wall Street Journal quoted Foreign Minister David Miliband’s acknowledgement that the contracts involved spare parts for a warship that shelled Gaza during the war, and reported that U.K. and European Union statutes forbid exported weapons “to be used for internal repression or external aggression.”

During the Gaza crisis I reminded all Member States of the United Nations that “the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international humanitarian law ? regardless of what country may be responsible for those violations.”
That reminder holds true today. It is the reason that your conference here in Geneva is so important. As talk of the “responsibility to protect” circulates throughout the United Nations system, we must keep in mind that that responsibility, if it is to be accepted and respected throughout the world and not only in the capitals of the most powerful, must be used on behalf of all who are in need of protection. The work of this Conference, and the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People in the General Assembly, provides us with one more venue in which to take up that collective responsibility.

I commend you, once again, for your efforts and wish you all a most productive meeting.

Thank you.
***