By Desmond Tutu | Information Clearing House, May 16, 2008
It would seem self-evident that a country which tortures and kidnaps its own people has no place on the world's leading human rights body. Apparently not: Sri Lanka, despite repeated criticism for its human rights record, is running for re-election to the UN human rights council, with a vote to be held in New York on May 21.
Governments owe it to Sri Lankan human rights victims - and to victims of human rights abuses around the world - to ensure that the Sri Lankan bid fails. This will be an important test of the 47-member council, to show that the UN's standards for it will be honoured.
If Sri Lanka is defeated this year, that will be important not just for the Sri Lankan human rights leaders who, at great personal risk, have called for Sri Lanka's defeat, and for Sri Lankan civil society. In combination with the humiliating defeat last year of Belarus, it will send an important signal for the future: governments with track records of serious human rights abuses do not belong on a body set up to protect the victims of such abuses.
Sri Lanka has failed to honour its pledges of upholding human rights standards and cooperating with the UN since joining the council two years ago. Indeed, its human rights record has worsened during that time. The Sri Lankan idea of cooperation with the UN, meanwhile, has been to condemn senior UN officials (including the high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, and the under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, John Holmes) as "terrorists" or "terrorist sympathisers."
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