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By Matthew Russell Lee, video

UN GATE, April 8 -- After months in which the United Nations of Antonio Guterres refused to answer questions about allowing 250 Sri Lanka soldiers to deploy to the UN mission in Mali, with an alleged war criminal Shavendra Silva seeing them off contrary to a false claim by Guterres that such deployments would stop, another  alleged war criminal has claimed the presidency: Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

  The UN's solicitude of this war criminal, as with Cameroon's Paul Biya, is based on the convenience and corruption of Antonio Guterres, wanting "peacekeepers" and budget favor. Next, Guterres should be banned from the US. His response on Covid-19 has been a joke, including refusing to answer questions about UNMISS in South Sudan putting UN national staff on busses without social distancing, here.

 And now on April 8 on Sri Lanka, this: "The lack of civilian oversight over Sri Lanka’s militarised COVID-19 response raises some very serious human rights concerns, said the International Truth and Justice Project. “Sri Lanka has an alleged war criminal heading its COVID-19 response, who served in the same army regiment as the President, raising questions about transparency, accountability and oversight,” said the ITJP’s Executive Director, Yasmin Sooka, herself under lockdown. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Killings, Agnes Callamard, has said that any measures taken to deal with the COVID-19 emergency should be guided by the principles of legality, proportion, precaution and non-discrimination. Appointing military personnel to manage the crisis without any civilian oversight does not bode well for Sri Lanka – nor does Lt. Gen. Shavendra Silva specifically identifying those COVID-19 patients who are Muslims in public statements. “Experienced professionals from the civil service should be in charge of coordinating complex public health and distribution issues, not the Army,” said Yasmin Sooka, “People’s lives are at stake as well as huge amounts of money and supplies that need to be equitably shared. It is essential that the public be allowed to question the response operation without being threatened with arrest. This crisis shouldn’t become an excuse to erode civil liberties yet further.” Already there are clashes between medical professionals and the military over what the best public health measures should be. Even the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) has expressed disappointment that  the Government placed an Army commander in charge of the country’s overall COVID-19 Response.  The National Operation Center for Prevention of COVID-19 Outbreak The Sri Lankan Government says all prevention and management of the COVID-19 virus outbreak and healthcare provisions and other public services are to be managed by this newly formed National Operation Centre. All other government officials should be available for the Centre to deploy1 .  However the National Operation Centre is headed by Sri Lanka’s Army Commander who is also acting Chief of Defence Staff, Lt. Gen. Shavendra Silva. Silva was publicly designated this year by the US State Department because of credible information of his involvement, through command responsibility, in gross violations of human rights, namely extrajudicial killings2  . Silva was appointed to this powerful COVID-19 role by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was his superior officer in the first battalion of the Gajaba Regiment in Matale during military operations to crush the second Sinhala youth insurgency in 1989 when hundreds disappeared in the area under their control. In 2008-9 when the US Government says Silva was allegedly involved in war crimes, he was receiving orders allegedly directly from Gotabaya Rajapaksa who was then secretary of defence. Moreover the legal basis for this latest appointment is unclear as there is no gazette notification establishing the COVID-19 National Operation Centre, as for other COVID-19 entities3  . This raises the question of who in the civilian administration holds Shavendra Silva accountable, other than his friend the President who is himself ex military. Media conferences on the outbreak are dominated by Shavendra Silva who briefs on the quarantine situation4 .  Presidential Task Force On Food Supplies This was gazetted by the President in March to ensure the supply of food to the nation during the crisis. In a detailed analysis the Centre for Policy Alternatives commented that“the mandate and powers assigned to the Task Force are much wider in scope and range from ensuring the supply of essential goods and services to providing relief measures to vulnerable groups of society”5  . The Task Force is also headed by the President’s unelected brother Basil Rajapaksa and contains a large number of retired military officials close to the President (including from his Gajaba Regiment) also implicated in the 2009 war in Sri Lanka, which saw widespread violations of international law by the Army. The appointment of military officers to key public roles has been controversial – for example Major General Vijitha Ravipriya’s appointment as Director General of Customs was opposed by the customs trades unions." Inner City Press will ask - but if the past is any guide, the corrupt UN of Guterres will not answer.

   Inner City Press in writing asked, repeatedly without answer from UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric and Melissa Fleming which blocks its entrance to ask in person: January 10-2: On Sri Lanka, what are the comments or actions if any of SG Guterres on if the Sri Lankan government should abide by its commitments to replace the abusive Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) with legislation that respects its international human rights obligations. The cabinet of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa announced on January 4, 2020 that it would withdraw a proposed replacement law, reneging on pledges to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the European Union.  The HRW in a statement said, Rajapaksa, who took office on November 18, 2019, has also taken other steps that threaten human rights protections in Sri Lanka. He appointed army commanders implicated by the UN in attacks on civilians and other grave abuses during the civil war to defense secretary and other senior positions." No answer at all. Guterres is absolutely corrupt.

Now this from IPJT and JDS: "Ambassador designate for Sri Lanka, C.A.Chandraprema, because of his membership during the late eighties of a death squad responsible for the murders of hundreds of people, including human rights lawyers, journalists, university students and school children.      C. A Chandraprema was known as “Thadi Priyantha” at the time and was a key member of the People’s Revolutionary Red Army or PRRA, one of many shadowy armed groups working with the military to target suspects during a Sinhala youth uprising that saw 40,000 killed. PRRA routinely issued death threats to journalists and human rights activists, including staff from Amnesty International, whose reports at the time accused PRRA of being involved in executions and enforced disappearances.     Chandraprema was arrested in Sri Lanka in 2000 in connection with the 1989 assasinations of two human rights lawyers  - Charita Lankapura and Kanchana Abhayapala. A senior ex policeman in custody had named Chandraprema as the alleged assassin in an affidavit which is publicly available online.  However Chandraprema was released after the  Attorney General decided there was no legal grounds to proceed. Since then he has been protected by his links to all the major political parties in Sri Lanka.      “It is the ultimate irony that a man who has never been properly investigated for his alleged role in the murder of brave human rights lawyers should sit in the Human Rights Council,” a body intended to protect the rights of victims and human rights activists said ITJP’s Executive Director, Yasmin Sooka. “Sri Lanka has a past record of intimidating and threatening activists who attend the Human Rights Council – it is simply not safe to have a man like this heading a diplomatic mission in Geneva.”     In recent years Chandraprema became a newspaper columnist. In 2012 he authored a hagioghraphy of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa that denies all the allegations of war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan army against Tamils in 2009." And from Guterres' UN? Nothing, as LaCroix dissembles about using the Rajapaksas' and Shavendra Silva's soldiers.

  After covering the UN's failure on Sri Lanka, from the bloodbath on the beach through accepting Shavendra Silva as a UN Peacekeeping adviser, Inner City Press was roughed up and banned by Secretary General Antonio Guterres. FP and Reuters said nothing.

  In February 2019 when Silva became Army Chief of Staff, Inner City Press puts in among its written questions to Spokesman Stephane Dujarric a question on this. Despite Dujarric's on camera promise to answer Inner City Press' written questions, no answer.

 In August when Silva was further promoted, Inner City Press asked again and again in writing, including to Guterres new chief of "Global Communications" Melissa Fleming. No answer; Fleming banned Inner City Press from the UNGA week.

  Then Dujarric's office handed a claim, which Inner City Press even then called out diplomaticallly as quite possibly not true, to his teacher's pet FP, long time correspondent Colum Lynch and DC-based Robbie Gramer. Neither ever wrote a word about Guterres using UN Security to physically rough up Inner City Press and ban it 450 days since. They call this a scoop, when it is just spoon feeding for those who want to feel good about the UN. Reuters also reported it - and they actively lobbied Guterres' Dujarric to oust Inner City Press, here. No correction: corrupt.

   On the morning of September 26, while simultaneous covering the SDNY Federal court where CEFC China Energy, financially linked to UNSG Guterres was convicted of UN bribery, Inner City Press asked Guterres, his spokesmen Stephane Dujarric and Farhan Haq and Melissa Fleming questions including "September 26-2: On Sri Lanka, please immediately explain why your Office refused to answer weeks of questions from Inner City Press about the impact of Shavendra Silva being made head of army (despite Dujarric on camera promise, and Smale's written promise, to answer ICP's questions) then handed the answer to FP and how that doesn't make FP and Reuters the UN's teacher's pets? Is the belated decision even true?"

  No answer. Then this...

 Past 4 pm on Friday, August 30 the UN issued a denial of accreditation with no reasoning other than that accreditation had previously been revoked:

"From:  malu at un dot org
Date: Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 4:23 PM
Subject: U.N. eAccreditation request for Matthew Lee Ref # M5413398 has been declined
To: Inner City Press:

Greetings Matthew Lee from Inner City Press,  Your media accreditation request, with reference no: M5413398, has been declined for the following reason: Media accreditation was withdrawn on 17 August 2018."

  This is Kafka-esque, and corrupt. We will have more, much more, on this.

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