May

20

Do What The E.U. Says Not What It Does

Posted by at 7:39 pm on May 20, 2009
Category: Arms Export

FlagsThe excellent online E.U. news source, EUobserver.com, ran an interesting column on the E.U. and arms sales to Sri Lanka. The column noted that on Monday the E.U. condemned human rights abuses by the Sri Lankan military and demanded an independent inquiry into the matter. The column cited a statement of the E.U. foreign ministers which stated:

The EU is appalled by the loss of innocent civilian lives as a result of the conflict and by the high numbers of casualties, including children, following recent intense fighting in northern Sri Lanka.

Such human rights abuses should trigger an arms embargo under the E.U. Code of Conduct on Arms Exports. According to that code, member states shouldn’t export arms if there is a “clear risk that the proposed export might be used for internal repression.” The code did not become binding until 2008 and seems to have been widely ignored in the case of Sri Lanka. Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the UK, France, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Poland haveall exported arms to Sri Lanka.

The U.S. has an arms embargo in place against Sri Lanka. That embargo provides an exception only for, on a case-by-case basis, “technical data or equipment made available for the limited purposes of maritime and air surveillance and communications.”

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Copyright © 2009 Clif Burns. All Rights Reserved.
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2 Comments:

Not to be Clintonesque, but how is “internal repression” defined? Do not sovereign states have a right to engage internal belligerants? While I have a soft-spot for any seccessionist rebel group (The South will rise again!), and I am not disputing or discounting Tamil claims of unequal treatment, Sri Lanka did have a parliarmentary government when the Tamils raised their flag. Seems like the appropriate response is for the ICC in the Hague to investigate the senior commanders responsible for war crimes (violations of Article 3 common to the Geneva conventions), rather than an automatic arms embargo on any government facing an armed rebellion. Would we want the EU to impose an arms embargo on the government of Pakistan for fighting the Taliban?

Comment by Hillbilly on May 21st, 2009 @ 6:48 pm

It is my job to monitor Dutch arms exports and therefore I am always highly critical about ‘my’ government. In this case however their mentioning deserves at least a little bit perspective.
To my best knowledge the only export licence over the past 10 yrs for Sri Lanka has been given in 2007 for 36 military pontoon bridges worth 90,000 Euros. In answers to parliamentary questions it was reported by the government in Dec. 2008 that they would be used for the Southern Transport
Development Project, building a road bridge between Dodangoda and Kurundugahatetekma, in the SW of Sri Lanka, far away from the military that was then fighting the Tamil resistance. Project management was by Taisei Corporation, which is part of the Japan Asia Investment Company (JAIC).

Nevertheless, indeed EU countries generally have little problems in manipulating or even disregarding their common arms export criteria.

Comment by Frank Slijper on May 26th, 2009 @ 8:49 am