Sri Lanka is reviewing a move to expel a senior UN official over comments he made during the final weeks of the country’s decades-long ethnic war, a senior official said yesterday.
James Elder, communications chief for UNICEF, was ordered out of the country for allegedly being biased toward the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.
“Mr Elder’s case is under review,” Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona said.
The move comes after UNICEF on Sunday sought more details on Elder’s visa status after immigration officials instructed him to leave within two weeks.
“They [UNICEF] are talking to us and we are listening,” the foreign secretary said.
An Australian passport holder, Elder had been working for UNICEF in Sri Lanka since July last year and had a residency visa valid until next year.
He and other aid officials spoke on civilian casualties towards the end of the war, before Sri Lankan troops finally beat the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in a massive offensive in May to end decades of fighting.
Sri Lanka took a dim view of international criticism over its conduct of the war. The government blocked independent media access into the conflict zone, while the few journalists who had access were taken on military conducted tours.
“Mr Elder was doing propaganda in support of the LTTE,” Kohona said on Sunday. “It was unacceptable. UN officials are meant to be impartial and the government took a very dim view of it.”
“Towards the end of the conflict, he issued statements that were not researched, not exactly based on fact, but reflective of the LTTE,” Kohona said.
Before the government’s defeat of the Tigers, Elder spoke of the “unimaginable hell” suffered by children caught up in the last stages of the war.
UNICEF and the government had been involved in a war of words over who was responsible for supplying the camps with basic facilities such as toilets and tents. The government said criticism over lack of facilities should be leveled at the aid agencies.
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