On the forgotten, forgettable, unforgettable and ‘forgetted’

[the nauseating demands articulated in Geneva by the worst perpetrators of crimes against humanity persuaded to google 'crimes' and this, writtten on September 13, 2010, came up]

9/11.  Two numbers. One stroke. A date. A monumental crime against humanity. A metaphor. An alibi for equally monumental crimes against humanity.  Turning point, to some, same-old-same-old for others, chickens coming home to roost for still others.  Yes, 9/11 was all that.  When you say it (yes say it and see for yourself) you will see the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York crumbling before your eyes.  This is the 9/11 of 2001. 

Ladies and gentlemen, we all forgot and keep forgetting do we not that there’s a 9/11 every year and there’s been 9/11s since human beings started carving up time into months, days, hours, minutes and seconds, screwed the season in the rush and made it eminently suited to be translated into money a few centuries later.  There are 9/11s then and 9/11s.  Tragedies and tragedies. Happy days and sad ones. Births and deaths and the innumerable in-betweens.  All this and more on this 9/11 and that, in that country or this or somewhere else you and I have never visited or even heard of.

I am not going to be random, sorry.  ‘9/11’ in the popular imagination is a specific, as the above experiment I suggested would prove. So here’s another  ‘specific’.  The Chile of Victor Jara, street artist and poet, lyricist and singer for the working class, whose hands were chopped off so he could not play or hold his guitar not many minutes before they killed him.  This Chile of Pablo Neruda.  The Chile of a US-backed coup d’etat that overthrew the democratically-elected Government of President Salvador Allende; the violent intervention that saw the Presidential Palace being bombed and thousands of unarmed supporters of the popular president being massacred in cold blood.

That was a 9/11 whose before, after and in between is brilliantly captured in a 3 part documentary by Patricio Guzman titled ‘Battle of Chile, chronicling the political tension in Chile in 1973 and the violent counter-revolution against the Allende Government.  It is the 9/11 that brought to power a love-child of US foreign policy, General Augusto under whose tyrannical rule over 3000 people were killed, 80,000 interned and over 30,000 tortured, including women and children.  It was a 9/11 that Uncle Sam orchestrated and cheered every bloody minute of the way. 

I remember a 9/11. Another specific 9/11.  It was a 9/11 when the sequel to Guzman’s documentary, ‘Obstinate Memory’ was screened in Ithaca, NY.  ‘Obstinate Memory’ is described as a collection of fractured biographical narratives of those whose lived experiences were erased from public memory in post-dictatorship Chile.  Twenty years after ‘The Battle of Chile’ was filmed, Guzman returned to Chile with a copy of the documentary. He showed it to various audiences (including persons present in it and/or their near and dear) and recorded reactions.

I remember, that 9/11 of 1998.  Guzman asks an audience of undergrads what they thought of Pinochet, Allende, the Communist Party which he led and other related issues prior to screening the documentary.  The students were candid in their answers. Most of them were critical of Pinochet but had generally accepted the official narrative: Pinochet saved Chile from Allende and Communism and had he not, things would have been worse. 

No comment from the film-maker. He just showed the film.  There was silence thereafter.  Then he asked a student what he remembered of that 9/11, the 9/11 of 1973.  Silence. Long silence. Then he spoke.

‘I remember that day. I remember that day because I was very happy. I was very happy because there was no school that day.’ 

Then he broke down and wept like a baby. It had taken him over twenty years to remember that 9/11 in its full significance, to reawaken obstinate memory from a slumber that lasted two decades.  It took him that long to understand that there is forgetting and that there is ‘unforgetting’, that there is forgettable and unforgettable.  That forgetting doesn’t just happen all the time, on account of event-clutter and the passing of time.  That there is, in short, a word that ought to be in all languages but is not: ‘forgetted’.

This is what it is all about.  Let me speak for myself.  I remember the 9/11 of 1998.  I wept that day because I realized that I could never forget people who I knew who were tortured and killed in the bheeshanaya of 1988-90.  I wept for Victor Jara.  Today is not an 9/11. It is a 9/12.  Of the year 2010.  Today I remember that I had forgotten the 9/11 of 1998 and the 9/11 of 1973.  I remember today that these things were ‘forgetted’ just as much as they were ‘forgotten’. I remember that the privileged 9/11 of 2001, monumental tragedy and reason for mourning though it is no doubt, is nevertheless also a ‘forgotting’ instrument.   I forgot.

It all came back because my friend Lydie Meunier alerted her Facebook friends to something they might have forgotten but should not. This was what she wrote: ‘On September 11 1973, the US government of Richard Nixon launched the military coup (or was it a terrorist attack?) that led Augusto Pinochet to become Chile's bloody dictator for 16 years, ousting the presidency of democratically elected Salvador Allende.’

There is something obstinate about memory. There will always be a Lydie Meunier reminding us that we can be afflicted with ‘forgettedness’ There will always be a Patricio Guzma. 

There will be remembrances.  There has to be. 

9/11.  Two numbers. One stroke. A date. TWO DATES (at least).  Let us remember

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer who can be reached at malinsene@gmail.com

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The ‘Ugly American’ as terrorist-mouthpiece

Given Robert O Blake's incurable itch regarding Sri Lanka, I thought a re-post of this comment might be useful.

Long before Wikileaks revealed that the current US Ambassador in Colombo, Patricia Butenis was bending over backwards to harass this government and thereby the citizens of this country, those who are alert about things like international relations, the political preferences of global powers and related machinations and of course the behind-the-scenes moves by diplomats. The lady had an impressive track record in the matter of meddling in the internal politics of countries where she has served. 

Patricia Butenis succeeded a man called Robert Blake.  Now Blake, according to Wikileaks, knew exactly what the LTTE’s political and military strategies were.  Not that we are surprised of course, since it is well known that Blake’s bosom buddies in Colombo had been tasked by the LTTE to use whatever means necessary to undermine the Sri Lankan government and create conditions favourable for that terrorist outfit.  In fact this same group left no stone unturned in trying- to engineer the escape of the LTTE leadership, clearly so that they could live to fight another day. 

The man must have been pretty down in the mouth when for once the US script was flipped by a determined government, a tenacious set of military commanders and a polity that had had enough of the ‘peace’ rubbish dished out by Eelamist apologists and consequently backed the military offensive to the hilt.  He left and was later appointed the US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs. 

Blake, on March 16, 2011, expressed ‘deep concern’ about ‘developments that shrink the democratic space and respect for human rights in Sri Lanka’.  We didn’t need Blake to tell us that.  Our constitution is made to make dictators.  As for human rights, parroting LTTE propaganda doesn’t really make a case. In any case, Blake is an employee of a government that goes to war in open violation of the constitution of the country, without sanction from Congress in terms of the section titled ‘Declaration of War’.  The last time a leader of that country took the constitution seriously was on December 8, 1941, when Franklin Roosevelt sought and obtained permission from Congress to formally declare war on Japan consequent to the bombing of Pearl Harbour.

Maybe non US citizens are not considered ‘humans’ and therefore it is alright to bump them off. Perhaps it is because the US thinks that brown people are fair game for bomb, bullet, bayonet, stripping, humiliation, torture and entertainment, as has been the case (in recent times) in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya.

Blake’s ‘democratic’ concerns are scandalously selective.  Today, the USA is bombing Libya in support of rebels with strong links to Washington (and to the Al Qaeda, ironically) and against a government that has unlike US allies in the region diverted oil generated wealth for the benefit of all citizenry, where there is close to zero unemployment, where usury is prohibited, which enjoys the highest life expectancy and literacy rate in Africa and there’s free health and free education.  Neither Blake nor his boss has dared compare all this with their thick-as-thieves pals in the region among whom are many monarchs and tyrants (well, the monarchies are tyrannies as well). 

So he’s upset about the 18^th Amendment. I am upset about it too, Bob.  But you know what, I am not going to stand anywhere close to you even if you were to hold the same placard, the reason being that you are a man without integrity, a rank meddler and an obnoxious busybody who was and is a spokesperson and agent for the world’s most ruthless terrorist outfit whose operations saw close to 100,000 of my fellow-citizens dying and several hundred thousands injured, displaced and dispossessed.   And, for the record, for all the flaws of our constitution, civil life is a million times better than it was when you were around partying with shady characters in Colombo. 

Here’s the latest ‘news’. Yes, the quotation mark indicates the fact that it does not come as surprise.  Blake has been powwowing with the LTTE rump.  He’s been strategizing with known LTTE operatives in the West who built careers and profiles spreading lies about Sri Lanka and whitewashing the LTTE of its many crimes against humanity, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing.  Why Blake or any of his colleagues in the State Department have not conferred with the Al Qaeda is mind boggling, all things considered.  Blake must be utterly naïve if he believes that the people who run the Global Tamil Forum and the British Tamil Forum never had any links with the LTTE.  He’s no baby, this man. He’s quite grown up.   They have directly and/or indirectly funded the LTTE and helped procure arms used to kill innocent civilians and consequently need to be named and shamed as the terrorists that they are.   But then again, Blake represents a country that has no qualms about giving bucks and guns to insurgents and terrorists and one which in fact has no qualms about slaughtering civilians in their thousands.  

There’s a p.s. to the ‘latest’.  Blake has told the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives that ‘The [Sri Lankan] government's worrying record on human rights, its weakening of democratic institutions and practices, and the way in which it conducted the final months of its conflict against the Tamil Tigers hamper our ability to fully engage.’  If ‘record on human rights’ and ‘strength of democratic institutions and practices’ (both in the USA and outside) is important to these people, they must acknowledge that their ability to engage with themselves are severely handicapped.  It means that the decision-makers in the USA must require truckloads of sedatives to deliver their REMs.  

‘We continue to stress the importance of reconciliation and accountability for the future civility and prosperity of that country, Blake has said of Sri Lanka. Ditto, brother.  Sorry, ditto to the 100^th power, in the interest of maintaining perspective. 

And now this Ugly American wants to visit Sri Lanka. Come, Blake, come. Be our guest. Enjoy our hospitality.  Yes, even party with your old friends in the terrorist-loving I/NGO circle.   I am sure you’ve memorized the lines scripted for you by the LTTE thugs you’ve been doing goodness knows what with.  Not that you had to, this we understand of course.  Fine. Fine.  Yes, you can even try arm-twisting.  That’s what your boss Obama did when your fellow ‘diplomat’ (hehehe) Raymond Davis emptied his magazine into some innocent bystanders.  Do all this, but also remember that even if this government is seen as ‘consolation prize’ by a significant portion of those who voted for it, they would most probably back it to the hilt against the LTTE or its agents (such as you). 

P.S.  The man did visit and re-visited too. Probably partied too with his Eelam-loving, pro-LTTE pals in Colombo.  And he's now playing 'Ugly American' in Geneva.  In Sinhala we say 'pau'.  

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Patricia Butenis needs to sleep (so she can wake up)

Patricia Butenis, in an interview where she was offered a lot of full tosses, has waxed eloquent about US-Sri Lanka relations.  I thought this piece, written a year and a half ago might make interesting reading.
The 4th article of the Dasa Raja Dharma, Lord Buddha's incomparable treatise on good governance is about Ajjava, i.e. honesty and integrity. The ruler, the Buddha said must be absolutely straightforward and must never employ any crooked means to achieve ends. This week I planned to dwell on this particular aspect of good governance but am compelled to employ the idea to dissect something more specific. I write about honesty and integrity but only in terms of how they relate to the month of September.

I am writing this on September 22, 2010. September 22 is significant for a specific and personal reason. It marks an anniversary. On this day, exactly one year ago, the Daily Mirror published an article by me titled ‘Welcome to Sri Lanka Ms. Patricia Butenis'. Ms. Butenis had just assumed duties as the US Ambassador to Sri Lanka. My comment followed a statement she issued to the press subsequent to presenting credentials to President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

She said in that note, ‘No country, including the United States, has a perfect record in safeguarding human rights' but said that even while addressing its own shortcomings, the USA has a responsibility to advocate for the rights and freedoms of people worldwide. Ms. Butenis is aware, I am sure, of the adage that charity begins at home. I expressed in my response to her ‘note' the hope that once she recovers from jet-leg, Ms. Butenis would write a lengthy piece informing Sri Lankans about what exactly the USA has been doing by way of addressing shortcomings.

A lot has happened since September 22, 2010. We've had Nick Clegg of Britain's Liberal Democratic Party confessing while acting as Prime Minister that the invasion of Iraq was illegal. We've had ‘Wikileaks' telling us of the horrendous and systemic perpetration of atrocities by US troops in Afghanistan. We've had the US justice system virtually giving a green light to torture of prisoners as long as it happens outside the borders of that country. We've had President Barack Obama wanting photographic evidence of excesses perpetrated by US troops in Iraq suppressed in the name of ‘national security'. We've not had Ms. Butenis saying a word about these things.

Here are some sobering numbers. The number of Iraqis slaughtered since the US invaded Iraq stands at 1,366,360. That's close to 1.4 million people. The USA has lost 4,739 military personnel. This means that roughly 288 Iraqis have died for each US soldier. Ms. Butenis knows of all this because she tried to buy the silence of one Mohammed Hafidh after trigger-happy security personnel deployed to protect a US diplomat belonging to the contractor Blackwater opened fire on a group of civilians killing his 10 year old son Ali. Ms. Butenis was at the time the Deputy Chief of Mission in Baghdad and had offered the boy's father US$ 12,500. He had refused. She must know these numbers. She must know what that invasion was about. She must know that the US invaded that unhappy country in order to eliminate non-existent weapons of mass destruction. She must know that in addition to the 1.4 million Iraqis killed after the invasion, half a million Iraqi children died courtesy of the US-led economic sanctions imposed on that country. I am yet to hear Ms. Butenis talk of ‘shortcomings'. Her country has already spent US $ 1,083,252,716,408 in executing the wars on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and I refuse to believe that these adventures did not generate returns that justified investment.

There are 30 days in September. On the 24th day of this month in the year 2009, it was revealed that declassified documents of the US embassy in Bogota showed that US authorities had been aware since 1990 that the Colombian military had been murdering civilians and dressing them up as guerrillas to increase body counts. Colombia is the largest recipient of US military aid in the Western hemisphere. Ms. Butenis knows. She was Consul (1990-1993) and Consul General (2001-2004) in the US Embassy in Bogota. She could not have been ignorant of these matters.

Ms. Butenis also served as the US Political Officer in El Salvador (1982-1985) and as El Salvador Desk Officer (1988-1990). This was when that country was in the middle of a civil war where US-backed dirty tactics (developed using CIA experience from ‘Operation Phoenix' in Vietnam) caused over 75,000 deaths. And this lady had the audacity to tell the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee that ‘the Lankan government must seriously address precious human rights abuses, including establishing accountability and rule of law by bringing to justice those responsible for extrajudicial killings, disappearances and numerous attacks against press freedom that have occurred in the last several years'. Ms Butenis could tell us what kind of bringing-to-justice was facilitated by her Government of murders her Government has supported and continues to support in Latin America. Given the posts she has held, Washington's policy directives she had to execute as part of her JD and her sanctimonious posturing, it is indeed surprising that she's in Colombo and not in the Hague.

My ‘welcome note' to Ms. Butenis is no longer available on the internet. I saw it a few days ago, posted the link on facebook, but it's since disappeared. I am not surprised. I have a copy saved though. Here's a quote referring to her meddling stink in Bangladesh:

‘At a farewell speech at the Gulshan Club, Dhaka, she had said that although some Bangladeshis believed she was sometimes too outspoken, this was because Ambassadors must be clear about their country's interests and viewpoints to avoid misunderstanding. I was told that Dr. Abdullah Dewan, Professor of Economics at Eastern Michigan University and a Bangladeshi American had observed: There was no "misunderstanding" on our part; she was not just "outspoken", but openly meddled, apparently beyond her mandated duty, in the internal affairs of a sovereign country and made it look like a client state of America.'

Last September I made a list and shook it twice at Ms. Butenis, in lieu of an official red-carpet welcome. This is the list.

US troops massacred 300 Lakotas in 1890. The USA has sent troops abroad or carried out military strikes against other countries on 216 occasions since independence from Britain. Since 1945, the USA has intervened in more than 20 countries throughout the world. People are aware of ‘Vietnam of course, where over 3 million people were killed before the then US President decided to withdraw. There are other unhappy countries. These include China (1945-46), Korea (1950-53), Guatemala (1954), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), Guatemala (1960), Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-73), Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-70), Guatemala (1967-69), Grenada (1983), Lebanon (1984), Libya (1986), El Salvador and Nicaragua (throughout the 1980s), Panama (1989), Iraq (ongoing), Sudan (1998), Afghanistan (ongoing) and Yugoslavia (1999). After World War II, the USA has assisted in over 20 different coups throughout the world and the CIA orchestrated countless assassinations and attempted-assassinations of dozens of political heads of state.

I also pointed out that Ms Butenis does not have to read Noam Chomsky to understand that Uncle Sam will support democratic regimes, dictatorships, monarchies, military juntas and all manner of totalitarian regimes guilty of horrendous crimes against humanity as long as US interests are served. That is the bottom line and I was sure Ms. Butenis must have been briefed on this when she was inducted into the US Foreign Service.

The USA has on numerous occasions deployed military police overseas, mobilized the National Guard, sent her Navy to patrol seas off the coast of numerous countries to show strength, carried out covert actions where US forces were not under direct US command, deployed US pilots to fly foreign planes, trained and advised military hierarchies in unpopular and tyrannical regimes and of course assassinated heads of state and other ‘undesirables'.

I strongly recommended that Ms. Butenis read Willian Blum's ‘Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II'. I said that if the US throws the book at us, we can drown them with a hundred books, such is the magnitude of that country's crimes against humanity.

Ms. Butenis' contention that it is good not to have misunderstanding was taken in that spirit. I asked her to comment. I hoped there wouldn't be selective amnesia. One year later, I can report that we didn't get ‘selective amnesia' from Ms. Butenis. We got blanket silence. In Sinhala we would say ‘kata uththara nehe' (silence on account of being tongue-tied).

Ms. Butenis might not have heard of the Dasa Raja Dharma. A year ago I might have though that she would know the words ‘honesty' and ‘integrity'. Today, the 22nd day of September, 2010, one year after Mr. Butenis received that open welcome note I am saddened to observe that this lady doesn't seem to have a clue and this because those are the two most inconvenient concepts for a diplomat from her country.

I finished that note with the following:

‘Don't underestimate us. Don't misread ‘smile' for ‘pliant'. We will be watching your every move, trust us.'

I wished her an enjoyable tenure in Sri Lanka. I take this opportunity to tell her that we haven't dropped our guard or blinked even once.

You are being watched Ms. Butenis. With greater suspicion in fact. You can thank your silence, double-standards, deceit and continued meddling for this.

Cheers.

[This was first published on September 22, 2010 and was edited by Wendell Solomons and posted at http://www.articlesbase.com/international-studies-articles/september-22-is-for-remembering-3333150.html]

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The UN is dishing out lunacy, idiocy and knee-slapping humour!

AND A NECESSARY AFTERWORD :)

I thought it was just Ban Ki-moon and the chief of the panel he’s appointed recently, one Marzuki Darusman, who didn’t know if they are coming or going.   Ki-moon said it was just a committee tasked to advice him on things pertaining to Sri Lanka. He said, through his representative, that there would be no investigation. Darusman says (magnanimously) that the panel will ‘also’ investigate the LTTE, as though he would be doing us some big favour.  LTTE is past tense and we don’t need some ill-advised dabblers to tell us the ‘truth’ about the LTTE. We already know.

Ki-moon’s representative, when announcing the panel and in response to questions from the media, has categorically stated that the panel does not have the authority to investigate or even visit Sri Lanka.  Darusman on the other hand clearly uses the word ‘investigate’.  Someone’s very confused here.  One of the two, i.e. Ki-moon or Darusman is so dumb that he ought to resign immediately or else be kicked out unceremoniously. 

On the other hand, we have that ace trouble-maker and Tiger-lover, Eric Solheim, trying to tell us that ‘thousands of lives could have been saved if the LTTE agreed to surrender’ before the leadership was finally eliminated.  Solheim says that had the LTTE been agreeable, the surrender would have been overseen by a special UN force.  Well, first of all, Solheim’s opinion constitutes toilet wash, given his considerable history as a promoter of terrorism.  Secondly, given that the Secretary General of the UN is now a confirmed imbecile, muddle-headed in thinking, moronic in appointment and given to act like executive and not the administrator that he is, I dread to think what such a mechanism would have entailed. 

Just imagine Ki-moon and Solheim overseeing surrender by the latter’s pals!  Solheim, even as the LTTE killed ‘thousands’ did nothing to ‘save lives’. Instead he rewarded the killers through his Government, the KINGDOM (yes, not democracy) of Norway.  At the end of the day killers such as Pulidevan, Nadesan, Prabhakaran, Pottu Amman and Charles Anthony would have been roaming around plotting to set off bombs and kill thousands of innocent people and when that day dawned guess who will be left carrying the baby.  Solheim? Ki-moon? No, the near and dear of the dead! 

Solheim is Solheim. Tiger-lover to the end, we can’t expect any logic to come from this individual’s mouth.  Sri Lanka was his toy. The key word is ‘was’.  He was Chandrika Kumaratunga’s favourite and later Ranil Wickremesinghe’s bosom buddy. He’s lost his toy and therefore his whines are quite understandable, poor boy. 

The world, however, is full of Solheims and Ki-moons, it seems.  Another ‘wise guy’, Mark Toner, the Deputy Spokesman (we are told) of the US State Department, has expressed the support of the USA for this panel.  Ever since Robert Blake started partying with apologists for the LTTE in Colombo, Uncle Sam’s position on Sri Lanka has been one of doing whatever possible to undermine the effort to vanquish terrorism. We’ve had Barack Obama sound like the idiot that he is not and Hillary Clinton being, well, Hillary Clinton quite thick and happy in what her President once said was ‘the season of silliness’.  Coming from a country whose leaders have perfected the art of genocide, double standards, myopia and selective amnesia, I suppose Toner could do no better.  Still, his ignorance stands out too starkly to escape comment.

Toner urges Sri Lanka to ‘take advantage of this team…take advantage of their offer.’ The fool has not been briefed and doesn’t seem to understand the importance of doing the basics in terms of getting facts straight.  There is nothing on offer here, Toner and therefore nothing to ‘take advantage’ of.  Quite apart from the fact that the head of the panel is a blundering jackass who hasn’t read his job description and who was part of a team of ‘experts’ who proved they were easily purchased by the pro-LTTE lobby in Colombo, Toner doesn’t understand that the panel’s mandate is to brief Ki-moon and not make a list of goodies for the people of Sri Lanka.

However, since Toner represents a powerful country with considerable arm-twisting ability, he could get Ki-moon to actually offer some goodies to Sri Lanka.  Got me thinking.

Toner can tell Ki-moon that Sri Lanka could do with a lot of help. We really need a lot of disinfectant, mops, detergents, deodorizers and other equipment and accessories pertaining to clean floors, bathrooms, sinks etc., because every two weeks or so we have a bunch of idiots who can’t hold their liquor vomiting it all out all over the place.

We need to be offered some moron-testing devices that we can use to filter out idiots who are frequently sent to Sri Lanka to look around with half-closed eyes and then to talk through their what-not as though they have a clue about what’s happening, what happened and what might happen. 

One more offer, please, Toner.  Can you ask Obama to start moving things so that his pals can come up with a brand new award, a Nobel or an equivalent, to celebrate and honour humour?  We really need a Nobel Prize for Clowning.  If Obama could get a Nobel Prize for Peace for doing jack-all, then he might as well get one for being a joker, except that we have someone who is far more worthy of award, recognition and many pats on the back and slaps on the thighs.  Toner, do the honours.  Offer us the (comic) relief of having our friend and benefactor, Ban Ki-moon being given the Nobel Prize for Clowning.  He deserves it.

The above was published in the Daily News of June 29, 2010.  The following was published the next day.

THE MORNING INSPECTION

My heartfelt apologies to some lovely people I may have offended

(mannikkavum ban ki-moon) 

There is a plus side to inserting an email address at the bottom of a newspaper article.  One gets a lot of feedback. I like reading comments, suggestions, answering questions, clarifying when clarification is sought etc.  Not all comments are in agreement of course.  Some take issue with assertion, some point out flaw.  All in all, it’s ‘engagement’ and therefore stimulating and welcome.  There is of course the occasional stinker and these I tend to ignore because it takes all kinds after all to make the world.  

I got one of these latter type emails a short while ago.  The author, let me call him Roshan, was apparently ‘extremely disappointed’ and ‘quite shocked’ to read what I had written for the Daily News on Monday (The UN dishing out lunacy, idiocy and knee slapping humour).  Roshan chides me for what he claims is illogical and irrational expression of criticism.  He doesn’t want me to use phrases like ‘Tiger-lover’ or words like ‘idiot’.  These, he says, had made him feel ashamed.   

Now I don’t think I was being irrational or illogical.  I do agree that it is nice if we can be nice and if niceties got things done but then again we are not talking to ‘nice’ people, are we?  I mean, could we describe Ban Ki-moon, Solheim and others as intellectual giants or saints?  It is not that I have not been ‘kind’ and ‘decent’ and ‘nice’ and ‘sugary’.  The world is not a pretty place and sometimes when one is ‘nice’ it is taken as ‘weakness’.  There is not fool-proof method of engagement. We try one thing. It doesn’t work. We try another.  And sometimes we just wait and what we wish for transpires for reasons we were not able to predict.  Anyway, I thought it would ‘nice’ to be ‘nice’ to Roshan, to alleviate his suffering and cure him of the shame that I’m accused of causing him.  So here goes.

I address this to Ban, Eric, Navi and other honourable ladies and gentlemen. 

Dearest(s),

I am amazed and utterly in awe of the great sense of responsibility and justice that touch all your actions and statements.  I am amazed and am in utterly in awe of how fair you have been, how balanced in judgment and even-handed you’ve been in viewing the world.  I believe that as a citizen of a member state of the United Nations, I am indeed privileged to have people like you to define for me the realities I inhabit. 

I am thrilled beyond words that you have treated Sri Lanka in exactly the same manner that you have treated the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Israel.  Your integrity shines so brightly that even from this corner of Planet Earth I am able to tell that you have had the eyes to view places like Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and other places, especially in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, ‘Palestine’ and Pakistan and have been beyond reproach in your assessment of events that have taken place. I am given to believe that NOTHING has taken place in such places to warrant censure of any kind, the appointment of an advisory panel or commissioning of investigation. 

I want to tell you that I have wronged you and a person called Roshan by saying nasty things about you a couple of days ago.  I regret using words such as ‘idiot’ and implying that you were moronic and partial to terrorists and their allies.  I now believe that you are utterly, utterly, absolutely blameless of any wrong-doing.  I am convinced that you are not petty-minded, do not know the meaning of the term ‘double-standards’ and have never acted in a high-handed manner.  Let it not be said also that any of you, especially Mr. Ki-moon, have operated outside the ambit of your job description. 

Darlings, you are lovely, lovely, saintly, wondrous individuals.  Indeed it is people like you who give us hope that the world can be a better place, that justice and fair play will someday triumph over malice, vindictiveness, deceit and other things that none of you will ever be found guilty of. 

I am full of remorse for having engaged in name-calling.  It was, believe me, done in a weak moment, in a fit of anger.  I should have been more circumspect.  Please, please forgive me, my dearest(s).  Please, also, be assured of my undying and eternal love and affection and loyalty from now until forever and two days more thereafter (for good measure). 

I am copying this to Roshan, who, dear friends, doesn’t seem to have the time to read newspapers. I am going to email to him.  He is, I am sure, a darling little boy, a staunch supporter of our beloved Secy Gen Ban, well Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (Roshan might be a tad peeved for abbreviating the name and title of such a saintly personality).  I urge you lovelies to consider writing to him.  Email me and I will get back to you with his email address.  

Roshan is convinced that the ‘invective’ of a ‘misled’ columnist (myself) has ‘reduced the respect that he thinks Sri Lanka has/had in the global context.  I did not know I was so influential, but anyway, I trust this missive would restore Sri Lanka’s status to its former glory. 

Dear all, I trust, now that I have showed what I believed is sufficient penitence, that you will forgive me.  I am hopeful, also that you will now further honour me by reiterating your commitment to fair play and to upholding the norms and protocols pertaining to your respective offices and to continue to treat (as you always have) all member states as equals in the family of nations.

Much love. Always and forever and two days more.

Me.  

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United nations will flourish

There are two kinds of united nations, the first is the in-your-face institution that was birthed after World War II, where rivers of blood were produced in the mad rush by some to carve the world among themselves.  This ‘united nations’, or rather the ‘United Nations Organization’ has come far since it was formed.  It has come far from the founding principles and has ended up as a bullying tool for bully-nations.  This ‘united nations’ is a body that has spawned many bodies all in the name of seeking ‘the greater good’ and all in the end furthering the interests of the movers and shakers, effectively rubbishing the notion ‘one nation – one vote’.

Right now, in Geneva, there are moves to censure Sri Lanka over some allegations made by a group of people who are to remain anonymous for 20 years.  The veiled and not-so veiled threats include but are not restricted to ‘an independent investigation’ and sanctions.  Interestingly all this is being orchestrated by countries that had no sympathy whatsoever for the plight of ordinary Sri Lankan citizens when they were being terrorized on a daily basis by an outfit that makes Al Qaeda look like first graders playing cops and robbers. 

They probably have very good reasons but none of them are about some compassionate love for ordinary Sri Lankans.  The bottom line is that Sri Lanka refused to play ball, did its own thing in its own way and surprised everyone by achieving stated objectives albeit at great cost to security personnel and hardly any harm to civilians compared to the kinds of mass-scale killings in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya conveniently labeled ‘collateral’ by the perpetrators. 

If the question is, whether or not Sri Lanka has the international clout to withstand these ill-tempered maneuvers, the answer is simply ‘no’.  On the other hand, if anything was learnt in the offensive against the LTTE, it is that the only way Sri Lanka can ‘do its own thing’ is to do it with the people and for the people. 

That’s the other ‘united nations’.  In other words nations that are united.  Unity is never easily obtained given the many lines along which societies are typically divided.   At the same time, nothing unites a people better than an outside threat.  The LTTE was not ‘Tamil’, but as alien as any ‘outsider’ has been in terms of what it did, how it was done and the reasons behind the doing.  At the critical juncture, the people stood together, barring of course a handful of spoilers who were duly made politically irrelevant. 

For all that is wrong with Sri Lanka and in Sri Lanka, few would argue that foreign interference in whatever form does more harm than good.  There would be even fewer takers if it was about embracing an intruder whose track record when it comes to violating human rights and committing crimes against humanity is second to none. 

For all the legitimate anger at the present regime and for all the petty party-lined objections, it would be hard to find a dozen people who would come out and want the political and military leadership of this country being hanged for crimes that were not committed. 

The danger, however, is that this state of affairs can be misread by the political leadership as regime-support.  They are two different things.  Just as an external threat can help forge unity, the sustaining of such togetherness depends on forging a sense of belonging.  It depends most importantly on the citizens being confident that their citizenship has a lot more meaning than a vote at an election and a contributing digit to a national census.  While it is not the case that there’s absolutely no sense of belonging to be had, insecurities still abound on account of economic hardship and disadvantaged location in structures of power and decision-making. 

On top of it all, the opulence of some at the top, an accompanying brashness in bandying privilege and a palpable perception that there is robbery and indulgence of thief and theft, can push those who feel marginalized into silence and apathy if at some point it is decided to execute threat, one way or another.  It robs the people of the will to fight, not the fight to defend regime but the one to defend nation. 

In short, the people will stand by the government without condition if they feel the government stands by the people.  It is simple.  Nations and regimes fall when there is no unity and when the felling is done by an outsider, nations, regimes and the people all fall.  If nations are to stand firm and remain standing, then people must stand by one another.  United nations do not fall.  It’s as simple as that. 

[The Nation Editorial, February 26, 2012]

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Ravaya: a critical ‘mark’ in the political firmament

The twenty fifth anniversary of the launching of a newspaper is cause for celebration.  It is also a moment for a slow, long gaze at the journey.  ‘Ravaya’ is not the most popular newspaper in Sri Lanka.  It doesn’t have the circulation and the readership of other weekly Sinhala newspapers.  And yet, it has something that few newspapers in this country have: widespread respect. 

The bottom line is that Ravaya does not cater to the bottom line, it does not write to the gallery and is not interested in catering to the lowest common denominator.  The content is serious, sober, deliberately political and shows an aversion to sensationalizing.  It doesn’t concern itself with the trivial and ‘surface’ is clearly not its favourite grazing ground.  The Ravaya likes to delve, likes to dig deep, likes to engage with the complex, likes to analyze from angles that are not common in other weekly Sinhala papers. 

This does not mean of course that other newspapers are fluffy or fascinated with the trivial.  All newspapers have description and analysis, after all.  What is distinctive about the Ravaya is the deliberate privileging of things ideological.  It is principally for those who are interested in issues of power and consequently the structures of power, the structuring of power and the spaces for and examples of processes that engage with these things. 

Whereas the content in almost all weekly papers is organized around roughly the same structure, i.e. with features, business pages, sports, sections of kids and youth, Ravaya’s thrust is the political commentary.  As the paper evolved, other elements common to the newspaper industry, made their way into the Ravaya, but even then a preference for sobriety over the frivolous was maintained.  ‘What happened’ was and is invariable accompanied by ‘why it happened’ and typically by ‘why it should not happen’, ‘what the corrective should be’ etc. 

Now not all people are interested in power games.  Not all are interested in the deeper cultural and political economical articulations and implications of things and processes.  The target audience is therefore miniscule and this is why doing it for 25 years  is a remarkable accomplishment in longevity. 

Victor Ivan, the founding and continuing editor, some would say is the Ravaya, that the two are indistinguishable.  This is not true, though.  He is enough of a liberal to solicit and accommodate views contrary to those he holds close to his heart.  What he does is give direction.  He frames the parameters of writing, not in terms of ideological cans and cannots but argumentative quality and decency.  For all that liberality, however, like-feathered birds naturally flocked together.  Thus, even though the occasional ‘dissenting’ piece was accommodated, the regulars were mostly from one thin sliver of the ideological spectrum. 

For those who didn’t identify with the ‘Ravaya Position’ on issues, especially those pertaining to the conflict, this was a convenience. All one had to do was to read the Ravaya to find out what the other side was thinking, fearing, strategizing etc.  The arguments were coherent no doubt, but they were based on flawed premises.  The conclusions, recommendation and rhetoric were therefore flawed.  At the end of the day, some might say, the Ravaya got some egg on its editorial face, but one-upmanship aside neither Victor nor the Ravaya need feel any shame.  They had a position, they had preferred outcomes and they stuck to their guns.  They still do.

No, neither Ravaya nor Ivan have unblemished records when it comes to ethical journalistic practice, but those hiccups were rare and eminently forgivable when one considered the abysmal levels to which the media culture has descended in the matter of ethical conduct.  More disturbing was a certain deliberate tweaking of the dictum ‘Facts are sacred, comment free’.  The facts were screened to make sure that what appears as ‘news’ supported strongly held beliefs about how things are and how things should be.  This is why the Ravaya (along with YaTV and yes, ‘The Nation’ at one time) was bracketed with eminently rubbishable outfits in the NGO sector.  The Ravaya, committed to the belief that the LTTE cannot be militarily vanquished and therefore must be engaged in processes of give and give (‘take’ was tokenism, for the most part), downplayed LTTE atrocities, vilified those who thought otherwise and by and large ended up painting itself as a needlessly overzealous anti-Sinhala, anti-Buddhist rag. 

Despite all this, Ravaya remains the forum where a particular political position (pro-devolution, anti-history, more or less Marxian and fundamentalist-secularist) is articulated, coherently and consistently.  At one time this ‘Ravayan’ (shall we say?) position had sway, especially between 1994 and 2005, not any more though. And yet, in good times and bad, the Ravaya batted on bravely.  More importantly even as it erred in political analysis of the conflict, it was consistent and spot on in the larger issues of democracy, i.e. representation, transparency, accountability and the rule of law.  That, in fact, is what gave respectability to the jaundiced ideologies that came thick, fast and consistent in its pages. 

Today, even though there is very little evidence of humility regarding the errors of the past, Ravaya continues to be in the forefront of the battle to win back meaning, dignity and power for the ordinary citizen as per the promise of democracy. 

You won’t get it all in the Ravaya, but what you do get is something you will not find in other newspaper or, if you do, only in bits and pieces.  Salutations are called for.  This is mine:  remain!  

[published in 'The Nation', February 26, 2012]

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