The advocates and practitioners of drone
attacks, for example, would be ‘activists’.
Those who throw Molotov Cocktails, deploy suicide bombs and explode
themselves in public places, and who take pot shots at people are being active
and vigorous. They are, therefore, activists.
Barack Obama is an activist. So was Osama bin Laden. Prabhakaran too.
And how about aggressive corporate
takeovers? How about vigorous price
wars? Is there activism there? Are there
activists involved? Are thieves
activists and is theft activism?
So there are activists and activists.
There is activism and activism. It makes
for selectivity, depending on who is doing the selection. There are some who would call human rights
advocates employees of rent-a-protest outfits.
There are people who would be dismissive of such tags but would never
call those who flock to Bodu Bala Sena protests ‘activists’.
So activists and activism can be
classed. We have environmental activists
of many kinds, focusing on different aspects of the broader issues. Some would be professional greens, activism
being a vocation. The same goes for
peace activists, women’s rights activists, temperance activists and of course
human rights activists.
Let’s toss in some names here. There’s Jeyakumari Balendran. There’s Ruki
Fernando. There is also Father Praveen
Mahesan. Jeyakumari is new to
‘activism’, the other two are not.
Jeyakumari hit the headlines, the others did too but not before they
tagged themselves to Jeyakumari-News.
How did Jeyakumari become ‘news’? Who made her ‘news’?
Well, first of all, she was an activist. Her
sons were willing or unwilling members of a terrorist organization. One of them, she claims, was ‘disappeared’ by
the security forces. So she became a ‘disappearance activist’. What she herself had wanted ‘disappeared’ was
her sons’ LTTE connections. She also
wanted ‘disappeared’ the fact that she was cozy with some hardcore terrorists
who also had criminal records. She marketed
herself as ‘activist’ and some people actually purchased the lie. Ruki and his friend Fr Praveen Mahesan for
example.
Actually, we don’t really know if there
was ‘purchase’ here because that would imply naiveté. Ruki is a professional activist. If Ruki and his friend, Fr Mahesan were not
in the know, they make poor apologies for activists.
That’s beside the point.
The point is that here we have an activist
(Jeyakumari) being arrested and two other activists who came to inquire about
her also being arrested, followed by expression of umbrage from Washington (Jen
Psaki of the US State Department) and London (Hugo Swire, UK Foreign Office
Minister). Psaki and Swire are upset
about Ruki and Fr Mahesan, but nary a word did they utter about
Jeyakumari.
Are some activists more active than
others? Are some activists worth only
until their true identities are discovered?
Heck, it’s the lady that got Ruki and Fr Mahesan some media coverage;
surely they should say ‘Thanks Jeyakumari’?
Surely they should express outrage over Psaki and Swire giving her the
cold shoulder in the political economy of umbrage? Surely they should ask if it’s an example of
discrimination along gender lines?
Well, it is doubtful that Ruki, Fr Mahesan
or any of activists and activist championing journalists, diplomats and UN
officials will direct such questions to Washington or London. We can draw some conclusions though.
First. Jeyakumari’s shelf life
expired. She had her script, read her
lines and now she’s done. She’s outlived
usefulness. Exit.
Second.
It means that a lot of other ‘activists’ may have shelf-lives too;
perhaps too, skeletons in cupboards that not all of their fellow activists know
about.
Third.
The likes of Psaki and Swire were quicker than those wooly headed rights
activists in Sri Lanka who allow regime-hatred to dull further their dull
intellect. They know, perhaps, that
Jeyakumari is such a hot number that if she were to be waved about they might
produce so much fire that other things that don’t buttress their lie might come
to light.
But activists, so the HR handbooks say,
are activists are activists. Activism is
activism is activism. You cannot
differentiate. Now the onus is on
Jeyakumari’s fan club to come out and say ‘Hey, she fooled us all!’ They won’t do it, I am willing to wager. They just have too much to lose. Credibility, for one thing. Jobs, for another. Careers.
They picked poorly when they identified
Jeyakumari as ideal pin-up girl for agitation purposes. Can’t blame them. After all, they even called terrorists ‘boys’
and said a thug called Velupillai Prabhakaran is a freedom fighter.
Those with any intelligence, if they were to be generous,
would call Ruki Fernando and Fr Mahesan ‘suckers’. If they weren’t generous, they would call
them ‘aiders and abettors of a well-orchestrated vilification campaign that has
nothing to do with human rights, disappearances and such’. Either way, Ruki and Fr Mahesan need not
worry. It is not on the intelligent or
intelligence that they count on.
The future must look bright for them, and they must be
grinning in private even as they talk of ‘fear’ and ‘hurt’ and wax lyrical
about democracy deficits. It’s all good
at the end of the day, never mind the fact that poor Jeyakumari is left in the
lurch, sold down the river and all that kind of thing.
msenevira@gmail.com
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