Laura Davies’ Shame

We live in a world of blurred boundaries and deliberate misnaming.   We expect words to mean something but in their activation we discover that they are taken to be something quite different.  The much celebrated ‘Arab Spring’ comes to mind.  The harshest winter is what that particular ‘moment’ has morphed into, but few if any will call it that. 

We live in a world of lies and intrigue, phone-tapping and email-hacking.  We live in a world where diplomacy and espionage go hand in hand, where diplomat and spy are almost synonyms.  We have come to accept that it is par for the course for busybodies to busy their bodies, whether they come with the DPL label or not. 

US and British diplomats have been doubling up as casual investigations in the North and East this last week.  It’s all done in the name of ‘promoting peace, democratic values and human rights in Sri Lanka,’ of course.  Just like former US Ambassador Patricia Butenis at one time going out of her way to put words in the mouth of TNA leaders, these worthies have obtained words convenient to pernicious machinations of Western powers in the United Nations. 

Cheap.  Expected.

Deputy High Commissioner of the UK Laura Davies, The Nation reliably learns, asked NGO representatives in Batticaloa what issues they face as NGO activists intent on applying pressure on the Government.  She had said that her country would provide funding as well as organize capacity building workshops by way of resolving these issues. 

Cheap.  Expected.

Essentially, these people are on a mission.  It is not a mission that one would associate with the diplomat of a friendly nation, as we are often told the UK is, but we are talking of a long history of interference and busying of bodies from a country known for plunder, genocide and absolute disregard for civility and civilization.  Expected, therefore.  Cheap, but expected.

There had been a lot of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ about projected funded by these respective countries and lamentation about things not done.   Laura Davies, is reported to have said that she is ashamed that fellow subjects of Britain had agreed to advise the Sri Lankan Government on inquiring into allegations of disappearances, after someone claimed that witnesses were routinely harassed. 

There’s a lot more that Laura ought to be ashamed about.   We are yet to hear, however, Laura Davies pointing her finger at each and every subject of Queen Elizabeth who directly or indirectly supported the illegal invasion of Iraq and who therefore are guilty of the monumental crimes against humanity perpetrated during that exercise and the bloodshed that followed and which continues to plague that unhappy country.   

We haven’t heard Laura Davies express any regret about the leaders of her country having supported the total destabilization of several countries in the Middle East in the name of ‘peace, democracy and human rights’.  We haven’t heard her utter one word about the fact that interrogation manuals used in training British troops unabashedly sanctioning torture.  We haven’t heard her saying, ‘I am ashamed that people in my country robbed people in yours and that no one has ever once talked about returning the loot or compensating; I am ashamed that artifacts plundered by my people are housed in dozens of museums and private collections in Britain and are displayed not as articles of shame but evidence of past glory’.