First of all, welcome to Sri Lanka. Don’t worry, it’s all heart and not
courtesy. This country has embraced one
and all. Invader, interferer, brigand,
smuggler, embezzler, immigrant, condescending missionary determined to ‘save’
the heathen, marauder, city-sacker, control-freak, you name it, we got them
all.
This you must know: when we say ‘friend’ we mean it. It is not diplo-speak. We don’t refer to ‘long standing friendly
relations’ even as we plot control and extraction. We don’t advocate, insist and enforce with
or without the stated or unsaid ‘this is for your own good’. We recognize all this, though. We know that power lies in the ability to
make others inhibit our version of their reality as Philip Gourevitch observed
in his collection of essays on Rwanda, ‘We wish to inform you that tomorrow we
will be killed with our families’.
So, dear John, let us be honest with one another.
Your country hasn’t exactly been friendly to Sri Lanka in
recent times. You’ve used
friendship-rhetoric of course in Geneva and elsewhere but it is pretty clear
that when you say you are prompted by friendly concerns to take up positions
that are opposed by the said ‘friend’ it amounts to being presumptuous if not
downright arrogant. Your country has
been friend to other countries. The good
intentions are not limited to Sri Lanka.
These are documented. They are
known. They are not pretty.
Now John, you cannot blame us for finding it difficult to
blank out such things. Histories
matter. They are remembered. Past actions help understand present words
and possible futures, pretty or otherwise.
Nevertheless it would be foolish to think that people cannot
change. People do acquire new knowledge,
they can learn, they can change. We can
hope. We will.
Since we are friends, John, we will not insist that you
retract your perhaps ill-informed statement on Sri Lanka which, if it was
deliberate distortion amounts to pernicious uttering typical (sadly) of much
that issues from the State Department.
Since we are friends, John, we would ask if you characterize
your involvement in Afghanistan as a ‘war with Afghans’. We would ask if you are at war with Iraqis,
with those of the Islamic faith (in all countries where the ISIS, Al Qaeda and other such
groups operate). We could ask if you are
at war with African Americans in your own country. You get the drift, right?
So we won’t ask you to
apologize for describing Sri Lanka’s long struggle against terrorism as a ’30
year war with Tamils’. We have already
asked our Foreign Minister why on earth he didn’t educate you on this when you
described it in those terms. We would
just remind you on how your President, Barack Obama, spoke of the engagement
with the ISIS, ‘a war on a terrorist group, not on the people it claimed to
represent’. Again, we note that given
histories the jury is out on the question of which side the USA is really
on. We say this in friendship and
because friends should be open with one another.
So if you want to be
friends, John, you should not hold your cards close to your chest. If you don’t know, it is no shame to admit
the fact. You can ask about terrorism
and you can ask about Tamils. You can
compare and contrast. You can study
demographic realities and you can peruse history. You can conclude about the legitimacies of
contradictory claims. All this only if
there’s humility. Take that our and the
word ‘friendship’ has to be followed by a question mark, you will no doubt
agree.
You may have heard, dear John, of a Native American leader
by the name of Cochise. He was an
Apache. He once said ‘you must speak
straight so that your words may go as sunlight into our hearts’. He added, ‘Speak Americans…I will not lie to
you; do not lie to me.’
Speak, John. Like
Cochise.
