Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein’s prayer

The United Nations General Assembly on Monday has unanimously approved Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein of Jordan as the new High Commissioner for Human Rights, succeeding Navi Pillay of South Africa. Zeid is not filling big shoes. He’s filling strange shoes but that should not worry him because those who step into those shoes have a long history of slicing off toes and shaving heals. The shoes are US made, truth be told. Indeed, more often than not the US manages to find a Cinderella for whom the shoe is a perfect fit. But in a parallel universe Zeid can have a mind of his own and that mind can think. In a thinking mind thoughts bleed into words and words come together as prayer. Here is his.



‘Let me have courage. Let me have wisdom. Let me have the wisdom to separate fact from fiction. Let me have the wisdom to see agenda and preference in words that are uttered in shrill or ominous voices. Let me have the courage and good sense to tell myself every morning that the UN is made of member states and each voice of each name has equal worth. Let me have the humility to ask myself every night whether I’ve remembered this fact throughout my working hours.

‘Let me have a million eyes so that I will not only see what some people want me to see and so I will not miss that which some people don’t want me to see. Let me not be selective in vision or word. Let me have the wisdom to shave of frills, whether they come as crystallized sugar or as congealed drops of blood, so that I can obtain the true dimensions of incident and process.

‘Let me have patience. Let me not rush to judge. Let me have the wisdom, when appointing advisors to check credentials and let me have the wisdom to detect conflict of interest so that prejudice will not color the result of assessment or advice or other conclusions. 

‘Let me not be so foolish as to fire off ominous missives and veiled threats at the drop of a hat. Let me not be so foolish, moreover, not to make mountains out of molehills and worse see certain molehills and be blind to mountains, so that I will not confuse the two.

‘Let me have the courage to call tyrant a tyrant and the sense of justice to ask tyrant that points finger at tyrant, “a friend in deed?”

‘Let me find time to read up on history and political economy so I can discern both pattern and contradiction and thereby question the moral authority of finger pointers. 

‘Let me understand the truth that there are no bloodless wars. Let me tell myself over and over again that nowhere in the history of humankind has there ever been a hostage rescue operation concerning several hundred thousands of people held hostage by terrorists. Let me ask myself again and again which government, if so intent on genocide, provided enemy with food and medicine, and risked and lost thousands of personnel to rescue “enemy”.

‘Let me have the wisdom and courage to resist being a pawn of anyone or anything except the need to uphold human rights at all times in all places. Let me have the wisdom and the sense of justice to never forget that no life is less valuable than another life.

‘Let me resist the urge to take the word of particularly powerful and wealthy section of global media as biblical truth and instead understand that opinion, like consent, is frequently manufactured. 

‘In practical terms let me start where the rot starts and concentrate on the biggest violators of human rights this planet has known, namely the United States of America and its allies, Britain included. In this, let me investigate, first and foremost the unwarranted invasion of Iraq which Britain admits was illegal and the so-called “war on terror”. Let me not be fooled by do-gooders who fire missiles and carry out drone attacks claiming they are doing so for the good of the recipients. Let me not be fooled either by soft words like “democracy”, “peace” and “justice” because I know that horrendous crimes against humanity have been perpetrated in the name of such things.

‘Let me have the courage tell my predecessor to take her shoes with her as she leaves office.’

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The UNHRC Resolution and the question of the Social Contract

Leader of the Opposition Ranil Wickremesinghe came up with a strange, important and revealing statement in the run up to the Southern and Western Provincial Council Elections.  He said that if he is elected to power (in a presidential election, obviously, and complemented by a victory in a general election), there will be no threat to Sri Lanka from the international community.  He was referring to the machinations in Geneva at the UN Human Rights Commission which had the government in what could be called its Annual March Dither.  The statement raises some interesting questions

What is it that Ranil can do that Mahinda cannot?  What is it about Ranil that would make the international community, so-called, get off Sri Lanka’s back?  If the UNHRC Resolution refers to things that may have happened more than five years ago, how can a Wickremesinghe Regime sometime in the future get it all off the agenda? After all, just because someone else is in power, it doesn’t change what is said to have happened, does it?  In this context what are we to make of Ranil’s assertion, his confidence and his confidences? 

What Ranil is basically saying is that the movers and shakers of the UNHRC Resolution, namely the USA and UK backed by Canada, France and other member states of the European Union, is not really interested in truth, justice, accountability, resolution of grievances via preferred arrangements (such as power-devolution) or buttressing democratic institutions.  Instead, all that is desired is regime-change.  All the rhetoric and talking-points in Geneva, then, amounts to just foil for the real objective. 

Now this should not surprise anyone. The USA, after all, has backed and defended with military might if necessary all kinds of tyrants, including monarchs, military juntas, dictators and even totalitarian regimes.  It does business with the rogues and rogue-states even as it decries autocrats and autocracies. It’s all about which dictator and dictatorship are whose friends.  The current initiative against Sri Lanka has nothing to do with truth, justice, reconciliation and such and not only because these things never mattered to Washington outside of rhetoric-need. 

While Ranil’s statement betrays what can only be called an unholy friendship with Sri Lanka’s enemies, it points to a more serious issue pertaining to what political scientists call ‘the social contract’.  The Minister of External Affairs, G.L. Peiris has argued on several occasions that the pressure exerted unfairly and selectively on Sri Lanka by Washington through Geneva can easily be dealt with by the simple matter of agreeing to the terms of surrender.  Those terms, as currently articulated, are squarely against the general sentiments of the population save the Tamil National Alliance, which is a communalist party representing only a fraction of the Tamil community and beholden to the best friends of terrorists. 

Regime change would not amount to a radical departure from these sentiments.  No one in the UNP, for example, would say that the Government was wrong in crushing the LTTE or that there was anything in method warranting investigation of any kind.  Objection to the regime there is and might even be growing but none of that has anything to do with operations against the LTTE or the current position of the regime vis-à-vis the issue of devolution.  A referendum on whether the 13^th Amendment should be enhanced with greater degree of devolution or another on the relevancy of the 13^th Amendment and Provincial Councils after more than a quarter of a century worth experience is likely to result in rejection on both counts.  No enhancement and indeed a call for abrogation, in other words. 

The social contract among other things is about sovereignty, territorial integrity, and not giving on a platter the land-theft sought by terrorists through 30 years of terrorism.  It is also about good governance, the primacy of the law, independence of the judiciary, and a need to depoliticize institutions.  The latter set, although stressed in the Resolution, have to be treated as means to the end called ‘regime change’ for if these were troublesome there should have been similar resolutions on each and every member state of the United Nations.  There weren’t and there will not be either. 

What Ranil Wickremesinghe is not elaborating in his casual ‘put me in charge and I will get you and all of us out of jail’ statement is the relevance of the Resolution to the vexed issue of the larger social contract.  Ranil is no fool.  He is probably the best read Member of Parliament.  His understanding of political philosophy and even the politics of the possible is probably second to none among his contemporaries. 

He, more than anyone else, would be able to explain why this Government or any government for that matter has to reject the Resolution and refuse to submit to arbitration by what is essentially a Kangaroo Court.  He would understand that submission amounts to buttressing a bad precedent and more than that subverts the very foundations of a political society that values democracy based on true representation.  This government has not lost the legitimacy of authority vested in it by the people and whatever erosion there is has nothing to do with the articles scripted into Washington machinations in Geneva and elsewhere.  This Government was not mandated to concede ground to Eelamists.  The people did not confer on this government the authority to open the door to intervention by outsider forces clearly operating against their overall interests.   

For all this, it must be acknowledged that mandates are twisted and re-interpreted by politicians all the time.  For example, President A may be ousted by Presidential Candidate B because President A was seen to be corrupt, tyrannical and incompetent, but President B, after assuming office, can say that he/she was mandated to ‘resolve minority grievances through excessive devolution of power to the provinces’.  We have to live with that reality.  The reverse can also be true. President A can brush aside corruption, tyranny and incompetence, and claim that his one and only task is to ensure that not one inch is conceded when it comes to sovereignty, territorial integrity etc. 

Ranil Wickremesinghe knows all this; all the more reason why he ought to elaborate on what would otherwise be a careless statement that amounts to confessing that he is in cahoots with the USA and UK for purely personal/party political reasons. 

The key question that is relevant to the people of this country at this point is whether or not they are willing to have the larger social contract be re-written by those who cannot in any way claim to be representing them, namely the USA and UK.  It is a question that all political entities, parties included, need to ponder over, regardless of love or hatred for the regime. 

A clear and comprehensive response from Ranil Wickremesinghe at this point would not hamper his electoral fortunes.  Indeed, the UNP as a whole could only benefit from stating its position in this regard.  Failure to do so would force conclusions of the following kind: the UNP does not care about the social contract and would gladly support its subversion and consequent submission to Washington in return for securing power.  It holds for the Democratic Party as well as the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna too. 

To recap, in Ranil’s case, he needs to answer some other relevant questions.  If he can, as he claims, get the USA off Sri Lanka’s back if he were in power, does it amount to an acknowledgment that the current debate on Sri Lanka has nothing to do with truth, justice, accountability and reconciliation?  Secondly, is he saying that the USA is only talking about war-related issues because it believes that these issues can help affect regime-change?  Also, is he saying that vexed issues such as what really happened during the last stages of the war (and of course before that, including the period when the IPKF was ‘handling’ terrorism and terrorists) can just disappear into a column called ‘Non-Issues’ if this regime is overthrown?  He is not a simpleton and therefore it is incumbent on him to response. 

We await. 

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No one gives a hoot about truth, it seems

There can be no ‘reconciliation’ (whatever that means) without ‘closure’ (whatever that means).  There can be no closure without ‘truth’ (whatever that means).  It follows then that obtaining truth is a non-negotiable for closure which, in turn, is a non-negotiable in the matter of reconciliation.  The ‘whatever that means’ is a necessary interjection because politics is not clean. It is not objective.  The rhetorician lords over the logician in these things. Preferences make for privileging and suppression.  And this is why it can be ‘logically’ said that those who talk of truth, justice and reconciliation as though these are obtainable through clean and clinical cuts of reason are either utterly naïve or are charlatans disguised as benefactors of humankind. 

And yet, come ‘Geneva Time’ we hear these words a lot.  Reconciliation.  Truth.  Justice.  Accountability.  All articles of faith. For some.  Like Tamil National Alliance Member of Parliament M Sumanthiran.  He wants all of it.  A few teaspoons of reconciliation, a dash of truth, a sprinkling of justice, a tablespoon of accountability and you’ve got it made.  A good speech that is, there’s no denying that.

But then again Sumanthiran doesn’s own any of these, separately or together.  Others are smart too. They too pencil in a liberal dose of the said goodies for, as I said, they make for good speeches. ‘Others’ meaning people like Ananthi Sasitharan, for example. 

They say certain towns are too small for two big persons.  Geneva is small and small-minded though both Sumanthiran and Ananthi are it looks like they both think the other is too big to share stage with.  So there was a spat. 

Now this could have been because of upstaging-need, we don’t know, and we really don’t know why Ananthi was upset with Sumanthiran.  Perhaps  she felt a pinch on her ego.  We can guess why Sumanthiran was not in a spotlight sharing frame of mind though.  She has the potential, he might have thought, of wrecking his speech; not on account of using the same vocabulary but, in fact, for the very ‘problem’ of using the same terms. 

See, Ananthi Sasitharan is not cool.  Not for people who take human rights and human wrongs seriously.  Sumanthiran is smart enough to know she’s a liability.  There’s a story she says and a story she would rather no one talks about.  She will talk of a missing husband but will not talk about the husband and what he did.

Sumanthiran is Colombo, Ananthi is not.  Sumanthiran heard of depravation, Ananthi saw it.  Sumanthiran knew that Tamil civilians were used as a human shield, Ananthi knows who the humans shielded.  Sumanthiran knows that those Tamils held hostage by the LTTE tried to flee into areas controlled by the Sri Lankan security forces, Ananthi knows who tried to stop them and how.  For Sumanthiran it was nameless, faceless ‘Butcher-Boys’, for Ananthi it was her ‘Butcher-Boy’. 

Ananthi’s husband, Elilan, was one of the butcher-boys and he played the part to perfection.  He was seen brandishing a sword with blood dripping from the blade, threatening those who would flee with dismemberment.  Some had obviously defied the order and paid the price, the relevant exchange marked on a blade-ledger with the blood of the defiant. 

Sumanthiran knows that the West doesn’t like hearing about blood, about the swipe of sword and the ‘un-limbing’ it produces.  Sumanthiran probably didn’t want those ‘specificities’ brought into the Geneva discussion because it would spoil Ananthi’s case as well as the TNA’s case.  ‘Spoil’ would not have meant the US-led resolution would have lost out. No, it would have made some people squirm in their seats.  People notice squirms.  People comment.  It’s loss of face to lose composure. 

Winning the vote is one thing, but losing credibility and sympathy is quite another. In the long run, sympathy counts.  Even the biggest hypocrites would be happier if they don’t have to field tough questions about the credibility of ‘victims’ especially if these ‘victims’ are providers of ‘evidence’ used to lengthen charge-sheets. 

The problem with all this is that it throws ‘the truth’ out of the equation.    Is Ananthi ready to be truthful about her husband?  Isn’t the truth of what he did, who he killed, who he ordered killed, the grief thus engendered, the doubts and lack of closure it all resulted in less worth investigation and comment than the truth about her husband’s fate?  Is Sumanthiran ready to talk about Elilan-truth?  How about the other fellow travelers, people like Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Jehan Perera, J.C. Weliamuna and Nimalka Fernando?  How about Frances Harrison and Callum Macrae?  Would David Cameron be interested?  How about a whispered query from Navi Pillay to Ananthi?  Would Al Jazeera ‘explore’? Would Channel 4 give us an exposé and air it on the sidelines of the next session of the UNHRC?

Or are they not interested in ‘the truth, the WHOLE truth and NOTHING BUT the truth’?    And if that’s the case, are we to conclude that they are not interested in justice either?  Can we all agree, thereafter, that this reconciliation talk is just a lot of hot air and that no one really cares about peace, harmony, holding-hands, singing the national anthem in 157 dialects? 

A final question:  can we just move on now?

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And they missed Pillay's LTTE reference too!

Navi Pillay said a mouthful and got a lot of it wrong.  Still, she did bash the LTTE and its supporters.  The BBC 'faithfully' reported about the mountains Pillay made out of molehills.  The BBC missed out on Pillay's comments on the LTTE.  The LTTE reference was at the beginning of her statement.  How could they have missed?  Poor journalistic skills?  Some might say that the BBC has digested so much of pro-LTTE propaganda that they just can't stomach anti-LTTE sentiments.

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Taking stock of Navi Pillai’s ‘Worst’

The lady came. She saw.  She was honest enough to say that although this is her longest visit to any country as head of UNHRC, she didn’t see much.  That’s her problem though and she can’t complain, having sat on an invite for more than two years.  She came, she saw, and she released a statement.  What has she said and what should one make of it?

Well, it depends who is trying to make what of what she has said of course, but let’s take a stab at it anyway.  Let’s first state bias (something that ‘neutrals’ who are ideologically driven contrary to claim do not).  I am suspicious of Navi Pillay.  She is selective in her targeting of countries, plays pussycat to big name nations and acts tiger to nations that big name nations she’s terrified of want to target for censure.  

She is quick to pick up horror stories, slow to check reliability of source.  She has the gumption to talk about which department best fits which ministry and about constitutional enactments of her preference, as though she is Viceroy, but is tight-lipped about the US Patriot Act. Tokenism is her ‘out’ when it comes to Sri Lanka’s detractors, imply that allegation is proven crime her pat-line on Sri Lanka.  She doesn’t compare and contrast because that would amount to stripping in public.  Understandable. 

But what has she said? 

She says Sri Lanka is heading towards authoritarian rule.  Correct.  Not news.  That piece of ‘news’ is 35 years old (someone should give her a copy of the 1978 Constitution).  Can it be changed? Yes.  The Government has the numbers.  But do politicians have the will?  Are we naïve enough to believe that those with power will agree to have wings clipped?  Saying and doing are two different things.  Criticism is good, political activism is better, but regime-change projects are different from system-change projects.  Tougher. 

As for her enumeration of various ‘disturbing developments’ she is perhaps swayed by inflated versions of interested parties.  Inflation serves politicians and detracts from the aggrieved.  On the ground, there is disappointment, but is there widespread ‘horror’?  No.  That’s unfortunate of course, but Pillay can blame the inflators, for the people are not unaware of their track records during and after the long struggle to rid the country of the terrorist menace.

She has threatened Sri Lanka in no uncertain terms.  She has said that if Sri Lanka doesn’t set up credible (i.e. independent, comprehensive and transparent) processes to investigate allegations, then calls for international inquiry will continue.  Leaving aside that the ‘if’, if complied with, never really resulted in the ‘then’ of if-then clauses as far as the movers and shakers of the international community are concerned, there’s nothing to stop the Government of taking this as a positive and even friendly suggestion.  The downside is that we live in a world where once a country is targeted, nothing done is deemed ‘enough’. 

The most important part of her missive is the following:

‘The LTTE was a murderous organization that committed numerous crimes and destroyed many lives.  Those in the diaspora (sic) who continue to revere the memory of the LTTE must recognize that there should be no place for the glorification of such a ruthless organization.’

First, she should have mentioned those in Sri Lanka who ‘revere the memory of the LTTE’ to that note.  Secondly, she should understand that the human rights activists and journalists she is concerned about (and whose glorious lies have been repeated enough, expanded, believed and written as fact in reports she has read and which no doubt color her reading) are part of that group.  The Government can and must ask her to make the connection, with adequate substantiation of claim of course.  Fourth, Messers Suresh Premachandran, R. Sampanthan, M. Sumanthiran and Chief Ministerial aspirant Vigneswaran will now be required to explain their conduct vis-à-vis this ‘diaspora’, the diasporic-funds, moral support and so on.  

Whereas Pillay wants the Government to set up mechanisms to investigate allegations (note, ‘allegation’ is not the same as ‘proven charge’), she has squarely concluded that the LTTE committed crimes against humanity.  Now the Government can insist that she follows up, by taking to task the approvers, beneficiaries and glorifiers of those horrendous crimes.

The Government can and must take this as the base document for all future engagement with the UNHRC, with a permanent introductory note on all missives quoting Pillay’s LTTE take.  The Government can and must work out modalities for proper investigation, not because Pillay wants it, but the people need to know. 

She spoke of ‘truth, justice and reparations for people’s suffering during the war’. Excellent!  Can Pillay please use her friends in high places to get the ‘Diaspora’ to cough up on behalf of the LTTE?  And can Pillay please ask Dr. Manmohan Singh to compensation Sri Lanka for Delhi’s considerable role in causing untold suffering in Sri Lanka?  

As for authoritarian tendencies, Pillay must understand that it is our business and not the business of the international community.  Pandering to the regime-change lobby will only give further credence to the general perception that the UN and UNHRC are out of order.  That will strengthen regime.  That will postpone democratization and put constitutional amendment on the back-burner (without gas). 

Her piece disappoints Eelamists and their tag-along circus of internally displaced politicians and ideologically misplaced 'human rights activists' and 'journalists' more than it would dismay the Government.   Pillay has done a poor ‘worst’, the Government might conclude.

[You can write directly to Malinda Seneviratne at msenevira@gmail.com] 

 

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On Navi Pillay’s ‘open-mind’, mildly

Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, is due in Sri Lanka today.  Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe expects Pillay to come with an open mind.  Pillay, for her part, said on Friday (23^rd) that she has an open mind and will not be pre-judging anything ahead of her visit. 

Well, words are words, can be used to communicate, can be used to miscommunicate, to lie and distort, play down or exaggerate.  Pillay knows words.  Pillay employs them.  And there are times she’s silent.

Navi Pillay says she won’t pre-judge and that’s a good thing to say.  On the other hand she has pre-judged before and has shown a clear penchant to believe tall stories cooked up by pro-LTTE elements and regurgitated by the naïve or else sour-graped, i.e. those who prayed for a different military outcome in May 2009, backed a different horse or bet on a different political winner in January 2010 and April 2010.  None of the claims treated as fact by Navi Pillay are substantiated; dig from source to source and one ends up with an LTTE spokesperson or someone held hostage by the LTTE as Source No 1. 

But Pillay is a human being; she can make mistakes.  There are things Pillay’s confidantes have not told her and things she is not ready to give ear to because she is not ready to believe anything contrary to what she has decided was the truth.  That’s human too.  She cannot with finger-snap divest herself of all the judge-baggage she’s accumulated over the years.  So let us not entertain any illusions about Pillay’s open-heart.

On the other hand part of being human is being able to recognize error and having the humility to acknowledge.  Pillay can compare and contrast. She must.  She can take into account context. She must.  She can be fair. She must.  She can visualize the what-might-have-been if things didn’t happen the way they did.  She must. 

All this time, she’s clearly been fed by mischievous elements in the I/NGO sector that sided with the LTTE (for a variety of reasons of course, not necessary because of love for terrorism or Tiger but perhaps in accordance with the adage, ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’).  There was that infamous and laughably flawed ‘Darusman Report’.  There were scurrilous documents authored by pen-for-hire ‘scribes’ who are either utterly naïve or incompetent or else suffered traumatic childhoods,  not to mention great television productions by Channel 4 (key word: productions).  Can Pillay shed all that? Let us see.

Pillay must, most importantly, take care not to confuse issues.  This regime is not the best on earth.  It has erred horrendously on many counts.  In this, there’s very little to pick between this regime and its predecessors going all the way back to 1977 at least.  Pillay’s project however is not regime change.  That’s the business of the people of Sri Lanka.  Now there are people who want regime change (for right and wrong reasons), but it is the most pernicious and politically bankrupt among them who would deliberately tag regime-change-need to a tall, uneven and politically tainted narrative about the last stages of the struggle against terrorism. 

Pillay is going to be here for a week. That’s a short time to walk the length, breadth and depth of thirty years of a nation, so it would suffice for her to acknowledge that she is but tiptoeing on the corner of a territory that is mapped out according to cartographer’s political preferences.  But blood is blood, terror is terror.  Even Pillay won’t find it impossible to imagine a 2013 with the LTTE (by briefing herself about a Sri Lanka that had to contend with the LTTE) and contrast it to the LTTE-less Sri Lanka she is visiting. 

She can think ‘resettlement’ and think of IDP camps she’s known and re-settlement programs that haven’t got off the ground in countries with immense resources. She can think rehabilitation and integration and ask herself which country held to ransom by terrorists and terrorism rehabilitated and reintegrated into society more than 10,000 terrorists and terrorist suspects, against whom there hasn’t been even a single police complaint since.  She can walk around Colombo and imagine a city that had roadblocks and checkpoints at almost every junction, and get a rough idea of freedoms gained. 

There are a lot of things Pillay can do.  If she can open her mind (yes, she can say she is coming with an open mind, but few will buy that). 

One thing she can be assured about is that whether she comes with open or closed mind, whether she sheds her biases or not, she will see a lot of smiles.  From total strangers, especially those who don’t know what on earth she’s doing in Sri Lanka.  That smile has a name: Resilience.  We have survived all kinds of invasions.  We will not be deterred by judgment, especially by the partial (even if they tell themselves ‘We are fair’).  

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