The business of prosecution

Steven J Rapp is a prosecutor.  He needs to exact a judgment in favor of his client.  That’s his JD.  So he has come on business that much is clear.  He is not a judge and does not have to weigh evidence or assess veracity of claims.  Naturally, he is selective. 

Steven J Rapp refers to the Darusman Report, again a document compiled by considering claims by interested parties.  Like the authors of that report, Rapp has listened to claims and allegations. He has not questioned motive, he has not sought clarification, he has not questioned the reliability of claimant or informant and he has not bothered to solicit representation by key, reliable, unimpeachable and disinterested sources.  His is thus an exercise of sourcing, selective naturally, for the purpose of legitimating a politically position on Sri Lanka.  That’s his business.

The US Embassy tweet which he claims was prompted by a need to respond to media articles and a protest is mischievous.  There is claim without substantiation.  That claim is now ‘fact’ or rather turning it into fact is what his visit was all about.  It is quite akin to wanting a separate state and conjuring ‘grievances’ to justify dream as well as means used to conclude a land-theft exercise. 

The ‘credible witnesses’ are all politically compromised.  We have ex-LTTE cadres. Then there is the TNA, shameless mouthpieces of the LTTE. There  are the Catholic priests, Rayappu Joseph and Thomas Saundranayagam, current avatars of a long line of ‘priests’ for whom terrorists were ‘boys’ and who directly or indirectly supported the LTTE.  No mention of Dr Shanmugarajah who witnessed what ‘the boys’ did, saw the fighting and attended to the wounded.  There nothing of his account which roundly debunks the oft-quoted claims by LTTE operatives who have become the darlings of Channel 4, Human Rights Watch and others like Rapp.  No mention of Hindu/Frontline journalist Murali Reddy who was there during the last days of the conflict.  He hasn’t taken into account the hard evidence of various organizations involved in channeling supplies to civilians held hostage by the LTTE in the first five months of 2009. 

Why not? 

He doesn’t have to.  Rapp is in the prosecuting business.  It is his business to be silent and if necessary suppress all facts that are detrimental to his case.  He would not have his scripted narrative disrupted by anything, especially fact.  He would rather go with fiction.  He has. 

And after all is said and done, after Rapp has folded and wrapped his pomposity and left the island, we are left with a Sri Lanka that must learn to live with the Rapps of this world and learn to reconcile in spite of their pernicious meddling.  We can, and that, Mr Rapp, is the best answer this country can give you. 

msenevirs@gmail.com

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Let’s all tweet now

The US Embassy has tweeted.  Tweeted a pic.  This is the line:’ St. Anthany's Ground - site of Jan 2009 killing of hundreds of families by army shelling.’ Thanks for the information. 

Information?  Is that what I said?  Sorry.  The word is ‘claim’.  Not the same as ‘fact’.  Claim is vague and has connotations of conjecture.  Information implies things known, definite, verified.  But then again there is only so much one can do with 140 characters, except of course that there’s no upper limit on the number of tweets allowed.  Michele Sison could have sent more tweets in order to elaborate, substantiate etc.  Didn’t happen.

So we have this claim.  There’s a date: January 2009.  US Ambassador at Large for Global Criminal Justice Steven R Rapp (that’s almost half a tweet length btw) has figured that the place was shelled, shelled in January 2009, shelled by the Army and that this shelling had killed hundreds of families.  Just by talking to some people who sided with the LTTE.  Wow! 

Now we can ask him what he’s done in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.  We can ask if he’s gone to other countries democratized (that US-speak for ‘destabilized’) by the USA to check what’s happened and what’s happening.  Libya and Egypt come to mind.  We can ask if he’s gone to Saudi Arabia and Yemen.  We can ask what the liberty-bringers in Syria have done.  We can ask if he’s investigated and concluded.   We can ask Sison if her counterparts in these countries invited Rapp and if indeed they have, whether Rapp stood on similar sites.  We can ask Sison if her counterparts tweeted similarly, if they said for example ‘X [Type in location] – site of Y [Type in Month and Year] killing of hundreds of families by US [or ‘us’]’.  There’s enough characters left to script in method; drones, bombs etc.   

Did any US diplomat say anything about the Highway of Death in Iraq (google that!)?  What was the tweet equivalent of the diplomatic equivalent of Sison way back when the US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki or sprayed Napalm in Vietnam?  Was there some pithy one liner about the scorched earth policy of the USA?  We don’t know.

But since this is tweeting time, let’s play. The following are some possible tweets which you can take as ‘information’.  Here goes:

George W Bush begged Barack Obama do something, anything, from being accused of committing crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan!!

Guantanamo Bay is just a holding facility for pigs, mosquitoes, centipedes, gila monsters and ostriches who have cut school more than once!!

Michele Sison has a fixation: she has to watch at least one episode of Star Trek (first three series) every night after 11 so she can sleep

Apollo 11 never went to the moon and Neil Armstrong's recorded speech was 'Buzz dude, I really, really, really, really, really, need to pee'

George W Bush's election campaigns were funded by very rich Arabs who he kept away from other backers, the Ku Klux Klan and Kermit the Frog

Ok.  We can go on and on and on with 140-character tweets. 

It’s time for Charlie Chaplin to be reborn.  Maybe he’ll be called the Savior.  At least he was honest.  

msenevira@gmail.com

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