Foreign policy and the doctrine of ‘conceding walkovers’

Sri Lanka has a severe human resources problem. That’s stating the obvious. Forget bad planning, the absence of an occupational classification, assessment of needs and charting of future requirements in terms of a reasonable view of how things economic and social would unfold; we lost several hundred thousand people over the last 30 years and even if just 1% of the number warranted the tag ‘talented’ it is a massive loss. Had ‘they’ been around, in a country of 22 million, it might have made the difference.

Ok, that’s preamble. Let’s get to specifics. In a country where there’s a severe human resource issue, it is natural that this be reflected in most if not all sectors. The foreign service is no exception. That said, it must be recognized that much of the good work done by our diplomats and indeed the various missions abroad go unrecognized. They don’t brag. They hardly issue media statements. And, anyway, that which has to be done ‘quietly’ does not make for noise. 

Unfortunately, there’s a tendency to berate the diplomats for not getting this or that done or for causing irreparable (harsh word, that) harm by what they do. The larger picture, the constraints, the contexts etc., are ignored. These include political buffoonery, let us not forget. 

There are, however, inexplicable tendencies which need to be flagged. Consider the 41st Sessions of the UNHRC underway in Geneva as I write. Sri Lanka is not on the hot seat, for now, having obtained an extension on delivery with respect to Resolution 30/1. Sri Lanka, however, and like most other nations, is not ‘excused’ from proceedings. 

As a member state, there are issues that we need to address, even if they don’t directly involve Sri Lanka. Representatives of many member states do engage, perhaps in the spirit of the collective endeavor to create conditions for a better human family and also because any determination anywhere can be cited in moves to obtain similar determinations elsewhere. What wrecks the Philippines in 2019 could very well bring down Sierra Leone in 2021. No one can take on all issues and indeed that could amount to spreading oneself thin. Limited resources mean that one has to pick the battles. Showing solidarity can cost, we know this. In a world of multiple inequities, a case can be made for sober pragmatism. 

On the other hand, it would be strange indeed if the representatives of Sierra Leone opted to remain silent when that country is vilified. Well, that holds true for Sri Lanka too. 

One cannot fault the Sri Lanka mission in Geneva for not attending all events organized to level unfair and highly tendentious charges. Side events of such sessions are vent-outlets for the most part. So too are ‘interventions’ by NGOs sandwiched between debates on important matters. The UNHRC probably place little value on 90 second rant-rave presentations. Still, we cannot ignore the fact that such invective does get heard by representatives of member states. This is why, there is a response-opportunity. Representatives typically respond to charges leveled at their countries and in some instances defend friendly nations. Not Sri Lanka, or at least, not Sri Lanka at this particular session of the UNHRC.  

In time slots allocated to various pro-Eelam and/or anti Sri Lankan groups, speaker after speaker uttered absolute falsehoods about Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan mission had nothing to say by way of response. In fact, in at least two of these sessions the mission was not represented by a diplomat. Perhaps they were busy with off-the-limelight work, but any random person listening to the anti Sri Lankan submissions cannot be faulted if he/she went away thinking Sri Lanka is one hell of a country. Literally. 

When a Sri Lankan took issue with the Ambassador of a European country for the position taken, the Ambassador was taken aback and had responded ‘I didn’t know all this’. He had heard one side of the story and didn’t know there were other and more compelling narratives with much better substantiation. 

The only attempt to put the record straight came from a Sri Lankans who used the time slots given to NGOs. J Tenny Fernando, Senaka Rajapakse and Hiru Makewitage representing the Executive Committee of the Global Sri Lanka Forum and several speakers from another organization based in Zurich  made pertinent points which included clarification on absurd claims made by the separatist lobby and also urged the Council to consider the fact that its ill-advised interventions in Sri Lanka with the happy and wide-eyed support of the current regime created conditions for the Easter Sunday attack. A drop in the ocean, no doubt, but a drop sadly made significant by the absolute silence of those who get paid to represent the country’s interests in such forums. 

That’s Geneva. Let’s take Canada.  Now it is no secret that Canada has been almost like the headquarters for the LTTE and its proxy outfits.  For reasons of justifying immigration and as a means of continuing covert criminal activity, such groups have continued to be vociferous. They engage in relentless lobbying of politicians, leveraging a significant vote-bank. 

And so we have politicians such as Patrick Brown, the Mayor of Brampton, talking about ‘the horror of the Tamil genocide. He has pledged to pass a municipal motion declaring ‘crimes against the Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka constitute a genocide’ and declare May 18th as ‘Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day.  The good Mr Brown probably doesn’t known the meaning of the word ‘genocide’. He obviously doesn’t know anything about Sri Lanka, the terrorism of the LTTE and how they held several hundred thousand Tamil civilians hostage.  

He is not alone. Toronto Mayor John Tory issued a proclamation declaring May 18 ‘Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day’. Scarborough-Rouge Park MPP Vijay Thanigasalam recently introduced Bill 104, an Act to Proclaim Tamil Genocide Education Week during the seven days each year ending on May 18. 

We could go on. We could cross the Atlantic and talk about similar happenings in the UK. We cannot fault ignorant politicians in such countries for idiocy. We cannot fault criminal groups in these countries for the uttering of falsehoods and tossing around of wild claims and exaggeration. The issue here can be captured in a single question: ‘What have our diplomatic missions done?’

The truth is, sadly, ‘very little’. Well, THAT could be an exaggeration. In Toronto, they’ve done nothing to counter moves such as the ones mentioned above. What is stopping them? Is it lack of resources? Well, one is required to do one’s best, and if ‘nothing’ amounts to ‘best’ there’s something seriously wrong. Is it that their hands have been tied and their mouths gagged by the Foreign Ministry? That’s possible or even probable, given that this government has on many occasions acted in ways diametrically opposed to the national interest, showing incompetence, servility and sloth of unprecedented proportions.  

When claims go uncontested they become things that can be said in the ‘goes without saying’ manner. That’s not slippage, it’s conceding a fabricated narrative. 

When those paid to do their job are sleeping on things, indignant and patriotic Sri Lankans living in these countries have had to counter the lies. The missions probably do other work that’s useful, so we should not call for their closure.  We should not forget, however, that there have been very proactive missions and diplomats who worked tirelessly to set the record straight.  The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, anyway, cannot be left off the hook. The regime too.  In the absence of counterpoint the Eelamist narrative is becoming the default story in international forums and in countries like Canada and the UK. Not only is this a travesty of justice, it is an insult on all peace-loving Sri Lankans. 

malindasenevi@gmail.com

[First published in the Daily Mirror on July 13, 2019]

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Torture, summary execution and war crimes in ‘nasty places’

The 'leniency' shown by the UNHRC with respect to investigations of alleged war crimes shows that violations as well as violation-investigation are framed by considerations of political expediency. What after all is the need to give breathing space to a new government?  Does it mean that 'reconciliation' as per preferred outcomes overrides rights-concern?  Why limit the whole thing to the so-called 'last stages of the war' when 'stages' is irrelevant as far as victims are concerned, when 'stages' are irrelevant to the pursuit of truth and the cause of justice?  The UNHRC is not about human rights, clearly.  This was written more than four years ago.   

There are two indisputable facts associated with the US-UK led invasion of Iraq.  First, there was absolutely no evidence of Iraq having ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ (WMD). Secondly, Nick Clegg, the British Deputy Prime Minister has confessed that the invasion was illegal. Let’s throw in a third, for laughs: if the existence of WMD warrants invasion, the US should invade Britain and Britain should return the favour.  Laughs aside, consequent to Points 1 and 2, everything that US and British troops have done in Iraq since the invasion constitutes ‘War Crimes’. 

Let’s get into specifics.  We all know about Abu Ghraib and the techniques of interrogation practiced by US troops. Sorry, not all of us, for Patricia Butenis seems to be totally ignorant about these things.  What many did not know was the fact that a similar torture chamber was run for years in Iraq by the Joint Forces Interrogation Team (JFIT). It has been dubbed ‘Britain’s Abu Ghraib’. 

There is evidence of detainees at this facility being systematically and brutally mistreated. They were starved, deprived of sleep, subjected to sensory deprivation, threatened with execution and treated in numerous ways that contravene the Geneva Convention.  Trainee interrogators have been told, it is now revealed, that they should ‘aim to provoke humiliation, disorientation, exhaustion, anxiety and fear in the prisoners they question’. 

We are not talking about cooked up video footage from dubious sources or pictures of people who could have been killed by anyone, by the way.  This is all beyond-shadow-of-doubt stuff.  The question that is being considered in British defense and judicial circles is not the reliability of the evidence, but whether inquiry would be in the best interest of complainants!  Nick Harvey, the Armed Forces Minister (Liberal Democrat) has gone on record to say that ‘a costly public inquiry would be unable to investigate individual criminal behaviour or impose punishments. Any such inquiry would arguably therefore not be in the best interests of the individual complainants who have raised these allegations.’  More importantly, he wants the Ministry of Defence to investigate the matter itself. 

So Britain does not want independent investigation into war crimes.  Yes, not imagined crimes and those which by no stretch of imagination can be tagged ‘systemic’, but crimes that were scripted in training manuals which had the blessings of the British Government.  The holier-than-thou in Britain calling for an ‘independent international investigation’ into alleged war crimes by Sri Lankan troops and indeed the principal mover and shaker in this matter, Patricia Butenis, do not seem to have read ‘Introduction to Interrogation and Tactical Questioning’ or, if they have, been disturbed by the contents.  That, by the way, is the Bible British interrogators swear by. 

It is telling indeed that Wikileaks has not come up with much by the way of cables exchanged by diplomats belonging to countries that together invaded Iraq expressing concern about such horrendous violations. 

There is no mention in such missives of Baha Mousa, a 26 year old Iraqi hotel receptionist who was kicked and beaten to death whilst in British army custody in Basra in September 2003. No mention of Abdul Jabbar Musa Ali, a 55-year-old head teacher, who was detained by soldiers of the Black Watch and allegedly kept hooded and beaten and whose body, when released to family, was found to be extensively bruised. No mention of Tanik Mahmoud who was kicked to death in a British Chinook helicopter by members of a Royal Air Force regiment who had detained him at a checkpoint. Nothing of Ather Karim Khalaf, shot and beaten at a British checkpoint after his car door swung open and struck a British soldier. No mention either of  Nineteen-year-old Said Shabram drowned after he was pushed into the Shatt-al-Arab waterway by British troops. These are civilians, by the way. 

The techniques apparently were perfected over decades of British counter-insurgency campaigns in Borneo, Malaya, South Arabia, Palestine, Cyprus and Northern Ireland.  The manuals stress the need for interrogators to ‘find discreet and nasty places such as shipping containers,’ and suggest places ‘out of hearing’ and ‘away from media’ to conduct interrogations.

Nasty places. Away from the media. Out of hearing.  So nasty, so far away from the media and beyond hearing that the British public will not know what their tax money is being used for, perhaps. 

Malinda Seneviratne is the Editor-in-Chief of 'The Nation' and can be reached at msenevira@gmail.com.  This article was first published in December 2010.  

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Uncle Sam: The Mother of All War Criminals

[This was first published in 'The Nation', September 20, 2009.  Given the continuing criminality of the United States of America, sadly, these kinds of comments are (relatively) timeless]

Robert O. Blake, former US Ambassador to Sri Lanka and currently Assistant Secretary, South and Central Asian Affairs in the Obama administration, is said to have told Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to Washington, Jaliya Wickremasuriya that a report on the conduct of government forcees during the war against the LTTE would be submitted to the US Congress tomorrow (September 21). 

We all know that Robert O. Blake was an ace mischief maker, the epitome of the Ugly American, during his tenure in Colombo. We know that he did everything possible to find safe passage out of Sri Lanka for the world’s most ruthless terrorist, Velupillai Prabhakaran.  We know that he was one of the key players (along with Teresita Schaffer, another important figure who batted for the Eelamists) in getting down Jehan Perera and Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu to brief people in Washington D.C. recently. 

We know that the likes of Perera and Saravanamuttu represent that tiny sliver of public opinion that always held against the state and that has been largely compromised by rabid anti-intellectualism and a marked propensity to treat terrorism with affection.  There are no prizes therefore for predicting that this report will be of the Channel 4 News type: sourced to the most despicable and corrupt political operators that ever walked this island, selective and ideologically motivated in reference and this on substantiation. 

What’s all this about?  Well, the short answer is: ‘more of the same’.  Terms come to mind: ‘double-standards’, ‘sour grapes’, ‘revenge’.  ‘Double-standards’ because the USA is by far the worst culprit in terms of violating human rights; ‘sour grapes’ because the USA did its all to give life-breath to a dying terrorist movement and failed, and ‘revenge’ because the people of Sri Lanka didn’t care a hoot for Robert O. Blake’s Viceroy-posturing and did what had to be done: make good on the widely accepted global policy called ‘Zero-tolerance on terrorism’.     

Look at who is upset: Uncle Sam!  I don’t know the legal standing of this report in the USA and its political and legal overall, but it occurred to me that there’s nothing to prevent the Sri Lankan parliament to constitute a committee that keeps track of war crimes world wide.  I believe that such a committee could submit to Parliament a ‘note’ on what’s going on in Iraq and Afghanistan.  

Such a report would not make waves.  The world knows that Uncle Sam has been the world’s biggest bully for the past so many decades.  On the other hand, no Government has had what it takes to sock it back to Uncle Sam.  Someone better do it.  Sri Lanka has nothing to lose now.  We have to recognize that the West hates this regime, not for its transgressions (which, compared to most nations fighting a terrorist) is hardly worth a murmur, but because Mahinda Rajapaksa for all his faults is too much of a patriot. 

Here are some facts which I am sure will not be mentioned or even footnoted in this report that’s on its way to the US Congress.

The United States invaded Iraq twice and moved to impose economic sanctions on that country because a ‘friend’ (Saddam Hussein was The Friend in Uncle Sam’s battle to destabilize Iran – remember Iran-Contra?)  had become ‘foe’.  Over half a million Iraqi children died as a result of sanctions.  Over a million Iraqis have died as a consequence of the invasion.  That country was bombed into the middle ages by George W Bush’s Alliance of the Willing to Massacre Brown People (check out George Carlin’s right-on-the-money comment, ‘We like war’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoTkbwML-zU). 

For what reason? Weapons of mass destruction.  Key word: ALLEGED.  How many did Bush’s men and women in uniform find? NONE.  The horror stories authored by the US occupation forces in Iraq would fill a library.  I am willing to wager that Robert O Blake would not have the tongue to utter a single reference to what the US did and continues to do in Iraq in terms of ‘human rights abuses’ (a sanitized term for ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’). 

Afghanistan.  Robert O. Blake probably will not wet his pants if someone mentioned that country and that’s only because he is the Ugly American Personified and has a mind that blocks out anything negative about the USA.  To hunt down a single terrorist, the USA turned half a million people into IDPs, destabilized a region and killed close to 40,000 people.  US jets bomb civilian targets at will and do not feel obliged to say ‘sorry’. 

I am sure that Robert O. Blake will not read F. William Engdahl’s ‘Colour revolutions; old and new’, where the author explains a new form of US covert warfare, first played out in Belgrade, Serbia in 2000.  It was not the spontaneous and genuine political movement that people believed it was, Engdhal argues; it was the product of techniques developed in the USA over several decades.   The Clinton administration orchestrated Slobodan Milosevic’s removal.  A $ 41 million campaign was launched from US Ambassador Richard Miles’ office, according to Engdhal. 

Blake will know but not acknowledge the mechanics of Georgia’s bloodless ‘Rose Revolution’ that replaced Edouard Shevardnadze with Mikhail Saskashvili, and Ukrain’s ‘Orange Revolution’ that brought Yushchenko to power in January 2005. 

The ‘Washington-hand’ in the on-going ‘Green Revolution’ in Iran is also well documented. It is said that if the ‘Green Revolution’ in Teheran fails, then ‘hardline regime change must be worked from the outside’.  In a June 12 Wall Street Journal editorial, John Bolton called for Israeli air strikes whatever the outcome - to "put an end to (Iran's) nuclear threat," despite no evidence one exists.

The operation in Sri Lanka suffered the fate of the attempted ‘Saffron Revolution; in Myanmar.  Well, Robert O Blake could not do a ‘Richard Miles’ in Colombo.  Perhaps this is why he is trying it out in Washington.

On July 11, 2008, Jason Leopold headlined his Countercurrents.org article, "State Department's Iran Democracy Fund Shrouded in Secrecy" and stated: "Since 2006, Congress has poured tens of millions of dollars into a (secret) State Department (Democracy Fund) program aimed at promoting regime change in Iran."

Yet Shirin Abadi, Iran's 2003 Nobel Peace prize laureate, said "no truly nationalist and democratic group will accept" US funding for this purpose. In a May 30, 2007 International Herald Tribune column, she wrote: "Iranian reformers believe that democracy can't be imported. It must be indigenous. They believe that the best Washington can do for democracy in Iran is to leave them alone."

What is the truth about Sri Lanka?  Well, Robert O Blake has been parroting claims churned out by the LTTE propaganda machine for a long time now.  Much of the claims have been adequately refuted and retractions articulated by some of the accusers themselves. 

Were there ‘excesses’ perpetrated by the security forces during the war.  It would be silly to say ‘no’.  Wars are not tea-parties.  But there has to be a sense of proportion in claim, objection and the processes of blaming and uncovering truth. 

Here are some facts (which should be compared with the facts from Iraq and Afghanistan):

Sri Lanka fought and defeated the world’s most ruthless terrorist organization which had spread its wings outside the island and linked with other terrorist outfits, some of which the Obama administration is at war with.

Sri Lanka lost thousands of fighting men whose lives were put at extra risk because the Government wanted to minimize civilian casualties.  Had the government been dismissive of cost to civilians, the war would have been over in January 2009 and not May. 

During the conflict, the Government ensured that everything possible was done to provide food and medicine to people being held hostage by the LTTE. 

Throughout the conflict, the Government did not cut back on free education and free healthcare services. Today, post-war, the bulk of the money is going for rehabilitation and rebuilding efforts in the North and East.  Compare this with what the US has done to the people whose lands were stolen (the Native Americans) and the people who built that nation with their labour (the African Americans), and to the victims of Katrina.  And get this: the vast majority of the people backed the President to the hilt and continue to back him in the reconstruction efforts.

How about torture?  There is no evidence of any kind of systemic torture being perpetrated by the Sri Lankan security forces.  Robert O Blake and the Obama administration, if they bring up torture, will be dismissed by mentioning a double-barreled torture chamber: Guantanamo Bay.  Well there is also Abu Ghraib and other such unhappy places associated with the gruesome.  

Enough. The Mother of All War Criminals does not have a leg to stand on and these Washington maneuvers stink.  It is what made some people say ‘You deserve it punk’ to Uncle Sam when that unconscionable attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon took place on September 9, 2001.  The world was willing to give Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt because he positioned himself as the political opposite of the Ugly American.  Looks like the man is no different from his predecessors.  The proof of the pudding is in the substance, not the colouring, Barack.  Tastes horrible, brother.

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The White House preference: ‘Talking for the sake of talking’

The more I listen to Barack Obama the more I get disillusioned about the man.  In the run up to the US Presidential Election informal polls of people from all over the world found him to be way ahead in popularity over his rivals, first Hillary Clinton and then John McCain.  Almost one year into his term, the man sounds more and more like his predecessors. He is redefining his identity and sounds nothing more nothing less than a common thug. 

“Our patience is not unlimited,” Obama told Iran recently, alluding to tougher economic sanctions if Iran does not take the necessary steps. “The United States will not continue to negotiate indefinitely, and we are prepared to move towards increased pressure,” he thundered, reiterating the strong arm foreign policy preference that has made the USA one of the most hated nations in the world.  He was referring to Iran’s nuclear programme.

Acting quite the school principal, Obama has put Iran ‘on notice’.  He charges Iran of ‘breaking rules that all nations must follow’.  The learned President of the USA cannot be ignorant of how his country has broken all rules and norms of decency throughout the long 20^th Century and continues to do so in Iraq and Afghanistan.  But he doesn’t say a word about all this; instead he says ‘we’re committed to serious and meaningful engagement, but not interested in talking for the sake of taking’. 

To me, the bottom line is this: the whole discourse of non-proliferation is wrong.  Obama says that Iran should understand that developing nuclear weapons does not enhance that country’s security but undermines it.  Look who’s ‘talking for the sake of talking’!  No country that has nuclear weapons has a moral right to complain about other countries developing similar capacities. Obama should cut the crap and say it as it is: ‘We are not interested in the idea of a global community, we are only interested in securing resources and markets; we are a selfish people and even as we talk the talk of humanity, community, democracy etc., we do so only insofar as it serves our purposes.’

His predecessor, George W Bush invaded Iraq to look for weapons of mass destruction.  What was that?  Certainly not ‘talking for the sake of talking’.  That was ‘talking for the sake of safeguarding oil interests’.  Is Obama any different? No.  If he was, he would have pulled out from Iraq the day he became President.  

‘Talking for the sake of talking’ quite in contrast to Obama’s claim is in fact the A-Z of US Foreign Policy.  I am thinking right now of Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State and one time opponent of Barack Obama who famously charged the latter of proposing ‘change (one) could Xerox’.  Obama retorted, ‘this is when we enter the season of silliness’.  All that is now in the past.  Clinton does a lot of Xeroxing and Obama is living it up in an unending season of silliness. 

Clinton, a few days ago, as President of the UN Security Council, made some utterly tendentious remarks on the subject of ‘Women, peace and security’.  This woman, who lied to the US voter about having got off a plane in Baghdad ‘under a hail of bullets’ and is blind to the crimes against humanity that her country has committed and continues to do so, flippantly said, ‘Rape has been used as a tactic of war in Sri Lanka’ (she named a couple of other countries too).

‘Tactic of war’ did she say?  Well, the lady is accusing the Government of Sri Lanka of having adopted and implemented a deliberate defence policy of systematically raping people as a key component of its strategy to defeat the LTTE.  Hillary is not saying that the Sri Lankan security forces stole some guavas from a garden in Puthukudiarippu.  He used the word ‘rape’. That’s a serious charge and one which demands elaboration and substantiation.  No one should be allowed to get away with that kind of frivolous charge, least of all a known liar from a country that has brought death and destruction to dozens of countries and is even now displacing innocent civilians by the hundreds on a daily basis and has set in motion processes that cause untold misery to hundreds of thousands of people, in particular women, children, elderly and the sick. 

Who raped whom, Clinton must tell us.  When did it happen?  Why was that charge not made earlier?  Why now? What kind of evidence has surfaced now to warrant this charge?  What is the ‘systematic’ in the alleged incidents that justify the charge, ‘rape as a tactic of war’? 

Patricia Butenis, the US Ambassador to Sri Lanka in a poverty-stricken damage-control exercise, offered that Clinton did not name any person but made a general comment. 

Well, what would Butenis say to a ‘general comment’ about rape and deliberate actions of sexual humiliation committed by US military personnel in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay and who knows where else?  Would she let it pass, if for example, Sri Lanka’s permanent representative to the UN talked of war crimes and inter alia mentioned the United States of America among other ‘rogue states’? 

It’s all talking for the sake of talking, isn’t it?  We are yet to hear the United States of America doing something about having broken and continuing to break rules that most nations follow.  Obama doesn’t want to see photographic evidence of torture and rape perpetrated by his troops. Hillary might want us to believe that the US Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan to dig wells, clean drains and construct toilets.  Butenis will not respond to questions that make her uncomfortable.  None of the three are willing to admit that the Global Thug days of the USA are coming to an end. 

Obama, Clinton and Butenis need to understand that talking the talk but not walking the walk does not win any admirers.  It is even worse to get others to walk one’s talk while one twiddles thumbs and passes judgment. 

Just after 9/11 happened, most Sri Lankans I spoke to expressed shock and sympathy for the victims.  Most of them after doing so, paused for a while, and mouthed the invariable ‘but’, followed by ‘the USA deserved it’.  I am fairly certain that such sentiments were not limited to Sri Lankans.  There is a reason for this and the Obama administration is not doing anything to change the mindset that utters such sentiments.  Indeed people like Robert O Blake have only hardened the genera anti-US sentiment among a lot of people.  Hillary is not helping either and as for Patricia, a willing approver (by designation), there’s very little she can do. 

Few liked George W. Bush.  Obama was supposed to be different.  He is doing his best to prove that he is not.  I feel for all those citizens of the USA who believed in his ‘change’ message.  The truth is, friends, ‘he can’t’.  Sorry, it’s not about ‘yes we can’ any more; it is about ‘no we won’t’ (change). 

That’s of course something the people in that country will have to think about. As for us, in Sri Lanka, we need answers from Hillary. She won’t give any.  We will have to ask her representative in Sri Lanka.  Ms. Patricia Butenis, we need another, more elaborate statement from you.  If you choose silence then we will have no option but to conclude: ‘guilty as charged!’  Sorry.  It’s just us, doing something more than ‘talking for the sake of talking’, I am sure you will understand.

[first published in 'The Nation', October 3, 2009]

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Slumber-fake doesn't fool everyone

A few days ago approximately 500 ex-LTTE cadres spent five days visiting Colombo, Kalutara and Galle, travelling from Vavuniya by train and bus and stopping in Galle, Matara and Embilipitiya.  Given that almost 70% of LTTE cadres who had surrendered or had been captured have been rehabilitated and reintegrated into society with marketable skills and/or having completed courses of study, this doesn’t come as a surprise.  What made me mention the fact is a comment by a US citizen: ‘Can you imagine a group of hardcore ex Al-Qaeda members who had been ‘rehabilitated’ visiting Washington DC?’   My tongue-in-cheek response was, ‘they do, they do.....and have, have...virtually’.

Washington DC was never anti-terrorism.   It was and is terrorist-friendly. Selectively.  Some might even argue that Terrorism Incorporated is headquarted in Washinton DC or that terrorism is another name for ‘Washington DC’, considering that the name is associated with implemented US policy, stated or otherwise.  On the other hand, even if we believed the glossy version of the world regularly dished out by the more or less kept media, the notion of ex terrorists (bearded and turbaned as per popular caricature) visiting the capital of the USA is impossible to visualize.  This is the difference between that country and this, and perhaps explains certain moves against Sri Lanka from that part of the world, i.e. those generated by righteous entities rather than the self-righteous.  They just can’t believe that things can happen in a different way.  And, if you still believe what outfits such as the BBC dishes out, then consider the fact that they had to apologize for using blatantly fake footage from a demonstration in India claiming it was in Tripoli’s ‘Green Square’ to ‘show’ that the city had fallen.  We’ve had enough reports of Gaddafi’s forces bombing civilians from similar organizations without a shred of evidence.

The point is that even those who are ignorant and/or innocent, unlike the movers and shakers in Washington DC, just can’t imagine a world where things get sorted out outside of the guns-in-booty-out logic.  If wars end, they must, they probably believe, involve mass slaughter (planned and executed) and follow with total humiliation of the defeated.  That’s the history that they’ve read and benefitted from.  I am sympathetic. 

There’s no point preaching to the converted.  There’s no point in believing that the truth would help change perceptions that are born out of malice and disseminated as fact even though they are laced with conjecture, wild extrapolation of dubious claims by dubious sources.  One cannot wake up someone who is pretending to sleep, as they say.  Still, it is important to let the sleeping know that it is known that slumber is being feigned.  This is why my thoughts go to visiting US Deputy Secretary of State, Robert Blake, former US Ambassador to Sri Lanka.

The USA recently ‘remembered’ the 9/11 attacks.  It was the 10^th anniversary.   Ten years after the attack, there’s a thing called ‘Ground Zero’ and a piece of paper called the ‘Patriotic Act’, draconian and racist.  There’s also the fact that the ‘9/11 Commission’ was arranged to fail; the Chairman, Vice Chairman and Senior Legal Counsel of the body have all disassociated themselves from the report and have charged that their work was deliberately blocked by Washington.  ‘This investigation is compromised,’ one member of the Commission, former Senator Max Cleland said.  Nothing adds up and we don’t need conspiracy theorists to say this, noting also that there are enough Washington-made conspiracies that require far more urgent attention than the 9/11 cover-ups.  ‘Conspiracy’: that’s another possible ‘aka’ for Washington DC, come to think of it.

For all these reasons, when Blake, according to Wikileaks, shows interest in blueprinting Sri Lanka’s post-terrorist future, there’s lots to tell.  ‘Interest’ is diplo-speak, just so we are clear on this.  The man wants investigation into so-called crimes against humanity.  He knows about Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.  He’s feigning sleep after all.  We need to tell him we are aware though.  Here’s some you-are-not-asleep-Blake pills that Blake will not swallow but whose existence the world knows of.

NATO and the Transitional National Council (Libya) gave the people of Sirte ten days to surrender or face a massacre.  Food, water and electricity were cut off and they were subjected to shelling by artillery and British warships and NATO bombing.  This is another ‘October 14, 2004’, i.e. the day when water and electricity were cut off to Falluja, one day before the start of Ramadan, and when the starvation of the population and a 3-week long bombing spree began before the final assault by US Marines killing 3,000-4,000 civilians.  Blake knows Article 14 of the second Protocol to the Geneva Convention.  We know he knows.

An investigation by the New Statesman and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has revealed that NATO wants to formalize the process of handing over prisoners to parties who are known to use torture, a procedure that violates international law, according to Dr. Juan Mendez, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.

If Robert Blake actually falls asleep, he might wake up and admit that US troops have summarily executed civilians in their hundreds and that there is evidence (not allegations) that people were handcuffed and shot dead.  He might admit that the man the US claimed to have been Osama bin Laden (captured a few months ago in Pakistan) was summarily executed in gross violation of all norms and laws of civilized military conduct.  He might shut up about Sri Lanka and all the cooked up allegations of misconduct by security forces in the island nation’s struggle to rid itself of the menace of terrorism. 

He would preface every statement he makes with the infamous Madeline Albright quote ‘[The USA will] behave with others multilaterally when [it] can and unilaterally as [they] must’ and spare the world and especially Sri Lanka the rank nonsense about democracy, humanity, civilization, conflict-resolution, reconciliation and whatnot that he dishes out regularly. 

As for his fascination with ‘devolution’, let him come out and match ‘Tamil grievance’ to devolution-resolution, without fudging the numbers pertaining to demography and evidence regarding historical claims and with due reference to theories of democracy and development.  

Robert Blake is visiting Sri Lanka.  I wish him one thing: good, long, restful slumber.   I doubt he will want to sleep, however.  He may or may not be planning a Libya in Sri Lanka (or a Sri Lankan version of ‘Iran 1953’), and who knows, he might even succeed.  He can count on one thing, though.  Yes, we know he’s feigning sleep. 

[Courtesy, Daily Mirror, September 13, 2011] 

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More garbage flowing down a sewer called Canal 4

Years ago, when I was an undergraduate, there was among us a highly talented boy.  He was extremely intelligent and although he hardly ever studied or visited the library always produced excellent results at examinations.  He was also a musician and one of the most accomplished I’ve heard on the Israj.  He was an actor and a sportsman too, his pet discipline being wrestling.  He was literally all over the university, engaging in numerous activities even though he spent his mornings teaching, having got an appointment on account of his qualifications in the field of music.

This boy, who always spoke sense, would on occasion come out with a monumental gaffe.  The running joke about him was that when he did slip, he slipped really badly, not least of all because he would add gaffe to gaffe in the process of trying to rectify things.  Channel 4 reminded me of him a few days ago. 

A few weeks ago, Channel 4 came up with a film on Sri Lanka, replete with a cast of shady characters all portrayed without mentioning their involvement in terrorist activities.  It always happens.  Hatred and ego are the parents of error.  It was a full-of-holes production and the holes have been pointed out and indeed, a full review would I believe show that the holes are larger than they actually seem. 

It looks like Channel 4 (henceforth Canal 4, conveyor of foul-matter in the manner of a sewer) has decided that the best way to plug a hole is to stuff it with garbage.  The piece of journalistic incompetence and investigative sloth forever marked by abysmal math skills and lack of integrity called ‘Killing Fields’ has been followed by an ‘interview’ of a couple of soldiers (or so Canal 4 claims) who claim to have been witness to what happened in the last days of the monumental hostage rescue operation carried by the Sri Lankan security forces. 

Canal 4 (maybe I should call it ‘Sewer 4’?) showcases a witness called Fernando.  Claims are made but are not backed by a shred of evidence. The only claim that can be corroborated is that of there being dead bodies.  It is strange that Sewer 4 has not thought of interviewing the hundreds of thousands of civilians who were rescued from the clutches of terrorists and who are now free to travel all over Sri Lanka and all over the world.  They, if any, could help make Fernando’s claims more believable.

Interestingly, none of the testimonies in the public arena mention any atrocities of the nature that Fernando claims took place.  It is strange too that it took Sewer 4 more than 14 months to find the much-trumpeted ‘First Eyewitness’. It is almost as if the only people around were the soldiers, that only ghosts came out of the un-cleared areas and that the soldiers had perpetrated these alleged atrocities on phantoms.  Someone must be hallucinating or intent on turning hallucination into fact. Garbage is the word that comes to mind right now, in this generous mood I am in. 

Another ‘witness’ claims he was privy to a conversation between the Defence Secretary and a field commander.  Sewer 4 tries to frill the story by bringing in a statement made by a former President of Sri Lanka endorsing the fact that her naïve son had been reduced to tears by the previous Sewer 4 film.  While all this raises a lot of questions regarding who is doing what in Sewer 4 productions.  Chandrika Kumaratunga, for the record, was tongue-tied during the last stages of the operation and had to swallow her malice down with the greatest difficulty in order to mutter a few words of congratulation).

In the end it’s all hearsay.  Channel 4 told a good story in ‘Killing Fields’.  These latest efforts are toilet wash.  Stuff for the sewer. 

As for accountability, Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans do not need a gutter television outfit or a highly discredited ex-president to lecture on the subject.  There is a process. There is keen interest in the process.    What this gutter station is doing will harm this process simply because the claims are so preposterous, mal-intentioned and busybody-like that the citizens of Sri Lanka could at some point turn around and say,  ‘enough is enough; the war is done, terrorism is out, life is in, all bets off, we start from scratch!’ 

That would indeed be a pity, all things considered, but that’s where these efforts that ought to go into a text book on how not to be a journalist are taking us. 

So yes, Channel 4 has a reputation, a name, but when one stands on brand name and pees, you don’t call it a shower from the heavens.  Pee is pee.  Even when employed to wash away poo-poo evicted with a lot of heave and puff earlier. 

[Courtesy 'The Nation', July 31, 2011]

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