Champions of the democracy deficit

It is pathetic, to say the least, when media rights advocates stretch and strain to scratch out some logic when they come out to defend their friends.  The Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association, the Free Media Movement, and the Federation of Media Employees’ Trade Unions are up in arms about the arrest of two persons who have nothing to do with the media, except the media exposure they seek for the organizations and politics they represent and embody.  

It is good to stand up for friends.  Nothing wrong in that. The problem is that that HR (human rights) labels don’t give immunity to anyone, especially when it comes to ensuring the security of a country that has suffered 30 years of terrorism, not forgetting that in this case hardcore LTTE operatives are involved.   Pertinent also is the fact that media rights is peripheral at best in this case.

On the other hand, no one need to be surprised about media right advocates who have a long history of being swayed by cash and prompted by political preferences firing off media releases (only) when fellow-travelers get into a spot of bother. 

But what of Ruki Fernando and Fr Praveen, the two ‘human rights activists’ we are talking about?  The usual ‘rights’ suspects, Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Sudharshan Gunawardena and J.C. Weliamuna were quick to air their horror.  So too was Groundviews, the website powered by Saravanamuttu’s NGO, Centre for Policy Alternatives.  They are all upset about the arrest.  They are upset also that Jeyakumari Balendran, another ‘activist’ was arrested.  They are not upset about Jeyakumari’s connections with ‘Gobi’, a known terrorist with a criminal record.  They are not upset that Gobi, previously an understudy to the LTTE’s intelligence chief, Pottu Amman, has been involved in a network that has robbed demining equipment belonging to another NGO and has used these to look for weapons buried as the LTTE fled the advancing security forces in 2009.  

They find a contradiction between what the government is saying in Geneva and what is happening on the ground here in Sri Lanka.  This is strange.  Do they think that commitment to upholding human rights equals a license to drop guard and let terrorists roam about regrouping, re-arming, recruiting and in other ways preparing ground for another bloodbath? 

They are upset by the Prevention of Terrorism Act, under which their friends have been arrested.  That’s easy to say, because they are not in charge of national security.  In an ideal world we wouldn’t need a PTA.  In an ideal world, let us not forget, we won’t have the LTTE and its NGO sympathizers, an LTTE rump and their ‘media advocacy friends’, priests who use cross and cassock to give respectability to criminals.

It is silly to think that these lovely gentlemen are unaware of what the Jeyakumaris and Gobis of this world are up to; after all they are also friends or else friends of friends of key individuals in the GTE, TGTE, TCC, HQGP and other would-be successors to the LTTE.  If they indeed were that ignorant, by now they would know who is who and what is what.  Even if they continue to feign ignorance, there is no hiding the fact that Jeyakumari is two-faced and that her activism was cover for activity that is of serious concern to those responsible for national security.  They would love the security establishment to look the other way, it seems. Fortunately it has not.

Groundviews is right in one thing.  There is a democracy deficit in this country.  That deficit is enshrined in the constitution and made more pronounced by beneficiaries of that same deficit who do little or nothing to bridge it.  On the other hand, you can also say goodbye to opportunities to close to gap if you are openly supporting moves to make for an LTTE resurrection.  That’s what Jeyakumari is about.  That’s what those who are championing her ‘cause’ are about. 

It is no wonder that both the USA and UK, the key movers and shakers against Sri Lanka in Geneva, appear to have swallowed their proverbial tongues with respect to Jeyakumari.  They are focusing on Ruki and his priest friend.  The reason is simple. They are interested in regime-change. They are not gung ho about an LTTE reincarnation.  What all these people are missing is that such a rebirth requires midwives, facilitators such as Ruki and Fr Praveen, and a veritable army of attendants, mostly donor-dependent nobodies who are forced therefore to call themselves ‘civil society’.

It would lovely if this country didn’t have a PTA.  It would be lovely if people who believe they have been wronged can protest at will.  It is sad that there are people wearing multiple hats, just like LTTE cadres who switched from military fatigues to sarongs, just like suicide bombers who dressed up as pregnant women, just like the LTTE’s propagandists who went around with Media IDs.  We don’t live in a happy world.  But if we are to aspire to any reasonable degree of happiness, we need to be alert.  We cannot afford another thirty years of bloodshed. 

There’s a case being made for strengthening the PTA.  That case is being made by a lot of people.  Let us name some. We have Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, J.C. Weliamuna and Sudharshan Gunawardena.  We have The Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association, the Free Media Movement, and the Federation of Media Employees’ Trade Unions.  We can’t really say ‘Thank you gentlemen for the sustained development of the democracy deficit’. 

msenevira@gmail.com

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The relative merits of Jeyakumari, Ruki and Fr Mahesan

An activist is an activist is an activist.  This means there are all kinds of activists.  An activist is someone who engages in or advocates activism.  Activism is defined as ‘a doctrine or practice that emphasizes direct vigorous action especially in support of or opposition to one side of a controversial issue’.  The moment we bring ‘vigorous’ into the equation we are talking about an even bigger can of worms. 

The advocates and practitioners of drone attacks, for example, would be ‘activists’.   Those who throw Molotov Cocktails, deploy suicide bombs and explode themselves in public places, and who take pot shots at people are being active and vigorous. They are, therefore, activists.  Barack Obama is an activist. So was Osama bin Laden.  Prabhakaran too. 

And how about aggressive corporate takeovers?  How about vigorous price wars?  Is there activism there? Are there activists involved?  Are thieves activists and is theft activism? 

So there are activists and activists. There is activism and activism.  It makes for selectivity, depending on who is doing the selection.  There are some who would call human rights advocates employees of rent-a-protest outfits.  There are people who would be dismissive of such tags but would never call those who flock to Bodu Bala Sena protests ‘activists’. 

So activists and activism can be classed.  We have environmental activists of many kinds, focusing on different aspects of the broader issues.  Some would be professional greens, activism being a vocation.  The same goes for peace activists, women’s rights activists, temperance activists and of course human rights activists. 

Let’s toss in some names here.  There’s Jeyakumari Balendran. There’s Ruki Fernando.  There is also Father Praveen Mahesan.  Jeyakumari is new to ‘activism’, the other two are not.  Jeyakumari hit the headlines, the others did too but not before they tagged themselves to Jeyakumari-News. 

How did Jeyakumari become ‘news’?  Who made her ‘news’?  

Well, first of all, she was an activist. Her sons were willing or unwilling members of a terrorist organization.  One of them, she claims, was ‘disappeared’ by the security forces. So she became a ‘disappearance activist’.  What she herself had wanted ‘disappeared’ was her sons’ LTTE connections.  She also wanted ‘disappeared’ the fact that she was cozy with some hardcore terrorists who also had criminal records.  She marketed herself as ‘activist’ and some people actually purchased the lie.  Ruki and his friend Fr Praveen Mahesan for example. 

Actually, we don’t really know if there was ‘purchase’ here because that would imply naiveté.  Ruki is a professional activist.  If Ruki and his friend, Fr Mahesan were not in the know, they make poor apologies for activists. 

That’s beside the point.

The point is that here we have an activist (Jeyakumari) being arrested and two other activists who came to inquire about her also being arrested, followed by expression of umbrage from Washington (Jen Psaki of the US State Department) and London (Hugo Swire, UK Foreign Office Minister).  Psaki and Swire are upset about Ruki and Fr Mahesan, but nary a word did they utter about Jeyakumari. 

Are some activists more active than others?  Are some activists worth only until their true identities are discovered?  Heck, it’s the lady that got Ruki and Fr Mahesan some media coverage; surely they should say ‘Thanks Jeyakumari’?  Surely they should express outrage over Psaki and Swire giving her the cold shoulder in the political economy of umbrage?  Surely they should ask if it’s an example of discrimination along gender lines? 

Well, it is doubtful that Ruki, Fr Mahesan or any of activists and activist championing journalists, diplomats and UN officials will direct such questions to Washington or London.  We can draw some conclusions though.

First. Jeyakumari’s shelf life expired.  She had her script, read her lines and now she’s done.  She’s outlived usefulness.    Exit. 

Second.  It means that a lot of other ‘activists’ may have shelf-lives too; perhaps too, skeletons in cupboards that not all of their fellow activists know about.

Third.  The likes of Psaki and Swire were quicker than those wooly headed rights activists in Sri Lanka who allow regime-hatred to dull further their dull intellect.  They know, perhaps, that Jeyakumari is such a hot number that if she were to be waved about they might produce so much fire that other things that don’t buttress their lie might come to light.

But activists, so the HR handbooks say, are activists are activists.  Activism is activism is activism.  You cannot differentiate.  Now the onus is on Jeyakumari’s fan club to come out and say ‘Hey, she fooled us all!’  They won’t do it, I am willing to wager.  They just have too much to lose.  Credibility, for one thing.  Jobs, for another.  Careers.  

They picked poorly when they identified Jeyakumari as ideal pin-up girl for agitation purposes.  Can’t blame them.  After all, they even called terrorists ‘boys’ and said a thug called Velupillai Prabhakaran is a freedom fighter. 

Those with any intelligence, if they were to be generous, would call Ruki Fernando and Fr Mahesan ‘suckers’.  If they weren’t generous, they would call them ‘aiders and abettors of a well-orchestrated vilification campaign that has nothing to do with human rights, disappearances and such’.  Either way, Ruki and Fr Mahesan need not worry.  It is not on the intelligent or intelligence that they count on. 

The future must look bright for them, and they must be grinning in private even as they talk of ‘fear’ and ‘hurt’ and wax lyrical about democracy deficits.  It’s all good at the end of the day, never mind the fact that poor Jeyakumari is left in the lurch, sold down the river and all that kind of thing.

msenevira@gmail.com

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The true temperature of aggrieved-tears

Only a mother who has lost a child can fathom the grief of a woman who has lost her son.  Balendra Jeyakumari is not a mother who lost a son. She’s a mother who lost three sons.  That’s not three-times the grief.  It is unfathomable grief.  This side of death, whatever closure is possible can only be wrought from knowing what happened to each of them.  This is why Jeyakumari’s activism among families of disappeared individuals generates sympathy which of course is as eminently made for hijacking. That’s a different story.

It is no salve for her or anyone else that had her children been associated with the al-Qaeda their ‘disappearances’ would not get her a ticket out of her village, forget having her name and those of her sons being paraded in Geneva. 

Jeyakumari had three sons and one daughter.  The eldest was shot dead by unknown gunmen during the war. Her second son died during the latter stages of the war. Her third son, the youngest, Mahindan, appears to have been forcibly conscripted as a 15-year-old child soldier by the LTTE in the final stages of the war.  She claims he was handed over to the security forces. 

It matters not that her children were associated with the LTTE either willingly or through forcible conscription.  A child is a child is a child. For a mother.  It need not bother her that those whose responsibility is the security of a nation and all its citizenry are mandated to be vigilant at all times and take whatever precautions necessary to ensure peace and stability within the broader framework of the law.  She is a mother, after all.

The problem is that people have multiple identities.  Jeyakumari is not just a mother. She’s a widow too.  The problem is that identity is not limited to blood-ties or civil-ties.  Jeyakumari not only had children who were part of a terrorist organization that specialized in abduction and enforced ‘disappearance’; her overall identity contains a political component that includes close association with at least one person with a criminal record who also was, like her sons, a member of the LTTE, it is alleged.  It is claimed that this individual, Gobi, was hiding under a bed in Jeyakumari’s house and shot and wounded a police officer who came looking for him.

All this could be ‘trumped up’.  It may be the case that Jeyakumari is totally innocent of the charges leveled against her.  On the other hand, if all this is brushed aside on account of the word ‘claim’ then the same logic could be applied to her assertions too.  More importantly, it can be applied to the claims that also come with the tag ‘wild’ with respect to how the security forces, at great cost, conducted operations to free some three hundred thousand Tamil civilians held hostage by the LTTE.  That’s not ‘claim’.  It is fact.  The security forced in fact did carry out the greatest hostage rescue operation in known history ever.  Jeyakumari knows this.

Still, the emptiness of one claim does not mean that all claims are fairytales. This is why it is important to account for all missing persons.  The Government has amply proven its bona fides with respect to sticking with the zero-casualty policy.  The costs incurred in terms of personnel lost in rescue operations (acknowledged by the US Embassy no less), the enormous efforts expended to provide food and medicine to people forced to suffer by the LTTE in areas the terrorist outfit controlled, the facilities provided in camps set up to accommodate the tens of thousands who either fled the LTTE or were rescued by the security forces tells that story in full.

Despite all this, it is the responsibility of the Government to make sure that everyone is accounted for.  It is a tall order in the context of a 30 years long engagement with a brutal terrorist outfit.  People die in such battles and those who survive often have to live and die without really knowing what happened to loved ones who went missing.  It is a tall order also because some of the ‘disappeared’, vanished to other countries; naturally, without informing relevant authorities.  For an accounting that factors in these realities it is important that collaboration be sought and obtained from all countries to which such persons fled for valid reasons of fear or in search of greener pastures as the case may be.  All such efforts have had to deal with all kinds of obstacles, especially from those who claim (on behalf of the aggrieved) they need to know the truth. 

Such an accounting can do without outfits ready to sacrifice reconciliation in favor of continued political relevance.  Yes, the TNA.  The TNA’s tears over ‘disappearances’ are suspect simply because the TNA refuses point black to acknowledge and detail the LTTE’s considerable role in producing the outcomes that pains the likes of Jeyakumari. All this may not be relevant to a mother who wants to know what happened to her son, never mind if that son and his brothers ‘disappeared’ the sons and daughters of other mothers.  It is not irrelevant to the TNA, though. It is not irrelevant to reconciliation. 

That’s where ‘impossibility’ comes in.  That’s where we have to remind ourselves that reconciliation is not a one-hand-clap.  The TNA plays ostrich when it comes to the likes of Gobi and his operations.  The state cannot follow suit.  The TNA, by playing ostrich, loses the right to talk about ‘demilitarization’.  As long as the TNA dances to pro-LTTE tunes from its backers and funders abroad, the TNA can rest assured that the military will not back off but will be forced, by circumstances, to be vigilant. That’s what you get when you support out of conviction or cowardice a terrorist outfit. 

Jeyakumari’s tears may be transparent and honest – yes, the jury will remain out on that and she can thank the LTTE and TNA for that.  Her tears may be marketed in Geneva. That’s to be expected.  Her tears don’t cancel out the tears of other mothers on the other side of the political lines that those who champion her cause have drawn.  This is how tears lose their temperature, one might conclude.   

msenevira@gmail.com

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