Beating the blitz on Human Rights

MEDIA: From where will the next volleys come, now that the promise of humbling and humiliating President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Government before the international community over Sri Lanka’s record on human rights has not become a reality?

What next after this failure despite all the frantic efforts of manipulative international organisations, calculating politicians, expectations of the LTTE and the high jinx of sections of the media that are light years away from reportage of the truth, and the genuine information of the public?

President Rajapaksa whose imagined helplessness in the face of international opinion ranged against him, as portrayed by the concerted media and NGO attack so pleasing to the LTTE and others ranged against his government, took the battle to the enemy when he told the UN General Assembly that “Human Rights are too important to be used as a tool to victimise States for political advantage.

It is essential that international action to facilitate compliance with human rights standards is fair and even handed. Human rights have to be protected and advanced for their own sake, not for political gain.”

In this comment he articulated what has been in the minds of men who are genuinely concerned at the trend of events in Sri Lanka, especially the role that some sections of the media are playing, supported by foreign and local vested interests that would prefer to see a new government installed very soon, which would be ready to sup with the LTTE with no conditions attached.

He laid out the case that Sri Lanka was being unjustly chastised for its record on human rights, not taking into consideration the actual conditions prevailing in a country faced with a threat from what is considered the strongest terrorist outfit in the world, with its tentacles extending to drug smuggling, gun running and money laundering on a massive scale.

The President also raised the question whether the attacks on Sri Lanka, with threats of sanctions, the imminent arrival of foreign observers and the various other intimidatory moves being proposed were just and reasonable, when one considers the situation regarding human rights here, in comparison to what prevails in several other locations that are much more in the limelight for gross HR abuse today.

Mission impossible

All the hype and hoopla in the Sri Lankan media about the imminent castigation of Sri Lanka over human rights that we saw over the past several weeks have come to zero.

There was a systematic build up trying to give the impression that there would be no escape for the Government on the human rights front, with so many forces ranged against it.

Some newspapers screamed that the UN will take Sri Lanka to task over the matter. Others were strident in their reportage of their own expectations of what would happen at the UN Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva.

Every possible force was harnessed to build up this image of a government being assailed on so many sides over its recent record on human rights from white van abductions to the alleged threats to a defence correspondent, and the gumption of media watchdogs abroad dictating to the government of Sri Lanka on the type of security that should be provided to a journalist.

The big guns among the HR forces from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch appeared to be ever too willing to join the forces ranged against Sri Lanka to make a case against it in every possible international fora.

They were gladly supported by the many lackey organizations over here, some foreign correspondents who display a crusading zeal against Sri Lanka far in excess of their affiliation to their news organizations, as well as self-seeking politicians looking for a sniff of power at any cost. Yet, all this effort was of no avail.

Sections of the Sri Lanka media little realised they were on a mission impossible as they conjured up story after story about the threats that the Sri Lankan Government faced over this very sensitive issue.

Diplomats serving here as well as the fly-by-night DPLs from abroad made their own contribution to help create the impression of an imminent crisis from which Sri Lanka would not emerge unscathed.

In the final week before the UN General Assembly opened in New York and the UN Human Rights Council sessions got under way in Geneva, the mood had been created that Sri Lanka was about to be tarred as worse than Dafur, with even local politicians jumping in to condemn the country as being in the class of Somalia.

Headline writers and editorialists were competing in efforts to show that when President Mahinda Rajapaksa arrived at the United Nations he will be treated like a recalcitrant schoolboy who gets a public caning from a tough school principal in the form of the UN Secretary General.

The other line was to show absolute certainty that the European Union would table a resolution against Sri Lanka in Geneva.

In the event, the “critical” last week in September is passing with none of these gloomy forebodings coming true.

The only reality is that the media that claims to be well informed about such matters has been exposed as totally lacking in accurate information, and much worse with the definite impression that they have gone on their own mission of misleading readers, listeners and viewers, for the benefit of political masters and manipulators or for some sinister designs best known to those in key positions of these sections of the media.

The extent of this hype was such that it even fooled the correspondent of a leading Indian newspaper here, who is a very senior observer of Sri Lankan affairs with a fine grasp of politics to write a story last Thursday that Sri Lanka had “escaped censure at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva”, when the real story was that “rights groups and the media both in the island and overseas” had failed in their best efforts to censure Sri Lanka at the 6th session of the UNHRC.

As he reported it, the European Union, which was expected to table a resolution critical of the island’s government, did not submit any.

He quotes a press release from the Sri Lankan mission at the UN Office in Geneva stating that no reference to any resolution on Sri Lanka appeared in the final list of draft resolutions circulated by the UNHRC Secretariat at 3 pm on Monday, September 24, three hours after the deadline for resolutions.

It is interesting to know whether this expectation of a EU resolution was something actually considered by its members, or something thought of, and planted in the local media by those who are happy in their role of being planters in the Fourth Estate aka unscrupulous journalists, backed by the lucre of questionable human rights watchers here and abroad.

In addition to his call for an end to the use of Human Rights as a tool in the hands of those who wish to use for political advantage, both within a country or for larger international interests that can threaten smaller countries, President Rajapaksa also focused on some other important issues too, that are largely ignored by those keen to invoke the wrath of international opinion on a government it dislikes for the most questionable of reasons.

Referring to the reality of terrorism that is considered a threat needing an international war on it (possibly except in Sri Lanka according to some pundit) he said: “Terrorism anywhere is terrorism. There is nothing good in terrorism. Sri Lanka has taken an upfront position in the global community’s efforts to deal with terrorism. We have become party to 11 of 13 UN Conventions for the suppression of various acts of terrorism. We think that the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, which in our view remains a priority, is only limited to endless discussion. I emphasize that we must conclude these negotiations soon”.

That was an important call to the world, and particularly those countries and organisations who have dual positions on how terrorism has to be dealt with, using a sledge hammer against al Qaeda and kid gloves in the Wanni. It is time to end this mockery of double standards on human rights whether it comes from interfering foreign bodies or misguided media at home.