Lakshman Kadirgamar: Ardent campaigner against terrorism
third Death Anniversary :
Adam ROBERTS
Lakshman Kadirgamar, lawyer and politician: born Jaffna, Sri Lanka 12
April 1932; Called to the Bar, Inner Temple 1958; Minister of Foreign
Affairs, 1994-2001, 2004-05; Honourary Fellow, Balliol College, Oxford
2004; married (one son, one daughter); died Colombo August 12, 2005.
Lakshman Kadirgamar |
Lakshman Kadirgamar, who was assassinated at his home in Colombo on
August 12, 2005, had as profound a grasp of the threat posed by
terrorist violence as any political leader in the world today.
He had known for almost a decade that he was a high-priority target
for assassination by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Kadirgamar had a near-miss on December 18, 1999, when a suicide
bomber attempted to kill President Chandrika Kumaratunga at an election
rally.
Five men were killed, the president was injured but survived, and
Kadirgamar, who had been due to accompany her to that meeting, escaped
because he was unwell that day and didn't go. He knew that the LTTE had
him, as well as other ministers, in their sights, and was under 24-hour
military protection.
As he said in a speech in September 2000, "For us who have to live
with terrorism, when we leave home in the morning there is no guarantee
that we will come back at the end of the day, absolutely none whatever."
Ironically it was at his private residence, where he had gone for a
swim, that he was shot.
Earlier on the day of his death, he had realised a lifetime's dream
when he launched a new academic journal, International Relations in a
Globalising World, which was a key part of his long-term plan to raise
the level of Sri Lanka's contribution to international diplomacy.
Kadirgamar began his turbulent political career at the age of 62,
when other people are thinking of retiring. It was in 1994 that he
entered Parliament for the first time, serving as Minister of Foreign
Affairs until 2001 and since 2004. Warm, outgoing, hard-working, and
with a subtle and powerful intellect, he was outstandingly effective in
that role.
He maintained a level of co-operation with the governments that
mattered most to Sri Lanka - especially India, China, the United States
and the UK - that had sometimes eluded his predecessors. His role in
developing South Asian co-operation was perhaps his proudest single
achievement.
Already when he entered politics, the terrorist campaign was a threat
to Sri Lanka's long democratic traditions.
As Foreign Minister, notwithstanding his impeccable liberal record,
he called for tough action against terrorists, not just within Sri
Lanka, but also internationally.
Sri Lanka was a strong supporter of, and on his instructions the very
first country to sign, the 1997 International Convention for the
Suppression of Terrorist Bombings. Long before 11 September 2001, he
warned Americans of the need to get tough on the terrorist financing
that was going on in their midst.
In London in 1998, at a meeting at Chatham House, he reminded his
hosts that they, like the Americans, were turning a Nelsonian blind eye
to organisations raising money for terrorist causes abroad.
A toughening of UK and US law against assisting terrorist campaigns
was at last beginning to happen. In 1997 the LTTE was belatedly listed
by the US government as a terrorist organisation. With typical realism,
he attributed these changes more to the terrorist outrages of the 1990s
than to his advocacy, coming as it did from a country that, he said, is
"small, relatively weak, and relatively lacking in political clout".
Kadirgamar was born in Jaffna in 1932. A Tamil and a Christian, he
came to be regarded as a renegade by the zealots of the LTTE but he
pointed out, with impeccable logic, that the Tamils are not arranged
tidily, but are intermingled with Sinhalese, Muslims and others on the
map of Sri Lanka - so the attempt to set up a separatist state by force
is a threat to them as much as to the other communities.
In speech after speech, he emphasised the need to maintain civil
liberties while also acting decisively; the importance of understanding
the political context in which terrorism arises; and the need to focus
on the wrongfulness of terrorist acts.
As he put it, with characteristic clarity: Terrorism is a method - a
particularly heinous one - rather than a set of adversaries or the
causes they pursue. Terrorism is a problem of what people (or groups or
states) do, rather than who they are or what they are trying to achieve.
As a young man growing up in post-independence Sri Lanka, he excelled
at cricket, rugby and athletics. Coming to Balliol College, Oxford for
graduate studies in law, he became President of the Oxford Union in
1959, and obtained a BLitt in 1960 for a thesis on "Strict Liability in
English and Roman-Dutch Law".
In 2004 his connection with Oxford was renewed when he was elected an
Honourary Fellow of Balliol, and in 2005 he spoke at the Oxford Union
with characteristic elegance at the unveiling of a portrait showing him
addressing that equally significant debating chamber, the UN General
Assembly, which he did at least eight times.
In his long and distinguished legal career, he became a noted expert
on intellectual property law, and for 12 years (1976-88) worked in
Geneva in senior positions in the World Intellectual Property
Organization. His most notable achievement as a lawyer, however, is much
less well known.
When in 1963 he was asked to investigate the treatment of Buddhists
in South Vietnam, he became the first person to conduct a formal
investigation in a country on behalf of Amnesty International. His
report, which I obtained from him at the time, was unashamedly
sympathetic to the Buddhists:
"I feel that the memory of their achievements cannot be allowed to
fade without it being brought to the notice of the world that men of
such calibre and integrity are still amongst us." Over 40 years later,
the same might well be said about him. |