Europeans and their tribes
Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha
The tenth session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva has come to a
close without the anticipated assault on the Sri Lankan state. This has
been on the cards for quite some time, beginning with the motion against
Sri Lanka that had been put forward three years ago.
Fortunately some concerted diplomatic action, involving regular
briefings of all states who were genuinely interested in the country,
saw that motion scratched in 2007, and since then there was much less
pressure.
Internationalized issue
This year however was different, for the LTTE saw this as their best
hope of internationalizing the issue. Hence the hordes of LTTE
sympathizers who turned up, to buttonhole various ambassadors, to brief
the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, to make aggressive
interventions during the debate.
They were aided and abetted by a number of Non-Governmental
Organizations, some genuinely if foolishly idealistic, others closely
associated with the LTTE, still others not perhaps keen on the LTTE in
itself but so bitter about the Government that they had no qualms about
the LTTE benefiting from their performances.
Hence indeed the ludicrous situation of Nimalka Fernando,
representing her grand sounding organization with its dead treasurer and
its absence of accounts for years, joining with the London head of the
TRO to denigrate Sri Lanka to a Navanethem Pillay harassed by a surfeit
of e-mails.
The reason I find Nimalka’s dead treasurer so fascinating is that the
finances of all these organizations are very shady. I am not talking
here only of the TRO and suchlike, which have been recognised in several
places as LTTE fronts.
Member states
What is equally worrying is the fact that so many of our local NGOs
are funded by countries that want to criticize us, and then use the
findings of these NGOs to claim that we deserve criticism.
Thus the European Union funded an organization that then claimed
elections in the East would be bad, whereupon the EU, claiming it had
objective evidence, had the gall to call in our ambassador in Brussels
and tell him that having elections in the East would be undemocratic.
Why is the EU so prejudiced against Sri Lanka? I should note that
this is not true of all member states, indeed most are sympathetic or
could not care less, but their leader has now got into the habit of
claiming to speak for 27 states and their candidate members too, and
whether these statements are carefully researched or not means little to
most of the rotating leadership. Indeed we found the ignorance of some
of them startling.
One Minister asked about a complaint he had received from a young
Tamil lady resident in his country, who had claimed that babies were
torn out of the wombs of mothers and killed before their eyes, though he
at least had the grace to ask us if this story could be true, since he
needed to respond to his Tamil fellow countrywoman.
Sadly his Ambassador for Human Rights has not as yet responded to my
query as to how they had responded once we had briefed them. And more
absurd was the much younger Minister from another country who wanted to
know whether our forces had stopped using child soldiers.
Assiduous propaganda
Such nonsense. Much of it springs of course from assiduous LTTE
propaganda, but assuming these are intelligent people one realises that
they have to play along because they need votes.
It is no coincidence that the vast majority of the small number of
British MPs who scream about us come from marginal seats where the Tamil
vote is quite influential. Indeed one Tamil Labour Councillor told what
seems to be a local Harrow paper called the Leader that Harrow MP Gareth
Thomas ‘could be a goner at the General Election... if Harrow Tamils
changed their allegiance.’
At the same time, leaving aside folly and self interest, there is a
streak of sanctimonious self-justification amongst some of the European
politicans who criticize us, just as there is in the Nimalkas of this
world. After they hold forth, they get very upset when they are accused
of amorality themselves, in playing up to the Tigers in a manner that
can only precipitate greater suffering for the Tamil people.
In some cases indeed one senses an attempt to convince themselves
that they are the standard bearers of all civilised values, even as they
come to terms with the fact that Europe is no longer at the top, no
longer indeed second or even third, as Russia revives and the Asian
giants leap ahead. And when they are lectured back, with more logic and
knowledge of facts than they can command, they can sometimes get very
testy.
Different leadership
Of course economically they still call the shots, and will continue
to do so for some time yet. But that has never been enough for the heirs
of Greeks and Romans, and hence the attempt to assert a different sort
of leadership with a country they think is small enough to knuckle
under.
Elsewhere I will look at the factors they bring up, and show that
they have no evidence at all for the moral superiority they affect, and
that in the end all their complaints boil down to the fact that there
are civilians still trapped by the Tigers in the small area under their
control, and that these civilians will continue to suffer so long as the
Tigers continue in action.
But my point here is simply the relentless self-righteousness of
people who will not utter a word against the excesses of other countries
to which they owe allegiance, including their fellow members.
So, as a couple of the Europeans themselves told us, there had been
an attempt to have a special session on Sri Lanka. When that failed,
encouraged perhaps by Ms Navanethem Pillay’s increasingly strange
statements about us, they wanted her to make a statement on Sri Lanka to
the Council.
Security Council
There were attempts too to place the matter on the Agenda of the
Security Council in New York. And, when we were advised of this by
several nations that thought all this excessive, and made this clear to
the European tribe, the story sprang up, as it had sprung up in 2007
when the European motion lapsed, that we had been saved by undemocratic
nations.
When I heard this I was reminded of an African comment at a meeting
of the Dutch Third Chamber, when a sanctimonious journalist said that he
had been frightened by the Chinese presence in Africa. His argument was
that they would prop up undemocratic regimes, but he was reminded of the
various regimes the West had propped up when they were exploiting the
place shamelessly.
Human Rights now seems a tool to ensure the domination of regimes
acceptable to the West, whereas some competition for influence might
actually be more beneficial than the old monopoly under another name.
The writer is Secretary General, Secretariat for Coordinating the
Peace Process. |