Creating a crisis to resolve
Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha
I have just been at a course on the Law of Internal Displacement
organized by the International Institute of Humanitarian Law, along with
the Brookings Institute, which is the leading think tank in the field.
Together with Walter Kalin, the Special Representative on the rights of
the Displaced of the UN Secretary General, it produced the Guiding
Principles on the subject, a manual that is now widely accepted as
definitive.
Kalin, who essentially ran the course, has visited Sri Lanka often,
and well understands our situation. He is also very practical in his
commitment to principles, and has been consistent in demanding attention
also to old cases of IDPs, instead of going along with fashionable
concern only with recent cases. Thus, though he granted when he visited
us in April that he could understand why the old cases had been put on
the back burner, he remained very concerned about them.
Those charging the Government over war crimes want to limit
assistance to the people who have been rescued |
I have no doubt he would be pleased that we are seeking to resettle
them too, and that the process has begun in Musali. Sadly it seems that
this has not met with the approval of donors who have been using fair
means and foul to ensure that we swiftly resettle the most recently
displaced first.
They are prepared therefore to withhold funding from the protractedly
displaced, and also to restrict funding to the recently displaced,
believing that thus making the lives of all the displaced miserable will
help them achieve their ends.
What are these ends? The claim is that they want people released from
what were described as internment camps - notably last year by TamilNet
and other agencies which thus justified the refusal of the Tigers to let
people leave the Vanni while they were dragging them away to become
hostages.
But what would that lead to? Some of the presentations at the course
suggested that, while freedom of movement was a desirable principle,
protection problems were better dealt with in camps rather than by using
host families.
And even though the situation may be better now, in that Prabhakaran
can no longer exercise his malign influence, we cannot forget that the
most vociferous critics wanted the displaced sent out when they could
well have been at the mercy of terrorist recruiters.
Given the current predilection now amongst the more unprincipled
Europeans for Pathmanathan, we have to wonder what they hope he might
achieve with his ill-gotten millions and a whole host of vulnerable
youngsters.
Kalin himself has always made it clear that security concerns cannot
be ignored. His point is that, while maintaining its vigilance,
government should ensure that it does not engage in blanket protracted
prohibitions, and that it should develop a road map for action that
explains the rationale for any measures taken.
All this makes sense and he would be delighted I think at the steady
exodus of the elderly from the camps, while encouraging us to send out
other vulnerable and innocuous individuals.
But he would also understand, which some of our critics fail to do,
that it is particularly the vulnerable, such as the disabled woman who
tried to kill Douglas Devananda, or the pregnant woman who tried to kill
the Army Commander, whom the LTTE was able to make most noxious.
Still, obviously we should send out whomsoever we can, and also
resettle people as quickly as we can assure them both security and
decent livelihoods. All indications are that we are working on this more
effectively than in many other countries, just as we did in the East -
indeed better, as far as security is concerned, given that the
continuing threat of Tiger resurgence that the East faced for so many
months no longer applies anywhere. But however efficient we are, we are
certainly not going to be able to resettle everyone in three months.
Despite this those who have on the one hand been pressing for a war
crimes inquiry or whatever else they think might embarrass the
Government for getting rid of the Tigers also want on the other to limit
assistance to those whom we rescued.
Furious perhaps that their predictions of a bloodbath were not
fuilfilled, they are determined now to make those who escaped suffer by
limiting assistance with food, by making them live in tiny tents, by
providing them with squalid toilets.
And then, with glee, when people fall ill, they can claim that the
epidemic their wishful thinking predicted every month last year has
finally arrived.
How can people be so wicked? How can people treat others simply as
objects, and use them for their own political priorities while
pretending to consider only their welfare?
The answer lies in history. The Europeans did not conquer vast tracts
of other continents out of altruism, but they did manage regularly to
convince themselves that their actions were for the benefit of the
conquered.
The saving grace of their religion, the peace they bestowed by the
sheer genius of their ruling class, the economic development they
promoted with some of the profits being allowed to trickle down to the
producers of the commodities they traded in, all this justified their
controls.
Why should things be different now? They alone can decide when and
where who should do what to whom, and if history shows that they
inevitably get things wrong and create more problems (the Shah of Iran,
Idi Amin, Tshombe and Mobutu and Forbes Burnham), now that the bleeding
hearts are worn on a sleeve, perhaps the results will not be so
obviously bad.
Starve the people and give them stinking toilets while pretending to
help, and then you can claim there is such a mess that only the white
man is willing and able, having made such a frightful stink, to
graciously take up the burden.
The writer is Secretary General, Secretariat for Coordinating the
Peace Process |