The International Community and their Agenda on Sri Lanka - Part II:

Fighting terrorism and human rights

This is the second part of the serialized excerpts from a forthcoming publication titled Sri Lanka - the War fuelled by International Peace by Palitha Senanayake. These extracts from Chapter 16 of the book are published with the kind permission of the author. The first part was published on June 30.

Palitha SENANAYAKE

For a long time, I entertained the thought that this intense criticism, of Sri Lanka’s campaign against terrorism, by the Western powers on grounds of ‘discrimination’ and ‘human rights violations’ was due to neo liberal Western attitudes on secularism. I was also aware that there was a massive disinformation campaign against Sri Lanka in general and Sinhalese in particular by the Tamil Diaspora mounted from as early as 1960’s. But the events of 9/11 should have helped change much of the Western perceptions about terrorism.

Western nations

It not only exposed the sheer destructive and dehumanized nature inherent in terrorism but also made the pervasive and domineering character of the terrorist amply clear. More significant was the fact that 9/11 made these very Western nations, that were aiding and abetting terrorists on various ruses, experience ‘first hand’ terrorism themselves, threatening to make them direct targets of unbridled terror. However, 7 years after 9/11, all what the event seemed to have achieved was to make those terrorists who are against the West as ‘bad terrorist’ and those who are against the others as ‘good terrorists’ or ‘freedom fighters’. This proves that the West’s nonchalant and patronizing attitude all these years towards terrorism has not been the result of propaganda or misunderstanding but just their policy.

No wonder the life of a terrorist in Sri Lanka who is trained to kill the innocent has a bigger value in the Western scale than the lives of thousands of innocents in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the name of ‘national security’ the West has licence to invade other countries, thousands of miles away, establish control and maintain it at whatever the cost. It is not violation of human rights! But Sri Lanka cannot even assert its own territorial integrity and sovereignty within its own territory, in the face of the most brutal terror outfit in the world. It is a violation of human rights. How tragically hippocratic?

International norms

Sri Lanka is one country that has negotiated with its adversaries like no other; with its back to the wall: while its leaders were killed, while its economy got devastated: while its civilians were killed with impunity, even disregarding the international norms of ‘not negotiating with terrorists with arms’. In fact Sri Lanka has been so desperate for peace it was made to negotiate, at the behest of the ‘International community’, on the terms and conditions of these very terrorist who have refused to accept its sovereignty and vowed to eliminate it from the face of the earth. All that, albeit resulted in making the terrorists more and more powerful, belligerent and more destructive. In the final stages there was only one more item left for Sri Lanka to negotiate with the LTTE and that is, its own destruction. The international community was prompting Sri Lanka again to negotiate, quite mindful of this reality. Did they wish that the state of Sri Lanka should ‘rest in peace’?

It is ‘fashionable’ to advise others to ‘negotiate for political settlement’ when it is not your kith and kin that has been subjected to years of terrorism. But when your own people die, you leave what is fashionable aside for a moment and get down to the hard facts. The irony is that, in the same breathe the International community advised Sri Lanka to negotiate, they advised Pakistan ‘not to negotiate’ with the terrorists of Wazaristan. You can call this ‘duplicity’ or ‘hypocrisy’ but yet, that is the only way to ensure that both those countries are kept ‘bogged down’ with terrorism.

Powerful countries

There is a pithy Sinhala saying that ‘poverty is comparable to a cow without a tail’: to mean that the cow without a tail can’t even show away the pests. It may be that Sri Lanka is comparatively poor because Sri Lanka could not built up a material lead by colonizing less powerful countries and engaging slaves, but let the West realize that the Sri Lankans are not a bunch of apologetic morons or ‘rice eating monkeys’ who can not see between the lines. Are we being pelted for not having ‘human rights’ of for not having the ‘human might’?

In 2001 under the Chandrika regime the LTTE attacked Sri Lanka’s only International airport making international Insurance agencies to turn down re-insurance facilities to Sri Lanka. The country achieved negative economic growth in that year and the travel agencies dubbed Sri Lanka as a ‘high risk’ destination. Bombs were exploding all over Sri Lanka killing innocent civilians. This pushed the fate of 18 million democracy loving citizens on the cross roads due mainly to terrorism of the LTTE. No international ‘do gooders’ however thought it fit to visit Sri Lanka during those days to inquire after its citizens-well-being, facing the world’s most ruthless terror organization. The west, on the other hand imposed arms embargos on the country. But ironically when the fascist LTTE was marooned in their hell hole in 2008 March, the foreign ministers of UK and France, Miliband and Kouchner, made a hasty trip to Sri Lanka to initiate a ‘cease fire’ and lecture the Sri Lankan leaders on the virtues of ‘human rights’. Kouchner, by the way is the architect who created Kosowo under EU aegis. Does the west stand for democracy and human rights or do they stand for fascism and terror?

Universal human rights

The Universal declaration of Human rights assures basic human rights for every citizen living in this world and the different States making up the world are called upon to institute laws and practices to uphold such basic human rights. Therefore the intention of the bill of rights is quite noble and it would be in the interest of every human being to see that such laws and practices are enforced.

It would also become the responsibility of every civilized state to enact laws and practices to ensure that the rights of its citizens are upheld preventing violations of such basic rights by the Government, other institutions and finally by the individuals. These individual rights are however conditioned by the larger interest of the society and then the State policy which safeguards national interest.

Sri Lanka is a democracy where the basic human rights are enshrined in the constitution itself and the country’s human rights legislation is attuned to meet the international norms and practices. Civil society too has its own responsibility here for a vigilant civil society aided by HR organizations should take appropriate action to strengthen a country’s human rights position.

Therefore then the enforcement of the Universal declaration of human rights is one of the best things that ever happened to the human race. But ironically in Sri Lanka with this conflict raging on, the term ‘Human rights’ evoke repulsive sentiments from the larger masses.

Human rights

This is mainly because these international organizations engaged in human rights have been vociferous and make themselves felt only whenever there are issues in these so-called LTTE areas where the conflict was raging and have been conspicuously absent or play a very limited role when the need for their services is felt in the local arena where the law and order reigns.

These areas where these International HR organizations chose to indulge in, for the bulk of their activities, are the areas in which the Government has temporarily lost its control; where the Government writ is not maintained at present.

The Government has deployed the Security Forces to re-impose its writ in these areas and therefore until this is done what prevails in these areas for the moment is just anarchy.

The NGO’s may prefer to call it a ‘war’ situation in their propaganda. Even if it is a ‘war situation’ the common saying that ‘everything is fair in love and war’ is a pointer that a war situation is a situation of anarchy where nothing in fact is unfair.

Security Forces

Under such circumstances when the Government Security Forces attempts to restore law and order it is possible that they may sometimes resort to extra judicial activity. Factually, there is no extra judicial activity in this situation because there is no judicial activity in a situation of anarchy.

The accepted civilized laws and practices suffer for the time being because everybody is fighting for their very lives and that makes the situation an ‘inhuman’ situation. Hence these so called ‘Human rightists’ have been trying to apply human right in to an inhuman situation thereby preventing order in those areas from being restored. There is provision in the International law to accommodate the type of situation Sri Lanka was faced with. But for those provisions to be applicable the conflict in Sri Lanka has to be recognized as an ‘armed conflict’ and not as a mere ‘insurgency’.

The international law recognizes countries facing an organized armed conflict, as against those engaged in operations against internal insurgency and hence there are two sets of laws applicable to these different situations.

A country confronted with an armed conflict has to abide by the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) whereas a country having internal strife (relative peace) has to abide by the International Human Rights Law (IHRL). The difference between the IHL and the IHRL is that IHL is limited in scope as it is the law that is applicable during times of armed conflict whereas IHRL is wider in its scope as that is expected to prevail during times of comparative peace. Societies in UK, US and in many European countries have accepted the inevitability of the derogation of civil liberties due to threats from organized conflict and organized terrorism.

The issue however is, since ICRC is the initiator and the guardian of IHL no other agency including UN could claim any right to intervene in the internal and external affairs of Sri Lanka, had the situation in Sri Lanka qualified to be designated as an ‘armed conflict’ as against an ‘internal dispute or riots’.

Sri Lanka however has to invoke the provisions of the IHL to be designated as a country whose activities should be evaluated by the IHL rather than by the IHRL.

Armed conflict

The fact is that Sri Lanka has not done so far and that is a continuing source of embarrassment to the successive Governments which have to bear the brunt of all this criticism and interventions in the name of International Human Rights Law when it should really face issues only under IHL which recognizes extenuating circumstances under ‘armed conflict’ situations. In two articles published in public newspapers on January 19 and March 13, 2008 Nevil Laduwahetti has elaborated this position in detail.

A primary position taken by these human rights INGOs when confronted as to why their criticism is always levelled against the Government and never against the LTTE, the answer is that they criticize the Government as a responsible organ and they do not criticize the LTTE because it is not a recognize entity.

Amnesty International

The British based Amnesty International and the US based Human Rights Watch often adopt this position. Although they may get away for the time being with such time serving arguments no such precedent could be established in international practices in monitoring human rights violations.

The humanitarian laws that are applicable to Sri Lanka at times of conflict even specifies a code of ethics for the non state actor engaged in the armed conflict. For instance the non state actor would be in violation of the Humanitarian law when it does not distinguish between combatants and non combatants, recruit child soldiers, and use humans as a shield.

The LTTE did all these all the time and that too with impunity. But you only have to go through the high profile reports of these two HR organizations during the past 5 years to realize that the criticism of the LTTE has been marginal with the bulk of the criticism directed towards the Government.

Any person reading only those reports may feel that the LTTE is justified in taking up arms as there are so many seemingly questionable acts by the Government. Prabhakaran was often quoted to say that, “the recent report by the Human Rights Watch against the Government is very encouraging”. So then, it must be the purpose of these reports to encourage terrorism!

Next : Part III