Sri Lanka’s Foreign Policy

This is the final part of the serialised 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. Part VI was published on July 10.

In 1954, six years after independence, Sri Lanka’s application to be a full member of the United Nations was forestalled by Russia on the grounds that Sri Lanka was not a fully independent state. In fact, we were not, because we had British troops stationed at Trincomalee and were a ‘protectorate’ of Britain and would not have been capable of independent thinking in a world forum.

By then Sri Lanka had no diplomatic relations with Russia and our relations with People’s Republic of China was limited to how much rubber they needed and how much rice we needed. The emergence of communism in the global scenario was viewed by the then UNP Government not only with disdainful prejudice but also with a sense of foreboding.

That was the thinking imparted to us by the colonial masters for it was their own apprehensions against changing world order that hastened their exit from Sri Lanka at that time.

The new MEP Government led by S W R D Bandaranaike that came to power in 1956 made the country’s Foreign Policy more balanced and independent. It saw the going back of British troops, established diplomatic ties with Soviet Russia, upgraded its relations with the People’s Republic of China and extend the hand of friendship to numerous other newly independent countries irrespective of their political affiliations.

This change in our attitude to the world made us acceptable to the UN and thus we became a full member of the UN.

Since then, Sri Lanka’s Foreign Policy blossomed in an independent direction under the SLFP led Governments even though it retracted to be pro-western again during the UNP times.

The high point in Sri Lanka’s foreign diplomacy was when she was elevated to lead the Non-Aligned Nations in 1976, under the Chairmanship of Mrs Bandaranaike. Sri Lanka stood as a true leader of the socialist block - the Arabs, the Africans and all others who desired to tread an uncompromisingly independent foreign policy against the backdrop of big power rivalry in the 70’s.

This helped Sri Lanka establish new and lasting friendships with world nations earning their respect as a committed Non-Aligned member.

The cynics and the capitalists however dubbed the Non-Aligned Summit as the ‘Tamasha of beggars’ partly betraying their antipathy for organizations that expressed willingness to steer clear imperialistic dependencies.

After almost 33 years on the May 25, 2009, when the imperialist global forces tried to bury Sri Lanka in a cog mire of ‘human rights violations’ for vanquishing the world’s most ruthless terror organization, the LTTE, look who supported her to come out of it!

Twenty nine nations supported Sri Lanka, 12 opposed while six abstained in the UN Human Rights Council that is made up of 49 nations.

The countries that supported Sri Lanka are the Non-Aligned countries and those who opposed her are, by and large, the former imperialists now turned ‘champions of human rights’. Isn’t this a vindication of Sri Lanka’s independent Foreign Policy since 1954? The situation would have been worse for Sri Lanka if the numerous resolutions hatched by the western countries at the UN on alleged human rights violations were not vetoed by Russia and China.

The event, apart from establishing the rights of nations for their suzerainty, served to expose the chicanery of these imperialists in ‘human rights’ garb. Could a handful of Tamils inveigled by terrorists have more human rights than half a million Iraqis, thousand of Palestinians and an ever increasing number of Afghans.

What is even worse is that Sri Lanka was fighting a battle for its very survival within its own territory while the imperialists are massacring hundreds of thousands in lands many miles away just on premonitions.

This support for Sri Lanka’s independent Foreign Policy should rightly be evaluated with the UNP foreign policy from 1977 to 1989 that was aligned to the West. When India dropped Parippu on Sri Lanka in 1986, Sri Lanka had an extremely pro- western Foreign Policy. In fact, it was even pro- Israel and Sri Lanka also established the record of being the only country that supported Britain when it justified the annexation of Melvinas (Falklands) Islands in 1979.

But after having been an ardent supporter of the west, little Sri Lanka had to look askance for support to assert her legitimate air rights. All her western ‘friends’ told her to ‘sort things out’ with her giant neighbour, India. As J. R. Jayawardene confesses in his autobiography it was under those circumstances that he had to sign the Indo-Lanka Accord that hoisted JVP terrorism, death, destruction and finally a white elephant called the ‘Provincial Councils’. What a contrast, the Non-Aligned friends and the western friends?

The West gave us independence grudgingly, because they feared a ‘communist take over’ of the colonies. They knew that independence meant little as long as they can keep our ruling class inveigled in western values and lifestyles. That was more or less an insurance policy for them to keep us servile to them.

After having granted independence, they readily accommodated political asylum seekers from ex colonies posing a challenge to the law and order situation in new regimes. At every turn, the west tried to impress us that we are not capable of managing our own affairs. The western press quoted the Tamil Net without verifying, dubbing it as a ‘reliable source’ thereby facilitating anti Sri Lanka propaganda. Although the west remained overtly friendly, when it came to core matters they are very subtle and hostile.

All this infers that the west, particularly British, have still not realized that Sri Lanka deserved to be treated as an independent country and the Sri Lankan Government as the democratically elected legitimate Government of the country. The fault however lies partly in our own thinking.

For generations we have been accustomed to English and English standards that we are unable to come out and think out of the block just as Britain is unable to change their ‘lordly thinking’.

As long as we are hooked on to this line of thinking, the West will never be our friends but would always try to be our masters, telling us what we should do.

The West invaded Iraq on a false WMD (weapons of Mass Destruction) allegations and invaded Iraq and killed half a million Iraqis and have now destabilized the country to a point of disintegration.

They very nearly became successful in using the ‘Human rights violations’ against Sri Lanka so that they could evoke R2P, invade Sri Lanka and destabilize the whole Indian sub continent.

The West will always be the west. Just as they invaded us in the 16th Century to civilize us, even after five centuries their intentions have not changed. This time they want to invade us for ‘human rights violations’. The intentions are the same, only the strategy is different.