Reflections on disinformation
Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha
On the eve of the closure of the Peace Secretariat, I had a call from
the BBC to respond to an interview they conducted with the American
Assistant Secretary of State Eric Schwarts who had been in Sri Lanka
recently. His comments generally made sense, and his stress on swift
resettlement of the displaced was understandable, and in line with
Government policy, which is to resettle them as soon as possible.
Indeed I pointed out that it was absurd that the West thought that
they were the only people concerned with swift resettlement. If we
consider both practicality and past practice, this is clearly a primary
concern for Government. Not only is keeping people in welfare centres
expensive, we had shown in the East that we could and would resettle a
couple of hundred thousand people far more swiftly than most people
imagined possible.
False information on IDP camps are reported by media. Picture by
Dushmantha Mayadunne |
The BBC however insisted that he had wanted them resettled ‘now’,
which was to take his words totally out of context, and equate a senior
administrator with loonies like Human Rights Watch. This malignant
organization had demanded the day before that ‘The Sri Lankan government
should immediately release the more than 280,000 internally displaced
Tamil civilians held in detention camps’.
I use the word ‘loonies’ of HRW advisedly, for it was they who had
complained about our swift resettlement program in the East, that it was
forced. This was in spite of clear acknowledgment by the UN that the
returns had been according to international standards. In short, you
cannot win with HRW, once they have decided that you are the enemy, and
that you should be destroyed at all costs.
At the same time, while promoting returns as swiftly as is compatible
with security considerations, we should note that there is still in the
East a small residue of IDPs in centres. This is because they do not
want to go back, even though the Government is anxious to close these
centres.
I had to point this out to the BBC when they wanted to know when the
Centres in Vavuniya would be closed - obviously one could not give a
date because, apart from the need to make sure that returns are to
safely demined areas, we are aware that some people may want to stay on
in a context in which the shelter and food they receive is better than
what they had before. It is also for that reason that the Government has
also embarked on a development program for the North, to make sure that
the quality of life of the returnees will be satisfactory.
I also pointed out to the BBC that calling our centres Detention
Camps was unfair, though this was typical of HRW. They had tried last
year to justify the Tigers holding people hostage by suggesting that
they were as well off with the Tigers as they would have been if they
came into Government controlled territory. Internment, the word they
used, was more appropriate to what the British and Americans had done
during the Second World War, in taking Germans and Japanese from their
homes and putting them in camps.
The BBC man patriotically got on the defensive straight away, and
said that the people interned then were foreigners. I do not know if he
thought it justifiable to violate the rights of foreigners
indiscriminately, but I pointed out that certainly now human rights
norms demand that anyone, and certainly foreign residents, be treated
according to the same standards as others.
Indeed the Guardian, for instance, was demanding better treatment for
the British national who had masqueraded as a doctor and sent what were
treated as factual reports from the front during the last days of the
LTTE, that she had so amazingly come out to support in 2008.
It is bizarre that now the West, having used brutal methods in the
past (though I assured the BBC that I was glad they had won the Second
World War), gets on its high horse with others, while also suggesting
that they can treat foreigners wickedly, but everyone else has to be
roundly condemned whatever they do. It is also bizarre that they believe
that they and they alone are the saviours of the human race.
Thus the Czar of the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect,
Gareth Evans, claims credit now for Sri Lanka not being a ‘classic R2P
case’. Having engaged in deceit and disinformation during his shameful
Neelan Tiruchelvam Memorial Lecture here in 2007 (when he omitted to
mention that Neelan had been killed by the Tigers, just as he omitted to
mention that the ethnic cleansing he declared had taken place in Sri
Lanka had been done by the Tigers), and having tried through his
glamorous acolytes to bring Sri Lanka under his R2P purview, he now
seems to grant that we clearly took steps ‘to be more cautious to avoid
civilian casualties’.
What a wonderfully pompous idea - if it were not for Gareth Evans,
our forces would have killed all the civilians. No understanding of the
fact that, throughout the operations in the East, long before the advent
of the Blessed Gareth, there were no instances at all of civilian
casualties (indeed no allegations even), except with regard to one
instance.
That was Kathiravelli, which Human Rights Watch blew up into
‘indiscriminate attacks on civilians’, even though its full report only
recorded that one case, and recorded too that the LTTE had been present
with arms in the centre for the displaced, and that bunkers had been
built there.
What is the reason for all this? With the media, one need not assume
villainy, it is more likely to be simply the need to sensationalize,
criticism going down much better than praise, given the vagaries of
human nature.
With Gareth Evans it was obviously a desire to continue to seem
important, as was obvious when he rather hopefully declared that the
SLMM was useless, evidently to suggest that an old experienced worthy
like himself would do a much better job. But I fear that with Human
Rights Watch there is a distinct agenda of disruption and
destabilization.
The simple explanation is that this is their bread and butter, unless
there are crises they can revel in they would not get any funding. But
while that may be generally true, I suspect that institutions like that
can easily get hijacked, by what seem charmingly idealistic staff who
work from other perspectives.
Thus I was not surprised to see, on the day that Human Rights Watch
delivered its diatribe, another attack by the Coalition against Child
Soldiers, in which the glamorous Charu Latha Hogg features prominently.
She was responsible for the first salvo against Sri Lanka in 2007, when
there was an attempt to carry a resolution against Sri Lanka at the
Human Rights Council, and when the opposition in Sri Lanka knew what the
UN High Commissioner was going to suggest long before she did herself.
Tracing connections between individuals and the agendas they push is
fascinating.
Most countries have special agencies for that sort of thing, but we
are not wealthy or sophisticated enough to do this at more subtle
levels, having enough on our plate in dealing with pure and simple
terrorism. But we need to be aware that the campaign of disinformation
will continue for the future too, and its consequences can burst out to
damage us in unexpected places.
The writer is Secretary General, Secretariat for Coordinating the
Peace Process
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