Arbitrary execution by Prof Philip Alston
Prof. Rajiva WIJESINHA
The Sri Lankan Government is saddened by a contumacious press release
issued late in the afternoon of August 28 by UN Special Rapporteur Prof.
Philip Alston on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.
Though Prof Alston had seemed an honourable man, he has recently
fallen prey to the unfortunate practice of launching missiles at the Sri
Lankan Government without giving it a chance to respond.
The press release
|
Prof.
Philip Alston |
When he was upbraided about this before, he asserted that he did give
time for such responses, and had indeed once altered a press release on
the strength of a response he had received.
Sri Lanka does not benefit from such generosity. Prof Alston sent at
14.45 on that Friday a letter addressed to the Charge d’Affaires of the
Sri Lankan Mission to Geneva with a series of leading questions based on
a video that had been shown on Channel 4 (though he makes no reference
to the provenance of this video in his letter). The carelessness with
which the letter was signed is evident from the fact that it begins with
the phrase ‘In this connection’, with no clue as to what the particular
connection is that the worthy professor means.
The reason for this unseemly haste is apparent from the fact that he
followed up this missive with a press release that was sent to the
Mission at 15.37, with a covering letter indicating that the release had
been issued. In his release, Prof Alston regrets that he has not been
invited to visit Sri Lanka. Obviously no country is likely to invite a
man who sanctimoniously claims to follow decent practice and then
blatantly violates this at the first possible opportunity.
It should also be noted that Prof Alston has sedulously refused to
answer letters sent to him from the Sri Lankan Government, and has
claimed on at least one occasion that he refrained from responding
because he did not want any response to be used publicly. It is this
same sanctimonious professor however who now, contrary to his express
assurance about press statements, sets himself at the heart of a
terrorist media campaign against the Sri Lankan Government.
Justifying his call
Prof Alston’s penchant for seizing any opportunity that fulfils his
predilections, even at the cost of seeming childish, is apparent in one
of the arguments he uses to justify his call for an independent
investigation into the authenticity of the video he privileges. He is
asserted to have said that ‘There is no justification for not moving
ahead with such an investigation in view of the Government’s confidence
that such atrocities were never perpetrated by its Armed Forces.” If he
actually uttered such a convoluted sentence, it is understandable that
he should have signed an incoherent letter, but in his saner moments he
must surely realize that in the adult world justification requires a
positive reason, and that ordinary people do not go to vast extremes
simply because there is no reason not to.
But Prof Alston, along with several of his peers, is rather like the
boy who cried wolf. They have been calling for an independent
investigation for so long, and with such shrillness, on the basis of
general allegations, that it is no wonder that their standard bearer
pounces with relish on what seems a particular allegation. Having been
soundly rebuked by the Human Rights Council for their pertinacity, they
must have been so delighted at what seemed real evidence, that the most
emotional of them fell over himself in glee, and obviously assumed that
the Sri Lankan Government would make the connection between this letter
and his earlier missives.
Illusory
But in actual fact the light he has found at the end of the tunnel he
dug for himself turns out to be equally illusory. The Sri Lankan Foreign
Secretary has said very clearly that a detailed allegation would be
investigated, and this continues to be the position of the Sri Lankan
Government. But it is really too much to expect an investigation to be
set in motion on the strength of a video clip shown on a television
channel that had previously engaged in bizarre inaccuracies.
Shadowy organization
The apparently high resolution video clip is claimed to have
originated on a mobile telephone in January, but only reached a shadowy
organization called Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka in the past
few days. It had to be smuggled out of Sri Lanka, it seems, suggesting
that these journalists and their sources are without access to modern
technology. Neither the journalists nor Channel 4 seem able to say when
or where precisely the incident happened.
Prof Alston may remember some material published in the English Daily
Mirror, which led to the resignation of its editor, Piers Morgan.
He may also recall that, after the death of Prabhakaran in May,
footage was circulating both of what was claimed to have been his
horrendous execution (to use an adjective that Prof Alston fancies), and
also of him alive and well and watching television reports of his death.
Prof Alston did not leap on these pictures with similar glee, sadly
since he would have been delightfully suited to lead an investigation
into what he could have described as the extrajudicial, summary and
arbitrary execution of a terrorist who miraculously survived.
Prof. Alston has forgotten, in his zeal to make himself useful, that
allegations must be based on evidence.
Attempt to find out
He may believe, as some people of his generation and mine still do,
that cameras cannot lie, but he must realize that a man in his position
should at least have made an attempt to find out, from Channel 4 or from
Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, the circumstances under which
this video was made and purveyed, before he went public with his pompous
pronouncements.
The Sri Lankan Government will, in its response to his letter, seek
clarification as to whether he proceeded judiciously after he saw his
chance to pounce.
It will do so expeditiously, because once before it was argued by
Special Rapporteurs that they were entitled to issue press releases
timed to precipitate a Special Session against Sri Lanka because the
Government had taken more than a week (including four holidays) to
respond. But this time sending a response without a lapse of working
time will serve no purpose for the Sri Lankan Government, given the
intensity of the forces ranged against it.
Call for investigation
Realizing that the Government was wise to the tricks of special
Mandate Holders, Prof Alston seems to have made sure he wrote on a
Friday afternoon and issued his press release with less than an hour to
spare.
In his letter he refers to the obligation of the Sri Lankan
Government to conduct an investigation, less than an hour later he is
publicly calling for what he terms an independent investigation. Thus,
wholly predictably, TamilNet was able to highlight his pronouncements
just a few hours afterwards, along with a pretty picture of the
Professor, when Sri Lanka was sleeping.
True, the evidence is circumstantial, but it seems more convincing to
a thinking mind than allegations based on videos, when doctoring of
videos is known to be a common practice of the terrorist Tigers: a
dispassionate observer could readily conclude that this incident shows
that the Professor, perhaps carried away by idealism, and memories of
Conrad’s deadly Professor, has found a lethal weapon to engage in an
extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary attack on an elected Government. He
must be congratulated for his ingenuity, if not his moral sense. |