Miliband’s baffling hollow thinking

UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband holding forth on race relations in Sri Lanka was hollow in his address to the Global Tamil Forum in London and still bent on pursuing separatism. He seemed bafflingly oblivious to the conscientious reconciliatory efforts being made in Sri Lanka after the recent elections. He was careening into mayhem, an affront to his bona fides.

Miliband’s threatening exclamation point was outrageously partisan and uncalled for, prolonging his relentless icy relationship with Sri Lanka, a long-standing member of the Commonwealth.

Irrationality abounds in that mind-set and he seemed unable to extricate himself out of a despondent stand.

Miliband on thin ice

Some could even demonstratively point out that Miliband is on thin ice on the crucial subject of race relations.

Achieving racial concurrence in Sri Lanka among Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims seemed rosier compared to UK’s thornier Islamophobia, bigotry of the worse kind to nearly two million Muslims by a section of British society.

A protest against David Miliband and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown opposite the British High Commission recently. AFP

It is unbecoming of a policy wonk to abandon well-thought out lines of diplomacy trying to perpetrate a philosophical divide in such a cavalier manner.

Beneath his brazen terminology lurk deception and a cover up, a corrosive political treachery.

Scouting out fake platitudes would not fool anyone. Physician, heal thyself or more aptly the timber in your eye is nothing compared to the sliver in others!

Promoting separatism in Sri Lanka

The Sri Lankan Governemnt had objected to Miliband participating at the GTF lending credibility to an organization propagating the separatist agenda of the LTTE. Miliband was acting in a manner inimical to the national interest of Sri Lanka and its legitimate government. It is a veiled interference in the affairs of a sovereign State.

There is an inherent contradiction in Miliband’s patronizing attitude towards the pro-LTTE Diaspora who is well-entrenched staying put thousands of miles away from the North-East corridor of Sri Lanka, too detached both physically and aspiration-wise with the core values of the Sri Lankan Tamil population.

That is the very anti-thesis of the realistic approach to race relations in Sri Lanka.

Deeply ingrained prejudice

To add to that the deeply ingrained prejudice against Muslims in UK is like a sore thumb. The number of Muslims in Britain may be close to two million having arrived from Pakistan, the Middle East and North Africa.

All Muslims affirm the oneness of God like the Christians of UK, believing in prophets like Abraham and Moses and in the Day of Judgment and life after death. They pray five times a day, give two and a half per cent of their savings and income to the needy and observe the holy month of fasting and discipline, called Ramadan.

But British Muslims face growing tensions. Most were once immigrants, people who naturally still looked back to their homelands. But they have put down deep roots, and their children — a growing proportion of the entire Islamic community — are Britons who happen to be Muslims. Miliband cannot deny that they continue to face discrimination and disadvantage:

Long-term unemployment

Bangladeshis and Pakistanis together have a long-term unemployment rate nearly three times greater than people of West Indian descent. In the inner cities, nearly half of all Bangladeshi and Pakistani adults are out of work.

It is a fact that number of Muslims in prison in England and Wales rose by 40 percent in the four years to 1995 to account for nine per cent of the prison population, although Muslims constitute only about four per cent of the entire British population. Things have improved marginally during the past decade.

A recent report identified “Islamophobia” as a problem besetting British Muslims of every generation and background: an irrational fear of Muslims as people allegedly bent on imposing their religious and political views on the rest of society. Ironically, that was what the British Empire where the sun never set once did to near perfection. The overwhelming majority of British Muslims are intent simply on living their lives without interference: faithful adherents of their chosen religion, and at the same time loyal citizens of their chosen country.

Miliband cannot avoid the charge that his address to the GTF immediately following the acclaimed election victory of President Mahinda Rajapaksa is highly suspicious. He could have delayed it a few months and waited for post-election anguish to subside. The fork-tongued two-faced duplicity is so obvious. The attempt by Western powers to throw a lifeline to LTTE leaders failed in May last year. There are repercussions flowing from that still send out vibes. Miliband is transmitting at an alarming rate.

Positive response

There is more positive news emerging as we write. An international Crisis Group (ICG), an independent non-governmental organization based in Brussels with a branch in Colombo has strongly urged the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora to jettison once and for all the failed Tamil Eelam agenda of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and instead put their energies into the quest for a sustainable and just peace in a united Sri Lanka.

In its 29 page report titled ‘The Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora after the LTTE’ released simultaneously in Colombo and Brussels, the ICG is blunt in its assertion that after 26 years of exhaustion from the war, an overwhelming majority of Sri Lankan Tamils have no stomach at the moment for return to militant politics.

Miliband’s admonitions delivered with the Tiger Diaspora in mind does not augur well for the British Government’s understanding of changing synamics in Sri Lanka. To put it more plainly and in language familiar to Miliband, he is talking through his hat.