Fooling all the people all the time - Part I

Country Report on Sri Lanka commissioned by UNHCR :

Rajiva WIJESINHA

Two sources abroad have now brought to my attention a recent report on Sri Lanka produced by an organisation called ‘Country of Origin Research and Information’. Unfortunately both told me this was a report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This is not the case, and indeed the UNHCR Representative in Sri Lanka knew nothing of the report when I called him on April 26. He then looked further into the matter and sent me a note about such reports on the April 27, which repeated what the Report itself says, that the views in it ‘are those of the author and are not necessarily those of UNHCR’.

It was kind of him to respond so soon, and I certainly do not think he should be blamed for the type of reporting that goes on. But it would be desirable for Sri Lanka, as a member state of the United Nations, to look into a situation that allows selective reporting about a country, reporting that seems deficient in accuracy, sensitivity and relevance. The UN should not spend enormous amounts of time and money on regurgitating prejudice that is not germane to its job.

The CORI report begins with the old chestnut that the MEP was responsible for what it terms Sinhalese only. It ignores the fact that it was the UNP that specifically called an early election ‘to obtain a mandate from the people to make Sinhalese only the State language’ (See Ferguson’s Directory, 1956, p 156). Its account of the early eighties, when ethnic problems turned violent, is cursory and misleading, since it ignores the impact of state sponsored violence in precipitating violent reactions.

Indo-Lankan Accord

The report gives prominence to an article in the Times that draws attention, with marked inaccuracies, to relatives of the President in ‘top positions’. After this hasty impropriety, the report, in providing a ‘brief background and history of internal armed conflict’, apart from the omission noted above, underplays the impact of the Indo-Lankan Accord and the nature of LTTE resistance, as also the scope and impact of JVP violence. Then begins the process of lumping the LTTE and government together, with the LTTE being given the benefit of the doubt whenever possible. Thus, it was only ‘implicated in the assassination of Indian Premier Rajiv Gandhi’, though given full credit for the killing of President Premadasa.

After the 2002 Ceasefire, it is claimed that talks broke down for a number of reasons including the ‘LTTE’s numerous violations of the ceasefire’ - whereas the fact was that the LTTE simply refused to attend. After 2005 it is claimed that ‘both the government and rebels repeatedly violated the ceasefire agreement’, a statement attributed to someone called Jayshree Bajoria who had prepared a ‘Backgrounder’ for what seems to be the American Council on Foreign Relations. This is in marked contrast to the reports of the Scandinavian Monitoring Mission, which had determined that the LTTE violated the CFA more than ten times as often as the government.

Emergency laws

After that Human Rights Watch becomes a principal source, with its farrago of lies and exaggeration. So there are claims about repeated and indiscriminate shelling, even though HRW was unable to substantiate this claim the first time it launched it; there are claims that the government fired ‘at or near hospitals’ even though its report on this made it clear that the areas it was talking about were makeshift centres which the LTTE simply declared to be hospitals, even while concentrating its own heavy weaponry around such places.

Brilliantly, the report cites HRW for the claim that ‘The UN reportedly estimated that 7,000 or more civilians were killed in the final phase of the fighting’, whereas a report commissioned by the UN could have checked with the UN, at which stage it would have been clear that the UN does not take responsibility for this figure.

The report cites HRW with regard to those detained for LTTE involvement, to say they were held ‘on suspicion...in many cases citing vague and overbroad emergency laws’, without explaining that most of those coming through checkpoints had admitted to such involvement. This section comes under ‘Political development’, and is followed by the claim that the government was working hard ‘to undermine the autonomy and independent character of Tamil and Muslim parties’.

This is according to the International Crisis Group that old Gareth Evans I think used to head, and it goes on to claim that Karuna was pressured to leave his original party and that Pillaiyan was ‘contemplating not supporting President Rajapaksa’s re-election bid’. What actually happened is not mentioned, even though the report was published in late April and contains much recent material.

War crime charges

General Fonseka is supposed to have announced his candidacy for the presidency after the President ‘sought to reassign’ him as Chief of Defence Staff. The Commonwealth Secretariat is brought into play to suggest that the State-owned media was responsible in large measure for ‘a pre-election environment full of rumour, speculation and uncertainty’, while the BBC claim that ‘just hours before his arrest, the General said he was prepared to give evidence in an international court on any war crime charges against the state’ is apparently supposed to be objective reporting. The BBC is supposed to have reported that ‘the UPFA had won 117 out of the 225 seats in parliament’, which I suspect is CORI getting things wrong rather than the BBC.

The introductory chapter ends with a section that gives pride of place again to ICG and its pessimism, notably the view that ‘Eight months later, the post-war policies of President Mahinda Rajapaksa have deepened rather than resolved the grievances that generated and sustained LTTE militancy’.

All but one of the 106 references in this chapter are to Western sources (I am not sure from where the South Asia Terrorism Portal operates, but if it is the institution in Mumbai that I have dealt with before, its sources of funding suggest that its outlook will not be very different from the rest of the sources cited).

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To be continued