'Filthy lucre' tarnishing Sri Lanka's image

Rev Desmond Tutu is a Bishop of the Anglican Church and a Noble laureate. He has been very vocal about the Sri Lankan Government's alleged violations of human rights for some time and had been instrumental in canvassing support with former American President Jimmy Carter (Catholic) against Sri Lanka for the UNHCR resolution at the UN Human Rights Council in May 2009.

That resolution sought to recommend war crimes charges against the Sri Lankan Forces immediately after the LTTE was eliminated. Now Rev. Tutu with the company of former UN General Secretary Kofi Annan has formed in to 'Elders' to call international action against Sri Lanka.

Human rights

They have even warned Sri Lanka's allies India and China, not to set wrong universal precedents for 'Violation of human rights' in the world community. To take such a persistent stand on the Sri Lankan issue, Bishop Desmond Tutu has to be either partisan against Sri Lanka due to some sectarian interest he is pursuing or it could be that he genuinely believes things to be really wrong with the Sri Lankan situation. Whichever the case may be, what appears abundantly clear is that Bishop Tutu is misinformed about the situation in Sri Lanka.

Distorted picture

Sri Lanka was a relatively unknown quantity in the world, especially in the Atlantic continents until the LTTE made its presence felt in the form of the most organized and ruthless terror organization in the world.

Hence it was not difficult for those who had a vested interest in the Sri Lankan conflict to paint a partisan picture for the consumption of people in Europe, America and Africa.

In fact it was well known that interested parties from Sri Lanka have been giving a distorted picture of the facts and events in the country for years due to communal, religious and fiduciary reasons. Yet, when a person who belongs to a particular community or religion speak ill of another community or religion, the receptor would always know that he receives is partisan propaganda. Therefore if the propaganda is to be convincing a person who belongs to a particular section has to come out with allegations of crimes committed by his own tribe against another.

In the case of the Sri Lankan conflict this has been happening quite cogently tarnishing the image of the country and particularly the Sinhalese community and this is where the 'fiduciary reasons' mentioned above comes in to effect.

Conflict resolution

This funding normally gets arranged through an NGO and there is enough reason to believe that Bishop Tutu, being a patron of 'International Alert' has been droned with tendentious propaganda about the Sri Lankan situation for years. International Alert is an NGO whose activities often became the subject of controversy even in other countries where it purportedly worked to 'resolve conflicts'. They claim specialization in the trade of 'conflict resolution' but up to now it is not known where they have resolved national or international conflict successfully. In Sierra Leone, they offered their service to resolve the conflict between the 'Shinning path' rebels and the Government. 'Shinning path' is an organization very much like the LTTE for its brutality to civilians, recruitment of child soldiers and illegal moneymaking by diamond mining and smuggling. The Government expected 'International Alert' to work their magic of 'conflict resolution science' but eventually the IA became so patronizing of the rebels the conflict became worse.

Diamond smuggling

The Sierra Leone Government, having realized that in the guise of resolving conflict the 'resolutionists' have become stakeholders in the diamond smuggling industry, ejected them from the country. Hence the modus operandi of these new fangled conflict 'resolutionists' is to eventually become part of the problem and their initial pontifications are only a platform.

In Sri Lanka the IA issued press statements when LTTE was ejected from Jaffna in 1996 stating that an 'army of occupation' has taken over the Jaffna peninsular.

The idea was to confer legitimacy on the LTTE 'Army' and their fascist rule in the area.

Bishop Desmond Tutu Born October 7, 1931 (age 78) Awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 Dean of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg in 1975 General Secretary of South African Council of Churches in 1978

Jimmy Carter Born - October 1, 1924 (age 85) Political party - Democratic 39th President of the United States Recipient of 2002 Nobel Peace Prize Founded Carter Center in 1982

Kofi Annan Born - April 8, 1938 (age 72) Ghanian diplomat Seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations Annan and the UN co-recipients of 2001 Nobel Peace Prize

It was organizations like IA that continued to whitewash all the heinous crimes of the LTTE including those against innocent civilians stating that they have a 'valid cause' due to 'traditional grievances'.

They were so well funded by Norwegians (sometimes even by arms manufacturers indirectly) that they spent liberally to make the most ruthless and uncivilized acts of the LTTE appear most justifiable and civilized.

They gave all the publicity required for the July '83 and became stakeholders in 'Sully Lanka to migrate' project of the Tamil expatriates.

Create market

After the 2007 Nugegoda and Narahenpita bomb blasts, some Northern Tamils were taken in for questioning and Kumar Rupasinghe of IA criticized these arrests in the public press on December 13 wishing that Sri Lanka upheld British standards in policing. Kath Nobel, a British national wrote a rejoinder to this on December 19, 2007. She was quite sympathetic to the Sri Lankan situation and concluded her article stating that, 'The power of filthy lucre attempting to render the law enforcement authorities in developing countries ineffective to pave the way for eventual anarchy', an obvious reference to the likes of Kumar Rupasinghe making money by exacerbating the conflict in Sri Lanka.

The organizations like IA therefore have made the conflict in Sri Lanka into an industry and the lives lost are just statistics that will advertise the conflict and hence bring more money to them. Therefore, as in other industries they do their market research and try to create a market for their product 'peace' and to sell peace you must have a market of 'war', death and destruction! Therefore, irrespective of the situation in the country, Sri Lanka's reputation in the world continues to get tarnished by International human rights activists because their local agents in this country do not wish to lose that market of 'grievance', 'conflict' and death. [email protected]