Ideals betrayed
Ven. Walpola Piyananda Thera Chief Sangha Nayake of
America
The preamble to the United Nations Charter expresses the very highest
ideals that countries might live by as guidelines for achieving world
peace: tolerance for others, universal human rights, economic and social
advancement for all. The preamble set the intention for all countries to
rise together in harmony as the world recovered from the devastation of
two World Wars.
The current Secretary General of the UN has turned this esteemed
organization into the focus of derision and the butt of jokes in Sri
Lanka; he has also tarnished its image around the world to an almost
irreparable degree by revealing a dark layer of bias beneath his false
veneer of humanitarian rhetoric. Ban ki Moon, fuelled by his desire to
be re-elected to a second term, made several fatal mistakes when he
appointed his Advisory Board for the Sri Lankan ‘war crimes’ issue.
Tamil diaspora
His first mistake was for him and his Advisory Board to listen to
members of the Tamil diaspora, and their well-paid public relations
spokesmen, rather than speak directly to Tamil people in post-war Sri
Lanka during the information gathering process. In Sri Lanka all races
now live in peace and harmony, and each is involved in the process of
peacefully rebuilding the country. The international Tamil diaspora,
which suffers from an inferiority complex because they don’t have a
country to call their own, are bitter about losing the war.
People signing a petition to protest against the
controversial Darusman Report.
Picture by Roshan Pitipana |
They just don’t seem to be willing to lay down their vitriol and
hatred for the Sri Lankan government - even though most of them weren’t
born on Sri Lankan soil - because they can’t accept the fact that they
will never be able to carve out a piece of our motherland to call their
own.
Decision-making process
His and his Board’s second mistake during the information gathering
process was to listen to an assortment often-biased NGOs and their
representatives, rather than to Sri Lankan military officers who were at
the front of the war - or even our Deputy Ambassador to the UN,
Shaveendra Silva, a learned individual who might have advised him quite
differently. Moon never let the old saying ‘consider your source’ be his
guide during his decision-making process, and he passed judgment using
unreliable sources.
His third mistake was to appoint an Advisory Board with two out of
three of its members having a past record of speaking out in public
directly against the government of Sri Lanka. The third member, from the
European Union, is, perhaps questionable, but at least he has no such
public record. Moon’s thinly-veiled attempt at being fair and neutral
was derailed from the beginning.
His and the Board’s fourth mistake was to examine only the last two
weeks of the war - rather than contexting the situation within the
totality of 30 years of bloody war. We don’t need to remind ourselves of
the hardship and violence of that period, but apparently the Secretary
General did.
His fifth and perhaps most fatal mistake was to underestimate the
strength of the Sri Lankan government and the determination of the Sri
Lankan people in regards to their resistance to succumbing to foreign
powers and caving into post-colonial influences. The Americans and
others were angered by the fact that Sri Lanka did not ‘tow the line’
and follow their orders at the end of the war; they obviously still
carry a chip on their shoulder.
Anti-Sri Lanka attitude
The former Ambassador Robert Blake was particularly incensed that he
was denied the opportunity to bring peace - his way - which was to let
Prabhakaran escape so he could regroup and start up the war under better
circumstances in the future. I’m sure we will be hearing from Blake ad
nauseum, as he refuses to make friends with the GOSL - in spite of his
lip-service-only overtures.
The Secretary General has been stripped of his Emperor’s clothes, and
now stands before us a beaten, undoubtedly disillusioned figure. It is
unlikely that he will ever be re-elected to his current post, and he can
never undo the damage he did to the UN’s reputation as a fair and honest
organization that represents all countries - and is biased toward none.
Yes, Moon, you have made the UN a joke. Some of us, however, don’t think
it’s very funny.
By the way, we don’t think the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,
Navi Pillay, is very funny either. She has consistently demonstrated an
anti-Sri Lanka attitude, and her ‘welcome’ two days ago of the Panel of
Expert’s report to the Secretary General was shouting out her bias just
about as loud she could. For the record, her flimsy, undocumented
comments were neither appropriate NOR accurate. Perhaps she is coming
out and publicly announcing her association as a key leader of the Tamil
diaspora/LTTE rump - giving up her esteemed status as a seasoned
international diplomat. Perhaps she is naive; perhaps not. At any rate,
naivete has no place in a critical situation where the fate of the
government of 20 million people is at stake. |