Death Eaters and the Return of Dark Lords of Terror
Hell-bent on making the 'layer-cake of lies' against
Sri Lanka:
Prof Rajiva Wijesinha, MP
Starring
David Miliband as Peter Pettigrew
Navanethem Pillay as Dolores Umbridge
Gareth Evans as Gideon Lockhart
Jon Snow as Rita Skeeter
Alan Keenan as Nagini
Joan Ryan as Bellatrix Lestrange
And
Ban Ki-Moon as Prof Severus Snape
In May 2009 we thought the Terrorist Tigers had been vanquished.
Prabhakaran was dead, along with many of his fighting cadres, and most
of the rest had surrendered. It was true that some had got away in the
preceding months, and a few more managed to escape, but these by and
large made their way out of the country. Sri Lanka itself seemed free of
terror and terrorist activities. Though the remnants of the LTTE abroad
continued to stick to their original agenda, it seemed that resurrection
of the movement that had wreaked so much damage was unlikely.
Rita Snow |
Peter Pettigrew Miliband |
Dolores Pillay |
Recently however there are signs that the movement feels it has got a
new lease of life. Taking advantage of what it sees as the vulnerability
of the Sri Lankan government to international pressure, it has also
endeavoured to convince the majority of the Tamil people abroad that the
LTTE agenda can be revived. Most worryingly, it is also trying to stir
dissension amongst Tamils in Sri Lanka, who would much rather work
together with the rest of the country to ensure rehabilitation and
reconciliation.
The strength of the old LTTE identity in other countries struck me,
watching the one but last Harry Potter film, as arising from the
dividing up of the LTTE persona in the way in which the evil Lord
Voldemort had divided up his sole and stored the parts in seven
horcruxes all over the world. While the list may not be exhaustive, we
can see then the way in which LTTE rumps, in Britain and France and
Canada and the United States and Australia and South Africa and India,
have tried hard to make sure that their destructive agenda dominates
discourse in those countries.
Once one realized how similar the LTTE was to Voldemort, the
parallels flowed thick and fast. We have for instance Navanethem Pillay,
who behaves exactly as Dolores Umbridge did, who was supposed to teach
students to defend against the Dark Arts in the fifth Harry Potter book.
What she did instead was to bully the decent people in her class, making
them for instance torture themselves by a gruesome form of self
confession, carving an admission of guilt into their own palms. So too
Navenethem Pillay, instead of worrying about terrorism and real evil,
uses her position as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to humiliate
those who provided the best defence against terror.
And, just in case it might seem that I am upset about Dolores Pillay
because of her relentless attacks on Sri Lanka, let me quote what one of
the brighter Australians I know said - ‘Any denunciation is welcome of
the preposterous Pillay woman. She’s just been in Australia denouncing
us as a Syria-like human-rights abuser. Her ignorance and lack of
proportion is breath taking, matched only by her arrogance and
self-righteousness.’
In three of the books the teacher supposed to provide instruction
against the Dark Arts turns out to be pretty nasty. One of them however
is simply a gullible self-promoter called Gideon Lockhart. His
opinionated flamboyance was similar to that of Gareth Evans, who first
tried to make waves in Sri Lanka in 2007 by suggesting that other
countries should interfere in Sri Lanka.
In invoking the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect, while also
putting himself forward as the Lord Protector, he suggested that
genocide and ethnic cleansing were occurring in Sri Lanka.
He did this with no idea of what he was talking about, as he admitted
when he asked his speech writer what was meant by ethnic cleansing. The
answer was the LTTE expulsion of Muslims from the Northern Province in
1990, though anyone listening to Gideon Evans or reading his text would
have assumed he was talking about recent events.
The speech writer was Alan Keenan, who has been the most dangerous
perhaps of the death eaters, slithering in and out of Sri Lanka like
Voldemort’s familiar Nagini.
He seems to have laid his cards on the table in a recent interview he
gave to a French lady called Angelique Mounier-Kuhn, in which (in the
Google translation of the French) he is supposed to have indicated that
foreign governments meant the ‘want other people lead the Sri Lanka’. He
goes on to made clear what he meant in adding that ‘However, from Iraq
to Libya, experience shows that it is risky to push for a change
regime.’
Nagini went around delivering death to all those Voldemort wanted to
get rid of. These included Severus Snape, who had done his best to help
those opposed to the Death Eaters whilst keeping the trust of these
latter.
His predicament was in a sense similar to that of Ban Ki-Moon who,
though he has often been suspected of wickedness by those fighting
terror, had good reason for his circumspection. We must remember though
that Snape did his best to protect Hogwarts, no easy task towards the
end when Death Eaters had been placed all around him.
Having had to cope with Navanethem Pillay and Louise Arbour and
Martin Lee, Ban Ki-Moon must know exactly how Snape felt.
However, with the support of heads of the old agencies, such as those
of UNDP and WHO and ILO (Juan Somavia indeed looks a bit like the gentle
giant Hagrid), one hopes good will triumph in the end, and that Ban Ki-Moon
will not be sacrificed by Nagini Keenan in his push for regime change
all over the world.
Given the desperate efforts of Jon Snow at Channel 4 to present lies
and half truths as evidence of allegations he has concocted, I need
hardly comment further on his resemblance to Rita Skeeter. But I should
note that J K Rowling leaves it open as to whether Rita is simply an
amoral journalist willing to do anything to grab attention, or whether
she has more sinister motives, to which she has been brought by the
emphatically wicked.
Whether wicked or not, Snow certainly resembles Rita Skeeter in other
ways. I was reminded of her preposterous costumes in reading the British
Sunday Times characterization of his ‘comic ties and jocund socks... It
is a pathetically and worryingly childish pose in a man approaching
retirement’.
The Sunday Times was more serious in criticizing the journalistic
aspect of the performance - ‘Snow’s commentary was intemperate and
partisan, and it was all held together by assumptions. Channel 4 News
has drifted from providing news broadcasts into being an outlet for
nodding spokespeople and assorted NGOs and environmental pressure
groups, or anyone who can provide interesting or sensational film. It
follows the old American news adage, “If it bleeds, it leads”.’
Who then are the people Snow is providing an outlet for? I have no
doubt LTTE personnel are amongst those who have fed Channel 4
information, along with Sri Lankans of all groups who like Alan Keenan
want regime change. But most insidious of all are the old Channel 4
patrons in the form of the last Labour government, with its now open
champions such as Joan Ryan of former - and no doubt future -
terrorists, crudely and unashamedly partisan like Bellatrix in the last
few Harry Potter books.
It was Channel 4 after all who questioned the Lancet’s account of
100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq by claiming, on October 29th 2004 if I
have it right that ‘without bodies can we trust the body count?’ This is
very different from their bald assertion, with no evidence at all, that
there were 40,000 civilian deaths in Sri Lanka. But the reason for these
double standards was made evident by the note in the New Statesman on
November 15th 2004 I believe which said ‘Channel 4 delivered a hatchet
job, based on Downing Street briefing’.
Tony Blair may have been responsible for many of the excesses and the
cover-ups in Iraq, but he was certainly ably assisted in the latter
period by his preferred successor David Miliband, who seems now to be
the prime mover in the effort to resurrect the LTTE.
Miliband looks rather like Barty Crouch, who escaped from Azkaban in
the guise of his old mother, and subsequently imitated Mad-Eye Moody as
the Professor of Defence against the Dark Arts. His venom when he is
found out makes clear the nasty inner nature of the cherubic youth who
kept changing character.
David Miliband’s latest outburst about Sri Lanka however suggests a
more weaselly nature than that of the relatively passive Barty Crouch.
In his effort in 2009 to save Prabhakaran, his determination to take
revenge on Sri Lanka through the Special Session of the Human Rights
Council which he declared was to do with War Crimes (as well as the
deprivation of GSP plus, when one of his sidekicks Lady Aston sent a
different response to the one anticipated by her peers in Brussels), and
now his leaping into the fray with a tendentious and misleading article
in the New York Times, he shows himself the most determined Death Eater
of them all.
He reminds me then of Peter Pettigrew, who betrayed his friends to
keep in with Lord Voldemort, who turned himself into a rat to escape
justice, and then when back in human form cut off his arm to ensure the
return of the Dark Lord. I hope nothing quite so bad happens to Miliband.
But I suspect he has forgotten, if he ever knew it, that Voldemort means
a wish for death, and that the destruction terrorists can perpetrate on
body and soul are immeasurable.
We have to hope then that this motley crew do not succeed. India I
believe has destroyed its own horcrux, in line with the destruction of
Voldemort’s Diary in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Despite
the efforts of LTTE sympathizers to revive LTTE support in the South, I
believe the Indian government will not allow terrorism to flourish
again, as opposed to support for the Tamil population.
But elsewhere the residue of the terrorist movement lives on. We need
to identify those elements that give it strength, and prevent their
support from creating more suffering, and death and destruction, for
this country that needs peace, for the world that could do without
covert and overt encouragement of the Dark Lords of Terror. |