A note on Radhika Coomaraswamy’s forwarding business

Perhaps it is a language/literacy issue or perhaps it’s some fundamental human trait, but a significant number of people seem to believe that clicking the ‘forward’ option in email or mobile phone amounts to communication. Some words do go back and forth. Sometimes other people say better what we want to express. Still, it can’t be just that, I feel. This world is made of compulsive forwarders. There’s a lot of evidence in my inboxes.

Sharing is good, don’t get me wrong. Some ‘forwards’ do illuminate, make my day and in general constitutes the passing around of good news. Some, however, are tainted by mal-intent. Some indicate ignorance. I suppose it takes all kinds to make this world.

Violence against women

There are no laws pertaining to forwarding. There is etiquette, though and depending on who is forwarding what to whom, it says a lot about all those concerned. In general though it is safe to assume that if something is forwarded, it amounts to endorsement unless the particular ‘communication’ is caveated by comment or convention.

This note is inspired by a forwarder, the forwarded and the forwarded to; in other words, a particular communication. The forwarder in this instance is Dr Radhika Coomaraswamy, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, former Director of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies and former UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women. This is not, then, some uneducated, ill-informed, too-much-time-on-hands person who doesn’t know enough English to write an email or to minute a communication that is forwarded. When she says something, it comes with the full weight of office, qualification, experience and track-record. When the forwarding comes without qualifier and indeed includes an emphasis of selected sections of the original email, it is endorsement. Unqualified.

Now Radhika has been conspicuously selective in her anguish about violence. Who does what to whom matters to her. Some violators are treated with kids’ gloves. Some are accorded the grace of blind-eye. In certain cases, even if violations are unproven and allegations tainted by provable mal-intent, compromised by the lack of credible substantiation and based on the politically motivated rants of unreliable sources, she is positively livid. Hassina Leelaratne, a freelance journalist living in California, says it all in a revealing comment titled ‘Is UN Special Rep using her office for personal vendettas and self-promotion?’

Child soldiers

What’s this ‘communication’, though? It was a forward, an ad in fact, of an airing of the controversial (I am being kind here) Channel 4 film (yes!) widely publicized by its key backers, the LTTE rump outside Sri Lanka and various journeymen and journeywomen of the Eelam project. Radhika has included a synopsis of the video aired by ABC in Australia the previous night in the ‘Daily Press Review’ emailed to UN staff by her on July 5, 2011. Radhika’s insert says more about her politics, intellect and integrity than about the film: ‘A British television documentary, aired on ABC’s Four Corners programme last night, showed evidence of rape, torture and murder of civilians during the Sri Lankan government’s war against the Tigers.’ The synopsis itself is Channel 4’s (and ABC’s) own lengthy advertisement which attempts to add scientific credibility to the video by dubbing it a ‘forensic’ investigation, Hassina reminds us.

The makers of this film has got a lot of egg on their faces on account of careless doctoring of footage, ignorance about context, lack of journalistic integrity and so on. Hassina points out that there is no correlation between the subject Radhika has been tasked to oversee and ‘Killing Fields’ and more importantly, observes that the film is strangely silent on the LTTE’s use of child soldiers and violence against children, things that should worry her no end, 24/7. We can be kind and say that at a personal level she can worry about anything and everything, not just children and armed conflict.

United Nations

In that case she should do it on her own time, using a personal email account. I’ll let that pass. What one cannot ‘let pass’ is the fact that Radhika cannot be seen as a compulsive forwarder. She’s got too high a profile to be categorized as an ignorant clown.

Still, perhaps it’s all in a day’s work at the UN, judging by the kinds of howlers that emanate from that supposedly august body. Deputy UN spokesperson Farhan Haq is reported to have described this forwarding fiasco as ‘an internal document compiled by Radhika Coomaraswamy’s office and does not reflect the views of Coomaraswamy or her office.’ All I could think of was ‘WOW!’

So whose ‘views’ were being reflected here? Those of Channel 4? Those of Fr (sic) Emmanuel, the current face of Eelam and former apologist for terrorism a la the ‘Our Boys’ rhetoric? Haq says that copy-pasting Channel 4 advertising was just ‘information’. No Haq, that’s advertising. That’s endorsement too because there was no qualifier included in the forward.

Now Haq says those were not Radhika’s views. Then he says it’s ‘information’. Well, if passing around information is part of Radhika’s job, what are the relevant caveats? Is she required to forward information from all sources, serious and pedestrian, academic and malicious, states and terrorists? Channel 4 has built a considerable case for being utterly out of order when it comes to journalistic integrity. Radhika Coomaraswamy cannot be ignorant of this. Is she going to or has she forwarded clips and other communiqu‚s put out by Al Qaeda and the Taliban, one wonders. If she does, will Haq shrug, grin and bear?

There is a law against theft. Those who steal break the law. Those who purchase stolen goods also transgress. There is however naive complicity and conscious involvement. Radhika Coomaraswamy is not compulsive forwarder. She is no innocent passer of information. She is a smart, accomplished purveyor of life-breath to terrorist project and credibility to pernicious operators that seek to destabilize a member state of the United Nations.

In most other situations I might have asked ‘have you no shame?’ That’s meaningless when it comes to Radhika, I’ve concluded a long time ago. She has none.

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