Two standards, two videos

It was Gough Whitlam, probably Australia’s greatest Prime Minister, who first changed his country’s orientation away from the West towards its geographical neighbours in Asia. He did away with the racist White Australia policy and began engaging with Asian countries as equals, not colonial fiefs.

He was also one of only two Australian Prime Ministers to visit this country. The other was his Labour Party predecessor Robert Menzies, who inaugurated the policy of friendship with and aid to Sri Lanka.

Australia has hitherto refrained from an intrusive approach to the post-conflict problems faced by this island. It has been one of the few countries which has put its money where its mouth is and taken part actively in the reconstruction of the North and East, particularly in demining.

Gough Whitlam

The current Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard has followed Whitlam’s example and has treated Sri Lanka in a manner befitting equals. Ignoring hysterical calls to burn this country on the stake of war crimes allegations, she had a constructive discussion with President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Illegal immigration

Their conversation took place on Wednesday, during the Commonwealth heads of government meeting now going on in Perth, Western Australia. The next CHOGM is due to take place in Sri Lanka in 2013, despite attempts by vested interests to have the venue changed.

Among the topics conferred upon by the leaders of Australia and Sri Lanka were the steps taken by the Sri Lankan government to prevent people smuggling and illegal immigration, the current situation in the country, the Parliamentary Select Committee and the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission.

Gillard did call upon Sri Lanka to address the war crimes allegations, but she emphasised the official Australian view which places them firmly within the context of the reconciliation process. Abjuring coercion, she has opted for engagement in a process of restorative justice. This marks the failure of the efforts of the rump of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’s overseas support network to get Australia to follow certain other states which seek, unsuccessfully, to punish this country for rejecting their invasive demands on this country’s internal affairs.

Part of those exertions was the abortive attempt to prosecute the Sri Lankan President in Melbourne. The Australian Attorney-General Robert McClelland ruled this out on Tuesday because it would breach both domestic and international law.

War crimes issue

Mahinda’s firm stand on the war crimes issue has been vindicated by recent reactions to the events in Libya, in particular the murder of that country’s leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

The murder took place after aircraft belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (an American Predator unmanned drone and a French Mirage 2000 fighter, according to French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet and an unnamed US official) targeted the convoy Gaddafi was travelling in.

Sir Robert Gordon Menzies

According to an Israeli source, a Special Forces unit belonging to an unidentified country had captured Gaddafi and shot him in the legs. They had then informed one of the rebel Misurata Brigades of his whereabouts.

If the evidence of the video taken by jubilant rebels and which has spread virally across the internet is to be believed, Gaddafi was tortured before being killed. A further video suggests that he was brutally sodomised with a knife, metal rod or stick.

The treatment being given to the video showing the murder at first hand illuminates shockingly the dual standards being adopted - contrasting heavily with that received by the controversial video aired on Channel 4’s ‘Sri Lankan Killing Fields’ programme.

For example, British Foreign and Commonwealth Office under-secretary Alistair Burt said of the Channel 4 video that it ‘constitutes convincing evidence of violations of international humanitarian and human rights law’.

International community

The whole of the international community will expect the Sri Lankans to give a serious and full response to this evidence.

By way of contrast, Burt appears not to have made any official comment about the video showing the murder of Gaddafi. What he did say on Sky News in relation to the brutal killing is: ‘It would have been preferable as far as we’re concerned for anyone in the regime to face justice through a court of law, but circumstances don’t always work that way.’

Meanwhile, the British Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond has said, ‘The fledgling Libyan government will understand that its reputation in the international community is a little bit stained by what happened.’

Of the 53 bodies of government supporters executed by rebels (apparently from the dreaded Misurata brigades) and found in a Sirte hotel, these worthies appear to be deafeningly silent. Resounding silence has, too, been their response to the revelation that the rebels were carrying out pogroms against black Libyans.

Julia Gaillard

They are also silent about the claim from rebel sources that Gaddafi was executed by a child soldier. The employment of child soldiers constitutes a war crime. However, the rebels in Misurata have been employing child soldiers since July - when Britain’s Daily Mail reported it. Another bunch of rebels who, famously, employed children on the front lines was the LTTE. Alas the misdeeds of that ferocious gang of murderers has quietly been swept under the carpet, including their ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Sinhalese.

The Janus-faced difference in the treatment received by controversial allegations about Sri Lanka on the one hand and brutally evident, substantial accusations about the Libyan rebels on the other is symptomatic of a deeper imperial disease.

‘“Human rights” and “democratisation”’, says Cynthia McKinney, a former United States Congresswoman and Presidential Candidate, ‘are being used as a smokescreen for colonialism and war.’

Underlying the separatist struggle in Sri Lanka was an entire subtext of colonialism, economics, natural resources and corporate greed. We will have to leave it for historians of the future to reveal that subtext in its entirety.