Battleground Geneva: The Special Session of the HRC on Sri Lanka
“Sri Lanka forces West to retreat over ‘war crimes’ with victory at UN”
- The TIMES (London), May 28, 2009
“Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
…Mmm, I’m gonna try with a little help from my friends”
- The Beatles
Was Geneva the last battle of the Thirty Years (hot) war, the first battle of the next war – a long Cold War against Sri Lanka — or was it a combination? Only future history will tell.
When we aren’t involved, our arithmetic goes awry. We speak of four Eelam wars when there were five, because we omit the important one fought between the LTTE and the IPKF. There were five Eelam wars fought on the soil of our island: 1978-1987, 1987-1990, 1990-1994, 1995-2002, and 2006-2009.
Similarly, there weren’t two defeats suffered by the Tigers and pro-Tiger separatism, namely military (on the Wanni coast) and diplomatic (at the UN in Geneva), but three, military, politico-ideological and diplomatic. The political defeat actually preceded the decisive military defeat and provided the final prerequisite for the surge that overran the LTTE leadership. This was the result of the Indian election and especially the wipeout of the hardcore pro-Tiger forces in Tamil Nadu.
Geneva was the third defeat. It was not a defeat of the Tiger Diaspora alone. It was the defeat of a powerful bloc of forces: the foreign affairs apparatuses of the European Union (driven by several Western European states), the Western dominated international media, the amply endowed international NGOs, the pro-Tiger Tamil Diaspora, anti-Sri Lankan elements within the UN system, and a residual political fifth column within Sri Lanka itself.
An unintended consequence of the Geneva session was the profoundly educative and collective character of the experience for Sri Lankans, a huge number of whom watched the proceedings on the live web-cast which was picked up by at least one popular TV channel. It was a distance learning Open University on international affairs for the country as a whole.
The nation saw who our true friends were and who the friends of our separatist terrorist enemy were. Sri Lanka saw and heard hypocrisy at work in world affairs. It also saw and heard fairness, friendship and solidarity.
As a former student activist of the Independent Students Union of Colombo University, now a university lecturer in New Zealand emailed me about the support we received: “It’s a beautiful wave going through, if I start from the “west”, from Brazil, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba through Egypt, Iran, the Middle East via Russia, Pakistan, India, China to the Far East including Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia etc up to the Philippines.” More prosaically, we received solidarity in the forms of vote (member states) and voice (observers) from the following states, geographically clustered by a young Sri Lankan student from Cambridge, voluntarily interning in our Mission.
Euro-Asia: Russian Federation
South Asia: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, Nepal
Far East: China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Maldives, Singapore, Thailand, Lao People’s Democratic Republic
Middle East: Azerbaijan , Bahrain , Egypt , Jordan , Qatar , Saudi Arabia , Iran , Syrian Arab Republic , Lebanon , Oman , United Arab Emirates
Latin America: Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Venezuela
Africa: Angola , Burkina Faso , Cameroon , Djibouti , Ghana , Madagascar , Nigeria , Senegal , South Africa , Zambia , Algeria , Sudan
When I handed in my credentials here on June 1st 2007, I assembled the Mission staff and told them of the chronicle in Herodotus’ Histories of the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae who held on against incredible odds to provide the time and political space for the rest of the Greek federation to mobilize and crush the aggressors. This, I told them, would be our task, and should animate our work and attitude. It worked and we held the line, not permitting a single move or sound out of Geneva which could reinforce the other prong of Western diplomacy – working for a “humanitarian pause” and an evacuation or “honorable exit” for the Tiger leadership– before the Sri Lankan armed forces finished their historic task, decimating the Tiger army and decapitating the fascist enemy.
The Western Europeans had pushed for a special session for weeks, lobbying intensively in capitals across the world. Their target date was May 14th. They failed due our intense resistance, and that was our first success. The story is best told by Prof Rajiva Wijesinha in his How the West Was Sidelined (For the Moment), which appeared in The Island. Though the proffered reason was the fate of trapped civilians, a Reuters report out of Geneva on Friday May 15th, datelined 5:30 pm, and dealing with the call for a special session, let slip the truth. It leaked the text of a draft declaration to be adopted by the EU Council on Monday May 18th which would insist that the Government of Sri Lanka “desist from a final assault”. This then was the agenda, because the EU had reckoned that with the Tamil nadu elections over on May 13th, the Sri Lankan armed forces would storm the last redoubt of the fascist Tigers. They were right.
When the European Council met on Monday May 18th, it had to amend its text, dropping the obsolescent call for desisting from “a final assault” and substituting instead one for an independent international inquiry into war crimes, and urging the UN Human Rights Council to have a special session. The news leaks surrounding it clearly stated that the EU expected the Human Rights Council to be the appointing body for such a probe. Obviously someone up there wanted to punish the Sri Lankan state for pressing ahead with the offensive and finishing off the LTTE. On May 19th, after President Rajapakse’s address to the Sri Lankan Parliament, UK Foreign Secretary Miliband submitted a written Ministerial statement endorsing the European Council’s call. One simply must recall that it was after the visit of secretary Miliband to Washington that the joint US-UK statement called for a pause and negotiations, and that the remarks by Foreign Secretary Miliband and Foreign Minister Kouchner in a co-signed article in The Times, Mr. Miliband’s favorite paper ( which he commended twice to reporters at the UN Security Council briefing) concluded by sounding the note of the so-called Responsibility to protect and calling for an international inquiry, more than 18 days before the war would be over. These personalities echoed this call at their remarks at the standup microphone outside the Security Council following the UN SC Press statement on Sri Lanka.
The EU worked overtime across the globe during the weekend of May 16-17 and in an activity spike occasioned by the May 18th statement in Brussels and the written Ministerial statement in Westminster of May 19th, finally managed to get the 16 signatures (peaking at 17) by the middle of that week. The surge was assisted by vigorous lobbying by Tamil ethnic lobbies in some countries of the global South and most of all by a blitzkrieg of disinformation in the Western dominated world media.
How did little Sri Lanka first resist successfully and then prevail over, for the moment—but a decisive moment– the concerted global efforts of old, massive, well funded and thoroughly professional foreign offices of the UK, France, Germany and Denmark, together with their access to the media, their “paramilitary proxies’ the INGOS, and their men and women seeded through the upper reaches of the UN system?
In the first place we had a political leadership, or more correctly, a politico-military leadership, in President Mahinda Rajapakse and Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, that possessed the political will to go ahead despite the odds, and in this they were supported by the national will, the people’s will, to prevail over the Tigers whatever the external pressures.
The strategy that I adopted in Geneva was discussed and agreed upon in a one-on-one conversation with President Rajapakse at the very time he appointed me. He had sent me on the delegation for the HRC sessions in March 2007, so I could get a feel for the place. Upon returning I outlined my perspective, simply that which came authentically to me, of actively re-committing to and practicing Sri Lanka’s traditional foreign policy of Nonalignment. The President briefed me on certain unfortunate departures from this policy that had taken place, which had led to changes he had just made in the foreign relations apparatus; deviations he wanted rectified including in the disarmament realm — and gave me the needed autonomy, saying “you know my thinking”. As for the specific scenario I anticipated, given that the EU had a draft resolution against Sri Lanka on the table since March 2006, he said “Yes, even if we lose, go for a vote.” President Rajapakse re-endorsed the strategy in two telephone conversations I had with him on the weekend just prior to the special session.
Sri Lanka’s leading analyst of international affairs, Mervyn de Silva, my father, died ten years ago this month, June. I practiced in Geneva that which I had absorbed from him. He told me of Ben Bella and Patrice Lumumba even before I started schooling. As a boy I had seen Sri Lanka’s diplomatic stance at its best, adopted by his friends Hamilton Shirley Amerasinghe, Neville Kanakaratne, Gamini Corea, and Anton Muttukumaru. Through my teens I attended the lectures, including by Sir Michael Howard, organized by the Ceylon Institute of World Affairs, of which Maj Gen ‘Tony’ Muttukumaru was President and Mervyn was Secy General, and the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies which was founded on the basis of a report by Mervyn. As importantly I was introduced to top foreign diplomats such as Cuba’s Armando Bayo and foreign policy thinkers such as Russia’s Evgeni Primakov. From the library at home to my father’s famous foreign journalistic friends, from our travels overseas to our conversations at dinner, the world my family inhabited was as much international as it was national. Eschewing lucrative offers of journalistic employment overseas, my father had his feet firmly in the national reality but his head in the international. I grew up with hardly any dividing line between one and the other, with my own role models and independent identifications being with a trend, tradition and experience that was internationalist and truly world-historical.
Mervyn de Silva believed firmly that Sri Lanka’s national interests were best served by active membership in the Non Aligned movement and commitment to the policy of Non Alignment. He believed that our relationship with our neighbor should be the bedrock of our foreign policy. He was also keenly aware of tendencies towards multi-polarity and new global trends such as identity politics which transcended national boundaries (“in this age of identity, ethnicity walks on water” he said in one of his last essays). Though he avoided didacticism of any kind, something he told his staffers (as revealed in the reminiscences of one of them, the journalist and literary critic Gamini Dissanayake) was that “if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything and everything”.
In Geneva we stood for something. In our hour of need, we reaped the harvest of a principled and active foreign policy practice, in the votes and supportive speeches we received from our natural constituency, variously identifiable as the global South and Russia, or the NAM plus Russia and China, or G77 plus Russia. Mao ze Dong identified the crucial question of strategy as “Who are our friends? Who are our enemies?” and commended the building of the broadest possible united front, uniting all those who can be united, neutralizing those intermediate elements who cannot, and isolating the main adversary. Without clarity in identification of who one’s friends are, one cannot build the broadest possible united front and succeed. In Geneva last week we may have applied the tactics of Zizek’s Lenin, of a high risk pushing for an endgame while we could have stopped short and capitulated in a compromise on sovereignty masked as consensus, but our approach was more Lennon than Lenin. We won “with a little help from our friends”.
As Cuba has proved, one cannot defend the national interest by being narrowly nationalist; one has to be internationalist in order to defend and protect the Patria. Geneva was a miniature diplomatic Dien Bien Phu or Bay of Pigs for the EU. Of the many comments on Sri Lanka’s victory (and the many congratulations that came my way) the most accurate was in an email and fax from DEW Gunasekara, who wrote both on his behalf as well as that of his party. Currently Minister of Constitutional Affairs and National Integration, DEW is the leader of the Communist Party, but more pertinently he was the International Affairs Secretary of that party when I first knew him more than three decades ago. Revealing that the Cabinet had been meeting, monitoring the Geneva HRC proceedings real time, with President Rajapakse expressing optimism at the result, reminiscing that he had known me from my days as an undergraduate at Peradeniya, and making a poignant reference to his late friend and my father Mervyn, comrade DEW correctly summed up the Geneva outcome: “it was a historic session reflecting the growing role of the new world balance of forces”. None can do a Kosovo on Sri Lanka: wrong century, wrong continent, wrong country.
(These are the strictly personal views of the writer)
23 Comments
Leave a Reply
Subscribe to Content Updates
iPhone app
Did I get this right? You are proud to be supported by the most ruthless regimes this world has? It is easy to count the democracies on your list of friends. I would be very worried if I ended up on the same side as China, North Korea, Iran and Sudan.
I wish Sri Lanka would take this chance to build a just peace, a society under the rule of law, with free press and religous freedom. But what I see is a lot of triumphant Sinhala nationalism and buddhist chauvenism, even in friends I would have expected more from.
I also see the idea of a world conspiracy against Sri Lanka, that lacks any bases in reality. I guess this is what a war does to peoples minds, but I hope it will go away and be replaced by reason.
Dayan Jayatillake has one of those “enviable” jobs, so to speak. He serves as a mediator between two organizations that are inherently failures. Can anyone say with a straight face that either the Sri Lankan Government or the United Nations merits any credibility worth speaking of?
What is interesting, to me at least, is why these two different organizations, with wholly different agendas, come together at all. My answer: Sri Lanka is essentially a welfare state that requires massive amounts of Western aid to avoid all sorts of humanitarian and economic catastrophes. There is also that question of “status”. In any case, the United Nations, being vastly overfunded, helps to prop up that welfare state, just like it helps to subsidize various welfare states in Africa. Most of these welfare states are governed by tyrannical regimes which care little for human rights.
So that is my conclusion: the UN has become a justification for despotic regimes to receive welfare from Western nations which, when the occasion suits itself, will subvert the UN for its own ends.
Dear Worried Friend,
Ruthless regimes? Can you think of any regimes that are more ruthless than the ones who invaded and occupied Iraq on false pretexts and are resposnbible for killing one and a half million Iraqis? I am happy at NOT being supported by ex-colonial powers that once occupied my country. I am happy at NOT being supported by thpse who are in occupation of other countries and who support the one country in the world that has invaded all its neighbours and is in constant violation of UN Security Council resolutions. I am happy at being supported by those states who respect the concept of national sovereiignty and have supported national liberation movements in many parts of the world. I am happy at obtaining the support of states which are the result of revolutions and national liberation struggles. Both Worried Friend and Heshan are clearly of the Ranil Wickremesinghe – Western stooge- appeaser of Tigers school of thought, rightly reviled by the vast majority of Sri Lankan people. Folks like you give liberalism a bad name…and legitimize the xenophobic fringe.
Dear Dr Jayatilleka,
In the name of the people of Sri Lanka and her people, please stop your beautiful prose nonsense, and putting people in ‘boxes’ as you have done with the first two commenters here.
Yourself and the Rajapakse government are very good at twisting everything, and turning all ideologies/historical facts to your advantage. If the so-called Western states supported your army terrorism, you would have used your writing skills to praise them madly. I have personal connections to the Sri Lankan government, and I know for a fact that there is a lot of sexual abuse going on in the internment camps, that young men and women are separated and separately abused, that a large number of young children are abused (and that some of them never return) – the objective is crystal-clear- the Rajapakse administration wants to categorically eliminate the economically poor, low-caste Tamils of the north, whose members form the largest group of LTTE fighters. Instead of this slow genocide, why can’t the government be more magnanimous, allow aide agencies in, and look after the people of the Vanni.
Don’t hide behind your beautiful prose, we all know that the Sri Lankan military is by any means far worse than the Tigers (or any other armed force/guerilla group for that matter) and have strictly no regard for ordinary people (especially Tamils).
People like you have ruined Sri Lanka’s foreign relations. Now, we have trusted allies in Libya, Iran, the ever repressive China and what next? All ambitious Sri Lankans ought to immigrate to those countries, and live under madly repressive laws (in many ways similar to those of the Rajapakse & Co)? You are talking about an intern at your mission studying at Cambridge…now wonder why you recruit people who study in the top-level institutions of the land that colonized your country…Wonder what on earth Mr Rajapkse’s eldest son is doing in Britain? Why study law in Tehran?
Come on, relations with Britain, the EU, the US & other English-speaking states with a large diaspora SHOULD definitely constitute the core element of our foreign policy. These are the lands to where our people aspire to immigrate, where a man and a woman can have equal rights, where minority rights are attended to (at varying degrees of success…) and where citizens can openly criticize governments.
In the new geopolitical order, we do need to strengthen our relations with the global south, but not in this completely crazy manner – it has to be done in a more creative and subtle way, developing partnerships, opening more doors, and not to the detriment of existing alliances that we badly need.
By your rogue foreign policy, you are spitting on your own face, and screwing it up for many generations of Sri Lankans. The only people who will benefit from this ballgame are the Rajapakse brothers and folks like you who are madly loved by them. You may surely come out with excellent contrary arguments, but as a thinking progressive Sri Lankan (not many of them are left because of your government’s mad propaganda), I’m in a position to say that this is the sad reality, and it will take years to rectify your ‘deeds of madness’.
The last sentence of the fourth paragraph (of the above comment) should read ‘Why not study law in Tehran?’
Nugawela,
The Cambridge kid volunteered to work for free as did many other patriotic young sri Lankans with a US or UK education. As for you lot, every election result and opinion poll ( be it by CPA or in the Daily Mirror) show just how contemptible the mass of Sri Lankans find your views and world outlook. China and India are the most popular countries among Sri Lankans (say the opinion polls) and both supported us here in Geneva.
Dear Dr Jayatilleka,
As a Maldivian, I would like to congratulate you and the Sri Lankan government for the victory over the LTTE. As one of your closest neighbors, we have a big Maldivian population in Sri Lanka. We have seen Maldivian deaths at the hand of the LTTE. Innocent Maldivian women and children killed for no reason apart for being in Sri Lanka.
As you rightly say this is the height of hypocrisy by the EU. When they invaded Irag illegally( according to the Secretary General of the UN then, Koffi Annan) and killed hundreds of thousand civilians, it is colloteral damage. When they bomb the hell out of wedding parties in Afghanistan and Pakistan, they kill terrorists. When Sri Lankan military fight LTTE, a terrorist organisation, they are accused of genocide and war crimes by the West.
It is time Sri Lanka, realise who her true friends are. We will stand by you in all times(except when we play football against each other) and we wish you all the best in trying to solve this humanitarian disaster that has befallen on the people of Sri Lanka.
Mr. Jayatilleka, as a sri lankan of tamilsinhala mixed origin, I wish to highlight the lack of initiative by sri lankans especially the high commission in actively challenging the pro LTTE activities their rhetoric and media especially amongst the students. Acid attacks or not, active lobbying must begin to counteract pro LTTE stances that gave way to the level of impunity enjoyed by them even at the last minute. This also highlights the western support to tigers (level of impunity ). I cannot fail to notice ironically supporting rascist fascist party like BNP would stop the middle class in supporting the tiger rhetoric. As an immigrant, I am at the low rung of society anyway it is the middle/upper class who would loose their plum jobs at the UN and thereby loose the bullying stance of smaller countries for doing the unpalatable but right thing. It is falling from the pan in to the fire but enough is enough how long are we to stnd by and watch Sri Lanka becoming another Iraq if we do not stand up.
Well governments change and so do the parties lobbied by pro ltte elements. So dont worry about foreign visas. We will play ball for an eternity if required. We always have ranil to suck up to the Anglos.
Dayan Jayatilleka:
The rhetoric seems unending except that it seems off-tangent. There is no quarrel over the issue of SL’s sovereign status, neither should the atrocities committed by the LTTE be overlooked, and should be rightly condemned but what of the conduct of SL govt in its conduct of a “war without witnesses”? What has it got to hide?
You quote, “I am happy at being supported by those states who respect the concept of national sovereiignty and have supported national liberation movements in many parts of the world. I am happy at obtaining the support of states which are the result of revolutions and national liberation struggles:” Oh, really, of China’s holy contribution to the Sudanese govt leading the Darfur massacre and Russia’s heavenly treatment of the Chechen and Georgia episodes.
I hardly find it bemusing of your warped logic in seemingly justifying the “thief never admits to his theft” attitude. While the western powers led by Bush devastated Iraq, what could or would be the worst than a country like Sri Lanka bombing to pulp its own citizens and then boast that it is a humanitarian mission. You cannot even facilitate or support the huge human catastrophe in your internment camps and go begging to the world community for help. Just because you keep on continuously lying does not mean lies become gospel truths.
The problem is you and your country believe, albeit incorrectly, that you have now presented a classic case-study of success through military means. It is not that Chantrika Kumaratunga or Ranil Wickramasinghe could not have achieved what your current President had – only that while they were right in wanting to exert the writ over the whole of Sri Lanka, they were not ready to do so at the expense of so many civilian casualties. So, what shall we make of this hollow victory? That the Tamils are expendable people?
Incidentally, if you are still hanging on to the Ranil/Chandrika sentiment as you mention, “Both Worried Friend and Heshan are clearly of the Ranil Wickremesinghe – Western stooge- appeaser of Tigers school of thought” then how long would it take me to make you a stooge of a ruthless regime, singing hosanas for his next paycheck. Let us state our case sensibly. The issue is the large loss of civilian lives and what has SL got to hide in denying access to the war zones and camps, before and after the conclusion of the war? Is that so difficult to digest or understand?
“Can you think of any regimes that are more ruthless than the ones who invaded and occupied Iraq on false pretexts and are resposnbible for killing one and a half million Iraqis?”
To put the above statement in context… I will not justify the invasion of Iraq, however, there are tens of thousands of Kurds in Northern Iraq who are quite happy that the USA invaded, having been massacred by the Saddam Hussein regime for decades. The figure of one and a half million Iraqi’s demands some clarity – 99.8% of all Iraqi’s killed were killed by Arab insurgents. It is the insurgency that has killed the Iraqi’s, not the Americans. Finally, it is noteworthy that the UN did nothing to censure the Americans for the invasion. Did I not state that the UN is inherently a failure?
“I am happy at NOT being supported by ex-colonial powers that once occupied my country.”
Ahhh… but you will gladly kneel, bow, and bend before them when it comes to securing the badly needed IMF loan.
” I am happy at NOT being supported by thpse who are in occupation of other countries”
The so-called occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are not meant to be permanent. Furthermore, Afghanistan was once a terrorist haven where Osama Bin Laden roamed freely… its “occupation” and reconstruction as you and I well know is a NATO effort, not the prerogative of a single nation.
“I am happy at being supported by those states who respect the concept of national sovereiignty”
Yes yes… the whole world knows how well China has respected the national sovereignity of Tibet. And why China does not recognize the independence of Taiwan. How about China greedily gobbling up Hong Kong after the 99-year lease ended? Your friends Japan and Russia have a much richer history. Japanese “respect of national sovereignity” during WWII pales in comparison to the atrocities carried out by any colonial administration. As for Russia, well, we know you are an ardent admirer of the despots Lenin and Stalin who’s Gulag’s killed more inmates than Hitler’s concentration camps.
“I am happy at obtaining the support of states which are the result of revolutions and national liberation struggles.”
The same states which happily pulverize media freedom, which mock the concept of innocent until proven guilty, which have no qualms about maintaining vast internment camps within their own borders, which frown upon religious freedom, and which make a mockery of free elections.
“Both Worried Friend and Heshan are clearly of the Ranil Wickremesinghe – Western stooge- appeaser of Tigers school of thought, rightly reviled by the vast majority of Sri Lankan people. Folks like you give liberalism a bad name…and legitimize the xenophobic fringe.”
Neither Chairman Mao, Stalin,, Castro, Lenin, or any other of your other Marxist heroes were remotely liberal. In fact, during their time, a vast number of liberal intellectuals fled overseas to the West. As for the Sri Lankan people, if you want to know their opinion… I suggest you stand outside the American embassy at 4 am, in the line stretching half a mile, Monday through Friday………. you will certainly get a feel for who reviles what.
Dr Dayan Jayathilake is the best candidate for the post of Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka! The only disqualification is that no one in the past canvassed for the post so cheaply so dishonestly. Bravo ”mage mau Lanka,” the post victory possibilities are superbly democratic
I am glad to see, from some of the comments, that some sense prevails and that everyone isn’t on the “we hate the West and love China and Russia” bandwagon! Thank you Chamara, Heshan and co… phew!!!
“rightly reviled by the vast majority of Sri Lankan people”… How can the vast majority “rightly” revile anyone when they don’t have access to information and get a one-sided story, thanks to the “media freedom” prevalent in the country? They may “revile” all right but would you care to educate us about what this revulsion is based on?
Concerebed Humanitarian,
I would never place Chandrika and Ranil with only an oblique bar between them. There is no such continuum. CBK bravely fought the Tigers. She took Jaffna away from them in 1995 and did not give it back in 2000. She may have made errors and not forged ahead as MR did , to win, but she was no Ranil. CBK and Premadasa can be placed on a continuum, as regards the war. Ranil was an appeaser who never fought the Tigers.
Heshan and idealist obviously do not read. The CPA commissioned a UK university to do a n extensive opinion survey on all aspects of the conflict. One of the questions was to do with countries that were trusted or liked. India and China were tops while the favourite countries of the Gv readers were almost at the bottom. Hence my use of the term reviled. Obviously these guys do not know that their foreign policy orientation is a throwback to that of sir John kotelawela at Bandung which earned him the nickname Bandung Booruwa, and contributed to SWRD’s victory. Heshan’s endorsement of Ranil proves my hypothesis about these types and their loyalties. Luckily , one more Presdential election and the UNP will get rid of this bunch of social parasites and return to its identity as the party of DS and Premadasa.. They can then join Mangala.
hahaha…this is hilarious. Rajiva Wijesinha and Palitha Kohona are left seething in the face of this wonderful bit of self-promotion. But poor Rajiva and Palitha can’t spill the beans now, can they? That the vote a the HRC was an inevitability given the composition and nature of the Council, and that not even a Bogollagama could have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka:
Yesterday, another journalist was attacked in SL. The pillar of journalism in SL, Lasantha Wickramatunge, was brutally murdered for taking on a regime that bemoans dissent and fair comment. Today, the robotic nature of Sri Lankan generally, perhaps out of fear for a regime that has become famous for the “white van” diplomacy is obvious. Tell me Mr. Jayatilleka, how many of the cases involving the murdered journalists have been solved. Lasantha’s case has been “vigorously” investigated, only that the murderers jumped from the moon and having taken their target, jumped on a spaceship and shot off to the moon. Give it to Scotland Yard, and they can get the culprit in a matter of days.
Wherein you found the commonality between CBK and Premadasa, I wonder. You mean Premadasa’s “pact with the devil” so to speak, in packing off the IPKF and then both the convenient accomplices rained guns at each other.
As assumed that the battle is far from over with the vote-count at the UNHR, and it is abundantly clear that other avenues would be vigourously pursued and which can be as painful to a regime that has no regard for civilian lives. And I would hasten to add that the same ruler will be applied to measure the LTTE, too. In the shooting and bombing “contest”, it is the hapless civilians who paid a heavy price, all because the SL govt has an outpouring love to save them from the clutches of the LTTE. Am I naive here?
Ermm… I did not doubt that China and India were the best liked… I just asked whether this choice was based on the public having access to a wide range of information or just hearing what a few people say about other countries…???
Dayan J:
Surveying a bunch of brainwashed gullible voters who are happy to blame their unemployment and general state of misery on (1) Tamils and (2) The West… will not yield any significant results. Why? Because the responses are far too predictable… it’s like interviewing Hitler to gauge his opinion of Jews.
I’m disgusted by ppl like Heshan and Chamara. You have enough information to see both sides of a situation, where as you conciously make the effort to see/talk about one side. And then you talk down to other ppl who you think does not comply with your opinion.
If you’re going to preach about being biased, make the effort to atleast talk about both sides.
Atleast the author admits that’s its strictly his personal view. Unlike you, who wants to present “YOUR View” as a “FACT”.
To Chamara, “we all know that the Sri Lankan military is by any means far worse than the Tigers (or any other armed force/guerilla group for that matter)and have strictly no regard for ordinary people (especially Tamils). ” – Either you were in a coma for the last 30 yrs or sleeping under a rock maybe.
Even the FBI and INTERPOL puts them as the 2nd most wanted in the list.
Maybe you dont think its disregard of ordinary people when you send a human wearing a bomb to kill a bus full of civilians going home after work, or kill civilians at public places who are going about their everyday life. OR when you hold civilian shields to prevent the loss of life of thier precious terrorist fighters.
OR maybe you dont think ordinary sinhala/tamil ppl living in the western/southern districts of SL are not as worth as the lifes of the civilians/terrorists living in the warzone.
I’m glad you are in the absolute minority in thinking so.
To concerned Humanatarian, “The pillar of journalism in SL, Lasantha Wickramatunge” – I assume you either have no idea abt journalism or you do not knw his work.
Although i do not agree with everything that the author had written, I am in agreement with the sentiment of his writing.
We’re proud to stand on our feet as Sri Lankans without dancing to every tune played by the double standard adhering countries like US and the EU. (Why dont they lead by example by doing a war crime probe on afgenistan and Iraq)
For everyone who says we should allow the war crime probe proposed by US and the EU, of course we will, if its a rule that every country in that forum adheres to. We will simply not bow and take whatever is thrown at us becuase we’re a 3rd world country in need of financial need.
Also i think China and Russia and all those countries which opposed the idea, did it just becuase its brought up by US and the EU, and has nothing to do with how much they care about our country. But in this case “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” would definitely come in handy for keeping a striaght back and not bend everyway to the hypocritical regimes.
Finally, thank you Dr. Jayatilleka for your strong sense of patriotism. I’ll gladly assure that the majority of the Sri Lankans are in agreement with your sentiments. (Unless they were smhow benifiting or was planing on benifiting from the war)
ForATruelyIndependantSriLanka :
Today in SL there are only “yes” men who would swallow everything and in a slant would find no hesitation in heaping praises on the likes Dayan jayatilleka and patriotism. So, is killing innocent civilans in the thousands and herding them into internment camps part of that patriotism? To me, the likes of you seem to say so.
No, if the SL regime thinks and says an editor is a rogue, then he is a rogue, and the other patriots will have to agree. After all, that is patriotism, isn’t it? Never mind that he has been duly recognised by those who matter, if SL says he is a rogue, then that should be the gospel truth. By the way, how many of the cases of murdered journalists since this regime came to power have been solved? Ah yes, I need to have a certificate in journalism issued by the SL regime before you would recognise me as one. I should have known better.
To concerned Humanatarian,
I see your prejudice has clouded your reasoning. I never mentioned anything about the SL goverment. In fact I do not agree with everything the goverment does. But it doesnt mean i think everything that they do is criminal as well. (Which seem to be your view point)
I was referring to your comment on Lasantha Wickramatunaga’s work. ““The pillar of journalism in SL, Lasantha Wickramatunge” (to quote you)
Patriotism has very little to do with a goverment, its about taking pride in your country and doing your best to help it. (which is a concept that you seem unable to grasp)
I’m sorry i dont fit into your neatly boxed up groups. (racists, goverment kiss-asses, thugs, spineless ignorants). Maybe you can look at the world without judgement and prejudice, and then you can see the actual picture. (instead of what you force yourself to see)
i am amazed at these very naive comments by lots of people who seem to think that rescuing the civiliams is a true crime. Do you , in your innocence , really think that the civilians were there to lay down there life for a pink fat coward?