By
Vishnuguptha

“In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Condemnation by a majority of the Members of the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) would not speak well for a people of any country. The Government of Sri Lanka, steeped in an irrationally clannish mindset, has chosen to ignore the obvious. Instead, the leaders are changing gears on a terrible course of (mis)governing of the country’s destinies at their own whims and fancies.

Mahinda Samarasinghe, Minister of Plantation Industries of Sri Lanka during the voting of resolution L.1/REV.1, Promoting Reconciliation and Accountability in Sri Kanka on the the 22nd Session of the Human Rights Council. 21 March 2013. Photo by Jean-Marc Ferré-UN

Taking a totally different route does no appeal to this lot. Tactics have been given priority over strategy; macho-politics has overtaken prudent and cautious governance and a will and desire to perpetuate themselves in power has eclipsed and is in the process of destroying justice and fair-play.

For the second successive time, the UNHRC passed a US-sponsored resolution at the annual sessions in Geneva against Sri Lanka. Once again, giant neighbour, India, sided with the majority and cast her vote against her small neighbour. Tamil Nadu politics, given vent to by some angry and seemingly prejudiced leadership, undoubtedly played a major role in India’s decision. Our Ministry of External Affairs could not curtail the erosion of the so-called friendly relations between the two neighbours of South Asia.

First it was the United States Department of State 2010 Country Report on Human Rights Practices, which was released on 8 April 2010, with its preface painting an utterly gloomy picture of the human rights situation in Sri Lanka. It detailed quite vividly, among others, the alleged abductions, torture and killings of people, the dates and places of such crimes and a list of people gone missing.

Prageeth Ekneligoda, the missing cartoonist, and General Sarath Fonseka, incarcerated at the time, were prominently revealed in the Report.

But the Sri Lankan Government adopted a ‘denial mode.’ Instead of answering the specific allegations it issued the usual denials through various media, asserting that the report was fundamentally flawed.

In the wake of this release, the Ban Ki-moon report was also handed over to the government, snippets of which had been controversially leaked to the press at the time as well. These selective releases were attributed to the government by the United Nations Panel Spokesperson. It was reported that a hard copy containing 196 pages was duly handed over to Prof. G.L. Peiris, and within days extracts of the same had found their way into the pages of the press

What did the report contain?

When the report was leaked to the media, the Ban Ki-moon report had not even been officially released by the UN Panel. The number of persons who may have seen the report, let alone read its copious contents, may have been just below five in total. Yet many a pundit – not surprising in the Sri Lankan milieu – came out openly to deny the allegations – details of which they could not possibly have known at the time. Among these obviously omniscient characters were some leading personalities of the Buddhist clergy, some UNP Parliamentarians, and a notorious Sinhalese radio personality.

In these circumstances, the most simple and logical question that the average citizen could raise is: What is in the report? Then the report was made freely available on the UN website and on the internet, and those who had taken the time to actually read it, could answer. In any event, the onus was always well and truly on the President and his coterie to release the report to the public.

Certainly if any part of the report was favourable to the government there was no logical reason for the government to initiate the process that they had embarked on. For instance, the frantic call of President Rajapaksa to party organizers, to bring at least 500 people each to the May Day celebrations in 2011 to demonstrate to the world that the majority of our people denounced the report and stood with the government was noteworthy. For the world at large, except for a very few self-proclaimed human rights watchdogs, it does not matter whether serious omissions or commissions were made by the Sri Lankan Security Forces and/or the government in the sphere of human rights during the very narrow period of time towards the very tail end of the war.

Crucial blunder

But all politics is local. The government’s handling of the crisis indicates that they have decided to ignore all norms of shrewd statecraft and instead attempted to invoke the base instincts of Sri Lanka’s people and get them to cry foul against a report, the contents of which were then known only to a handful. Even now, over two years after the report was made public – one is hard put to find a person who has read it in its entirety. Thus the Sri Lankan Government has apparently made a very crucial blunder by taking its own people for granted, treating them as mere pawns on a big political chess board.

If the report was adverse to the government and the armed forces, then it is totally a different ball game. In this context, the government had two options: Namely, 1) Reject the report by countering each and every argument expounded in the report with clinical precision and publish them so that the people will know and understand. (2) Accept totally or partially, the report or at least the recommendations, if there are any, and take concrete measures to implement them.

The government did neither. It must realize that, by taking the current course of action of kindling pseudo-patriotism, it is invoking the base instincts of a very vulnerable and gullible population, pushing them to the fringes of radicalism that, if not checkmated now, will have very serious, negative potential. Moreover, if the findings were adverse, the light it throws on the personality of a people, leave alone those who are specifically accused, will be very unsympathetic. This is where the whole responsibility of ‘governance’ lies.

Pundit Nehru quotes Chankya in ‘Discovery of India’ thus: “The function of a leader is to make his people free of fear.”

The government is bent on achieving exactly the opposite, making her people fearful and ashamed. Development of democracy and free speech is as old as man, but it has taken a long time for those institutions and concepts to mature, sometimes only with the sacrifice of thousands of free people. However, much a Sinhalese tries to justify the excesses of war, no man can justify the riots that took place in 1983. When the LTTE killed 13 soldiers in Jaffna in July 1983 in a clear military operation, the Sinhalese went on a killing rampage in Colombo and elsewhere, and maimed, burned and killed innocent Tamils.

In most areas, these riots were led by Buddhist monks, the so-called guardians of the teachings of the Buddha, thereby debasing the very soil of the temples they dwelled in. Buddha never ever preached violence, leave alone discrimination, against any sector of the human family. The mindset created by Mahanama Thera of Mahavihare had come to fruition. The impression that these killing orgies created cannot be erased in one, two or three decades, or perhaps even in a generation or two. The euphoria and the sense of triumphalism generated by the total annihilation of Prabhakaran and his Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has led to a sickness, the symptoms of which are being manifested in irrational opposition to any magnanimity.

In general, the government’s response to the Ban Ki-moon report was grossly inadequate and foolhardy. Obsession with power and self-importance has serious repercussions, more for the citizenry than for the leaders. As the late Lalith Athulathmudali once said, “Arguments for human rights can never be foreclosed.” If such violations have been committed by whichever party, it is the fundamental duty of a decent society to see such violations are condemned unequivocally. Martin Luther King Jr. observed during the days of the American civil disobedience movement that one who endures wrongs and discrimination done unto them are as guilty as those who inflict them. In the same vein, if such violations of fundamental human rights have been brought upon by the government and its agencies, military or otherwise, then they have committed a crime against humanity, and if so, it is the right of the people to dissociate themselves from such dastardly acts of man’s inhumanity to man.

Transparency and accountability disregarded

In this whole exercise of handling the UN report and thereafter, the Ban Ki-moon report, the government has disregarded two most vital features of a decent democratic society: Transparency and accountability. The process has been kept secret from the very outset and the UN contention that they were denied access to the war zone is valid. Consequently, they depended on the sources that were available to them – the fleeing Tamil refugees and their kith and kin. To that extent, these reports were one-sided. However, had the government offered assistance to the panel to visit Sri Lanka and offered total transparent assistance, almost all of these allegations could have been met and refuted. The very accusation that the government is making was made real by the government’s own foolhardy attitude. This happens when rulers resort to politics instead of governance.

Second – the accountability factor. This is the one nagging feature of this regime. With the advent of the people’s government (apé aanduwa) in 1956, and the gradual rise of corruption and indiscipline among politicians and the present-day tying of government servants to trees by ministers being condoned as normal Sri Lankan life, accountability has flown out the window.

When the country stands condemned and the target of such condemnation is human rights, the picture one sees on the canvas may not tell the whole truth. The gloomy shades and nuanced lines on the picture tell of a different character altogether.

Do the people too endorse the irrational behaviour of a government hell-bent on keeping the people in the dark so that their pockets could be enriched? In such circumstances, if the people at large believe that accountability and transparency are things of the past, then the cruel truth one has to face is: Where are we heading as a nation? Is our collective conscience dead or in the process of dying? These are the lessons unlearnt by our leaders. COURTESY:CEYLON TODAY