groundviews » Too tired to say ‘human rights’

Too tired to say ‘human rights’

October 17, 2007 at 10:01 pm · Categories: Peace and Conflict | by sam

I got a glimpse of Louise Arbour last Thursday, late in the afternoon. She had just completed her meeting with Mano Ganeshan and some family members of the disappeared. Arbour peered out of the small entrance door to the UN compound. Photographers and video men crammed the entrance. Behind the media scrum were about a 100 or so members of families of the disappeared – all holding up large scale prints of their loved ones for the Human Rights Chief to see.

I doubt Louise Arbour really got to see past the hungry media – but either way, it was a nice gesture by her. She gave some more hope to those who are fighting for the human rights of their loved ones.

Arbour’s visit was essentially, about rubber-stamping the report on Sri Lanka’s human rights situation.

Local and international non-government organisations, want a field-based presence of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, to presumably, monitor and record human rights violation. And Arbour recommended the establishment of such a mission.But the Government of Sri Lanka said no.

Now, let’s cut to Burma.

Remember Burma, when the Buddhist monks ventured out to the streets a month ago.

We all saw the pictures, right?

The United Nations made statements. So did the international community, human rights organisations and hundreds and thousands of ordinary people via protests throughout the world. The regime that rules over Burma was condemned over and over again.

An US envoy urged ‘transition’ and according to the BBC, France, UK and the US have released a “watered down” circular where the latest draft ‘replaced the word “condemn” with “strongly deplore”, and dropped a paragraph demanding a full account of those jailed, missing or killed.’

The Burmese regime said they’ve implemented a “seven-step road map in accordance with the people’s desires”.
I wonder how useful these statements by ‘Western’ governments and human rights organisations really are?

The past informs us what happens when the Burmese people protest. The regime waits till the spotlight goes away and then murders those it suspects were part of the opposition. And that’s exactly what it is doing now.

It’s important, or rather, absolutely essential, to ask how useful the international community, or the United Nations, in the context of Burma. I won’t be presenting any thorough analysis here, but my instincts combined with ‘watching’ the Burma situation via the media suggests that the international community has little influence over the regime in Burma. They – the regime that rules over Burma – will continue to kill and they will continue their ways.
So what does all that mean for Sri Lanka?

I have a hunch. The international community, nor the UN is really that concerned about Sri Lanka, or the human rights situation here. The Government of Sri Lanka knows this.

After all, it doesn’t take an idiot to figure out that if the international community hasn’t done anything decisive after what happened in Burma (etc.), then there is little chance it will do anything effective about Sri Lanka – where diplomats, foreign aid workers and well-paid local NGO staff can still enjoy a pleasant round of golf and a relaxing weekend in an exotic resort, without the fear of being tear-gassed, tortured or slaughtered.

And let’s not forget the War on Terror. If the United States and its alliance members can kill over 100,000 Iraqi civilians while it pursues ‘terrorists’, then surely, a few thousand, or even tens of thousands of dead Sri Lankans can’t be all that bad.

So, what was the visit by Louise Arbour all about? The two recent posts – Post Arbour and Louise Arbour and Mahinda Rajapakse that have appeared on Groundviews provide little new detail. They recap and reinterate what is already known.

What is needed, in my humble opinion (;-) is a new angle to the old problem we are so familiar with. But, I suspect that this ‘new angle’ won’t be appreciated by the human rights and conflict experts from the international community, or their local executioners…

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Focus on Human Rights The diplomatic offensive of the government is in full swing even though there continues to be confusion as to who speaks authoritatively for it on the matters of war, peace and human rights â the Foreign Minister, other assorted cabinet ministers, the defence secretary, the foreign secretary, the secretary general of the peace secretariat or... Dr. P. Saravanamuttu, September 12, 2007
Louise Arbour and Mahinda Rajapakse The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is finally in the island, due, in no small measure, to the campaign of local civil society and international human rights organisations to get the government to invite her to Sri Lanka. This has happened despite the threat and invective directed against local civil society ranging from the... Dr. P. Saravanamuttu, October 10, 2007

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punitham said,

October 18, 2007 @ 3:36 pm

Add the following:
The ‘reformed’ UNHRC has a majority of human rights violators and a minority of human rights defedners. So effectively the UNHRC is there to block any action being taken against injustice of all forms.

V S Subramaniam said,

October 28, 2007 @ 5:51 am

The above piece and a piece ‘Tamil Trauma – new demonic phase’ created much interest and comments. Please see SouthAsiaContact, Yahoo.com.Though the comments on these piece were candid the comments (especially those of Hariharan) had to be put in proper perspective for an objective public debate.
The myth that everything originating from ex-RAW persons are impeccable had to be corrected; that only the quality inputs of ex-Raw experts are invaluable in public debate and public policy making. Flawed ex-RAW inputs are analysed in V S Subramanian pages in sulekha.com Terrorism – cheque book analysts and media moguls create a class of non-jihardi ‘terrorists’. The reading public is aware of numerous instances of political leaderships let down tragically by sub-standard intelligence; a classic one being Bush’s WMD Iraqi quagmire. Another familiar to the Indian reading public is the intelligence bungle in the IPKF disaster in SL.

The Indian armed forces and Indian intelligence under Indra did a clean job in the 70’s delivering for Mukti Bahani a Bangladesh free from the yoke of Punjabi oppression. In contrast the IPKF that undertook a noble mission to save the Tamils who also lovingly and warmly welcomed it (to Sinhala anger) turned sour; deficient inputs from the likes of Hariharan as MI chief in the field contributing. However though he let down Rajiv, Hariharan served the SL cause. Years passed, Hariharan struggles to explain his role in the failure using SL’s most commonly used scapegoats, the Tamil militants. Reading between the lines of his note a bitterness underpins his partisan line undermining the credibility of his inputs to the SL issue. The reading public is left to wonder whether he is part of the SL war machine waging a propaganda war against the Tamils. Customarily SL delivers a Karuna treatment to those who do not add value to the genocide even as its spokespersons.

It is unfortunate that the ‘Tamil trauma’ paper is pre-judged as a ‘predictable rant about the plight of the SL Tamils’. On the contrary readers do seem to appreciate it for addressing the implications of current developments on peace prospects. Hariharan toeing his patron’s line dismisses the paper as a ‘dust(ing) up the grievances book’. SL regimes look up to such supportive comments as a great favour when its efforts to erase clean its genocidal record flounders. The tone of Hariharan’s comments also displays a haughty disdain of human sufferings and the views of those outside his circle.

Hariharan goes further to praise SL regimes (unlike under LTTE) allowing the Tamils ‘the freedom to differ …have not lost their voices’. How very flattering to Hariharan’s patrons; the SL genociders. With the media and NGOs shut out of the affected areas and strongly disagreeing, a once high powered ex-intelligence person cuts himself off the mainstream thinking to become an embarrassment to the present generation of Indian intelligence. Though graphic pictures of the Tamil sufferings in the affected areas unlike in the Darfur case are blacked out to the world, news censorship is porous today. The diaspora who are in constant contact concerned about kins’ lives in affected areas are a source of news feed that is appropriately vetted before release by the world class media. This world class media confirms the severity of the Tamil sufferings.

SL is indeed grateful to the likes of Hariharan also for contributing to the hijacking of the debate from the 5+ decades long ‘genocide’ to a so-called Tamil ‘terrorism’ (LTTE). Hariharan appears to further the SL regime’s agenda urging the Tamils to bury (‘think out of the box’) the SL genocide story totally (including the 3 decades of passive democratic resistance to state violence) in exchange just to save their lives in a peace of sorts. This suggestion effectively degrades the pain in Tamil struggle to an empty ‘rant’.

Perhaps Hariharan took his lessons on fighting ‘insurgency’ from the Israelis. The international debate on the Palestine issue was hijacked away from Israeli occupation, the Shattila massacres and continuing Isreali oppression to non-issues like resistance’s funding, reform of the PLO and factional fighting, the Hamas factor; an effective counter-insurgency ploy. The Tamil factional fighting under civil war conditions were and are instigated and operationally supported by Hariharan’s patrons, who in the circumstances are a party to the ‘canibalising’. Hariharan’s silence on SL’s role in the canibalising is conspicuous. How useful are such partisan inputs of an ex-intelligence expert for public debate?

Hariharan’s problems with numerical proportion and history are evident when he states ‘of course non-Tamils were ruthlessly driven out of LTTE areas longtime back’. Hariharan omits to mention the far greater (nearly a million Tamils) numbers who were driven out of non-Tamil areas and SL compared to at the most the fewer tens of thousands non-Tamils from Tamil areas. A study of population statistics confirms this especially that the non-Tamils in the North (the LTTE heartland) were particularly low. Hariharan seems to take pride in singing the half true tunes of the SL theme song. Millions and millions moved across between India and Pakistan during the civil war preceding the partition. Would Hariharan the eminent intelligence expert who hastens to blame the LTTE also similarly blame the Congress and the Muslim league for ‘driving out’ non-Indians and non-Pakistanis out of their respective areas? Hatiharan problems with history explain his inability to put events in proper perspective.

Given the upbringing and training especially the strong Gandhian influence on the Tamils of my generation that despite the pain of SL genocide (killings/street assaults/now starvation) the Tamils scrupulously avoided violence following Gandhi’s teachings. Violence both at the individual and the state levels are evil. The peaceful Tamils resistance was driven to violence purely in self defense to save lives facing brute state violence only after 3 decades of peaceful resistance. State violence has deepened the Sinhala/Tamil divide to a degree which any amount of contact with acquaintances of the likes of Kadigamars only creates the illusion of a shallow divide. The Tamils throughout SL living in fear of their lives could not be expected to be forthcoming on this sensitive issue. Objectivity requires that this fear element is factored in any assessment of the depth of the Sinhala/Tamil divide.

Though agreeing that the concern of the parties to the conflict be to look to the future any solution has to take on board the lessons of history (which is not ‘dusting up the grievance books of a historical conflict’) ignoring which is sure to invite greater peril for the Tamils.

V S Subramaniam