CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

Arbour’s labour and other matters

Editorial The Island (Courtesy The Island 12-10-2007)

UN Human Rights High Commissioner Louise Arbour’s visit has triggered a mixed reaction. Some human rights groups that advocate a UN monitoring mission here are cock-a-hoop, while the anti-terror activists are deeply perturbed as they believe she is here on a mission aimed at giving oxygen to the Tigers licking their wounds in foxholes in the Wanni.

Those who are campaigning for a UN monitoring mission with a gung-ho zeal claim that the government has failed in the task of protecting the civilians trapped in the conflict zone. They point out several instances of serious human rights violations that the government stands accused of.

But, of what use are monitoring missions, UN or otherwise? The ceasefire monitoring mission has become a pathetic failure. It originally consisted of monitors from several powerful countries including the EU member states. Still, it served little purpose. Today, it stands accused of its partiality towards the LTTE and has obviously overstepped its mandate as evident from the recent visit by a diplomat from Iceland to the LTTE headquarters in Kilinochchi with the help of truce monitors.

Is it possible that a UN monitoring mission will be able to be different from the SLMM? UNICEF evinced a keen interest in the rights of children in combat and went to the extent of setting up transit homes in collaboration with the LTTE to secure their release. The project flopped as the LTTE reneged on its promise to let go of child soldiers. The UN did precious little to coerce the LTTE into falling in line. The Security Council skirted the proposed tough action against the organisation including the LTTE on the UN List of Shame for recruiting child soldiers. So, what purpose is a UN human rights monitoring mission going to serve here? We don’t need a group of commentators, do we? We already have truce monitors!

The anti-terror activists suspect that an attempt is being made to internationalise the conflict further through UN involvement in a big way and push Sri Lanka towards a situation like that in Cyprus so that the LTTE will be able to rule the areas under its jackboot indefinitely with the UN recognition. Some UN bigwigs in Colombo, they point out, are overtly supportive of the LTTE. Their fear is not unfounded as some UN functionaries in Colombo misled former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to issue a condolence message when an LTTE leader called Kaushalyan was killed in Trincomalee some time ago. They also went all out to take Annan to the LTTE controlled areas in the aftermath of the tsunami disaster allegedly in a bid to help the outfit gain some legitimacy but in vain.

The international community has lost its credibility in this country. The role it has been playing in the ‘conflict resolution process’ is similar to that of an unscrupulous pettifogger in a divorce case, taking advantage of the aggrieved woman’s plight. Some members of the international community get jolted into action only when the LTTE fights its way into a cul-de-sac. Then, they suddenly become conscious of human rights! Had they sprung into action, when Prabhakaran threatened to plunge the country back into war in 2005 and then captured the Mavil Aru reservoir, the on-going bloodshed could have been averted. They kept on pandering to the whims and fancies of Prabhakaran, who flouted the CFA to his heart’s content and made a mockery of the truce.

Foreign intervention is like AIDS. It has no cure and prevention is the best remedy. When the Portuguese first landed here, so goes a popular story, they obtained permission for occupying a land of the size of a cow’s hide and then went on to cut it into strips which they joined together to demarcate a land sufficient for a fort. The Norwegians have, mutatis mutandis, acted in a similar manner in conflict resolution here. Today, they cannot be got rid of as facilitators! They stay put like the proverbial dog in the manger!

To be wary of scheming foreigners is not to be xenophobic. Who doesn’t fear the Greek bearing gifts? Naturally, that kind of fear has got into the genes of a nation which has suffered under the jackboot of colonialists for centuries.

Ms. Arbour has said the setting up of a UN human rights monitoring mission depends on the government’s willingness and denied the JVP’s allegation that the UN is working towards categorising Sri Lanka as a failed state. How can a failed UN judge its member states? It is a glorified eunuch at the beck and call of a few powerful countries. The UN knows what to do and how to do it but cannot do it for obvious reasons. It has no voice of its own and only echoes that of its masters—very effeminately.

JVP Leader Somawansa Amarasinghe has asked Ms. Arbour why the UN has not set up monitoring missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. That, we reckon, was a rhetorical question to which he didn’t expect any answer. How can Ms. Arbour answer that question? She is a smart lady! She knows her freedom ends where Uncle Sam’s nose begins! So, she is very cautious when she waves her stick of human rights around. Everybody loves his/her job, doesn’t he/she?

There is a lesson that the government should take from the unfolding human rights drama. It, too, has lost credibility and the world doesn’t take its claims seriously. Before taking on Arbour or anyone else, it must put its house in order and ensure that human rights violations don’t occur in the areas under its control. The rights violations reported from the Eastern Province are not all fictitious. Respectable human rights groups like the UTHR (J) vouch for the fact that blatant human rights violations are happening in those parts of the country. They must be probed and the culprits brought to justice forthwith. The Karuna Group and some rogue elements in the armed forces stand accused of running amok. They must be reined in immediately. Unless the civil liberties are safeguarded, it cannot be claimed that the East has been ‘liberated’. People don’t live by physical development alone. They need an environment free from violence or fear to live in. The biggest task before the government is not the development of infrastructural facilities in the East but the creation of conditions for democracy to be rekindled and administration handed back to the people.

Protection of human rights is something that the government can achieve without foreign help or leaving room for international nosy parkers to intervene on false pretext. It has to put its heart and soul into the task and, if needs be, mobilise the local human rights groups sans dubious background in the East or at least consult them and act upon their complaints.

The government ought to prove its bona fides as a regime that respects and protects human rights both in word and deed. That done, it can rest assured that world opinion won’t turn against this country.

There is no other way!

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