By Eymard de Silva Wijeyeratne-Courtesy The IslandƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ 

The gathering of Anglo-Saxon clans and their servile Asian butlers (that include a few Sri Lankans) are making a strenuously concerted effort to present a concocted charge of war crimes against Sri LankaƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s armed forces. C4 of the BBC is now trying hard to provide pictorial evidence of alleged crimes, in order to intensify this campaign. Though it claims to be an autonomous body, the BBC unerringly reflects the position taken up by the British government on any subject, as evidenced in the statement made by Alistair Burt, BritainƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s Foreign Minister for South Asia. It reads as follows, “Channel 4 footage, constitutes convincing evidence of violations of international humanitarian and human rights law and if the Sri Lankan government does not respond they would support the international community in revisiting all options available to press the Sri Lankan government to fulfil its obligations” (The Island, 15th June 2011).

Even individuals in Sri Lanka, who hold no position in government bureaucracy, have treated ministers and diplomats of foreign governments with courtesies due to the high office they hold. Minister Burt has forfeited the privilege of putative dignity, attached to his office, by associating himself with this sordid gallery of pictures, displayed by the BBC. In these circumstances, we too are entitled to exercise a similar right to comment on the statement he has made, without mincing words. Mr. Burt must bear in mind that the entity he refers to as the ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”international communityƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢ is no more than the governments of the United States and Britain acting in concert and collusion. The word ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”revisitedƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢ is trivially used by third grade writers to convey a sense of intellectual sophistication. I donƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢t think Mr. Burt is privy to Evelyn WaughƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s metaphorical usage of the word ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”revisitedƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢ in the latterƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s novel ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”Brideshead RevisitedƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢. Charles RyderƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s revisiting Brideshead, is intended to convey the shallowness of the moral and spiritual conversion that followed the essentially secular/agnostic nature of the life he led during his first visit. The British, in like manner, invaded, occupied and exploited (visited) Sri Lanka in the guise of civilising natives with the use of hollow high-church values of gentility and parlour decency. Now! The bleeding heart of Mr. Burt threatens to revisit Sri Lanka with another version of this strategy, which authorises terrorists to enforce the observance of human rights in Sri Lanka. I suggest that he takes his bleeding heart to Derry, in Northern Ireland to celebrate the feast of Bloody Sunday and from there to Basra, Baghdad and Afghanistan, where British soldiers, as foreign invaders, committed many atrocities against innocent civilians. The British army, we are told, gets itself absolved of liability, with pleas of ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”innocent mistakesƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢ and ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”severe combat pressureƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢. Sri Lanka does not need to use these flimsy excuses.

BBC

The BBC has, in the past, been associated with finely nuanced and dignified reporting: of course with a trace colonial hauteur. But now, its performance has degenerated to the level of being the standard bearer and defender of a colonial prime mortgage. Its role is now limited to that described in the EditorƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s note in Daniel JonesƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢ ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”English Pronouncing DictionaryƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢, as being the model of spoken British English; used by “professional speakers employed by the BBC as newsreaders and announcers on BBC1 and BBC2 television, the World Service and BBC Radio 3 and 4ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚¦”(Daniel Jones, EPD page v, 15th Edition). Just as much as Public School Pronunciation (PSP) and Received Pronunciation (RP) are said to be archaic (ibid), BBC English too enjoys the same status in a world of global cockneys. What is expected of all media, whether print or electronic, is reliance on verified facts, consistent values (not one for the LTTE, another for Sri Lanka and yet another for the ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”Coalition of the WillingƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢) and a disinterested cast of mind that does not submit to the pressure exerted by terrorists and the mafia. The print and electronic media use photographs that are authenticated (date, time and place) by professionals in their employment, or by trustworthy amateurs. There are hundreds of such authenticated pictures of men, women, children hacked to death with machetes, or sprayed with bullets by the LTTE, outside the theatre of war, in lowly homesteads, buses, trains and offices. The blood of these innocent victims cries out for vengeance against C4 propagandists, theologians and be-medalled clergymen who define their stance as one of divinely disciplined evangelical disinterest. The pictures displayed by C4 with childish bravado, have been evidently fabricated with modern techniques of digital manipulation. Why is it that C4 refrains from showing pictures of the state-of-the-art methods of torture such as water-boarding and killing with remote-controlled drones? We need to highlight the sheer moral turpitude inherent in this campaign of vilification of Sri Lanka by BBC and the British government, against the background of the wanton killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian electrician who was shot in the head seven times after he was overpowered and pinned to the ground by several police officers at the Stockwell tube station on the London Underground. This shooting occurred as a part of the governmentƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”shoot to kill on suspicionƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢ policy, which it adopted as a response to the London bombings of 7 July 2005; in which 56 people died. This is in sharp contrast to what happened in Sri Lanka on more that one occasion, when it was ravaged by regular suicide bombings. In one instance, a woman police officer approached a woman LTTE suicide bomber who was loitering close to the Prime MinisterƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s office; to question her. She was blown to pieces because she did not shoot to kill on suspicion. A similar incident occurred at the Kollupitiya Police Station. The Marusman Report failed to make a credible impact by reporting what, in aberrant quasi-judicial language, it referred to as ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”credible allegations of war crimesƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢, committed during the last stages of the war. The BBC has evidently stepped in to fill the breach caused by this failure, by publicising fake pictures of staged dramas of execution. Anybody with a whit of intelligence should realise that the intensity of fighting was such that no soldier would have enjoyed the luxury of enacting staged executions.

The Intensity of the Campaign

Only those, who like to be cradled in adulthood, will believe that the campaign against Sri Lanka is based on genuine, righteous zeal to protect human rights. The Western world is in the grip of a paranoid fear that the virtual empire it has maintained, after the collapse of the real empire they ruled, is also fast coming to an end. It believes that the only way it can maintain a surrealistic empire is by encouraging third world nations , especially in Asia and Latin America, to voluntarily splinter into ungovernable entities. Deep in their collective unconscious is a fear that the growing behemoths, India and China, will threaten their very existence. The very fact that tiny Sri Lanka was able to crush the invincible LTTE, has made them subject to the nightmares of Vietnam where a brave people humiliated a shameless Goliath that resorted to chemical warfare.

Nuclear fission has been used as a source of energy at least until the recent disaster in Japan. It can also function as a source of destruction. Constitutionally entrenched multi-cultural polities too are highly fissile material. The United States, Britain and the European Union are well aware of its potential to break up nation states into helpless political entities. While this holy alliance uses pressure on Sri Lanka with charges of war crimes, Jayalalitha and dollar-hungry NGOs will clamour for a political solution that involves devolution. Adherents of four religions and their schismatic offshoots have lived in peace together in Sri Lanka, for as long as we can remember. The language issue too requires only administrative fine tuning. The demand for linking ethnicity to specified, geographical locations, in the name of devolution, will only serve to kick start the process of death and destruction once again. Sri Lanka has lost close to 30,000 members of the security forces and nearly a 100,000 of its citizenry by talking peace in the company of the Norwegians. The assassination of the late Lakshman Kadirgamar signals the absurdity of politically amplified ethnicity. The government needs to be wary of being beguiled by insincere overtures as well as Burt-type threats. Prof. G. L. Peiris is a gracious man but his reliance on verbal sleight-of-hand, as evidenced in the joint statement he has issued with the Prime Minister of India, does not bode well for Sri Lanka. Fine-tuned diplomacy alone will not help in dealing with intimidation.

The International Chorus of Intimidation

The people of Sri Lanka have been steadfast in their determination to be rid of terrorism in spite of the threats they have been subject to over the last 30 years. The UNSG, Ban Ki Moon, his three Panelists, High Representative of European Union for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos and other agencies such as Amnesty International, International Crisis Group, Dublin tribunal, and an assortment of theologians and peace-makers have been howling in chorus, to implicate Sri Lanka for its refusal to recognise the invincibility of the LTTE. Robert Blake, the leader of the chorus, had made the following statement before the US Senate. “Positioned directly on shipping routes that carry petroleum products and other trade from the Gulf to East Asia, Sri Lanka remains of strategic interest to the U.S. An important contributor to global peacekeeping operations, Sri Lanka stands poised to be a capable and willing partner to effectively combat violent extremism, trafficking and piracy, and thereby help to ensure maritime security of the regionƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚¦ But the GovernmentƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s worrisome record on human rights, weakening of democratic institutions and practices, and the way it conducted final months of its conflict against the Tamil Tigers hamper our ability to fully engage”. This statement alone, combined with the BBCƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s doctored picture gallery, reveals the hypocrisy and humbug that drives the campaign to harass Sri Lanka. To talk of engaging Sri Lanka as a partner in combating violent extremism while accusing it of committing war crimes is the height of absurdity and hypocrisy. Why should Sri Lanka get involved in fighting those whom others consider terrorists, when all she wants, as a small country, is to live in peace? This talk of a strategic location is plain rubbish.

Reconciliation

The process of post-war reconciliation that the aforementioned campaigners talk of will only be indefinitely deferred as a result of this campaign to give the kiss of life to the practitioners of hardcore terrorism. I will conclude my analysis by quoting an impartial observer who has made a simple but perceptive assessment of the situation that Sri Lanka faces. “What Sri Lankans need now is to be left alone. People in other countries playing politics with their lives is not the path to lasting peace but to further bloody conflict. And surely the country has had enough of that” (Kath Noble, ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”A Bittersweet Anniversary for Sri LankaƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢, The Island 19th May, 2011).