US back to Lies : Lied on Iraq WMD – Now lying about Sri Lanka War Crimes
Posted on January 27th, 2014
Shenali D Waduge
ENOUGH PROOF REMAINS TO SHOW AMERICA IS A SERIAL LIAR – THE WORLD NEEDS TO HAVE SERIOUS RESERVATIONS ABOUT ITS CREDIBILITY.
US on Iraq : Colin Powell shows ‘evidence” – Result – Iraq invasion 1million Iraqi deaths, US citizens in debt – corporate America rich US Government and its officials lied to its citizens on Iraq |
US on Sri Lanka: Stephen Rapp and Michelle Sission show ‘evidence” in run-up to US sponsored Resolution against Sri Lanka US Government and its officials are preparing the lies on Sri Lanka! |
§ President George Bush had made 232 lies on Iraq’s WMD
§ President George Bush made 28 statements on Al Qaeda collaboration with Saddam Hussein
§ Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld lied 119 times on Iraq
§ Secretary of State Colin Powell’s 254 false statements earned him a silver medal.
§ Paul Wolfowitz lied 85 times
The extent to which US officials went to create the scenario for invasion and occupation is covered in the steps taken by Secretary of State Colin Powell
- Multimedia presentations on Iraq WMDs
- Powell played intercepted conversations between Iraqi officers who were discussing ways to conceal prohibited materials from UN inspectors. The lengths US goes to bring about regime change was also seen in 1990s when a Harvard graduate impersonated Saddam Hussein hired by US government-linked PR firm Rendon Group (“Broadcast Ruse: A Grad Student Mimicked Saddam Over the Airwaves,” The Village Voice, 13-19 November 2002). Then in 1990 Kuwait hired another PR firm to support the 1st Gulf War by lying of Iraqi troops throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators. (Source: ‘The Lies we are told about Iraqi” The Los Angeles Times, 5 January 2003) The likelihood of these being fake is proven in the manner the CIA ran a clandestine radio station to provoke a coup against democratically-elected government of Guatemala. This radio station was broadcasting fake ‘opposition’ voices. We now hear that the US Ambassador is distributing galaxy phones, IPADs and what not – so the public of Sri Lanka need to be well prepared for 50 ‘opposition’ voices soon to come out manipulating social media as they are currently being trained on what to do.
- Powell used satellite images to support claim that Iraq is producing and hiding chemical weapons. The New York Times reported that US officials had given UN inspectors satellite photos of ‘chemical weapons site’ – that ‘site’ turned out to be an old ammunition storage area! Powell also showed satellite images of a ‘terrorist camp’ – couldn’t US have bombed the camp instead of invading and occupying Iraq?
- The satellite images shown of grave sites in Sri Lanka showed just over 300 and makes one wonder how 40,000 to 125,000 can be shoved into one!
- Colin Powell claimed that according to ‘defectors’ Iraq had an elaborate system of mobile laboratories to produce biological weapons. Powell used ‘artists impressions’ of these ‘laboratories’ which displays the creative imagination of US when they want to take over nations! This is why the UN puppet is now trying to keep ‘witnesses’ classified.
- Colin Powell also missed to mention how the company American Type Culture Collection was contracted by the US to send to Iraq E Coli botulism, the seed stock to make anthrax
- Another lie of Colin Powell was of Saddam’s links to Al Qaeda and then portrayed Zarqawi the exact way they prepared Osama bin Laden to be hated by the world.
- The lies by Powell and Co despite intelligence reports of FBI, CIA, UK intelligence and even Mossad claiming there was no evidence to tie Al Qaeda and Saddam. (ref: UK report rejects Iraqi Al Qaeda link – BBC, 5 February 2003). If we explore any likelihood of a link it was by the Reagan Administration when US helped recruit men from Arabs and Muslims to form ‘Afghan Freedom Fighters’ installing Osama as leader.
- The US and UK now referring to the ‘no fire zones’ in Sri Lanka has forgotten how both nations bombed ‘no-fly zones’ for 12 years in Iraq! The UN Resolution spoke nothing about Al Qaeda connection – why did the US need to create a lie?
- Colin Powell reminded the UN Security Council that Saddam has been a horrible monster for more than 2 decades. Powell cited Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Kurds in 1988 calling it ‘one of the twentieth century’s most horrible atrocities’. Colin Powell missed to mention that US supported Saddam against Iran going so far as to instruct US diplomats to implicate Iran – no different to what US diplomats are currently doing in Sri Lanka abusing all diplomatic decorum.
What the American public need to realize is:
For the US , WMD is defined as Words of Mass Deception !!!
What sovereign governments voting at the UN and its assemblies in particular the UN Human Rights Council need to ask themselves is will their decision to endorse Resolutions by the US end up creating catastrophes that Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan and similar countries today suffer from.
Sri Lanka is being unnecessarily targeted for eliminating terrorists banned by 32 nations. Nations of the world must be aware of the suffering of 20million people under 3 decades of LTTE terror and take cognizance of their suffering too.
If the Pentagon is using deception should the world’s SOVEREIGN nations think twice about endorsing what US asks of them – including that of agreeing to every Resolution brought by US to the UN even the watered-down ones.
Do leaders not have moral obligations to humanity anymore?
January 27th, 2014 at 2:22 pm
IT said said that US attacked Iraq because Saddam Hussein avoided Oil trade based on US Currency as the exchange. That cost US lot GDP.
IT was not WMDs.
Right now, they accuse Russia for anti-gay policies and try to scuttle Sochi-Olympics while Evangelical Church has made AFRICAN – Constitutions anti-homosexual.
January 27th, 2014 at 7:55 pm
“The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program … Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.” — US President George Walker Bush Oct. 7, 2002, in Cincinnati.
“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” — US President George Walker Bush, Jan.28, 2003, in the State of the Union address.
“We believe Saddam has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” — US Vice President Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney on March 16, 2003 on “Meet the Press.”
“[The CIA possesses] solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade.” — CIA Director George Tenet in a written statement released Oct. 7, 2002 and echoed in that evening’s speech by US President George Walker Bush.
“We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases … Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.” — US President George Walker Bush, Oct. 7, 2002 .
“We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these unmanned aerial vehicles for missions targeting the United States.” — US President George Walker Bush, Oct. 7, 2002.
“We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they’re weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established.” — US President George Walker Bush, Feb. 8, 2003, in a national radio address.
“Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets.” — Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 5 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council.
“We know where Iraq’s WMD are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat.” — Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, in statements to the press.
“Yes, we found a biological laboratory in Iraq which the UN prohibited.” — US President George Walker Bush in remarks in Poland, published internationally June 1, 2003.
January 27th, 2014 at 7:56 pm
Please read this link to know more
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/leadup-iraq-war-timeline
January 27th, 2014 at 8:04 pm
There was testimony before the United Nations General Assembly by a Kuwaiti woman who said she aworked at the Kuwaiti hospital and had seen Kuwaiti babies only days old were taken from incubators, thrown to the floor of the maternity ward in clear sight of their Kuwaiti mothers, and stomped to death by Iraqi soldiers. Even the US President Bush Sr repeated this incubators story several times to demonstrate the extraordinary cruelty Saddam was capable of.
The American people were provided the tearful pleas of elected officials of Kuwait imploring us to restore democratic government and free their people from the tyranny of Saddam.
All of this was heart wrenching, and all of this was a lie. All of this was a product of a Washington D.C. public relations firm with close ties to the Bush administration.
While Iraqi troops did commit atrocities in Kuwait, they never tore little babies from incubators and murdered them — and there was never democracy in Kuwait.
To read more about this
http://www.rense.com/general30/sdeee.htm
January 27th, 2014 at 8:06 pm
Twenty Lies About the Iraq War
http://www.globalresearch.ca/twenty-lies-about-the-iraq-war/5327386
January 27th, 2014 at 8:37 pm
The language of colonialism may have been modified; the spirit and the hypocrisy are unchanged. Winston Churchill had urged in 1951 “Those insolent Arabs, should be driven into the gutter from which they should never have emerged.” When UK lost control of Egypt in 1956, UK PM Anthony Eden said he wanted the nationalist president of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser murdered!!
The history of US interventions is littered with false stories, from the “Remember the Maine” campaign to the stories of Vietnamese attacks Remember the Iraq war when French president Jacques Chiraq vetoed a resolution for an intervention? What did George Bush do? He went to war. And what did the UN do against they USA? Nothing !
Serbia’s Milosevic was brought before a UN tribunal to face justice but NATO leaders who made illegal war on Serbia, were not. UN said nothing about Bush’s decision to authorize torture nor chastise Obama for continuing drone attacks on unarmed civilians and children. UN did not say anything when crown prince of Bahrain slaughtered unarmed protesters and allowed Saudi forces to crush his country’s democracy movement
January 27th, 2014 at 8:46 pm
United Nations has absolutely no legitimacy whatsoever to meddle in the domestic affairs of a sovereign nation!!!
The human rights issue is being used by a handful of countries as a pretext and tool to pursue selfish interests, demonize the image of other countries and intervene in their internal affairs. The US shouldn’t behave as a self-proclaimed human rights judge. The US has never hesitated to point the finger at other countries’ human rights and to advocate that “human rights are superior to sovereignty” when it serves its own interests. But the US has refused to sign some of the major United Nations human rights covenants. UN Human Rights Council made 228 proposals for the US to improve its own human rights conditions, including urging Washington to ratify some key international human rights treaties, improving the rights for minorities and reducing racial discrimination. However, the US refused most of these proposals on the grounds that its human rights allow no intervention from the outside.
The double standard embraced by the US testify to the fact that human rights are being used by some countries as a tool to interfere with others’ internal affairs and the idea that “human rights stand higher than sovereignty” has become a political slogan for some to justify their hegemonic activities. Until the outbreak of World War II, Western countries were still enmeshed in their history of colonialism, racial discrimination and outside aggression. The widespread national liberation and democratic movements across the world following the end of World War II quickly resulted in the collapse of the West’s long-held moral excuses that were used to justify their past crimes and “use of force” and it turned to concepts, such as “humanitarian intervention” and “human rights are superior to sovereignty”, as the main means to regain their lost moral dominance and maintain their dwindling domain of influence throughout the world. By using abstract terms and their own criteria to define the concept of human rights, Western countries have attempted to completely separate human rights from sovereignty and then cause conflicts in specific countries and regions from which they can benefit and achieve their own political purposes.
Human rights in individual countries can only be realized and protected in a sovereign country, when there are still strong and weak countries and when hegemonic activities and power politics still prevail. A country belongs to all its people and the country’s sovereignty is the concentrated embodiment of its collective human rights. The existence of sovereign nations constitutes the foundation of the current international society and under this precondition human rights conditions worldwide have made continuous advancements. In the absence of sovereignty, a country will have no ability and means to protect the human rights of its people. From Kosovo to Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, under the pretext of “human rights being superior to sovereignty”, Western countries have chosen to use guns and bombs against the governments of these countries to realize their own ulterior motives. But the use of force has failed to bring the people in these countries improved human rights, on the contrary it has plunged them deep into humanitarian disasters and cost many their lives. Protecting human rights is a universal pursuit of people of all countries across the world. But if this issue is rigged by a handful of countries as the excuse to interfere with other countries’ internal affairs, the human rights of these countries and their people are ignored. Military interventions under the guise of moral slogans are in essence a kind of neo-colonialism.
January 28th, 2014 at 3:32 am
I think and hope contributors and commentators will come to some senses and stop bashing the West. Today and Yesterday India, Indian colonial parasites and Indian vermin are our enemies.
January 28th, 2014 at 7:05 am
Nalliah Thayabharan
I have read your articles a lot, that explains well why there’s so much trouble in the world. You are in Canada, why not come back to live in Sri Lanka and take to politics, which is non sectarian? We are an island that can be very well be controlled and disciplined and no outside meddlers could ever interfere. I will back you up and you could also help run my businesses in UK,SL and elsewhere. First we must clean our own country or it will be to our own folly. Good luck to you on your construction and maintenance business in Ca.
January 28th, 2014 at 8:58 am
Nimal is showering complements on NT and also says that he reads NT’s articles a lot. I cannot remember any article written by him; however he writes comments which are very much longer than the articles themselves which sometimes appear well researched by an organization. That is what commentators say about what NT wrote on “Mahavamsa bashing” in these columns. He has not challenged that, instead he has written some mumbo-jumbo. I think you are inviting trouble. I first suspected that he is from such a organization when he wrote about thugs who were used by past presidents for various activities. The comment included minute details of the thugs the dates they were jailed etc. as if to say the Sinhalas are unable to rule the country. An ordinary professional cannot compile such details unless he is involved with some anti national organsation.
I see this happening today with some TV channels owned by minorities. They video the chaotic scenes from Pradeshiya sabas and broad cast to the world just to show that we are unable to rule ourselves.
January 28th, 2014 at 11:22 am
Aloy
We like to hear your version too. What NT said about the world events have some truth. See what happened to Gaddafi and Sadaam,who came a long way please the west, as NT indicated elsewhere when the leaders of countries move away from the US currency, all hell lose on them.
With respect to Mahwansa,bible or other out dated scriptures, the more one just ignore it is better and move forward, as they are controversial and divisive.
We have to put our country on a footing that is acceptable to the world, that means higher standard of governance with a feel good factor among the hardworking people in the land. Do I have to spell it out and when I did that last time I had a good whack on my head?
I was told by an expert from US, in 1964(I think) there’s 50 million barrels of oil offshore, this means trouble. If you get my drift? What is unfolding in Syria is sad, putting one sect against the other and covertly encouraging the Islamic terrorists to add to the chaos. They wouldn’t have that nonsense in their own land. We have long way to have a country at peace and we haven’t scratch the surface in getting our country in the right path where these meddlers have little chance.
We see to our utter folly, the concept of religious divisions that the enemy sees as a weakness to exploit, just as in Syria. Assad and his father united the Muslims with the Christians and Jews but fell foul with his own divisions in Islam, which had lead to the present situation. We too have our own homebred traitors who have taken evidence of the recent events of the war to western countries, just to get privileges. Can’t blame the politicians, as they are product of the rotten people of our land, from the bottom to top. Do business there and find out your self like I do.I wished I never went there to establish a business. I am not a got writer but a man of science and a business man.So please put up with my writing and good day to you all.
January 28th, 2014 at 1:30 pm
Christie you say..
(I think and hope contributors and commentators will come to some senses and stop bashing the West. Today and Yesterday India, Indian colonial parasites and Indian vermin are our enemies.)
US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Nisha Biswal (ICP= Indian Colonial Parasite?) arrives in our shores on Friday.
Perhaps you would like to gives us your perspective on this.
Thanks
January 28th, 2014 at 5:50 pm
Christie: What you call “bashing the west” did not hatch in a vacuum nor is the entire Western hemisphere being accused or in your words “being bashed”. This is in response to certain western nations such as the United Kingdom who is the center of the “Global Tamil Front” and has a massive Tamil diaspora where President Rajapakse faced Tamils carrying placards of LITE emblazoned on them while Scotland Yard did nothing. If they were emblazoned with Al-Qaeda when President Obama was visiting they would have been arrested and their placards removed. The British government is determined to penalize Sri Lanka.
The Human right violations was demanded by India to which the US government under President Obama was more than obliging while India at the last moment put in stipulations that this motion will not ricochet on her while punishing Sri Lanka. It is a NORMAL response to point out the hypocrisy of these nations and not be silent about it. I hope you understand my point of view.
January 28th, 2014 at 6:03 pm
If this issue is not resolved on its own accord and by the Colombo which I believe these nations be they India, the UK, Norway, the United States will not allow it to be reconciled then Sri Lanka will have to understand that it will continue well after President Obama leaves office in 2016. Mrs Hillary Clinton the lackey of Obama is a shrewd cold blooded politician.
When this woman was the first lady of the US and her husband President Bill Clinton was having affair after affair with woman.. in the very White House where Mrs. Clinton resided and not in some discreet place, Mrs. Clinton knew of these affairs and deliberately put her politics over her own marriage. Compare this with the French President Hollande and the marital turbulence when his wife discovered of his adultery and one comes to the conclusion that Mrs. Hillary Clinton is capable of anything. She already has the crucial electoral college votes of around 230 in her pocket. It takes 270 electoral college votes to win the election or a mere 40 electoral votes.
Mrs. Hillary Clinton is that proverbial monster that Dr. Frankenstein created. She will take up where Obama left and definitely add to it. Under her governance accusations of human rights violations against Sri Lanka will take epic proportions or that is my opinion. Mrs. Hillary Clinton is the type of woman who does not have a limit to her arrogance and calculated politics. She will try to attain the impossible and that is to contain an ever growing military powers of China and Russia and by that the strategic nation Sri Lanka and her alliance with these powers will be punished with an endless list of human rights accusations.
January 28th, 2014 at 6:18 pm
“With respect to Mahwansa,bible or other out dated scriptures, the more one just ignore it is better and move forward, as they are controversial and divisive.”
Mahawansa compared to bible/Koran are completely different.
Unless Nimal is not a Sinhalese, mahawansa is about his ancestors and unless he is not a Sri Lankan it is about his country.
Bible/Koran are about are religious texts which can be compared with Thripitakas and Nimal may dared toll say out dated.
What his comment may prove is that Nimal is a Catholic.
It is OK, if he can move forward with rest of the Sinhala Buddhists an others without saying Mahawnsa is out dated.
January 29th, 2014 at 5:26 am
Thank you Nimal for your response.
As Nanda says we have to take Mahavamsa and Scriptures in their own context . Mahavamsa is supposed to be our history. The monk who started writing in the 5th (or 6th) century was biased towards the Bangali people and did not mention the other waves of migration from the North West of India. Anyway today we are a goulash comprising a majority of 75% of the population. I do not know of any other country in the world where a minority of about 5-8% dictate terms, make insults publicly and give so much trouble as in the case of Tamils in this country who got maximum out of generous welfare systems.
All our leaders after DS are the ones who should be blamed.
January 29th, 2014 at 7:31 am
There you are, trying to put a religious label on me.I rather have a stiff drink with my colleagues than be a religious hypocrite. Religions and their followers put me off.
January 29th, 2014 at 2:51 pm
to Aloy: “Mahavamsa is supposed to be our history. The monk who started writing in the 5th (or 6th) century was biased towards the Bangali people and did not mention the other waves of migration from the North West of India.”
From what you stated it is assumed that the Mahavamsa is biased, and maybe it is. But in response can anyone point to any historical document that is not biased in one way or the other. For that matter documentaries, books on history and culture to even our daily news from the Media to the newspapers take an angle. That is why we have so many news outlets that emphasis a particular philosophical leaning be it liberal, conservative, pro Tamil or anti government. Information from the ancient times to the 21s century is seldom if ever objective.
If anything we should learn of how biased historians can be when we as Sri Lankans read our history written by our former Colonial rulers the British, where they praise the British Empire to no end and condemn the primitive practices of the native lands. They even go as far as to the poverty they created on the nations they governed. Yet even now most Western nations take their point of view as “fair and balanced”
January 30th, 2014 at 7:10 am
A professional strategy aimed at globally isolating Sri Lanka
By Daya Gamage
Either Sri Lanka does not possess the style of communication with cogent arguments, or the principal players in the international community (IC) do not accept Sri Lanka’s presentations, or simply dismiss them for some other reason.
Or is it the policymakers and opinion molders in IC’s leading nation, the United States, are being influenced by a ‘third party’ which has special interests in changing the domestic trajectory Sri Lanka has undertaken since the military defeat of the separatist Tamil Tigers.
Whatever the reasons are, this writer is in some position to get a glimpse of a distinct professionalism now in progress to put Sri Lanka on the defensive, skillfully garbling the message this South Asian nation has and is providing global forums to isolate it and project it as the worst violator of international humanitarian law.
Among many maneuvers by the once ‘material support’ providers now very much active within the (Sri Lankan) Tamil Diaspora to diplomatically achieve an independent Tamil Nation in the north-east region of Sri Lanka once envisaged by the Tigers until their ‘domestic’ demise in 2009, one youthful professional stands out to inform American lawmakers, policymakers, the powerful NGOs and the influential mainstream media, using her constant travel to the country, once abandoned by her parents in the late seventies , of the ‘internal situation’ that even the authorities in Sri Lanka wouldn’t have had time to probe, encounter and counteract probably either because their monitoring capacity is low or were preoccupied in the ‘massive infra-structure and economic developments’.
Most recently, she was instrumental in bringing several US Congressmen together to inaugurate the Congressional Caucus for Ethnic and Religious Freedoms in Sri Lanka with a special emphasis on Tamil issues which, the Asian Tribune understands, has taken considerable momentum within the American legislature.
She is Nimmi Gawrinathan.
Born in the United States Ms. Gawrinathan has all academic credentials to work with several professional organizations as splendid cover to travel to the predominantly minority Tamil districts in northern Sri Lanka, gather much information as possible about the ‘plight’ of the Tamils while working in orphanages and return to the U.S. armed with data to place before the lawmakers and policymakers.
The Asian Tribune does not challenge her concern toward the status of the Tamil population in the north of Sri Lanka nor her passion toward her parents kith and kin, but our whole exercise here is to ascertain what type of information the Americans receive from her upon her return and whether Sri Lanka possesses the correct type of diplomatic prowess to understand this vital dissemination of information which shape the mindset of lawmakers and policymakers to halt the ongoing maneuvers to create a ‘Kosovo Type’ scenario for a separate and independent state in the north-east of Sri Lanka.
The travails of Ms. Nimmi Gawrinathan, in fact, date back to the era when Velupillai Prabhaharan was running affairs in the north and east of this South Asian nation.
As the Asian Tribune reported last week that the ‘eelam specter’ was haunting the creation of the US Congressional Caucus for Ethnic and Religious Freedoms in Sri Lanka giving special emphasis on Tamil Issues, Gawrinathan in a lengthy statement at the inaugural meeting called by two US Congressmen outlined the scenario faced by the Tamils – especially the women – in the northern region.
The Asian Tribune gave a fair coverage to her presentation. Following are what we reported:
(Quote) Dr. Gawrinathan focused on the alarming level of militarization in the North-East, in particular the impact it has on Tamil women. She said that the militarization is a “calculated institutionalized practice and pervasive ideology which has the ability to deepen the impact of repressive policies”, and that militarization in the North-East has an “active impact on politics and social interactions as a form of state repression.” She stated that a recent survey in Sri Lanka found that defense forces occupied over one third of the land inhabited by the Tamil population in the Northern Province. (End Quote)
She told the American lawmakers and their staff present at the inauguration of the ‘Caucus’ that interviews conducted (by her) with members of civil society highlighted militarization as the biggest problem facing the Tamil people today.
In considering the gendered impact of militarization, Dr. Gowrinathan outlined five specific areas of concern: prostitution, rape, coercive population control, suicide and domestic violence.
Discussing the prevalence of rape during the last phase of the armed conflict, but also today, Dr Gowrinathan said frankly that prostitution is easily found after 6 pm in Kilinochchi, and constitutes a form of sexual violence.
Highlighting reports of coercive population control, Dr Gowrinathan cited recent cases of birth control being given to Tamil women without their consent and how the husbands of these women were angry when they found out about the coerced birth control. Contextualizing the incidents occurring today, with the numerous reports of forced abortions being carried out on Tamil women at the end of the armed conflict, she stated that Tamil women were told abortions were necessary because the fetuses had been exposed to chemical weapons.
Do Sri Lanka’s foreign policy planners monitor this global dissemination of information?
In what manner does any American audience, especially filled with lawmakers and policymakers, react to Dr. Gawrinathan’s ‘global’ submissions, and what credentials does she possess to look credible to that audience which has adopted a new policy plank to get Third World developing nations to emulate American values. Nimmi Gowrinathan’s endeavors well fit into the US State Department’s practice of, and reemphasized in recent times, pushing America’s foreign policy through ethnic Diasporas.
Nimmi Gowrinathan, holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her study, “How Women Rebel: Gender and Agency in Sri Lanka” looks at the impact of displacement, militarization, and gender-based violence on women’s political identities, and it received the Jean and Irving Stone Dissertation Award for Innovation in Gender Studies. She was formerly the Director of South Asia Programs and UN Representative for Operation USA (2004-2011), an international disaster relief and development organization.
In this capacity she raised over 2 million dollars and managed these funds in the form of small grants to community-based organizations in India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. She has also worked as a lead researcher and analyst for the International Crisis Group (ICG), researching and writing policy reports around women’s insecurities in conflict zones, and briefing high-level policy makers such as Louise Arbour of the United Nations and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Her article “Inside Camps, Outside Battlefields: Security and Survival for Tamil Women” was the lead article in Oxford’s St. Anthony’s International Review.
She had the opportunity to visit Sri Lanka’s Northern Region during the period (2004-2011) when she was the Director of South Asia Programs for Operation USA. In her capacity as a UN Consultant she came in contact with Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (2004-2008).
Her rapport with the senior staff of the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Commission is quite obvious.
Operation USA is a Los Angeles-based international relief organization that helps communities, both domestic and international, overcome the effects of disasters, disease, and poverty. Ms. Gowrinathan oversaw (2004-2011) disaster relief programs in India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan, and also acted as the United Nations’ consultant, directing the New York office of Operation USA.
The projects initiated by Operations USA in the Northern Province in Sri Lanka that made possible for her to travel to this South Asian nation, live among the people there and learn about their ‘situation.’
Gowrinathan describes herself in this manner: (Quote) From 2004 to 2009, I have engaged in looking at issues around gender, militarization, and state repression in Sri Lanka from a number of vantage points. While in the doctoral program at UCLA, I have also been working part-time as the Director of South Asia. Programs at Operation USA. I managed post-tsunami and post conflict humanitarian programs on the island, focusing in particular on vocational training and educational support for young girls and women in the northeast. Later, as the UN representative of Operation USA, I chaired the Sri Lanka Working Group of NGOs, spearheading advocacy efforts with policymakers and members of civil society in the U.S. around issues impacting Tamil communities in Sri Lanka. Working with the very active Tamil Diaspora in the United States, I also developed Tamil Women’s Groups, which are formal community groups across the country that raise funds and awareness around issues impacting Tamil women in Sri Lanka. In my academic research, I developed a unique sample set of interviews with current and former female fighters, political leaders in the LTTE , former fighters in refugee camps in India, as well as leaders of civil society and academics in Sri Lanka. (End Quote)
When she meets with US lawmakers and policymakers these credentials hold in good stead, a challenge to Sri Lanka if it fails to use public diplomacy and strategic communication in a cogent manner, and/or a mechanism to monitor, comprehend to combat this global dissemination.
She was born on the American soil to Tamil parents who left (or fled) Sri Lanka in the late seventies.
What Sri Lanka needs to understand in the post-LTTE era in the most challenging issue of ‘reconciliation’ is what Nimmi Gowrinathan told The New York Times on 18 May 2009, the day Sri Lanka Government declared that the Tigers were militarily defeated: “The feeling people have is a psychological defeat. There’s no avenue for change for a marginalized population.”
Her understanding of Sri Lanka
Her understanding of Sri Lanka, then in 2004 when Tamil Tiger leader Prabhaharan ran his writ in the north and east , and since the defeat of the Tigers in 2009 play a major role in American diplomatic dealing with the South Asian nation. And, with whom she associates is another factor the Asian Tribune took note of.
Way back in 2004, Nimmi Gawrinathan visited Jaffna to work with orphaned children in her capacity as co-director VISIONS-USA, an NGO which has programs to teach English and leadership skills.
She had worked three summers in the north of Sri Lanka, and in one of her submissions dated 21 October 2004 to Ilankai Tamil Sangam Web Site of the Association of Sri Lanka Tamils in the US Ms. Gawrinathan made known her sentiments in this manner:
(Quote) The four Tamil Sri Lankan-Americans who ventured back to Yalpannam knew the story well. After all, it was only one generation that stood between them and the violence whose legacy left no Tamil family untouched. It had been passed down through ammammas and ammas, re-constructed in academic texts, explored through journalistic exposes, and stripped of its factual particulars by opposition political parties. As we walked past bullet-ridden buildings and spray-painted taggings of the LTTE, paid our respects at the Mahaveerar cemetery, brushed off the dust kicked up by the army trucks which thundered through the middle of town…not only did that story come to life, but it no longer stood as a reality outside of ourselves something to be studied, informed about, and observed. In those 21 days, through those 40 children, the tale of the struggle for Tamil Eelam became embedded within us, not as history or ancestry- but as an essential part of who we are.(End Quote)
In the same write-up to the Web Site she further noted: “The presence of traumatic histories was felt in trips to the LTTE cemeteries where certain women wouldn’t enter, and young boys who had lost their fathers to the cause, proclaimed themselves ardent supporters of the LTTE. “For ‘our people’ they are good” claimed the boys, infected with the pervading nationalism for Tamil Eelam.”
And, then she declared: “Human rights groups attack the rebel group for accepting the young women “child soldiers” who willingly enter the movement.”
In mid-October 2011, before a hall full of students and faculty members at the Yale School of Medicine, Ms. Gowrinathan, the director of programs in South Asia for Operation USA and a consultant to the United Nations, discussed the difficulties that nongovernmental organizations face in pursuing their missions.
Throughout the talk, she drew on examples from aid she helped administer after the Sri Lankan Civil War. While three attendees interviewed said they found her perspective interesting, two said her speech was too one-sided.
Gowrinathan began by describing what she argued are large-scale Sri Lankan human rights violations. In 2009 the Sri Lankan government came down hard on an opposition force called the Tamil Tigers with widespread violence against the group, she said. During this purge, tens of thousands of Sri Lankan civilians were also killed, injured, raped or displaced, Gowrinathan said.
Gowrinathan said that if the Sri Lankan government discovered that a nongovernmental worker was speaking out publicly about rights violations of this kind, the government would ban that worker’s NGO. She added that this is true in nearly every nation that engages in rights violations. Gowrinathan said volunteers usually avoid speaking in public about their concerns to avoid this outcome, even if it means leaving the stories of the Sri Lankan victims untold.
Again as recently as December 11 (2013) at the Uppsala University Forum and Forum for South Asia Studies Lecture, Dr. Gowrinathan gave a brilliant twist to LTTE’s recruitment of women to its female cadre. In this era of Sri Lankan authorities struggling to combat the pro-separatist elements in the Tamil Diaspora, her arguments seem to have entered the ‘orbit’ of American foreign policy framers and lawmakers.
Dr Nimmi Gowrinathan argued at Uppsala University that recruitment has little impact on the nature of women’s participation within a violent group. Drawing on the case of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka she argues that the political identity of the woman, shaped by her prior experience of state repression (in particular militarization), has a greater impact on individual female participation than the specific manner of her recruitment. This complicates the dominant assumption that the way in which someone is recruited into a rebel group will determine the nature of their participation. Instead, Dr Gowrinathan demonstrates that even in cases of coercive recruitment, female participation cannot be predicted and may even evidence high levels of commitment to the insurgent cause.
What we endeavor here is to present Nimmi Gowrinathan’s mindset in these times when Sri Lanka is being accused of violating international humanitarian law, militarization of the north and suppression of the minority Tamil population, and even war crimes. We have traced her mindset to the era (2004) when the LTTE was militarily strong to control better parts of the north and east of Sri Lanka, and the Sri Lanka regimes were in the defensive, to just before and after the rebel movement was domestically defeated to most recent pronouncements when she was much involved with American foreign policy framers and lawmakers.
In another submission, she make these declarations on the subject ‘Why Do Women Rebel? Understanding State Repression and Female Participation in Sri Lanka’:
(Quote)As we witness a resurgence of the state repression and militarization that first initiated this seemingly intractable ethnic conflict, how do we understand the impact of these processes on the lives and experiences of the female combatant?
The case of thousands of female combatants participating in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a nationalist movement which fought for an independent state in Sri Lanka, is one of several where an analysis of the relationship between state repression and the nature of female
participation is particularly relevant.
The female rebel (and often, female martyr) and their role in resistance movements from the Black Panthers in the U.S. to the freedom fighters in the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front is a symbol that evokes mixed emotions and reactions in academic literature and the media—and particularly amongst feminist writers and scholars. In the post 9/11 era, all such rebels and martyrs quickly became terrorists and suicide bombers—further increasing the fascination with and scrutiny of the “female terrorist.” (End Quote)
And then Dr. Nimmi Gowrinathan joins in the efforts of New York immigration attorney Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran’s Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) which is very open of its objective: An independent Tamil Nation in the north and eastern region of Sri Lanka, the target LTTE leader Prabhaharan missed when he, his top, second and even the third leadership with his machinery were wiped out by the Sri Lankan military in May 2009.
The agenda shifted overseas. The Asian Tribune analysis by this writer summed the annihilation of the LTTE at that time as “The demise of the LTTE is highly exaggerated’.
End of May 2013 in the City of Lancaster in Pennsylvania (US) the TGTE adopted its ‘Tamil Eelam Freedom Charter’.
In a media statement the Prime Minister of the TGTE Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran said “Aspiring to take the Vaddukoddai Resolution forward as the TGTE moves towards realizing its goal, and taking inspiration from Britain’s Ma’gna Car’ta, the Freedom Charter of the African National Congress (ANC) as well as the Palestinian National Charter, the Tamil Eelam Freedom Charter will enshrine the freedom demands of the people.”
The TGTE released a list of domestic and international participants who it considered ‘distinguish’, and among the list of ‘distinguish participants’ was Dr. Nimmi Gowrinathan.