Prof. Rajiva replies to UTHR (J)

(December, 07, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Your report suggests that the Free Media Movement was one of those I highlighted. This was not intended, for I was referring more specifically to those organizations which, while avoiding debate and discussion with government officials in Geneva, arranged meetings together with representatives of LTTE front organizations to attack the government.

by Rajiva Wijesinha

I read with interest the account, in today’s Morning Leader, of your most recent report. Though I may disagree with some of the points you make, let me take this opportunity to reiterate my admiration for your work in general, and your principled stand in the past despite threats to lives and livelihood by the LTTE.

There is one factual inaccuracy in the report which I should try to correct, since it concerns someone else. The report suggests that you were misled in reading reports of the Press Conference held by the Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights after he had led a delegation to Geneva in connection with allegations of Human Rights violations by the Sri Lankan government.

Entertainingly, and clearly only inadvertently, you seem to have assumed – since both he and I participated in the Conference – that his title is what you describe as the Orwellian one of Minister for Human Rights and Head of the Peace Secretariat. In fact there are two people involved, the Minister and myself, as Secretary General of the Peace Secretariat. The two institutions are not symbiotically linked, though we work together quite regularly, given that Human Rights should be an integral part of any peace process.

The suggestion that there was a network of NGO companies was made by me, not Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe. I should note that the position of the Peace Secretariat has always been that allegations about violations of human rights should be investigated, but it is difficult to do this when they are presented in the form of generalizations, and in accordance with what seems a political agenda. When I talked about companies, I was referring in particular to some NGOs that had been arguing for UN intervention, sometimes to the extent of invoking the Right to Protect, sometimes on the basis of wild allegations and unverified statistics.

Your report suggests that the Free Media Movement was one of those I highlighted. This was not intended, for I was referring more specifically to those organizations which, while avoiding debate and discussion with government officials in Geneva, arranged meetings together with representatives of LTTE front organizations to attack the government. However, since FMM was part of the conglomerate that produced a list of nearly 1000 dead and disappeared, which it put forward as cases requiring the intervention of HR authorities, they could well fit within the framework in which I was specifically concerned about the Law and Society Trust, which seems to have taken the lead in that exercise.

In this context I should perhaps share with you the relevant portions of a letter I sent recently to the Chairman of the Trust which laid out my worries -
‘My initial concern about what seemed anxiety to present inflated figures occurred when I noticed a Philippine national cited amongst the disappeared. This was in fact an aid worker who had been repatriated for medical treatment to Singapore. I was familiar with the case because this office monitors any news report that might suggest human rights problems. In that case it turned out that a tendentious news report indicating the Sri Lankan forces were at fault was quite misleading, and the individual in question had been injured after entering a high security zone despite repeated warnings to stop. The agency in question had subsequently acknowledged that he was at fault and taken him away.

Despite this, with some confusion of dates, he appeared in the LST list of the disappeared. Though his name has subsequently been withdrawn, there has been no intimation to the international media, which continues to highlight your findings, that such an egregious error had been committed.

Then it was brought to my attention that some of those described as killed in a manner that you believe warrants the attention of the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission were soldiers who had fallen victim to the LTTE. Their names had been altered so that for instance Lt. Col, Jayantha Suraweera appeared as Liptinana Kernal Jeyanthasurvira. I am sure LST did not intend this, but I cannot think of a greater insult to a serviceman slaughtered in the course of duty than to suggest that he was a victim of human rights violations on the part of the government.

When this was brought to the attention of your staff, they sent me a letter claiming that ‘We include names in our document on the basis of information given to us by a few trusted sources – their methodology includes noting direct reports of families and witnesses as well as monitoring media reports. In replying, and mentioning the six wrongly identified individuals, I asked if I could ‘know which of your few trusted sources gave you these names, and whether they told you that the methodology employed was direct reporting of families and witnesses or else monitoring media reports (and if so which reports) or something else.’

Your researcher said that she could not answer my first question, which I had anticipated, given that obviously you would want to preserve the confidentiality of such sources. However, my second question was intended to suggest that, precisely because you lay such weight upon such sources, you need to ensure their reliability. My question in this regard remained unanswered.

This in itself was not surprising, given that it would have been very odd for the death of the Lieutenant Colonel and those who died with him to have been brought to the attention of your few trusted sources in this strange fashion by a family member or an eyewitness. There remain according to your researcher media reports. The idea that grave allegations, used internationally to decry this country, should be based on media reports that are notoriously unreliable is astonishing. I believe someone of your stature should ensure that for the future any allegations based on media reports are carefully checked, before reports that so extravagantly magnify numbers are circulated internationally in the name of your organization

Further evidence of the irresponsible nature of the research dignified by the name of your organization arose when I was told that four of those who died in this attack will be restored to the list because they ‘were in fact wildlife guards and therefore presumably civilians’. My understanding of the purpose of this list however is that it serves to draw attention to cases that are, obviously or possibly, violations of human rights. Four government officials killed along with members of the armed forces in the course of performing security duties cannot by any stretch of the imagination be described as cases requiring the attention of the Human Rights Commission, unless of course the Law and Society Trust believes that all violent deaths or crimes imply a violation of Human Rights. Similarly, the inclusion of the names of those killed due to an explosion in a bus (or by bus exploding as your document had it) seems inappropriate given the general thrust of the document and the use you know will be made of it thereafter.

I cannot believe that an organization of which you are the Chairman, and which has had so distinguished a history, is quite so naive. The conclusion one is drawn to then is that LST too, or rather its junior staff, has got into the game of number crunching and name calling and finger pointing that so many so called human rights activists have recently engaged in, some perhaps through misplaced idealism, others through a political agenda that seeks to promote regime change on the lines of what happened in 2001.’

I have had no reply to this letter. I have not had a response to the second question raised above, nor to my subsequent letter to the researcher responsible. The failure of this organization to engage may simply be due to carelessness, but it is typical of a dispensation that cannot deal in hard evidence and logical argument.

This does not mean that there are no cases that should be investigated. But such carelessness and such a preposterous concept of what needs investigation is at best irresponsible in organizations that engage in critiques of the government of their county. Such an approach may however be understandable, given that at least one of the organizations involved is overtly political in its approach, being in effect run by a leading member of the opposition; but it is a pity that such approaches are always thought to be objective by the world at large.

This underlies another reason for my critique, namely the blatantly oppositional character of some of these organizations. Recently I had occasion to draw attention to the role of the Secretary to the Prime Minister of the 2002/2003 government, who has held responsible positions in several Non-Governmental Organizations which have received massive funding in connection with the Peace Process. It would be surprising if any donor seriously thought his approach would be apolitical, but the organizations he is connected with continue to attract substantial funding.

What is surprising meanwhile is that funding for very practical approaches to solving our problems is difficult to obtain. I think you would agree that ensuring adequate knowledge of Tamil on the part of security personnel would help considerably in reducing tensions, but progress on this is very slow. Training to develop human rights awareness in security personnel through simulations and role plays, that would increase awareness of the sensitivities of those with whom they interact, has been suggested but there is no take up. Finding funding for rehabilitation for former combatants – and in particular programmes that will promote pluralism and practical skills - is also difficult. But, at the behest of the shareholders of the companies I worry about, funds flood in for surveys, seminars, awareness programmes and so on.

I have written at some length because, on the basis of our Press Conference, you seem to think that the Minister, or I, or both, blanketly criticize advocacy groups. I do not, nor does he, as must be apparent from his putting members of these on an advisory committee in his Ministry, though as it happened they attended very rarely before resigning dramatically. For my part, as I took over this office, I invited members of Civil Society to meetings on Confidence Building Measures and, though many attended from less prominent groups, hardly any came from those I would consider companies. I continue to have the highest regard for those representatives of the National Peace Council, the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies and so on who have come to meetings and raised salient issues.

The others may well believe that talking to us is useless, since our ideas are far apart. But, in a context in which we, and the Sri Lankan government, continue to request the LTTE to return to negotiations, on the basis that, however dissimilar views may be, it is necessary to discuss things openly – in a context in which the world at large also urges negotiations – I am sorry that you privileged organizations will not talk, but expect the world to believe pronouncements that are at best misleading. Sadly, it is to such that the world succumbs, not to those who are always prepared to talk, but will not compromise on principles or give in to terrorism, or prevarication, for the sake of peace.

(Prof Rajiva Wijesinha, Secretary General, Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process in Government of Sri Lanka.)