How JR’s legal eagle Shiva Pasupathy became Prabhakaran’s jinx

By Philip Fernando

(April 02, Los Angeles, Sri Lanka Guardian) Shiva Pasupathy former Sri Lankan Attorney General to President J R Jayewardene has the audacity to write to UN Human Rights High Commissioner Navanetham Pillay about the plight of civilians in the Northern mainland of Sri Lanka. He sheds crocodile tears about the civilians now being used as a human shield by Prabhakaran getting protective custody from the armed forces.

How Pasupathy morphed from being JR’s legal eagle to Prabhakaran’s veritable jinx provides excellent reading in the light his recent letter to Navanetham Pillai published in transCurrents.com.

Pasupathy as AG co-authored JR’s constitution of 1978 and also the infamous Prevention of Terrorism act (PTA) which put hundreds of Tamil civilians in dire straights. Later, he helped draft the sixth amendment to the constitution of Sri Lanka that prevented anyone from advocating separation including Tamil MPs who were debarred from parliament under that amendment.

So what is Pasupathy urging Navanetham Pillay to do now? In his words: ensure that all citizens are allowed to remain wherever they want to stay and that none should be compelled to move to detention camps against their will. What is civilians are running from LTTE harm's way--never mind all that. Enjoying a lucrative pension from the Sri Lankan government, Pasupathy now paints a different story about civilian safety. The civilians that suffered at the hands of Prabhakaran had gone unnoticed as Pasupathy practiced amnesia all these years.

Pasupathy did an about turn from being the loyal follower of JR to doing the bidding of the Tigers as legal adviser later during the paece talks. He failed the Tamils big when he helped draft he infamous ISGA or the Internal Self Governing Authority that never had a chance of seeing light of day, which even a brief less lawyer would have known. He led the LTTE up the garden. Such servile pandering to the LTTE bigwigs’ sealed any hope of solving the ethnic conflict.

Pasupathy's present thesis is that no one has the right to uproot people from wherever they lived. (of course, he ignored that even the US government had kept terror combatants behind bars at Gitmo for years). Pasupathy was blatantly ignoring that LTTE uprooted several thousand people from their homes forcefully and took them to Vanni and displaced them. He knew that Prabhakaran did that over and over again. He never uttered a word then.

Thousands of Muslims were chased away from Jaffna overnight depriving of their properties and valuable possessions. Pasupathy was not the champion of human rights then but a faithful lap dog of the LTTE Supremo.

The IDP camps that have sheltered the Tamils who were forced to escape from being sacrificed as human shied by Prabhakaran are now described as concentrations camps by Pasupathy. He should have called George Bush before he wrote his magnum opus to international agencies.

Was it blind loyalty caused by a total lack of judgment or intellectual dishonesty that drove the purveyors of self-serving advocacy norms to such treacherous behavior? The statement penned by Pasupathy who called himself chairperson of Australians for Human Rights of the Voiceless is a pathetic exercise in pandering. Voice of thousands of innocent civilians crying for help facing the atrocities of ruthless terrorist leaders fell on deaf years and Pasupathy never moved his little finger to save anyone from harm during the past decades. Has Pasupathy ever got a single civilian released from the inhumane LTTE bunkers in the Wanni suffering adequate food and health care?

Some activitists have joined the Tamil caused with sincere urges to get something achieved. Some were too naive to fight an impossible cause. Others just changed sides at the right moment. Shiva Pasupathy continued his hapless task even as Attorney General with massive access to power and them retired and turned tables on those who got him the plums of office. No sooner he quit Sri Lankan government service he was on the other side.

There is a silver lining to all this. He led the LTTE as bad as he led JR Jayewardene government to a frightful end. From the top most legal eagle of Sri Lanka Pasupathy became the veritable jinx for Prabhakaran. LTTE got banned by over 30 countries in the world as the most ruthless terrorist outfit in the world. Pasupathy stands even lower in rank than “most ruthless.” It is aptly called “most disgusting. “

-Sri Lanka Guardian