Will someone please get David Miliband a brain?

By Malinda Seneviratne

(April 05, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) One can learn from experience and one can learn from other people’s experience, they say. To learn from other people’s experience, one has to have a mind that is uncluttered, a modicum of intelligence and a bit of humility. Those who lack these attributes will remain ignorant until such time they burn their fingers. I am not angry at David Miliband, British foreign secretary. I feel sorry for him.

Miliband acknowledges that there is a lack of verifiable reporting from the conflict area. In the same breath he says “there are credible reports of civilians being killed and wounded everyday including in the ‘no fire zone’”. What he’s saying then is that it is possible to consider something that cannot be verified as being somehow ‘credible’. Incredible! The ‘credibility’ then is predicated on the believability of source. He cites none.

Now there are some ‘verifiable’ reporting and I am sure Miliband has seen these: the stories of IDPs who recently fled the ‘no fire zone’ dodging intimidation and even bullets from the LTTE. So Miliband knows that the LTTE is killing people in the no-fire zone. He doesn’t say this though.

Unhindered access

Miliband is upset that the government rejected a special envoy of Britain, one Des Browne. Come, come David, you already have a high commissioner here with whom the government is engaging. Are you saying your chappie over here is incompetent? Replace him then!

Miliband wants unhindered access to humanitarian agencies to IDPs, a privilege that Britain has not allowed others in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unhindered, did he say? In this day and age? Surely the man knows that no country would give blank cheques to anyone, least of all to agencies that have been caught doing the dirty, aiding and abetting forces openly fighting the state? Hasn’t this man, whose country has suffered terrorist attacks, ever heard of a thing called ‘mandatory screening’? Look David, once your aviation authorities allow unhindered access through its airports to all passengers in transit, then we’ll consider your ‘directive’ (some gumption, coming from a has-been nation!).

Forget all this. Let’s just consider this thing he calls ‘humanitarian ceasefire’. Why is he pushing for such a thing? To allow the civilians to leave the no-fire zone. David, David, David, you poor, poor, poor man with your peanut sized brain, we’ve gone over all that before. As Dayan Jayatilleka once put it, ‘been there, done that, got the T-shirt’. Won’t happen, dearie. Just think (if you can). If a fish was given the ‘option’ to have the water which is the only habitat it can survive in removed, would it seize it? No, it will not want it. If it could prevent it, it would, wouldn’t it?

David, if the government was not concerned about the civilians, this war would have been over some months ago. Can you get that into your silly little head? Since it is more concerned about civilians than your government has been about your own civilians and of course the civilians in countries your government has chosen to bomb into the Middle Ages and the countries your ancestors have pillaged for centuries, we are suffering massive losses on the frontlines. Feel sorry for them, baby? No, I know.

There’s not much that a country like yours can do, reeling still from empire-loss and your reduced circumstances vis-a-vis the rest of the world, earlier the USA and now China. You can stop playing electoral politics though and tell the LTTE’s proxies where to get off. On the other hand you would not dare show the kind of bullishness you show Sri Lanka to your potential voter would you? Admit it chum, you are chicken right? Your political philosophy can be captured in a single word, ‘disingenuous ‘, can it not?

To the no-fire zone

David castigates Sri Lanka, one newspaper said. I wonder if David knows the meaning of ‘castigate’. Poor David, let us be kind to him. I don’t have the resources to invite him over for a cup of tea (with or without a dash of milk) or some boiled vegetables (read, ‘bland food’), but I am sure the government can arrange for this little man to come here and partake these delightful delicacies sometime soon. We can take him all the way to the no-fire zone. He can stand there, bedecked in sunglasses and other touristy paraphernalia, arms open, and with a big, big, big, sign ‘Come to me, my trapped children, let me embrace you with the kind of love my ancestors didn’t have!’ He can wait until the cows come home or longer.

One condition though. He, along with whoever he succeeds in luring past Prabhakaran’s guns, will be thoroughly searched. Why? Well, thievery in some cases is a genetic trait.

Your ancestors have a sorry history, David; many were good at picking pockets. So bear with us. You have a ministry that looks after homeland security, right? We do too. It’s a prerogative of a sovereign state, you know.

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance journalist who edits the monthly magazine Spectrum. He can be contacted at malinsene@gmail.com.

-Sri Lanka Guardian