The KP episode

(August 28, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The arrest and abduction of Kumaran Pathmanathan ( KP ), who professed to have succeeded the late leader of the LTTE V. Pirapaharan, spanning the international landscape and transcending the borders of sovereignty is a definite sign of the decline in the standards of international law and more so of the upholders of it. We are not holding a brief for KP but all what we are saying is that if he is culpable of any international crime of a humanitarian nature, or any other, then due process should have been applied in bringing him to justice. To extend the home made criminal justice system of Sri Lanka to ridiculous international proportions and its farcical claims to the rule of law in its brand of democracy is not only to make a mockery of the international law but of the international justice system itself, which thanks to Ban ki Moon, is in a deplorable state threatening the future of the integrity of the UN itself.

The Mossad or the KGB style of the violations of international justice in this 21st century is an international disgrace and the upholders of international justice should take the entire blame for the impunity which the Sri Lankan State is able to enjoy on such a matter of a crime against humanity on the strength of its support from other rogue States of dubious human rights record. In the case of the arrests by the Israeli secret service they went for the Nazi war criminals and those who committed humanitarian crimes against the Jewish people which won moral support, and justifiably so, world wide. The irony in the instant case is that there is a reversal of the roles where the Sri Lankan State, the very perpetrator of the genocide of the Tamils based on vicious racism and humanitarian crimes against them has taken upon itself the task of being the prosecutor, judge and the jury.

The Sri Lankan State taking the law into its own hands to illegally abduct and deport a resident from a foreign soil who guidedly or misguidedly claimed to be the leader of the Tamil people, even before the Tamil people endorsed him as their leader, and to start preliminary investigations by interrogation through torture is a hall mark of Sri Lankan Terrorism entering its international phase, with impunity. This is not like King Dutu Gemunu, 2300 years ago abducting a Tamil enemy of his regime from a foreign clime, as claimed by a Buddhist monk and member of parliament, as being the culminating glory of Sinhala Buddhist civilisation.

The Sri Lankan state apparatus are adepts in the art of abduction and disappearance far exceeding the record in Chile under the brutal regime of Pinoche. This act of abduction comes as no surprise. As boasted by a State controlled newspaper, the Sri Lankan abduction machinery could be hired by nations to "crack down on their enemies". It is best that this machinery be made a government corporation under a new ministry to be outsourced, by other States, to be used like other ruthless private organisations like the Blackwater USA approved by George Bush and Cheney to kill those suspected of terrorism in Iraq, the Sandline used by the Banana Republics in the pacific, the War Dogs from Belgium and France used in the Congo region, the mercenaries hired by the Reagan administration to help the contras to fight the legitimate Sandinista government in Nicaragua, and now Pakistan with its human rights record wanting help from the Sri Lankan army to quell their brand of terrorism, which brand we do not know, all of them, however, using their patronage against national liberation movements for their right of self-determination.

If the Sri Lankan government is so desperate to catch a Tamil terrorist alive and show the world that the Tamils are all terrorists, they need not go far. They can find such a terrorist in their in their own closet, cleansed of his crimes, and deal with him in the way peculiar to the Sri Lankan justice system and their democracy.

One thing has become clear, and that is that even those Tamils the world over who were inclined to reluctantly abandon separation, having now witnessed the injustice of it all, are once again becoming resolute towards it, notwithstanding the form of leadership.

[ The writer, editor, eelam nation, online journal]

-Sri Lanka Guardian