Rice-fed rascality?

By Rajpal Abeynayake

(August 18, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) My friend and former colleague Kishali Pinto Jayawardene has invoked Martin Luther King Jr., and written last week about the “appalling silence of the good’’ (ooh, I can almost touch and feel that sanctimony...) in an article in the Sunday Times.

I couldn’t agree with her more on the current climate of impunity that is lapsing into a somewhat dangerous phase (...see editorial page 4) but, it’s also important to note that Kishali Pinto Jayawardene seriously lacks perspective, when she compares the here and now with the past.

Not just that, with all due respect to her work —- not better than any other contemporary rights activist’s or journalist’s in terms of focusing on human rights —- she can hardly afford to talk about the silence of the “good’’ when she accepted a citation (...or was it an award?) bestowed by Condoleezza Rice for being an international ‘Woman of Courage.’ (Pinto was the Sri Lankan recipient.)

The citation said the award was for, among other things, the work by Pinto Jayawaradene on ‘the rule of law.’

Citation from Condoleezza on “rule of law’’? There wouldn’t be any rational person on planet earth, who would dispute the fact that this is akin to accepting an award from the devil for quoting scriptures. But yet, the “good’’ person in Kishali Pinto Jayewardene accepted this award — or citation - - or whatever it may be, and never had the gumption to decline it flat, or to tell the United States and Condoleezza Rice, “unless you shore up that dismal abysmal human rights record of yours, thanks but no thanks for your award.’’

The “good’’ people

Well, that’s the kind of silence of the “good’’ people that knocks global perspective out of kilter, and allows countries such as the U.S. — and people such as Hillary Clinton, to shamelessly back terrorist organizations such as the LTTE in Sri Lanka, making it all the more difficult for governments such as ours to bring terrorist groups such as the LTTE to heel.

But, more on that later — for the moment, some perspective on the fact that Pinto says there were high profile cases such as the Embilitptiya case in point, and the Krishanthi Kumaraswamy case, in which verdicts were handed down against soldiers without their lawyers being called traitors.

As a result she says we didn’t have to “blush for shame.’’Just one small detail here —- were the upward of 30,000 civilian disappearances in the 1989, that pales the civilian disappearances of today in comparison, a blip in the radar, in that case? No shame, eh what?

Contrary to her assertions, yes, there were calls for ‘war crimes’ tribunals at that time, some by the same man who now occupies the office of President!
My point is that one court case, high profile or otherwise, doesn’t absolve that era or make it look any better than the present. At about the time the Krishanthi Kumaraswamy case was heard, this is what the Ameen Commission had to say about Sri Lanka’s human rights record, after 1989 and the JVP uprising, and well into Chandrika Kumaratunge’s term:

“The Report which was submitted on the 28th of October 2003, inquired into 281 complaints of disappearances between 1990 and 1998 in the Jaffna Region received by the HRC. It analyses the different reasons why such persons had been taken away, by whom and the whereabouts of such persons. The Report puts the blame squarely on the army in respect of the majority of the disappearances saying that there is clear evidence that they were responsible for the arrests of 245 of them and had found no evidence on where they are detained or that such persons are alive somewhere.’’

There were no prosecutions based on any of these ‘disappearances’ and so much for Pinto’s assertion that Sri Lanka did not have to “blush for shame’’, during that bucolic past. As for lawyers not being castigated and demonized during the Embilipitiya case hearings, one needs to be amnesic to forget that lawyers such as Kanchana Abeypala who filed habeas corpus applications (...during this same period that the Embilipitiya horror took place, though not in relation to the Embilipitiya case...) were hunted down and killed by state sponsored paramilitaries on the prowl those days (Prraa, Raa Green Tigers what have you...). So much then for the comparisons of this era with that one, in which Pinto casts this era in an abysmally low light in comparison to that. Well, at least no lawyers have been killed during the current administration for their law practise, certainly none that we know of!

Heavens no, my attempt is not to say that the website article that appeared in the defence ministry site that led to this brouhaha about lawyer traitors or traitor lawyers (whatever...) was justified. In this newspaper’s pages, the fiasco has already been dealt with and deplored.

But a tad more perspective is called for, don’t you think, when “demonising’’ the current era in comparison with the lily-white past? Why ever not, is it because the now lily-white Kumaratunge was in charge at that time, or because the now lily-white United National Party was in charge during the 89 uprising, that the remembered hoary past gets such easy passage?

Milder in contrast

It’s wholly indefensible, this defense of the past against the present when the excesses of the past mostly pale the present by comparison. The present seems relatively much milder in contrast to the murders of lawyers in 1989 or thereabouts, and the ‘disappearances’’ of tens of thousands on tyre pyres ... in none of which cases the culprits were apprehended.

All of this, we have to infer, does not even merit a mention by Pinto, because she sees the glittering case of the prosecution of the Embilipitiya fiends (ah, not the top men she says but the minions) and the Krishanthi Kumarswamy rape culprits, as admirable examples of state accountability.

Pardon me, but the excesses under the Rajapaksas do not have any special import attached to them —- and the Rajapaksas are no greater “demons’’ than those of that era, who Pinto neglects to “demonise’’, but in effect exonerates. We take it that the killings of lawyers — never investigated — who filed habeas corpus applications, and the disappearances of literally tens of thousands in the eighties and nineties means nothing to her, compared to the website article that appeared a few weeks back, on the Defence Ministry website?

To me the trend is telling —- the “liberal’’ Kumaratunge can get away with anything, and Ranil Wickremesinghe, darling of the Colombo elite dominated UNP can do no wrong. These leaders and their governments may have been guilty of a “few transgressions’’ in the past at best if you believe the Pintos — but when the Rajapaksas do it, they are ghouls no matter why they did it, who they were going after, and no matter that previous excesses (such as in 89) just cried out for the establishment of ‘war crimes’ tribunals by any yardstick, contrary to what Pinto explicitly states. Of course Pinto can say she never wrote about Ranil or Kumaratunge, but her omissions indicate adequately where she is coming from.

Now, let’s get to the little issue of Kishali Pinto Jayawardene’s award - - or citation. Just in the same sanctimonious humbug way that Condoleezza Rice bestowed an award on Kishali Pinto Jayawardene (which the “good’’ person in Pinto accepted without a murmur), Rice also once upon a time lectured to the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. She said in “Meet the Press’’ in 2002: “He (Chavez) needs to respect constitutional processes. We hope that he takes this opportunity (of the coup...) to right his own ship, which has been going, frankly, in the wrong direction for quite a long time.”

This characterization of Chavez was rich on two counts. Chavez did everything by the book, and even instituted a recall election for the presidency in his new constitution, a recall poll which he won! He was a democratically elected president doing a remarkably good job in Venezuela, which according to John Pilger, has reached 100 per cent literary from way below that, after Hugo Chavez launched radical educational reforms.

But Condoleezza Rice?

Her government was reappointing all the discredited Iran-contra figures and those responsible for egregious killings through U.S sponsored death squads in Latin America, such as Otto Reich to oversee U.S policy in Venezuela and surrounding countries, and the NED (....toned down version of the CIA) was rapidly infiltrating Venezuela in the way reminiscent of the Nicaragua (coup) experience. “Grants were escalating quickly, as US power brokers were growing increasingly wary of Chavez. As 2001 rolled into 2003, the money quadrupled. Most of it went to anti Chavez civil society organization including one called Sumte.’’ (Bart Jones, writing in THE HUGO CHAVEZ STORY.)

In other words, here was dainty old Condoleezza being the secretary of state of a government which was doing its utmost to topple a democratically elected leader in a coup, and using the most discredited brigands to do it - -now lecturing Chavez, who did everything democratically and by the book, about how to be democratic!

And of course the things that her government did in Iraq and all the human rights violations and the suppression of democracy that the U.S incursion of Iraq entailed, we do not even want to begin to tell. As Tariq Ali said "if anybody thinks there is democracy in Iraq (after the American invasion) it’s a sick joke.’’

So let’s have no qualms about it. The silence of the ‘good’ cuts both ways. If Pinto accepted an award from this Rice, and she works also for civil society organizations often here in Sri Lanka which are funded heavily by this same United States, (as in Venezuela the money from the U.S seems to keep quadrupling to Sri Lankan civil society organisations such as those Pinto works for often...) her advocacy may be so severely coloured that she would surely have forfeited her right to be counted among the 'good’ or at least among those who don’t have a hidden agenda in blowing things squarely out of perspective, as she has done in her comparison of the current era with the past.

US paid job

Make no mistake, the excesses of now such as are evident are not excused by this writer, but they have to be put in perspective, something severely lacking in the “Rice-award wining’’ writer Pinto’s treatment of recent events. But then, if you accept an award established and given by Condoleezza Rice, there is very little likelihood you are going to be a person even remotely of the objective sort, right? It’s more likely you are doing the job the United States government paid you for, by palavering you with awards, and by funding the civil society organisations such as CPA you most of the time work for?

We may even ask, tongue in cheek no doubt -- so when is the coup, Kishali?
(ARTICLE APPENDIX: Funders of the Centre for Policy Alternatives: Academy for Education Development (US based); ARD-USAID; Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA); Diakonia (Swedish); European Union (EU); Ford Foundation; Forum of Federations (Canadian); Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ); International Budget Project (US based); International Media Support (Danish); National Democratic Institute (USA); NORAD; OXFAM; Save the Children in Sri Lanka; Swiss Mission in Sri Lanka; The Asia Foundation; The Berghoff Foundation for Conflict Studies in Sri Lanka; The Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung fur die Freiheit; The International Social Survey Programme (Germany/USA); UNICEF; UNDP; UNHCR and USAID.)

Courtesy: Lakbima News

-Sri Lanka Guardian