Alston sings on lying channel

By Lucien Rajakarunanayake

(September 19, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Among the types who are known to rush in where even angels fear to tread is Prof. Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur of the UN on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions. He made great haste to issue his original statement demanding action against Sri Lanka on the basis of the Channel 4 video of alleged “summary executions” of Tamil civilians by Sri Lankan “Security Forces”, concerning the contents of the video, almost before the Channel 4 presenter could say the material was unverifiable.

The truth about this video is now out. It has been made by the LTTE, or those who are left of it, originally done in Tamil, and later dubbed with Sinhala words and sounds, and doctored overall.

That it was a fake was well established, before it was known to be an LTTE job, with the original in Tamil. It has boomeranged on the LTTE propagandists who used the so-called Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka to get it to Channel 4; as if Channel 4 needed such devious channels for its contemptible, unverified lies about Sri Lanka.

To give those who rush in with such haste their due for bowing before incontrovertible fact, Prof. Alston has now eaten most of his harsh, ill-thought out and damaging comments about Sri Lanka. He states that the expert report on the Channel 4 video shared with him by the Sri Lanka Government, leads him to the conclusion that “the views expressed do indeed raise several issues which warrant further investigation before it could reasonably be concluded that the video is authentic”. The Government did reject the video as false at first sight, knowing the tactics of the LTTE and its fellow travellers and sympathizers, but it did better by issuing an official rejection after careful scientific study.

Yet, even when fallen and compelled to eat one’s words Prof. Alston is not defeated, or so he believes. He says the professional investigation carried out by the Government, which has led to his doubts, is not independent because, guess why....the experts concerned were Sri Lankans. It is possible he would have given much more credibility to experts from the LTTE’s dream state of Eelam, and the nightmare of the Tamils, if it was ever established. Or should they have come from the little Eelam in Toronto Canada, or some other such area dominant by those who still wave the Eelam Flag.

If we go by this logic, the world must not believe what the Gordon Brown’s inquiry into the role of the UK in the launch and conduct of the invasion and war in Iraq would find, because those carrying out the inquiry are citizens of the UK. Or one should always dismiss as being suspicious, whatever the US and NATO says about the allegedly accidental killing of civilians in Afghanistan, because the probes were conducted by Americans or citizens of other NATO countries. If one follows this ill logic any further, one should totally disbelieve India’s claim that Mumbai was attacked by terrorists last November, whether they came from Pakistan or not, merely because the charge of having come under attack is made by India.
Crooked job

In his moment of despair, at even having to admit that the Channel 4 report could possibly be a crooked job, talking of “several issues which warrant further investigation before it could reasonably be concluded that the video is authentic”, Prof. Alston has another matter of contention, too. He characterizes Dr. Chathura Ranjan de Silva’s analysis of the video, which proved it was not made on a mobile phone as claimed but on a camcorder or video camera, and other relevant facts, as partial.... because.... “He appears to have been consulted by the Government on previous occasions.” For the record Dr Chathura Ranjan de Silva, is the Senior Lecturer of the Computer Science and Engineering Department and the Director for the Centre of Instructional Technology for the Moratuwa University. I do not know the discipline of Prof. Alston’s professorial appointment, but I would hesitate to state that he should not be consulted on a matter relating to that discipline by the same person or body, because he has been so consulted by the same person or body earlier.

This will leave the entire body of forensic law in a strange situation, because an expert who has testified for the State in one case, will not be able to do so again, and will be suspected because he has been called by the State once before. The Government’s position on this absurd position of Prof. Alston is very clear. It holds the view that it is quite legitimate to consult acknowledged experts from autonomous academic institutions and this in no way makes the expert part of the Government nor does it render the view tainted by bias.

One wonders whether Prof. Alston would make such statements about any experts that are consulted by the US Department for Homeland Security, the FBI and CID, or MI5 in the UK, if they had been consulted on matters that required such expertise on previous occasions.

To take his line of thinking, which defies all logic, the Crown Prosecutor’s Office in the UK would not have got the convictions of those three British Muslims last week for plotting a terrorist attack on aircraft in midair, if the court took up the position that any of the experts consulted for that trial, had been consulted on matters regarding explosives or similar devices before that by the Metropolitan Police of London or any other Police authority in the UK.

In contrast to the UN Rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions, it was interesting to read the observations of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay, no particular friend of Sri Lanka from recent experience, welcome Sri Lanka’s communication of the Channel 4 video, for having carried out a prompt investigation into the matter. She also mentioned that, “being a lawyer herself, she had thought it fit not to make a pronouncement on this issue until the authenticity of the contents of the video in question was established.” At least she was moving away from the tribe that rushes into where angels fear to tread.

It is evident that this will not be the end of the Channel 4 issue, and one can be sure of seeing more of such damning new items about Sri Lanka being highlighted in sections of the media that think they are both the proprietors and defenders of democracy in the Third World. It was only this week that the Guardian UK ran the story of a British Tamil citizen, who was working with the LTTE, after having come to Sri Lanka on a tourist visa, overstayed her period of holiday, moved into LTTE territory, and admittedly worked as a nurse’s help in to the LTTE in the last days of the final attack on the LTTE.

She was arrested as an IDP, and held for visa violation, but was finally allowed to leave for her home in the UK. And from there she is now singing to the Guardian and anyone else who will listen to her, about how the mortars were raining on the hospitals in the battle scarred North; that she says had no blood or water. The Guardian did not think it proper to ask her what in the world she was doing in LTTE territory, and also helping a terrorist organization banned by the UK Government, too; so much, for credibility and ethics in journalism.

What all this tells us is that there is a powerful lobby of people and institutions ranged against Sri Lanka, from those who have the ear of the UN Secretary General such as a Special Rapporteur, and what is known as a respectable mainstream newspaper in the UK. We will be better armed in the battle for international opinion, when we know better the nature of the enemy we face.

-Sri Lanka Guardian