Hillary's Nelsonian Eye

What is the message that the US and Hillary have sent to terrorists the world over?

By Prabath Sahabndu

(October 07, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) "The mother told me her baby's name was Esther. Clasping her breasts, she said she had no milk. She did not tell me what operation she was waiting for. Perhaps her rapist(s) had caused a fistula, penetrating the wall between her rectum and vagina with penises, guns, or machetes. Hundreds of other injuries are possible. We had seen pictures of women who had been shot in the vagina, who had had salt rubbed in their eyes until they were blind (and thus could not identify their assailants), who had been burned and had limbs amputated after being raped."

This is how Kathleen Kern, in a well researched article, The Human Cost of Cheap Cell Phones, in the book, A Game As Old As Empire – the Secret of World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption, edited by Steven Hiatt, describes the plight of tens of thousands of Congolese women gang raped by marauding militia sponsored by western powers seeking cheap minerals to keep their corporate giants going.

It was this heartrending description by Kern of the suffering of African women caught up in protracted conflicts with no end in sight that came to mind when US Secretary of State told the UN Security Council the other day that rape was being used as a war tactic in some countries. "We have seen rape used as a tactic of war before in Bosnia, Burma and Sri Lanka and elsewhere," she said calling for an end to sexual violence in armed conflicts. We have nothing but respect and admiration for the former US first lady for having taken up the cudgels for female victims of war. But, what on earth made her think Sri Lanka, too, was guilty of that crime? She may not have named the party or parties responsible for that crime in Sri Lanka but her remark obviously was aimed at giving a boost to the US-led campaign to press war crime charges against the Sri Lankan military.

True, the incidence of rape in this country is rather disturbing and tougher laws, proper implementation thereof, effective prosecution and deterrent punishment are called for to tackle the evil. There must be zero tolerance. But, it is certainly far-fetched to claim that rape was used as a weapon in Sri Lanka's war on terror.

As expected, the US State Department has had to own up to a factual inaccuracy in the Clintonian revelation at the UN. Melanne Verveer, the US Ambassador at large for global women's issues at the State Department, has said in response to Sri Lanka’s strong protests against Hillary's statement: "In the most recent phase of the conflict from 2006 to 2009, we have not received reports that rape and sexual abuse were used as tools of war ...."

The question is whether Verveer has any evidence of perpetration by the Sri Lankan military of the crime of using rape as a weapon in the previous phases of the conflict? If so, he ought to produce proof thereof without making innuendos. The Sri Lankan government must challenge him to do so, if he could, because his veiled allegation is also bound to have a damaging effect on this country's image at a time it is faced with a human rights witch hunt.

How come both Verveer and Clinton have turned a Nelsonian eye to the situation in the conflict ridden Africa, where rape as a weapon of war has become the order of the day? In Congo for example, women have been suffering at the hands of marauders mainly because world powers like the US helped fund Rwanda's intervention in that country. The US, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland and Japan did not give a tinker's damn about gross human rights violations, especially brutal violence against women and children, when they doubled their aid to Rwanda barely five years after its genocide which left over 800,000 people dead in three months in 1994. (The US tried to block an IMF standby facility for Sri Lanka because of her successful war on terrorism!) UN Peace Keeping forces were not allowed to intervene to prevent the genocide. Why didn't the US step in to save those innocent men, women and children being butchered? Where were the R2P guys who have made a business of other people's suffering? Montague and Berrigan point out in The Business of War, that the US provided $ 75 mn as military aid to Rwanda after Kagame took over. The Washington Post revealed that US troops had been sighted with Rwandan military in July 1998 on the eve of Rwanda's invasion of Congo.

People are butchered and women get raped in Congo because of the plunder of mineral resources including Coltan (used for making semiconductors), whose prices savage corporate vultures keep ridiculously low at the source with the help of local militia responsible for crimes against humanity so as to reduce the cost of electronic gadgets produced in the developed world.

Hillary Clinton deserves plaudits for her noble campaign to protect the rights of hapless women trapped in conflicts. But, strangely, she has chosen to ignore Africa, where her services are needed most and she, in our book, seems to need a bit of schooling as regards the countries she fire broadsides at whimsically. Way back in 1992, her husband Bill Clinton made an uncomplimentary remark about Sri Lanka during his first presidential election campaign and later he retracted it following protests from Colombo. Seventeen years later, the State Department has had to do likewise because of Hillary's faux pas.

Unfortunately, the US State Department depends on every Tom, Dick and Harry to ascertain information about Sri Lanka and perhaps about other countries in Asia and elsewhere. This has enabled the various INGOs, NGOs and frustrated Sri Lankans including political leaders out of power and disgruntled business tycoons to disgorge loads and loads of diabolical lies about this country down the willing throats of US diplomats as their contribution towards the on-going efforts by some western governments to effect a regime change in Sri Lanka.

When will the US State Department bigwigs recover from the diplomatic-foot-in-the-mouth disease? Hillary's condition seems to be serious!

So, in the end the US State Department had egg on its face because of Hillary Rodham Clinton's blunder. It is hoped that she will do her homework at least hereafter before displaying her oratorical skills at international fora without letting her prejudices get the better of her.

However, although Hillary got her facts wrong about Sri Lanka, where, she claimed, rape was used as a weapon of war, she deserves the fullest cooperation of one and all to protect women against rape as well as all other forms of sexual abuse, especially in conflict situations. Perhaps, no woman is better positioned than she to champion women's rights vigorously and effectively.

Similarly, Hillary should realise that rape is not the only crime perpetrated against women caught up in conflicts. The snatching away of children could be as painful and agonising to a mother as sexual abuse. Sri Lanka's terrorists, whose sympathizers US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Robert O. Blake has chosen to entertain in spite of a much advertised US ban on the LTTE, turned the Northern and Eastern provinces into a hellhole for women and children. They abducted children in their thousands and transformed them into cannon fodder and killing machines. By the time the so-called Eelam War IV broke out, most mothers in the North and the East had stopped sending their children to school because of the LTTE child recruiters on the prowl. Finally, the UN had to place the LTTE on its List of Shame because of child recruitment.

How would Hillary feel and react if a girl near and dear to her were to be abducted and turned into a suicide bomber? This was the harrowing experience of many Sri Lankan mothers at the hands of the LTTE. Is making a human bomb of a woman as a weapon of war less criminal or less inhuman than rape? Only a diehard LTTE backer will answer in the affirmative. But, how many women's liberation organisations and human rights outfits which are a dime a dozen in this country took up that issue and tried to bring pressure to bear on the LTTE to stop such barbaric crimes against women and children? None! Even Hillary did not make a whimper of protest against the use of brainwashed women as a weapon of war, did she?

When the LTTE leaders responsible for having recruited thousands of child combatants; turned hundreds of women cadres into suicide bombers; used civilians as cannon fodder; committed low intensity genocide against the communities it perceived as enemies and assassinated prominent political and human rights activists regardless of ethnicity and religion, were cornered in the Vanni, the US and several other countries including Britain and France did their damnedest to rescue them! Had those criminals been spared, there would have been no end to crimes against civilians, especially women and children; parents and children would still have had to live in eternal fear and dark justice would have been meted out by kangaroo courts to dissenters. And the North would have remained a hellhole devoid of any human rights.

We are often treated to Hillary’s tub-thumping at the UN and her strident calls for stringent action against those who violate the rights of women but when Sri Lanka defeated a terrorist outfit and delivered hundreds of thousands of men, women and children from suffering, the reward it got from the West for its service to humanity was persecution! Hillary has been at the forefront of a campaign to harass Sri Lanka by levelling wild allegations of war crimes against it.

What is the message that the US and Hillary have sent to terrorists the world over? It is that they do not have to worry so long as they steer clear of western interests. So, terrorists could manipulate visa sections of western embassies, send as many sympathizers as possible to the developed world, build block votes and sway governments there the way the LTTE is doing in Scandinavia, Britain, Canada, France etc.

As much as the terrorists and rogue armies that use rape as a weapon of war must be severely dealt with, the powerful countries and their leaders including Hillary Clinton must be condemned for abusing allegations of human rights as a weapon to persecute the developing nations that refuse to compromise their national sovereignty and battle terrorism in defiance of diktats of the West.

(The writer, Chief Editor, the ‘The Island’ daily news paper based in Colombo, where this piece appears. He can be reached at prabhath@unl.upali.lk. )

-Sri Lanka Guardian