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| United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse shake hands in Colombo, capital of Sri Lanka, May 23, 2009. Ban Ki-moon has asked Mahinda Rajapakse to allow greater international relief access to internal displaced person (IDP) camps in northern Sri Lanka.(Xinhua/AFP Photo) |
by Gamini Weerakoon
(May 15, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Sri Lankan nation has yet to rid itself of the collective anti Ban Ki-moon hysteria. Anger and frenzied emotions directed at the UN Secretary General for his stupidities on this issue are certainly justified but even collective national hysteria should have an objective.
What impact will all those acerbic editorials in the ever-faithful Rajapaksa press and letters written by learned critics such as Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha — his output we notice exceeds even three articles per newspaper per day — have on this subject of the Ban Ki-moon report. Do the Secretary General and his staff read them at all? This is best described in the trite Sinhala saying: Beeri Aliyanta Veena Gahanawa (Playing the violin to deaf elephants).
Patriotism with motives
All this could be taken as expressions of devout patriotism of the Rajapaksa variety — ‘those who are with us’ (government) and could go a long way in expanding the horizons of the contributors even though they may have no impact on blunting the alleged accusations of war crimes against our war heroes.
There are other forms of expressions of patriotism inspired by Ban Ki-moon. Mervyn Silva who cannot be kept out of focus has come back announcing the formation of a suicide squad to ‘protect President Mahinda Rajapaksa from the West.’ We wonder whether the all powerful Defence Secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, will consider his crack squads in the forces inadequate to protect his brother and President. Mervyn should also take his suicide squads along with him when he decides to pay calls on the Rupavahini Studios.
Another question for the Defence Secretary: Is any individual permitted to keep suicide squads?
Media piety
An exception is Minister Champika Ranawaka and his JHU cohorts who in these raucous days on Ban Ki-moon are keeping to the saintly spirit of Wesak. They had shaved their heads and were photographed walking barefooted serenely in a single file like monks in Buddhist murals. The only incongruous feature with this scene we thought was that since the objective of taking vows to observe certain sacred precepts is to forsake all worldly things, bumping into paparazzi accidentally or by design is not in keeping with the spirit of the season.
Moon’s folly
If the above are considered foibles of the Sri Lankans, the biggest blunder of all has been committed by the Secretary General and his advisors and the well informed sharp and acute minds in Western Chanceries and the American State Department. Did these political and diplomatic pundits ever consider that a Third World government would ever launch an impartial investigation by themselves or permit an investigation by foreign inquisitors into alleged war crimes of the nation’s heroes who had won a 30-year war? Pray which country which had been victorious in war had done that?
Maybe a single individual or two may have been brought to trial but a substantial section of the high command — as in the case here — who had been in command in the last stages of the terrorist war?
The American example
The most noted example is the Mai Lai massacre where an estimated 400 Vietnamese citizens — men women and children including babies — were brutally killed on March 16, 1968. The news of this massacre caused global outrage including in the United States. Twenty six soldiers including high ranking officers were initially charged for killing 22 villagers. Sub Lieutenant William Calley was charged and originally sentenced to life imprisonment. But he served only three and a half years and that too under house arrest! That’s American military accountability!
War crimes officially came to be recognised after the Hague Convention of 1907 but war crimes were firmly established after the 1945 Nuremberg trials. In World War I, one of the war crimes considered was the use of poison gas which is said to have been used by all belligerents but no investigations were held. In World War II there are no war crimes listed against the United Kingdom save for the Breach of the London Naval Treaty which ‘constricted sub-marine warfare.’ The UK had admitted to the violation of this treaty but there was no prosecution.
Americans were only accused of a serious war crime in World War II. That was on April 29, 1945 when the US Seventh Army killed German prisoners of war when they entered the Dachau Concentration Camp. The numbers reported killed vary from around 100 to 30-45.The US military considered courts martial against those involved but legendary General George Patton who had been appointed the Commander of Bavaria dismissed the charges.
Nuremberg and Tokyo
After the Second World War, the victorious allies set up two military tribunals — one at Nuremberg to try German war leaders and the other in Tokyo to try Japanese leaders. The victorious allies apparently considered themselves the angels in war and faced no war tribunals — not even the Soviet Union under Stalin who had murdered and imprisoned his own people by the millions. The Western allies would no doubt have liked to bring the Soviets to trial but the Soviet Union was far too great a power for the Western allies at that time.
Making poor countries kowtow
The history of World War II reveals the fact in war there are no war criminals among the victors — not even those responsible for Hiroshima and Nagasaki — but only among the losers. In the post Cold War era Western powers have assumed the role of being the gendarmes of human rights.
While powerful nations that cannot be tampered with such as Russia, China and even Iran are only embarrassed with accusations of violation of human rights, attempts are made for medium sized and small nations to kowtow to the Western powers on human rights. Now leaders of poor countries such as Liberia, Ruwanda, and medium sized countries Yugoslavia and Serbia are being trained before the International Criminal Court. The newly fangled doctrine of R2P (Right to Protect) is specifically directed at such nations to bring them under the influence and power of the ‘international community’ (Western powers).
No doubt there are gross violations of human rights in some of these poor countries but such defects cannot be corrected by leaders of these nations being abducted by commando squads or being hammered into submission through economic and trade sanctions.
Divided we stand
The international community is out of touch with reality when it calls for the country’s war heroes to be tried as war criminals before local or foreign tribunals. They may not be war heroes to this international community but they are to the great majority of the Sinhalese even though not to Tamils. President Rajapaksa posturing as the leader of the great victory over terrorism wants the people to rally round only him against foreign pressures. But the Sinhalese are polarised around him as well as the Opposition. That is why a significant proportion of Sinhalese still stand by General Sarath Fonseka.
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