‘Tis the season of silliness

By Malinda Seneviratne

(March 24, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) ‘Ceasefire’, ‘evacuate’, ‘save civilians’...these are the words on a street called ‘Concern’ in a town called ‘International Concern’ located in a country called ‘Ignorance’. What is it with Westerners that make them believe a) they know everything, b) the world awaits with bated breath for their pronouncements, and c) the rest of the world would be crippled if they were not around to issue definitive statement and directive?

I don’t know, but if the best that the West can offer is represented by what has recently been uttered by certain US senators, the nauseatingly colonial David Miliband of Great Britain, the pronouncements of that irrepressible meddler Liam Fox and a doddering ex-diplomat from Australia named Howard Debenham, then no one should be surprised that the centre of gravity in world affairs is shifting so quickly to Asia.

Let’s take them one by one. First the US senators. Robert P. Casey (Jr), Patrick Leahy, George V. Voinovich, Sherrod Brown, Joseph I. Lieberman, Barbara Mikulski and Richard Burr are reported to have written to Hillary Clinton, expressing concern about the situation in Sri Lanka. After the usual disclaimer about the LTTE’s track record, they quickly shift to giving parity of status to the Government, viz ‘Yet, the Sri Lankan government has acted no more responsibly’. They first mention and list the ‘horrific atrocities (perpetrated) by the LTTE’, concluding ‘this egregious disregard for human life underscores why the US designated the LTTE a terrorist organization’. The ‘balancing act’ of apportioning equal blame to the protagonists is poorly crafted though, full of unsubstantiated claims and vague wording.

All of a sudden the refusal on the part of the Government to grant humanitarian aid workers access to the conflict zone (never mind if their credentials are suspect and whether it is even practically possible, given the intransigence of the LTTE, or even advisable given that the LTTE has murdered even UN workers in cold blood) is a crime equivalent to conscripting child soldiers, holding civilians by force within the conflict zone and shooting those who attempt to flee.

As you are aware, the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka continues to deteriorate, a situation we have been following closely and with increasing alarm. The International Committee of the Red Cross recently warned of an “impending catastrophe” and estimates that 150,000 civilians remain trapped in the Wanni - the region of northeast Sri Lanka where war is being waged between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Then they refer to ‘reports’ of the Government sanctioning the shelling of civilians and hospitals and to ‘descriptions’ of conditions in IDP camps. No mention of source here, we note.

If the Government was half as bad as the LTTE, these ignorant ladies and gentlemen should understand that the war would have been over and done with two months ago.
They know nothing of Sri Lankan journalists. They obviously are unaware that most of the ‘information’ they receive are from so-called journalists who have been perpetrating fraud, some to the tune of several million rupees. True, the Rajapaksa regime appears to be turning a blind eye on violence against journalists, but to call it a ‘war’ is to extrapolate to Rubbish Land.

They also want Hillary to instruct the US Embassy in Colombo to explore the possibility of providing temporary refuge to Sri Lankan journalists who legitimately fear for their safety and well-being and to encourage other governments to take similar measures. They could also tell Hillary to tell Blake to stop acting as though he is a 21st Century version of the Colonial Viceroy, not least of all because he sounds stupid to the core and anyway, 21st Century US is not the equivalent of 19th Century Great Britain. The sun has set on both empires. Soreeeeee!

I think the Government should invite these senators to visit IDP camps just so that they are able to see first hand that even if they are not exactly great places to be, they are certainly not the hell they are made out to be. And the Government should ask these people to take a boat to Guantanamo Bay, or take a look at the pictures from Abu Ghraib. That should keep the Samaritan cells in their peanut brains buzzing for a while.

Hatched

Then we have Liam Fox, who once hatched an agreement between Chandrika Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickremesinghe (in hindsight an agreement between two people who had lost the support of the masses), now wants the Government to let the ‘international community’ help evacuate civilians held captive by the LTTE. Now the big names of the international community did very little for a long time in terms of stopping the LTTE in its tracks. In fact the international community did its best to try and convince the Government that the LTTE cannot be defeated and people like Fox spearheaded those efforts. Well buddy, guess what, you may want to help, but the fact of the matter is that your ‘help’ might actually screw things up further (that’s going purely by your track record). Thanks, but no.

And finally, we come to Howard Debenham, a two-bit diplomat who spent two years in Sri Lanka and believes this is enough for him to market himself as an expert on the country, its history, the conflict and its resolution. I can dismiss this joker with a single word: ‘Aborigines’. Remember them? Remember what your ancestors did and your contemporaries still do? But no, let me not be that dismissive. The man is looking for a visionary who agrees with his caricatured version of Sri Lankan history, the roots of conflict etc. What nerve! We’ve had enough of you people telling us who we are and what we should do. We are no longer interested in inhabiting your version of our reality. We are a pretty messed up country, I agree, but there comes a moment in every nation’s history when it has to look within for answers and tell all those ‘well-meaning’ foreign pundits, kindly, that their blueprints don’t necessarily fit the contours of our sense of being. This is such a moment. So Debenham, thanks for the ‘words of wisdom’. We are not buying though. Sorreee!

Ok, friends, now that we’ve bashed these bullies, let’s have the conversation we have avoided to have among us. Who the hell are we? Where the hell are we at? What the hell are we doing? Where the hell are we going? Those are the bullet-points for the overarching discourse on our nation. Let’s move.

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance journalist who edits the monthly magazine ‘Spectrum’. He can be contacted at malinsene@gmail.com.

-Sri Lanka Guardian