An entry visa for Drug Kingpin Kudu Lal, and shamelessly shedding tears for the drug trafficker Sheikh by UK!

Written by Day

“Do not let my husband be ‘a number’! - Kiki’s wife’s request to us on his death

(January 01, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) It is not strange for a country, for that matter, a Kingdom to condemn the execution of Sheikh, who was arrested at Urumqi airport with four kilos of heroin in September 2007 and was executed by lethal injection at 10.30am local time on Tuesday, 29 December 2009, (2:30am GMT) at the Xishan Detention Centre in Urumqi, in the far west of China, when the very same country or Kingdom granted a UK entry visa to notorious Kudu Lal, another drug kingpin in Sri Lanka, who is a sidekick of Dr. Dushta Gemunu! It is because the UK is the proverbial prawn (‘Mr. Clean’ but carries feces in the head!), and shows the UK’s proverbial ostrich attitude in international affairs.

My attempt here is not to despise the dead. I beg your pardon if one feels that way. I want to bring to light the selfish international affairs by UK government in the case of Shaikh.

In the sad episode of Shaikh, his family members and UK Government ministers tell us that he suffered from severe bipolar disorder. And his family members insist that he was tricked into carrying the drugs by a criminal gang.

I am so sorry if his family members, UK Government ministers and officials or anyone else wish us to have sympathy on those two defenses. Most of us adults have traveled through airports and we all have heard this public service announcement played with regularity and emphasis “Do not accept parcels from strangers…” Or you have experienced lady or gentleman at Check-in counter questioning you like this “Have accepted to carry any parcel on behalf of someone else or a stranger?” That questioning at passenger airports is a must in these times of heightened security due to aviation terrorism alerts. So the argument of someone with vested interest used this mentally ill person as an unsuspecting drug mule does not hold water.

Unfortunately, though, they ‘told it to the Chinese’ even the Chinese were not going believe it at all. Gone are the days we asked people to ‘tell it to the Chinese’ when people try to pull wool over our eyes, in this modern age and time Chinese are not gullible, but knowledgeable and are a nuclear power, an economic giant, and a huge lending bank!

Here we are not talking of a packet of heroin weighing some milligrams, say introduced by a stranger or an enemy of him, as in Sri Lanka where a corrupt police officer has introduced a packet of cannabis (pot) to implicate someone to settle some scores. The quantity was FOUR KILOGRAMS of heroin!

Let’s talk about the second defense of his mental illness, as indicated by his family, as to ‘he suffered from severe bipolar disorder’. Why on earth his family members let their near and dear one, a mentally ill person, go to a strange country where only a very few in society speak English (I know it for a fact as my brother and sister-in- law have pursued higher studies there )! Only God know, some other calamity could have, quite easily, befallen him. Now his daughter, Leilla Horsnell, says “I am shocked and disappointed that the execution went ahead with no regards to my dad’s mental health problems, and I struggle to understand how this is justice.”

Shaikh’s cousins, Soohail and Nasir Shaikh, who flew to China on Sunday in a last-ditch attempt to seek a reprieve say “We find it ludicrous that any mentally ill person should be expected to provide this, especially when this was bipolar disorder, in which we understand the sufferer has a distorted view of the world, including his own condition. That this was regarded as sufficient grounds for refusal by the judicial authorities to order any mental health assessment is shocking to us”

I know you all are in mourning but, please pardon me for saying this anyway, accept some culpability or responsibility of your father’s/cousin’s death for allowing the 53 years old bi-polar patient to visit China alone. His death could have prevented, but only by you!

Now let us talk about exhortations, appeals and pleading by UK government. UK government ministers’ hearts or rather Ed Miliband’s is ‘bleeding profusely’ when ruthless terrorists (‘Honorable Pribaharan’ and his gang of murderers) and drug traffickers like Shaikh are about to die. These political rascals intervene shamelessly on behalf of another bunch of rascals who have been involved in death and destruction. Simply put, drug traffickers are heartless, valueless and remorseless death dealers. In an act of terrorism; victims die of bullets wounds, burns, shrapnel wounds or shock etc and buildings and property damaged and destroyed. In case of drug trafficking; mostly the innocent youth die of overdose, driving under the influence, in violent acts and their families and countless others’ lives are destroyed and changed forever!

The sad part is UK Government condones and facilitates travel of these rascals across international boundaries and goes to any length to save the skin of these rascals when they are in hot water and death is waving at their criminal citizens or the birds of a feather! Take the case of notorious drug lord ‘Kudu Lal’, the sidekick of an equally notorious minster, being granted a visa by British High Commission in Sri Lanka. And in November 2007, the infamous ‘Karuna’ episode, where ex-Liberation Tigers of Tamil (Dr)Ealam (LTTE) eastern leader nom de guerre Col K visited the UK, an accomplice in murder of more than six hundred surrendered innocent policemen! But UK government (the British High Commission in Colombo) shamelessly, baselessly, groundlessly and without explanation denied UK visa to then Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary Dr Palitha Kohona and former Deputy Tourism Minister and MP Arjuna Ranatunga. What about the irony of the Attorney General of Sri Lanka being summoned to the British High Commission in Colombo for an interview, before being granted a visa for a visit to the UK? And so many other innocent students, tourists, academics and businessmen have been denied UK entry visas or simply given a run around. Strangely, though, most of them are Sinhalese, they say!

That was how UK Government treated a diplomat, an internationally renowned cricketer who has played in almost all test cricket grounds in England, and an Attorney General of Sri Lanka. That is why the world would miss the ‘Big Daddy’. If this happened in his country he would immediately declared PNG on the UK diplomats rather the diplomats may have met with an unfortunate ‘road mishap”!

Let us look at the diplomatic row created by the execution of Sheikh. Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister said “he was appalled.” A Foreign Office minister, Ivan Lewis, said that the execution made him “sick to the stomach”, and that it was “reprehensible” and “entirely unacceptable” that Mr. Shaikh’s mental health was not assessed before he was put to death. David Miliband, a very infamous man in Sri Lanka, the British Foreign Secretary said “Our specific concerns were not taken into consideration.” and “These included mental health issues and inadequate professional interpretation during the trial.”

China has a zero tolerance policy towards drug smugglers, whether Chinese or foreign. In other words, in China, when it comes to drug trafficking or pushing drugs ‘sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander! It is also extremely sensitive towards any attempts to interfere in what it regards as its internal affairs. Every country must have death penalty for drug traffickers and kingpins, local or international, in the name of national security (to defeat narco-terrorism) and future generations (to have addicts-less society)!

Chinese did not kowtow to UK political pressure, and a spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, for China’s foreign ministry retorted “Nobody has the right to speak ill of China’s judicial sovereignty’’ and “We express strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition over the groundless British accusations and hope that the British side can view this matter rationally.”
UK has tendency to behave like the proverbial crab that cannot walk straight! Read the press reports about its interference in Iran in fomenting unrest on the Teheran streets against a democratically elected government! The relentless diplomatic pressure brought on GOSL in the final stages of the humanitarian operations against LTTE, with other EU buddies who see the speck in others’ eye but fail to see the moat in their eye!

Huang Feng, a professor of criminal law at Beijing Normal University asserted “It’s not a question of whether the Chinese government is lenient or not, it is about China’s legal system,” Under Chinese law, possession of 50g of heroin merits a death sentence.

If the Chinese ambassador Fu Ying was summoned to the Foreign Office amid a growing row between the UK and China over the execution of a British man, a drug trafficker, then what should have Brazil done for the cold-blood execution of Jean Charles de Menezes on 22 July 2005? He was a Brazilian national who was shot in the head seven times at close range by the London Metropolitan police ("the Met"), who misidentified him as a suicide bomber about to detonate a device on the London Underground at Stockwell tube station.

In Sheikh’s case the death sentence was passed by China's Supreme People's Court after more than two years of legal proceedings, but in the case of Jean Charles de Menezes there was no questioning, no due process or trial at all and he was mercilessly killed in cold blood by the Met. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s “unreserved apology to the family for the tragic death of Jean Charles de Menezes and reiterating that he was a totally innocent victim and in no way to blame for his untimely death” shows beyond any doubt that he was an innocent young man whose life was cut short by seven bullets pumped into his head after he was pinned down and was no longer posed a ‘threat’!
Another example, from Afghanistan, of killings in cold blood and when people are fast asleep. This happened on and around 12 March 2009. According to CNN-the Ministry of Defence said “The British government says its troops were responsible for an airstrike Tuesday that killed two women and two children in southern Afghanistan. At least 10 others were injured” and “We deeply regret that the incident happened and do everything we can to mitigate the risk to the civilian population but maintain the right to self-defense which obviously includes returning fire against insurgent firing positions". Where is the outrage? Where is justice? Have the British diplomats been summoned in these cases to lodge a strong protest? You tell me!

There are numerous examples, which can be cited, of UK’s shamelessness of their diplomacy, disgraceful interferences in other countries’ legal, military or political affairs. If one needs to find information or details she/he may Google or ask a history professor of a third world country!

Sadly, instead of keeping a stff upper lip, in the case of drug trafficker Sheikh, UK government buried the lips and head lock, stock and barrel in Urumqi, like the proverbial ostrich!