GL rides the waves

by K. Godage

(June 07, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) I have had a most interesting letter from a friend in the US which raises a few questions regarding the walk out by Minister Peiris from the briefing at the National Press Club; apparently the briefing had been, according to my correspondent, arranged or rather organized by the PR firm Patten Boggs retained at great cost by the Embassy though the Embassy has in its services amedia relations officer, a US national, who would also be drawing a high salary, whose responsibility it should have been to arrange the briefing and most important of all to ensure that the occasion of the briefing would not be used to embarrass the visiting minister.

My information is that the Diaspora was intending to humiliate the minister; perhaps even to throw shoes at him as has now become quite a practice or greet him as Editor Sahabandu says in the manner of hyenas. It is a well known fact that the Tamil Diaspora is on the warpath and would stoop at nothing to humiliate the government; as for the Press, their staple diet is sensation and they would have feasted on the humiliation of our minister and the government of President Rajapaksa. The hostile media would have had a field day; they would without doubt put every known spin, misled their reading public and succeeded in ruining the image of our country.

Award winning reporter Nick Davies in his famous book ‘Flat Earth News’ which exposes falsehoods, distortions and propaganda in the global media states "The need for truth is greater, not less, in this new century for the likelihood of untruth has become so much more prevalent. Fabrication is another common practice as is omission" – the hostile media omits to mention the tremendous achievement of defeating the LTTE the terrorist group which the CIA itself categorized as the most dangerous and deadliest terrorist outfit in the world. They omit to mention that 300,000 men, women and children who escaped from being the LTTE’s human shield and came across to government controlled territory on their own, repeat on their own; and that 70% of these have already gone back to their homes.

When they write of the unsubstantiated story of ‘white flag’ bearers being shot, they fail to mention that the LTTE’s suicide cadres have approached their target pretending to be pregnant women. One such instance was when they sought to assassinate Gen. Sarath Fonseka, another well known case was the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi when she came with flowers pretending to want to garland him. There have been numerous other instances in our country when suicide cadres came in various disguises to assassinate their victims.

Let us not forget Babu the suicide bomber who assassinated President Premadasa - he was deliberately ‘parked’ in a kiosk near the President’s home and he cultivated a friendship with the members of the President household and was even known to the President himself; he bided his time and when orders came it was easy for him to ``do the job.’’ So who was to tell that (even if the story is true) that the two men who approached the troops in the thick of the battle were not suicide cadres?

The press and the western funded Human Rights NGOs and the hostile media funded often by the Tamil Diaspora have targeted Sri Lanka as they do not seem to be able to get over the fact that the LTTE was vanquished and with it their hope of creating a separate state. Nick Davies in his own words exposes members of his own profession - "media stories are often produced by corrupt and cynical journalistic puppets who just couldn’t care less whether they tell the truth and simply dance to the tune of whoever is pulling their string".

It was therefore wise on the part of the minister to have averted a confrontation whatever the bloggers may say. They have in recent days gone to town to ridicule the minister for having left the meeting after having gone to the Press Club, but there is little doubt in the minds of all right thinking Sri Lankans that he did the right thing and cheated the media of their spin filled stories intended to denigrate our country.

The high point of Minister Peiris’s visit was his meeting with the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; for reasons best known to them this was the first time that a Minister of External Affairs of the Rajapaksa government was able to meet a US Secretary of State. The meeting had gone off very well and our minister had even been given the privilege of addressing the media along with the Secretary of State herself which is indeed a rare privilege and not one afforded to every visiting foreign minister. Secretary Clinton had been extremely positive and the government should be happy at this change of attitude in US policy towards our country, which change commenced with the Kerry-Lugar report of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate and our strong ties with the emerging superpower China.

Secretary Clinton responding to Minister Peiris offered strong support for the government’s effort at rebuilding our country after 25 years of war. She also praised the government’s decision to establish a Reconciliation Commission stating that the US supported political and ethnic reconciliation in Sri Lanka. Peiris had explained to the Secretary the progress made with regard to the resettlement of IDPs, he had told her that only 45,000 of the 297,000 IDPs remain to be resettled and explained to her that was not just a question of resettling people but the government is seeking to ensure the restoration of their livelihoods to enable them to live their lives with dignity without bitterness or rancor".

The Secretary had assured the Minister that the US would continue to provide humanitarian assistance; she had also said "we are moving far beyond that to repair schools and repair infrastructure with a view to creating jobs. Both the Minister and the Secretary of State had referred to the warm friendship between our two countries and the Secretary had assured the Minister that the US stands ready to support Sri Lanka in a spirit of partnership. This is indeed a tremendous improvement on the state of our relations and it is now up to us to nurture this friendship and ensure that the US administration does not come under pressure from Human Rights groups and the Tamil Diaspora and from their friends in Congress by reaching out to the minorities and the Tamils in particular and addressing their grievances.

Minister Peiris had during his hectic four day visit had met with the Under Secretary of Defence Michele Flournoy, who is also the senior advisor to the Secretary of Defence Bill Gates and Congressman Gary Ackerman, Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia in the House. The Minister also addressed academics at the respected Heritage Foundation and had been interviewed by Riz Khan of Al Jazeera and also give a wide ranging interview to Laura Rozen of the Magazine Politico.

The minister has quite rightly slammed the Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group for their continued picking on Sri Lanka, a small weak country; they would dare not take on Israel unless they indulge in something absolutely stupid like the attack on the food convoy nor would they ever think of embarrassing countries such as the US.

It was been the long time policy of these organizations, instead of engaging with the government and assisting the government to right its wrongs, to embarrass the government. They in their arrogance don’t understand that such an approach is counter-productive. Take the most recent report of the International Crisis Group, they chose, in bad taste, to deliberately time their report, on a day significant to us (based not on fact but mostly on fiction, their Senior Vice President had stated that "tens of thousands of civilians were killed or harmed." The minister has quite rightly asked the question "What is tens of thousands—10,000, 20,000, 90,000, they are all tens of thousands") – no wonder they were referred to as scum who have prostituted themselves to make a living, well funded by certain countries to achieve their political ends.

This particular report is said to have been written by a Canadian Professor. I doubt his ever having visited Sri Lanka; he would no doubt have been well ‘looked after’ by the Canadian Diaspora. As stated earlier, The have made wild statements without substantiating their allegations, they issued their report to embarrass us in the eyes of the world, on an important day for the people of this country – when we marked the defeat of the terrorist LTTE which had for almost thirty years wreaked havoc on our country and killed thousands of our people including our leaders and Rajiv Gandhi.

These INGOs have senior western politicians as patrons; the politician being a politician likes to be associated with such NGOs and the NGOs use them for their purposes; a recent instance was when they had Chris Patten issue a stupid statement that the UN or the international community should have intervened and stopped the war against the LTTE. I wonder whether he expected the government and the people of this country to sit idly by and accept the invasion by foreign troops; was he wanting the terrorist LTTE to survive to wreak havoc on our country? it was wholly unbecoming of this man to make the statement he did.

The minister has quite rightly pointed out that these INGOs do not represent the international community, as they claim in their arrogance and that we will not be dictated to by them. What the International Crisis Group should have done is to have engaged the government and discussed the report instead of seeking to embarrass the government and the people of our country by their stupid action which exposed them for what they are.

(The writer who served in the career foreign service retired as Additional Foreign Secretary)