Asia: Basil Fernando got it all wrong — Oh dear faller, how is it possible?


Has Mr. Fernando raised any serious issues in his first article? It seems like he requires a primary level education to define the seriousness. So, then he can at least distinguish the difference between vulgarism and fundamental thoughts of principles.



by Our Special Correspondent

( June 5, 2018, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Mr. Basil Fernando of the Asian Human Rights Commission, an NGO in Hong Kong understands that the 17 questions we posed to him are meaningless. In his wisdom and compassion, he tried to teach the gentleman he targeted previously, about what are truly meaningful questions and how to articulate them. The fact that it has taken Mr. Fernando nearly one year to realise those questions are meaningless appeared to have escaped him. All of sudden, awake from his deep slumber he has started hollering in the darkness. One must be happy that Mr. Fernando is a little bit earlier than Rip Van Winkle. By the way, Mr. Fernando being a "well-read person" himself will understand this allusion to Joseph Conrad’s collected works in which he addressed his colleague as: “Oh! ...Oh, Oh! Oh, my God... My dear Ford... My dear faller...”

But, it seems, Mr. Fernando got them all wrong; that’s nothing surprising. He knows very well what went wrong. He knows quite well who the ‘congenital liar’ is. No wonder he has such a hard time shaving, he is afraid to even to see his face in the mirror in case he sees what a congenital liar looks like. (This is an allusion to the day when Mr. Fernando appeared in the office having shaved one side of his face but not the other).

He is so much interested about others’ personal lives and we conclude that this is because he has very little personal life of his own. This is what, we believe, he has done in the name of human rights. Boosting himself by using the plight of others and appearing as the guardian of humanity. What he has completely missed, or perhaps refuses to see is that his own depravity has brought him to his present situation as titular head of a dying human rights NGO. The balloon he has been riding for the past 20 years was exploded by a tiny needle – TRUTH! And this what Mr. Fernando refuses to see. Now, the world is smelling the wound on a putrid human body.

However, we have no illusion to believe that we can wake a person who is pretending to be asleep. Now he has been behaving like a clowder of civets after a feast of ati kehel or wild banana. There are people, as Albert Camus illuminated us, who ‘expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.’

According to what we can understand from the broken writings of Mr. Fernando is that he is ridiculing himself, though his prime intention is maybe to ridicule others. This is not the first time that he is trying to ridicule a person who questioned his misbehaviour and dictatorial practices under the disguised mask of human rights.

Our records including emails that this Mr. Fernando has shared confirm that he is trying to repeat the same arguments, he brought during the internal discussions within the AHRC – to the public domain thereby acting in breach of the basic principles of confidentiality within senior members in an organisation.

By keeping a Lilliput type Executive Director without giving him due respect or power, Mr. Fernando tried to manipulate the organisation to his own benefit. But in the end, all he has managed to do is become the author of his own self-destruction. Records show, on many occasions that at least a few staff members of this organisation tried to explain to him that he is not the competent authority to make a certain decision but he never understood it. His greed for power and the resulting insecurity slowly but surely assassinated the dignity and credibility of the organisation which could once have been honestly called Asia’s finest human rights NGO. Now he is pathetically trying to put the blame on others for these failings. Isn’t it shameless, Mr Fernando? You have proven the weakness of your own management which has no capacity to take on responsibilities, that’s why you are finding others to blame. This is not becoming of a real man of high character.

Has he raised any serious issues in his first article? It seems like he requires a primary level education to define the seriousness. So, then he can at least distinguish the difference between vulgarism and fundamental thoughts of principles.

Well, to our knowledge there is nothing serious there but just words coming out from his fetid mind in order to consolidate enough information to strike a personal attack, and he has extended it in his second statement. Oh dear, what has happened to this man and how is it possible at this late stage to save his soul?

He talked about a story on The Island, a daily newspaper in Sri Lanka. This is, in fact, a laughable cynical articulation of what exactly happened and unfortunately, he or the person who trilled him with a bit of gossip contained completely wrong information. First of all, Mr. Ilangamuwa never worked in The Island. But, the issue, Mr. Fernando is trying to reveal shows the phantom limb of his own thinking pattern. What a senior human rights defender, he who does not hesitate to reveal the source provided details, though they are inaccurate, to him for making him happy. This is a sort of risible approach will do nothing but further ridicule himself.

Mr. Fernando by now has proven he does not have the capacity and capability to develop any constructive discussion on political issues. Perhaps he may be confusing personal issues as political issues, and political issues as personal issues.

Mr. Fernando has bragged about the help he has given Mr. Ilangamuwa by detailing as his own, the facts of the person who actually delivered the outcomes. That shows the ethics and principles of his human rights journey. He seems to have forgotten many instances but we are glad he at least remembered the abstract version of the total story. Mr. Ilangamuwa, talked about the entire story as an exiled journalist, many years ago. The simple question is, should a person allow someone to defecate on his head? - a man who is able to sell out the plight of a victim by gloating about the “help” he has rendered?

However, we would like to reiterate the fact that we are not pushing ourselves to the lowest of the low levels where  Mr. Fernando is residing at present. Therefore, we will not take any personal issues into the discourse.

Mr. Fernando was a regular contributor of the Sri Lanka Guardian, and we accepted all sorts of challenges to publish his thoughts by thinking Mr. Fernando had substance for the course correction in disordered societies. Therefore, we had certain respect for him; but of course, it is no longer so.

We have evidence that he pledged the recommendation from the Sri Lanka Guardian for winning awards. He may have forgotten all but we have documentary evidence of how we have recommended him for awards and how he has compiled all that he has written for the Sri Lanka Guardian to win those awards. This experience shows that the stories he is taking as metaphors at the end of his scatological argument in the second statement are apt for him, not others.

Mr. Fernando is talking about Mr. Ilangamuwa being a cut and paste writer. This is indeed amusing, because, as his former personal assistant and the editorial assistant of the AHRC will reveal, this is exactly what Mr. Fernando has been doing for many years.

One would not be surprised if in next article, this Mr. Fernando, attempted to deconstruct the number of times that Mr. Ilangamuwa used the commode in the bathroom to defecate when there was a party at his residence; and started feeding himself with them as Boars are more interested in human waste than engaging in debate with substance.

Dear Mr. Fernando, dear faller, what happened to you? Your thoughts confirm that you are much uglier than Eichmann and your banality of evil is more dangerous and pathetic than what Hannah Arendt understood as a reporter for the New York Times, during the Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem.

Try to re-earn the respect and credibility which always come with an authenticity of what you are writing or presenting or delivering before humanity. You can’t grab your reader’s respect by reporting on nonsense. The impunity you once exercised within your cage will eventually fade away. This, we believe, is the real scenario you are in.

But, unlike you, we have no anger to express, but we feel pity for you!

Mr. Fernando, let’s have a walk on the roses without spikes, we will show you how to correct the course by eliminating delusional arrogant mentality which is giving you nothing but self-destruction.

In conclusion, as Mr. Fernando has referred to the 17 questions we raised we are repeating them here, both for his convenience and that of our readers.

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