Drawing Circles in the Sand
19 December 2005
The Robert Litvack Human Rights Award of McGill University
for 2005 was received by Dr Radhika Coomaraswamy on November 8th.
Her
acceptance speech conceals more questions than reveals intelligent
solutions. The speech unearths emotive philosophical constructs. On the one
hand, while hoodwinking painful political realities and appalling human
rights breaches in her own back yard (i.e. Sri Lanka), she is deliberately
dishing out biased unrealistic opinions. By paying lip-service to her
international clientele, she is gratefully giving a thumbs up to the power
brokers behind the award.
Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy (RC) is a splendidly subtle act to pay attention to
within the human rights industry on the international circuit! Dr RC has
philosophical leanings towards
Ghandianism. When delivering her Gandhi Memorial lecture in 2004, she
confessed:
"Of all the political celebrities in world history,
Mahatma Gandhi has had the most profound impact on my political ideas
and practice." True to her leanings, Dr. RC in her speech spoke of her
admiration of Martin Luther King Jr. during her school and
university years (Yale & Harvard) in the US and moaned of the 'Folly of
violence':
"It is my experience as an adult in Sri Lanka where
the folly of violence is so apparent and the consequence is so dire that
we don't want to contemplate its repercussions."
Hardly any one would disagree with that sentiment. The
paradigm-shifting Question in her narrative remains unsettled, especially in
regard to Sri Lanka. How do we square the circle?
Most world leaders in the West, on the other hand, would only give
lip-service to non-violence. When it comes to sorting out third world
conflicts these Western powers would not waste their time finding the route
to praxis of such philosophies/theologies. Recent revelations in Iraq and
the distant memories of Vietnam would speak volumes on double standards.
I am indebted to my brother for introducing me to the writing of
Oriana
Fallaci.
The Force of Reason
"What do you think of Western civilization?" a reporter once
asked the Mahatma. With his characteristic chuckle, Gandhi replied: "I think
it is a very good idea."
Dr RC, while receiving the award at Montreal, and speaking, in her specific
role as newly appointed (for the last 2 � years) Chairperson of the Sri
Lankan Human Rights Commission, promoted Sri Lanka to her international
audience as a "good idea."
About the
Sinhalese Buddhist majority, she explained: "Their idea of Sri Lanka is
as a Sinhalese Buddhist land where the majority will must prevail and where
the markers of Buddhist identity must be celebrated above all others."
When she toys with the 'idea of Sri Lanka' for the Tamils, her choice of
words is loaded with calculating politics, which, sadly, undermine her
credibility in terms of human rights. Excerpt:
"For Tamils in the North and the East, Sri Lanka is put forward as two
nations where the north and the east are a separate ethnic and cultural
space requiring either independence or power sharing with the Sinhalese
Buddhist South."
The following statement is designed to be an ear massage to
her audience:
"For others [the idea of] Sri Lanka is seen as a
multi
ethnic, multi religious country where pluralism is required and where
institutions reflect that pluralism through power sharing and equality of
protection."
According to Dr RC, when her ideas of "ownership" collide, and strive for
their respective vision, 'that ensues in a desperate struggle. "Each side
wants to conquer and eliminate the other and so the violence continues," she
states.
Imagine if you would, all these separate ideas presented by Dr RC and try
and synthesize it in to one bigger and a wider circle. In Dr RC's 'Alice in
Wonderland,' these imaginative circles [or more precisely stereotypical
squares] produce a virulent struggle over the larger and harmonious 'pie-in-
the sky' idea of Sri Lanka. As a corollary to that struggle, Dr RC admits to
the inescapable fact: "Sri Lanka has developed an
appalling human
rights record."
Yet again, one hears the biased bile of Dr RC. Excerpt:
"At the moment the worst forms of violence come from the
eastern province, political killings where the perpetrators are the LTTE
and their break away group
the so-called Karuna faction and the recruitment of child soldiers
by the LTTE.."
Is Dr RC so sophisticated as to forget that the Buddhist
State is currently engaged in a
all-but-in-name war with mercenary paramilitaries as accomplices? Dr RC
might be helped by dusting her Fallaci collection. You would think truth was
a fool!
Blaming the Tamils and the LTTE? 'None should teach their grandmother to
suck eggs.' Dr RC is dreaming of a "Democratic space" in Sri Lanka. Jolly
good! If
democracy
had functioned as it should post-independence, then Sri Lanka would not be
caught in such a blood-letting quagmire. DR RC's audience is been taken on a
high brow digression from:
a) The genocidal
horrors perpetrated by the Buddhist State against the Tamils for over
half a century;
b) The Tamils'
reluctant last resort embracing of an idea of Eelam - as an autonomous
spiritual and cultural and political and hospitable space for themselves;
c) The Gandhian Tamils were
forced to defend their rights by hesitatingly entering in to a violent
liberation struggle;
All the above were consequences of to a bellicose state turning against its
own defenseless principle minority. Who will raise their voice against such
systematic racist oppression and the systemic suppression of the fundamental
human rights of the Tamil-speaking people of the NorthEast? Dr RC proves to
be just a noise.
All the symptoms of a convenient disease which notoriously infects
irreducible intellectuals who maintain allegiance with State terror is
detected in Dr RC. That incurable disease is called selective amnesia. Bless
her heart!
Dr RC's friends in the corridors of power in Colombo, the US and in the
Indian-Brahmin intelligentsia have had the rumor mills humming with devious
propaganda against the Tamils. Their aim is to turn world opinion against
the Tamil military system and ultimately against Mr. Prabaharan. I have no
doubt Dr RC would have listened to
Pinter's 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech only a few
weeks ago. I wonder what her take is on the following words of Harold
Pinter:
"How
many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described
as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than
enough, I would have thought. Therefore, it is just that Bush and Blair
be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But
Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal
Court of Justice. Therefore, if any American soldier or for that matter
politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send
in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore
available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if
they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London."
I wish to recommend that Dr. RC refresh her memory of recent
history by reading a detailed analysis by a Scientist based in Japan which
knocks out these state-manufactured myths and half-baked ideas propagated by
herself and her clan. (Sachi
Sri Kantha, Pirabhakaran Phenomenon, Lively COMET Imprint, Japan, ISBN
1-57087-671-1).
"Peace must come soon to Sri Lanka," Dr RC grieves, "Not only with a federal
model; it must also come with a commitment by national and international
actors to transform the politics of the north and the east into a haven for
democracy."
Tamils have strived to live harmoniously within a united Ceylon. It is
after
a series of pogroms and
well documented human rights abuses that the Tamils chose the path of
autonomy. What Dr RC has to convince the 'actors.' as she rightly puts it,
both domestic and foreign, is that to approach this struggle with a
commitment to dismantle the police state which is underpinned by the 'Mahavamsa
mind-set.' This one-track view does not lend itself to the glorious
vision of plurality and equality that is mouthed by Dr RC.
Power knows the truth. The proposal of Dr RC to speak truth to power is a
deviant occupation which lacks intellectual integrity, moral persuasion or
ethical force: because, quite frankly, she belongs to that power bloc. Or
shall we say that she has a blind spot and a soft spot towards the State
terror networks? In such a mind frame, she is seeing the liberation struggle
in terms of 'one side trying to "conquer" the other.' Wake up! Smell the
coffee. Tamils are
struggling for their freedom and they are fighting to recover
their lost sovereignty to the Sinhalese via the back door of Western
colonization.
In essence, Dr RC is part of the problem as opposed to being a solution.
That is no good credential for Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of
Sri Lanka. The seductive colonial mind-set has no relevance to grassroots'
reality, which is where the abuses and denials of human rights predominantly
occur. Dr RC's barren moral authority has clay feet. Einstein's
observation neatly deconstructs the "residual idea" called Radhika
Coomaraswamy:
"It is difficult to say what truth is, but sometimes so easy to recognize a
falsehood."
