R Chandrasoma

 The visiting United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism – Ben Emmerson – is mightily aggrieved that Sri Lanka has been slack and legally incompetent in dealing with supposed cases of abuse arising out of the military action against the murderous Tamil Terrorists of Northern Sri Lanka. The issue which we wish to raise is one concerning morals – not the law. Let us begin with a tellingly apposite and wholly relevant quotation from the Bible – ‘Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye. This misguided visitor (Emerson) typifies  the Arrogant White Know-All  lecturing to the Natives. There are two issues that baffle the Patriotic Natives of Sri Lanka – the first is the abasement and humbling at the State Level of a country wholly bereft of Territorial, Political or Social Ambitions that might incur the displeasure of the World Powers. Indeed it appears that our leaders take pride in the fact that we are small and insignificant – hence treating threats and insults in the way an inoffensive dog tolerates an occasional kick.

The issue, then, is this belly-upward attitude of the political leaders of our benighted country. Here we have a case (involving the infamous Ben Emerson) of a person who has the audacity to berate us publicly on non-compliance while the mighty Powers he (indirectly) represents have ravaged the world with an insouciance and recklessness that will find a place in the history-books of the future as a stunning example of a Malignant White Monopolism.   Can we ignore this istance– trifling though it be – of a   political cancer that almost destroyed a greater part of the civilized world. It is true that that we in Sri Lanka are marginal players and can only watch the unfolding pageant of World History with fatalistic bemusement.  It is said that even a worm turns on being trodden – have we not reached this point in our pathetic encounter with the world? The word ‘we’ is misleading as the public have no say in the matter. After the climactic events of the Second World, the Victors  (the US and its Western Allies) sought to contain a so-called Evil Empire – a fiction of their own making – that concealed a destructive agenda that made rivals their enemies and fools their stooges.

The Indians – under their philosophic ruler Jawaharlal Nehru – tried to break free from this imposed stupidity of those who were supposed to be World Leaders. Alas, things have turned a full circle and the political descendants of Nehru are now close buddies of the West and spend a sizeable part of the wealth of this very large but miserable country in developing (and installing) nuclear weapons directed against China and Pakistan. Many ‘Emersons’ of the Indian kind roam freely in Sri Lanka but our leaders have developed a fatal immunity to this ‘infection’ and there is little hope of genuine relief.