Editorial Courtesy The IslandƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ 02 June 2010

When western colonial powers descended on the Global South centuries ago brandishing as they did sabres and flintlocks, they were accompanied by phalanxes of ‘priests’, who justified their brutal conquests and the attendant savagery as well as ruthless exploitation of human and physical resources. But, today, neocolonialists are employing far more sophisticated methods to achieve the same results. They no longer resort to naked military aggression unless they are really desperate to secure cheap oil and mineral supplies or to remove an imminent threat to their interests. Instead, they craftily use suave envoys capable of practising gunboat diplomacy while wearing saccharine smiles, pro-western terrorist groups, economic hit men carrying cheque books and bludgeons, jackals wielding sniper guns and INGOs using various causes as excuses to launch frontal attacks on a developing country’s sovereignty.Sri Lanka is in an unenviable position. She has defeated the fierce Tigers and brought three decades of fighting to an end only to find herself ringed by a pack of INGO hyenas pursuing the goal of eviscerating her with tenacity and assiduity.

Minister of External Affairs Prof. G. L. Peiris has slammed some INGOs for their anti-Sri Lankan campaign. He has said those groups do not constitute the international community and hence are without any moral authority to tell Sri Lanka what to do. We could not agree with him more! Championing human rights is one thing but using them for political purposes is quite another.

Why didn’t the human rights INGOs press for stern action against the LTTE while it was committing heinous crimes against civilians? They only fired paper missiles at the bloodthirsty TigersƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…”ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…”that too from a safe distance! They should have pressured the western governments and the UN to crack down on the LTTE and its backers responsible for massacres, child recruitment, extortion, drug trafficking, human smuggling and a spate of political assassinations in this country. Had they done so, they could have helped Sri Lanka avoid war by taming the Tigers and making them amenable to a negotiated settlement.

The real danger of the self-appointed human rights crusaders’ war crimes campaign against Sri Lanka is that no other country in the developing world will dare battle terrorism with might and main hereafter for fear of war crimes tribunals, unless, of course, terrorists they fight happen to be a threat to the West. These human rights pundits seem to believe that Sri Lanka took on the LTTE and waged a bloody war which doubtlessly involved a human cost, for the fun of it! They have turned a blind eye to the fact that all governments that ‘bent over backwards’ to appease the LTTE and find a political solution failed in making peace because of the outfit’s intransigence and mindless terror and that even the US-led Tokyo Co-Chairs could not make the LTTE abide by a CFA they sponsored. An incumbent President, a Foreign Minister, a host of ministers and MPs, many Tamil political leaders and a countless number of ordinary citizens had died at the hands of LTTE death squads before Sri Lanka decided to declare an all out war on terror. How many more Heads of State, ministers, MPs, Tamil political leaders and civilians do the international human rights groups think Sri Lanka should have sacrificed on the altar of appeasement before resorting to military action to crush terrorism?

All it took for the US to unleash hell on Afghanistan and Iraq was only a single dayƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s terror at home. Thousands of civilians have died in the US-led attacks and as a result of sanctions etc in those two countries. But has any human rights group called for a war crimes tribunal to try US, or British or EU leaders responsible for the killing of civilians there? It was only the other day that a massive crackdown launched by the Jamaican security forces and police at the behest of the US, which demands the capture and extradition of drug baron Christopher Coke, on a slum area in Kingston left over one hundred civilians dead and many others injured. Washington is all out to punish Coke because he is a key supplier of drugs to the US. But, no human rights campaigners are baying for the blood of Jamaican or American government leaders or the security and police personnel who took part in the operation at issue in spite of civilian deaths. Why? Is it that pursing terrorists and drug barons is something that only the US and its allies are entitled to? Remember when the CBS television brought it to the notice of then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright way back in 1996 that half a million children had died in Iraq because of the US-led war and asked whether she considered the price was worth it, she had no qualms about saying, “We think the price is worth it.” Did any tub-thumping human rights group demand that Albright or her political bosses or military commanders be hauled up before a war crimes tribunal for those children’s deaths? It is still not too late for them to do so.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other bigwigs of the Obama administration are now in a position to advocate reconciliation here because the LTTE has been defeated and the war brought to an end. Else, bloodshed would have continued for decades to come and they would have remained passive onlookers. The perpetuation of war would have benefited only the Victim Industry, which thrives on human misery. It is a pity that the on-going war crimes witch hunt has put paid to Sri Lanka’s efforts at putting the conflict behind her and achieving reconciliation!