Guerilla attacks on Sri Lanka
Secretary General The Secretariat
for Coordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP)
01st October 2007
The Peace Secretariat views with some surprise a notice appeared on
Tamilnet on Sunday 30th September, purporting to be an account of a
meeting held in Geneva on September 22nd. The speakers are reported
to have included Ms. Sunila Abeysekera, Executive Director, INFORM,
Ms.Karen Parker, Mr. David Rampton, School of Oriental and African Studies
(SOAS), Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Executive Director, Centre for
Policy Alternatives (CPA), Rev. Fr. Alphonsus Bernard, Director, CEPAHRC,
Jaffna, Fr.Jeyakumar (HUDEC, CARITAS Jaffna) and Mr. Kasinather Sivapalan,
Deputy President, Northeast Secretariat on Human Rights (NESOHR) and
local nominee to SLMM Trincomalee.
The status of this last individual is unclear, because the SLMM is
supposed to work together with the Sri Lankan and the LTTE Peace Secretariats,
along with monitors appointed by each of these. The Sri Lanka Peace
Secretariat has suggested that the local monitoring committees all be
reactivated, since most of these have been in abeyance for months now,
but was told with regard to Trincomalee that the local monitors appointed
by the LTTE were not functional. If Mr. Sivapalan is one of these local
monitors it is a relief to find that he is in Geneva, where it seems
he has for several months now been a regular participant in fringe meetings
of the Human Rights Council.
There is however a Dr. K. Sivapalan, who is according to the SLMM attached
to the Jaffna University Faculty of Medicine and the LTTE representative
to the Jaffna District local monitoring committee. When we last asked,
in an attempt to get the honest input of the LTTE monitors, the SLMM
told us that he had migrated and was no longer available. There may
of course be two K. Sivapalans, but if this is the same character, it
is perhaps characteristic of the LTTE that he now masquerades according
to Tamilnet as the local nominee to SLMM Trincomalee, doubtless to lend
credence to the falsehoods about the situation in the Eastern Province
that the meeting propagated.
Of his fellow prevaricators, Nimalka Fernando delivered a splendid
performance on September 24th when NGOs were allowed to speak on countries
requiring special attention. In a diatribe against Sri Lanka, she complained
in particular that much money had been spent in material to counter
the allegations of the various NGOs.
Whether Mr. Sivapalan's regular trips to Geneva to inveigh in the guise
of being a denizen of Trincomalee against the government are financed
by the LTTE is a question she probably does not care to ask. Nor will
she explain who foots her bill to spend so much time in Geneva, along
with her peers, some of whom had engaged in a grand tour of several
European capitals before they reached Geneva.
In anticipation of Dr. Saravanamuttu's arrival in Geneva the day before,
the Sri Lankan Mission suggested a debate on the situation, but this
was not taken up by any of the NGOs who were so vociferous in their
attacks when they could avoid any opposition. Only Amnesty International
attended to discuss particular issues, whilst representatives of UNHCR
and the Canadian and Swedish Missions were present to learn about the
situation. Given the solid responses previously made by the Second Secretary
to the Sri Lankan Mission and the Director / Legal of the Peace Secretariat,
in the seven minutes they were allotted when half a dozen NGOs spat
fire at Sri Lanka, it is understandable that no debate was allowed on
Saturday 22nd September, and that most of the complainants avoided the
Human Rights Council the following week.
Karen Parker meanwhile had shot her bolt on the 21st, in complaining
in response to Radhika Coomaraswamy that Special Envoy Allan Rock had
been wrong in condemning the use of child soldiers aged over 15. Sunila
Abeysekera meanwhile was cross because the Sri Lankan Mission had suggested
that she was not qualified to sit on a panel about gender issues, and
suggested that the UN instead use the services of qualified legal experts
such as Savithri Gunasekera or Deepika Udagama.
The most quotable quote therefore, as used by Tamilnet, came from Mr.
David Rampton, who was recently a doctoral student at SOAS, working
on the JVP, though he saw fit to focus 'on the spectre of colonization
in the east'. In wonderfully obfuscatory and not entirely grammatical
prose he declared that "whilst the current landscape in the East
is one of humanitarian crisis and endemic human rights abuses, the current
focus on human rights issues, which whilst performing the essential
task of exposing the authoritarianism and violence of the current regime,
is insufficient to capture the cold calculations and reasoning in the
intentions of the Sri Lankan State which has once again returned the
logic of Sinhala colonisation."
Not entirely surprisingly, the record of this meeting, supposedly held
somewhere in Geneva on September 22nd, only appeared on Tamilnet on
the 30th, when the Sri Lankan delegation had left Geneva. Doubtless
the LTTE has learnt that continuing sniping is dangerous, since the
Sri Lankan forces have now learnt to deal with it. So too their auxiliary
forces have learnt that discretion is the better part of valour, and
have decided to put as much distance in space and time between themselves
and potential respondents before launching their flaming thunderbolts
or damp squibs.
Rajiva Wijesinha
Secretary General
Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process
|
