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About qualifications , Ms.Louise Arbour, and violation of human rights.By Charles S.Perera
The Western concept of Qualifications is defined as attributes that must be met to make a person suitable for something. These attributes are a university degree, other academic distinctions, and experience in an executive position. In that sense the Chief of the UN Commission for Human Rights, Ms.Louise Arbour who was also a Judicial luminary of her Country, may be qualified person. But dealing with human problems, there are other things besides resolution of the UNGA, the rule of law, and legal concepts, that are required to make a person qualified to make judgmental pronouncements on human suffering. In that sense Ms. Louise Arbour, as many others, is not only unqualified, but also ignorant.
In order to correctly assess human suffering, caused through violation of human rights, or other mundane realities such as poverty, ill health an so on, one should know what suffering is, the cause of that suffering, a way out of that suffering, and a state of non-suffering. In that sense Ms.Arbour is one among many other ignorant beings. That being a beyond mundane proposition, let us see whether Ms. Arbour's qualifications in a mundane level, separating her from her legal qualifications, and her exceptional experience as a Judge of the Canadian courts of Law, and her experience in International Commissions, is qualified to interfere into the affairs of the Sovereign State of Sri Lanka.
There are lots of people, such as Ban Ki Moon, Koiciro Matsura, Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, or lesser ones such as the Chiefs of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, etc., despite there distinguish positions, are not qualified to judge the present problem in Sri Lanka taking it, in its correct perspective. That is because to understand whether a person is suffering because his human rights have been violated, is a subjective point of view, what all outsiders pontificate are mere conjectures. For instances the Tamil people in the areas controlled by the Terrorists, cannot speak out freely, therefore we really do not know their suffering, grievances or their living conditions. Are they living happily among the terrorists ? It is only those people, or perhaps, the soldiers who meet them, and speak to them as they run away from their terrorist enclaves my know.
The poor people in our country could be understood, only by the people who share their problems, and live in conditions akin to theirs. An outsider will not be able to judge them, their real grievances or their sufferings. Even if they are questioned by a foreigner with an interpreter interposed , their answers would be to leading questions ,and will be furthest from what they really mean, therefore they cannot be taken as a free expression of their real feelings.
Ms.Louise Arbour only reads the reports and questions the people who she meets and she gets only their version of the situation. How can she judge the situation of the minority Tamils from what had been presented to her mostly by biased reporters, with their own prejudices added to it ? Even the politicians of the minority Tamils, clamouring for a political settlement of the ethnic problem have different version of the problem, according to the difference of the politics they uphold. The Tamil politicians are divided and therefore do not speak with one voice on the ethnic problem, hence their difficulty to arrive at a sustainable political solution.
In that situation how can Ms. Louise Arbour, profess to know the answer and accuse the government of violating the human rights of the minority Tamils ? Ms. Louise Arbour not being qualified to speak about the human rights of the Minority Tamils of Sri Lanka, being foreign to the thinking of the people and not learned in the history of Sri Lanka, and what part each community played to make what Sri Lanka is to-day, is not a qualified to interfere into the affairs of the Sovereign Government of Sri Lanka.
Not only is Ms. Louise Arbour not qualified to make judgemental pronouncement
of the ethnic problem, more so because she has come with a predetermined
opinions on the subject. One who is biased and prejudices is certainly
not a qualified person to accuse the Government of Sri Lanka on violations
of human rights, and therefore, she is not fit to advice the government
as to how it should settle the ethnic problem. It is our problem and
it is best that the foreigners mind their own business, and keep away
allowing us to take a suitable decision in consultation with our people.
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