Prof. Peiris takes on INGOs pushing partisan politics
After giving a free hand for the INGOs to play the role of subversive
interlopers in the domestic affairs for decades the Sri Lankan
government has at last decided to confront the foreign-funded agents in
INGOs head-on.
In Washington External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris, last week took
them on and challenged their moral/political authority to dictate terms
to Sri Lanka.
Quite bluntly, he told them that Sri Lanka will give due
consideration to Security Council and the Human Rights Commission in
Geneva but not to a couple of INGOs. In an interview with Al-Jazeera in
Colombo President Mahinda Rajapaksa too fired a salvo, questioning
bluntly, the partisan role played by INGOs and the media. Both were
targeting the orchestrated campaigns of foreign agencies - particularly
the INGOs and the media — to erode the sovereignty and territorial
integrity of the nation.
This is a front that should have been opened up a long time ago.
Confronting INGOs demanding instant solutions to the complex and
inescapable consequence of the 33-year-old Vadukoddai War was an
imperative that needed the backing at the highest level and it has come
from the President and the External Affairs Minister. The unelected
INGOs dictating unworkable, unrealistic and counter-productive recipes
have not been helpful either to the victims of Vadukoddai violence or
the governments grappling with complex factors and limited resources.
Besides, these INGOs representing themselves and not the people are
not tasked with the grave responsibilities of protecting the people.
That is the task of the elected governments and when the INGOs pose as
the moral alternative to elected governments they are intruding into the
legal, moral and political space of democratically elected governments
to protect the people and democratic institutions battling fascist
terrorism.
What is most unacceptable is the tactic of the INGOs to mount
politically motivated international pressure aimed not so much at
protecting human rights, or easing of human suffering but to force the
democratically elected governments of the day, just not in Sri Lanka but
in practically all developing countries, to fall in line with their
hidden agendas.
Exposing the arm-twisting tactics of these unelected institutions,
representing no one but themselves, is an urgent political necessity not
only to expose the hidden agendas of INGOs but also to protect nations
from unacceptable intrusions of foreign-funded agencies acting as
proxies for vested interests of the West.
The mushrooming of INGOs in less developed parts of the world is a
cancer that must be removed surgically for they neither have the ability
to diagnose nor prescribe the cures for the plagues exported mainly by
the West to the non-Western world.
The people of Sri Lanka have been the victims of these INGOs which
had stoked the fires of destabilisation and human rights violations with
their bogus theories, analyses and solutions. The International Crisis
Group (ICG) report is the latest. (More of this later).
Irony
President Rajapaksa and Minister Peiris have quite justifiably taken
on the INGOs because these interlopers are blatantly using human rights
as a devious - if not, a neo-colonial — instrument to dictate terms only
to less powerful democracies devastated by the political violence
exported from Western bases of terrorism.
Invariably the agencies that funded and supplied the military
hardware to perpetrate and perpetuate violations of human rights in Sri
Lanka had their political and financial bases in the West.
The I/NGO moralists of the West had no compunction in justifying the
existence and the activities of those who launch, sustain and finance
violent movements hiding in bases in their countries. London, Paris,
Berlin, Oslo, New York, Toronto, Melbourne, Sydney are well-known to
their intelligence services as key bases for the illegal operations of
the Tiger agents.
The mammoth task of combating fascist terrorism exported from these
Western bases fell on the shoulders of successive Sri Lankan
governments.
They have done so for the last 33 years since the Vadukoddai War was
declared on May 14, 1976. The irony in all this is that the it is
exporters of terrorism to Sri Lanka who are accusing the government of
violating human rights, as if they had no hand in contributing to the
violence that led to inevitable counter-terrorist operations...
They can’t have it both ways. If they are genuinely for human rights
then they must first take drastic measures to prevent the agents of
fascist terrorism from exploiting the political space in liberal
democracies to export terrorism from Western backyards. Their posture of
being saintly moralists protecting human rights at all costs does not
sit well with their active support for agents of violence in Western
bases exporting violence to countries like Sri Lanka.
If their bases are used to export men, material and resources to
violate human rights abroad what right have they to accuse or blame the
victims of their exported violence of violating human rights? The law
and the morality should be spread evenly across the board - and that
includes the Western bases that have been the primary source of strength
to the Tiger terrorists.
The INGOs who are a part of this machinations ignore their
responsibility to look inwards and initiate steps to protect human
rights by monitoring and reporting on all sources and agents
contributing to violations of human rights. Instead they craftily invoke
principles of human rights to blame only the victims of the fascist
violators of human rights operating from approved bases in the West.
Pursuing this one—eyed policy INGOs like Amnesty International (AI) and
International Crisis Group (ICG) are increasingly on the warpath against
selected nations - mostly the less powerful.
High priestesses
Sri Lanka is an example of a nation which is targeted by AI and ICG
without applying the Principles of Responsibility to Protect at the
identified sources of violence located in the West.
When the high priestesses of human rights hide the agents of fascist
terrorism under their skirts what right have they to blame the victims
of their machinations and blinkered visions? If harbouring these agents
of terrorist violence is legal and moral in the West why is it illegal
and immoral for the victims of Western terrorism to fight back with all
their resources, even if it entails some inescapable violations of human
rights? From one end of the mouth, Western human rights agents claim
that they are protecting human rights by providing all facilities for
agents of fascist violence to operate from Western bases and, from the
other end, they also claim, in their questionable reports, that they are
protecting human rights by blaming the victims of terrorist violence
they export. Sri Lanka is making a desperate bid to recover from
destabilizing violence engineered and promoted with funds raised in
Western bases.
Most of the weapons used by the Tiger terrorists were procured from
the Western bases. Instead of writing reports accusing the victims of
terrorism exported from the West isn’t it better for these worthies to
focus on stemming the flow of arms destabilising global peace and order?
Disregarding these responsibilities the INGOs join the pro-violent
lobbies in their neck of the woods and blame the government for not
taking action prescribed in R2P. Is R2P only for the nations facing the
brunt of violence exported from the West? Or does the West also have an
equal responsibility to take effective measures against the agents using
Western bases for violations of human rights? Why are the INGOs ignoring
the sources of violence based in the West and focusing only on the
victims of the violence exported by them? Sri Lanka is an outstanding
case where the victims are blamed by the victimisers.
A glance at the history of political violence in Sri Lanka will
reveal that the INGOs were the primary agents that provided theoretical,
political and international cover for the Vadukoddai violence to explode
and lead to the massive violations of international humanitarian law.
They were the Gobbelsian propagandists who distorted the realities of
the Sri Lankan polity and blamed the Sinhalese ONLY like the way the
Nazis blamed the Jews.
Rationale
Like Goebbels they were effective as long as the war lasted. But
since the end of the war they have lost their earlier rationale for
blaming the Sri Lankan government and have nothing to hang on to except
to adopt the ruse of accusing the Sri Lankan government of not
concluding the war according to their expected standards.
The primary accusation of not concluding the Vadukoddai War according
to their high moral standards - taking the word of the ICG for the
moment — would be a fair argument if they can answer the following three
simple questions with substantive evidence:
1. Can Louise Arbour and Naveethan Pillay name one war conducted or
concluded by the Western countries according to their own moral
standards?
2. If not why are they picking on Sri Lanka?
3. Can an investigation imposed by the West, or from the UN, stop
human rights violations in wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan, to name
only two hot spots of the world?
The big moral issue highlighted in the ICG report runs like this: if
Sri Lanka is allowed to get away with the alleged war crimes other
nations too would follow the example. Louise Arbour, the CEO, of the ICG
who must take full responsibility for this fear-mongering canard, then
must provide the answers to the three questions above.
If she can’t the moral basis on which she relies to push her agenda
in the ICG report against Sri Lanka falls apart. The clearly stated
moral argument in her report is that Sri Lanka must be made an example
by the international community as a warning to other nations engaged in
tackling internal violence.
Her argument is that one report from a panel appointed by Ban Ki-Moon
will act as a brake on the violations of human rights in “Israel,
Myanmar, Thailand, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Colombia and the
Philippines”.
Does she really want the world to believe her yarn?
Without being cynical it can be asked which human rights report has
either curtailed or prevented violations of human rights when the
combatants decide to engage in a free-for-all? Take, for instance, the
example of Radhika Coomaraswamy naming and shaming the LTTE for forcibly
recruiting underaged Tamil children into its “baby brigade”. Did it stop
the LTTE from dragging children to the grave till the last day he fought
his futile war? Did it stop him from shooting children running away from
his brutal army? Again, take the case of the 600 civilians killed in the
US operations last year in Afghanistan, some of whom were children, and
tell us how the voluminous reports of INGOs, Security Council
Resolutions, and other activities of do-gooders have tamed violence and
secured human rights?
Clearly, the ground situation demands a more realistic approach to
assess the critical situation faced by the Sri Lankan government in the
last days of the war.
Prof. Peiris publicly appealed for space and time to handle the
crisis with domestic solutions. Hillary Clinton warmly accepted this
principle. It was a triumph for Prof. Peiris’ diplomatic skills. It is a
clear signal to Ban Ki-Moon to not rush into places where angels fear to
tread. |