Seventh death anniversary of former Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar falls today:

An enlightened voice for a new world order

The seventh death anniversary of former Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar falls today. A remarkable orator in the English language, his speeches were full of insights on global and regional issues. He spoke at various global fora on a range of issues from terrorism to world development and these speeches are still being studied by scholars the world over. Several books containing his speeches and interpretations of his ideas and opinions have already been published.

A new book on his speeches titled ‘Democracy, Sovereignty and Terror: Lakshman Kadirgamar on the Foundations of International Order’ will be published later this year by I.B. Tauris Publishers.

“For those of us who have to live with terrorism, when we leave home in the morning there is no guarantee that we will come back.” Thus Lakshman Kadirgamar foreshadowed his own assassination in 2005. He was an astute and brave thinker and practitioner on many key issues in international politics.

Long before 9/11, he warned Western democracies that they were too passive about the activities on their soil of foreign terrorist movements and their front organisations. He was a strong advocate of democracy and human rights, conducting the first ever Amnesty investigation into the problems of a particular country – Vietnam. He was uniquely effective in countering the propaganda campaigns of the separatist Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka – the movement which ultimately took his life.

This definitive work explores the continuing relevance of his ideas for the modern world. Democracy, Sovereignty and Terror presents Kadirgamar’s distinctive voice in his major speeches. It also offers a convincing picture, by those who knew him, of a scholar-statesman who was both a realist and an idealist. “He showed that these approaches can be combined in both thought and action,” says the author of the book Sir Adam Roberts, President of the British Academy and Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford University.

Terror attacks

As a tribute to the late Minister Kadirgamar, here we reproduce excerpts from a speech he made at the United Nations soon after the 9/11 terror attacks in the US. This is one of the speeches featured in the book.

“The horrors of the morning of Tuesday the 11th of September, the spectacle of international terrorism in action viewed ‘live’ on television screens the world over, has cast a heavy pall on all of us and on humanity as a whole.

We are all still deeply moved by what happened in the United States that tragic morning. We will always be affected by the memories we shall carry with us for as long as we live.

The terrorism of the 11th of September, so shocking as it was, gave rise to a “coming-together” of the people of the great city of New York in the finest traditions of humanity.

Let us hope that such a deep sense of the “togetherness” of all of humanity at times of great crises will continue to be pervasive.

To ensure that those responsible for the terror of the 11th of September are brought to justice and that those responsible are deprived of their support and their resources, whatever and wherever that may be, has the immediate urgency.

Terrorism is, sadly, no stranger to Sri Lanka. We, in Sri Lanka know terrorism, unfortunately, only too well.

We know the horrific direct consequences of an act of terrorism: the carnage; the horror; the thousands of unsuspecting innocent lives lost or maimed, in the flash of an explosion; the thousands of families then left bereaved; the countless personal tragedies that terrorism leaves in its wake.

Yet we must not forget the elaborate funding, support and preparation - in a word the “logistics” that lie behind a single act of terrorism: The extensive secret collection organisations, their associates, their collectors, their enforcers, their many other supporters misguided or otherwise; the ability to transfer millions perhaps just by word of mouth; the numerous connections to the underworld of crime; the deliberate fanning of the flames of difference or discord in societies into the fanatical hatred from which crucible a suicide mission is born; and, above it all, there looms the reclusive leader who attracts and directs the misguided and the impressionable.

Principal objective

The elimination of the supportive financial systems on which terrorism depends must, in Sri Lanka’s view, be a principal objective and that will require a global undertaking: Complex difficult, multi-faceted and long-term.

However, because of the 11th of September, important beginnings are now being made for that purpose - which, hopefully, will be of assistance, as well, to those of us who have known the heavy hand of terrorism for many years past.

Yet, there also exists a far more abundant and seemingly limitless reservoir of funds - namely, expatriates of similar ethnicity settled abroad. As the Western media has reported over the last few years from time to time, collection from expatriates abroad for the armed group known as the LTTE, are staggering in their magnitude; for example US$ 400,000 a month from one country; US$ 600,000 a month from another; US$ 2.7 million a month from yet another, and large additional funds from expatriates in still other countries.

The many disparate forces for international terrorism do not come together in one monolithic whole. They are variously inter-connected in numerous ways and their international networks are extensive.

They are mutually supportive and communicate through the global underworld of crime when special missions are afoot.

If international terrorism is to be ever removed from our midst, we must begin with the recognition that international terrorism is a form of global criminality.

We must not let ourselves be deceived by the artfully crafted cloaks of false pretensions. It is the method of terrorism as in the murder of innocent civilians and the defiance of the sanctity of life - that defines terrorism.

The eradication of such a global criminal phenomenon requires a global governmental and non-governmental endeavour in many fields. There shall have to be numerous bilateral, sub-regional, inter-regional, and global, governmental and non-governmental arrangements.

To such a global endeavour, this organisation, the United Nations, must contribute and the United Nations is no stranger to the development and administration of global programs.

One of the magnificent achievements of this organisation, in the last half century, has been the transformation that has taken place in global opinion on the relationship that should obtain between the governing and the governed, between the government and the citizen.

It was on the basis of the moral authority of the General Assembly’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the determined endeavours of the Commission on Human Rights, that this transformation was achieved. The dignity of the individual has now, largely as a result of United Nations leadership in the field of human rights, been placed, as it should be, amongst the primary priorities of national and international attention.

Horrors of terrorism

If only such a powerful edifice would turn its attention to the eradication of the horrors of terrorism that afflict so many in developed and developing countries alike, the world would be a better and safer place for all the peoples of the planet.

Moreover, let us remember in this connection, that the Universal Declaration on Human Rights is not limited in scope to ensuring the observance of human rights by governments alone.

The Declaration has a far wider purpose: The observance of human rights by all governmental and non-governmental organisations alike. One need only look to the explicit prescription in Article 3 of the Universal Declaration, which requires that everyone has the right to life; and to the provisions of Article 30 of the Declaration which prescribe that: “Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein”.

An act of terrorism by a non-governmental entity against civilians is surely one of the most heinous violations of the human rights of its victims and, surely, a crime against humanity as well.

Sri Lanka pledges to follow closely and cooperate fully in the work of the United Nations on terrorism. Sri Lanka will, also, follow closely and cooperate fully with such other United Nations programs against terrorism that shall, hopefully, also develop, within the United Nations System in the knowledge that it is the prevention of the terrorist’s strike that should be the principal focus of a global endeavour against terrorism; and that fundamental to such prevention is the interdiction of terrorism’s “life-blood”: the provision of funds made available in such millions, knowingly or unknowingly, willfully or otherwise, directly or indirectly, overtly or covertly, in circumstances where it is possible that such funds may be utillised to further terrorism’s purposes.

We know also that our negotiations on international conventions, often concluded after lengthy, exhaustive sessions to produce lowest common denominator provisions enleavened by “constructive ambiguity” have not been as effective as they ought to be. They may salve our consciences, but with loopholes through which millions of dollars could pass in questionable transactions in the real world. Yet, that was the world we knew before the 11th of September. Let us hope that things will now change for the better.”