The Attempted Resolution against Sri Lanka: a Western perspective - 1 June 2009

by Rajiva Wijesinha

First we must insist that everything we did was transparent and above board. Unlike Sri Lanka, which requested support from countries that no self-respecting Westerner would talk to, unless we had something to sell to them, we spoke only to countries with a solid track record of concern for human rights, except in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Exceptions can also be made for gentlemen (and ladies, if you can call them that) of a faith which is implacably opposed to the Western values and ambitions that constitute Human Rights for the world. We will decide what such faith or faiths are in accordance with our value system for each decade.

It is true we did not consult Sr Lanka's neighbours but, apart from the fact that you cannot trust them anyway, we understood that they had no sympathy for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. They excuse this inhuman position on the grounds that Tigers are terrorists, but we know better. Though some of us have banned the LTTE, this was under pressure from President Bush, who was not a nice man.

Mr Obama is much nicer and, if he sometimes seems too soft, we will make sure that he will be hard against real terrorists. With regard to the Tigers, we know that they will never turn their arms against us, so there is no reason to let them be destroyed while they still have purchasing power. Yes, we know we said the same about the Taleban, but they belong to a faith that can never be trusted. In the old days we thought that because they were not Shiites they were really gentlemen, just like us. It shows you can never trust anyone, unless they are white and Christian (though not Orthodox, they are just like Shiites at heart). Mr Obama may be considered an exception for the moment.

In any case we will not let the Tigers actually get a country of their own, not until they have signed it over to us. We forgot to do that with the Taleban, but we were a bit careless in those days because of all the other enemies we had. Anyway, to get back to Sri Lanka, obviously we could not trust anyone else, so that is why we only discussed the need for a special session amongst ourselves. We did not think for a moment that we would have trouble getting a few countries outside the inner circle to sign with us. We were particularly upset about Japan, but that shows how wrong we were to think of them as being nearly white. As for the South Americans, they too have begun to get a bit above themselves. It was a jolly good thing we sank the Belgrano and, if anyone thinks we are going to allow any international inquiry into that, they are sadly mistaken.

None of those other types would have understood why we wanted the special session on May 14th, and that if we had got our way we could have created such a fuss that the Sri Lankans would not have been able to finish off the Tigers. We had the Times and all the television stations ready to report everything we said, along with some leaks we had arranged from our chaps in influential positions, so that the Sri Lankan army would have been stopped in its tracks. Also we had made several visits to Tamil political leaders in India, and had promised them our support, and our media outlets had assured us that they would hold the balance after the Indian elections and that would serve the silly Sri Lankans right.

Unfortunately everything went wrong. We finally got the High Commissioner we had chosen in on the act, and she made some requests from countries she ought to have been able to influence since she looks like them, but she failed. It may partly be her fault anyway, because she had threatened the Sri Lankan ambassador with a special session at the time the monsters made us discuss Gaza, and that may have warned him. We should have known you can't trust such people however carefully you surround them with our sort.

Still, we managed to lull that ambassador into a sense of security by giving him the impression that we would abandon the call for a special session if he agreed to a full briefing on Sri Lanka, with the High Commissioner in the chair and the NGOs unleashed. He was on the verge of agreeing, and now we can see that would have been better in the long run because NGOs are more reliable (after all we fund them) than elected governments. But Teutonic determination dictated that we continued with our main effort, and we made it clear that we saw nothing wrong or dishonest in pursuing that while telling others that we were willing to compromise.

When the whole plan collapsed, and the silly Indian voters did the wrong thing and produced a stable government contrary to all our predictions and predilections, and the Sri Lankan forces destroyed the Tigers, we realised that all would be lost if we did not act soon. We applied enormous pressure in the capitals, revived a Pinochet connection in one case, brought Sri Lanka up at a bilateral meeting in another, made clear that membership of the European Union demanded unquestioning loyalty, used some economic muscle and raised so many questions on the basis of the reports our media outlets were putting out, that in the end we got the signatures.

Sadly, to get the signatures, we had to convince those who were not part of the inner core that our main concern was the Tamil civilians. The LTTE wanted something on war crimes, because they needed this if they were to survive as a movement, and discredit all the Tamil parties in Sri Lanka which are willing to work with the government, but this could not be expressed openly. We did mention it in passing, even in the world's most important and honourable forum, in Westminster, and our media picked it up and made it clear that this was the main intention of the special session, but officially we had to say we were more concerned with positive developments for the future than a witch hunt.

That was our undoing. The Indian government, not realising that Tamils were the preserve of the international community, not their business at all, got in on the act soon after their election, and got a joint communique which basically addressed all the issues we had sold to the countries whose signatures we needed. Then the Sri Lankan government invited everybody to come and see, and the silly fools actually went and looked, and said things were not too bad. We should have known you can't rely on a Korean, but even some of the white people who went failed to raise the alarm.

Fortunately we had enough journalists on our side who said exactly what we wanted them to say. Some of them even went further, and we got stories of women with cropped hair with their throats slit (always useful to press that button, and show that coloured people are now more Teutonic than most of us), and mass graves (pity we could not say the Sri Lankans had dug them, but that too will come) and enormous figures, increasing every day since those we had started with were not doing the trick. Sensible man, Goebbels, white to the core.

But somehow no one who is not like us seems to believe us any more. Lots of the Tigers turned up to the session, though fewer than had arranged to come for the one we had planned for the 14th. Though they spoke very emotionally, they got carried away and could not take their audience with them.

The President of the Council, who is not white, unexpectedly ruled one speech out of order, which ruined everything. It shows you cannot trust anyone, not unless they look like you and think like you and share your values. He made a mistake in March too, after the High Commissioner raised a storm about Sri Lanka, having met the TRO representative whose eloquence seems to have struck a chord. We were counting on a High Commissioner's statement or at least a Presidential statement then, which would have really turned the screws on Sri Lanka, and stopped them freeing any more of the hostages. But nothing came out, except for the hostages, and the last weapon we had ready slipped from our hands.

We could not admit this of course, which is another reason we ensured we got the signatures later, but then that coalition, which we had so painstakingly built up but which we should have known was unstable, fell apart. Obviously the whole thing was orchestrated by wicked states, and our media made the point very clearly, but we should perhaps be a bit careful about claiming ourselves that everyone who supported Sri Lanka had something to hide.

I mean, Russia and China should always be cut down to size, and now we have to be careful about India too, but we might find people will not believe us if we put Brazil and Uruguay and Angola and South Africa all in the category of the wicked.

Cuba and Nicaragua and Bolivia are of course horrid, and those of a particular faith can easily be demonised, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia and even Pakistan. But there too we have to be careful, because we have tried in the past to suggest that Bahrain and Qatar and Malaysia and Indonesia are not really nasty, and it is worrying that despite all our lobbying they let us down so badly.

They do not seem to understand that we now live in a unipolar world, and that God is in his heaven, on a cloud somewhere to the west of Brussels, though not too far west until we can be sure that Mr Obama is not quite what he looks.

Anyway, he will soon have to prove himself, which means he and his ilk will learn that you cannot compromise with those who will not accept European values. It is those values which brought us where we are now, especially as practised for the last five centuries, with fear of none (for we had the guns and soon enough we got the money) and favour to none except ourselves.

That is why we refused to compromise, though we were always prepared to, on our terms as laid out by our media. Unfortunately we lost those countries which had thought the special session was about human rights for the Tamils of Sri Lanka, not about punishment for the government.

But those who think positively for the future have no place in the culture of guilt that has served us so well. Our guilt, and the recompense we have made at the expense of others, has helped to keep everything under our own control. If we can pin some guilt on Sri Lanka, and ensure recompense that will benefit us for the future, we know that we can rely on that nice man Mr Pathmanathan, who now controls the Tiger millions, to spend all of it on what we can provide him. We can pretend to believe him when he says he has given up terrorism, and we do not need to remember that he is wanted by Interpol. We introduced his name at the special session, and no one noticed except the silly Sri Lankans and they can be ignored.

A suspected drug smuggling money launderer has now been propelled onto the world stage, and we can ignore the many pluralist democratic Tamils who were such a nuisance when we were waltzing with the Tigers. They are not under our control, whereas Mr Pathmanathan is, and will be, if he wants to stay out of jail. So if we can keep up the pressure on the Sri Lankan government, the diaspora will continue to fund Mr Pathmanathan, and he might find people in Sri Lanka to force poor young Tamils again into battle.

We will keep quiet about forced conscription, as we did before, and even convince our politicians who know no better that it is the Sri Lankan state that uses child soldiers, not our good terrorists.

The next few weeks will be crucial. If, ably assisted by our media, we can keep Sri Lanka in the firing line, soon enough it will be business as before with the LTTE - and we do mean business.

Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha

Secretary General

Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process