Big power politics flush UN Charter down the toilet

[Erickassonfire]

Of all the human rights issues in global conflict and post-conflict
zones why is India, EU and USA focussed relentlessly – and, more
importantly, selectively — on Sri Lanka? What is behind their
persistent and the holier-than-thou obsession to hunt Sri Lanka with a
vengeance? Is it pursued to fulfill the aims and objective of a higher
morality, or the principles of the UN Charter, or a Mosesian legal
code? Or is it because Sri Lanka has committed such unspeakable gross
violation of human rights like the Indians in Kashmir, or the
Americans in Afghanistan where President Obama is competing with Herod
to beat the record of the slaughter of innocent children at the birth
of Christ? Are they after justice or are they after vengeance for not
toeing their political agenda?

This Troika — the international axis of anti-Sri Lankan manipulators —
has hijacked the universal principles declared in the UN Charter,
international humanitarian law, Vienna Declaration and Program Action
(VDPA) R2P and other conventions and declarations related to human
rights and use them as oppressive tools of neo-colonialism to force
less powerful nations obey their dictates. The current deplorable
plight of humanitarian law is that it has fallen into the hands of
unscrupulous international mafia with America as its Godfather. Backed
by might rather than right, they pursue only one noted policy for
those who are outside their network: target anyone and everyone who
are a threat to their self-interest. If they can’t target their
perceived threat/enemies in the UN because of the veto of China and
Russia then they shift their manoeuvres to a more pliable theatre like
the UNHRC. This act of targeting its perceived threats/enemies is not
a secret. Every American President in the post-World War II period in
particular, including Nobel Peace Prize winng Obama, is on record
saying that they reserve the right to strike at anything that
threatens their security which means destroying the security of
others, including children.

Nor is this anything new. American history began with violent
aggression, shooting from the hip, to destroy anything and everything
that were seen as a threat to their expansion and occupation of the
territory in the “wild west”, as they say, which did not belong to
them. Occupation of virigin land was of strategic importance to their
survival in the new world and human rights were put aside for the
political necessities of imposing the white man’s rule over the
indigenous owners of the land known then as Amerigo. First they led
genocidal attack on the native Indians, After the mass massacres of
the natives they penned them in reservations just in case they should
get out of hand. The reservations were the precursors to the
Guantanamo camps to come. Not satisfied with the genocidal attacks on
the Amero-Indians the white man handed them small-pox infected
blankets for protection. First examples of biological warfare. There
is a moral in this for the world: Beware of Americans bringing
blankets for the sick and the needy! It is worse than the Greeks
bringing gifts.

Then they went for the Negroes running race-based clinics in Tuskegee,
Alabama, between 1932 and 1972 to discover the effects of untreated
syphillis. Hundreds of black Afro-Americans were selected and kept in
the dark without letting them know that they had syphillis. Even when
penicillin was discovered in the forties they were not treated because
the doctors were more keen on finding out how syphillis progressed in
the human body. Of course, they committed these crimes against their
own people under the burning cross of KKK.

Rendition too is nothing new. It began with the white masters
torturing the disobedient black slaves. Hardly anything has changed in
America history. The only difference is that the American dream of
oppressing, torturing, slaughtering human beings and experimenting
with their new war weapons has gone global. To achieve this American
dream nowadays they use either drones — the newest lethal weapon in
modern warfare — or human rights. There is no difference between the
two either. Both are used as exchangeable weapons to keep America
safe.

The pretentious American morality refuse to accept the apparent
contradiction in trying to run with drones aimed at protecting and
preserving American security on a global scale and, on the other hand,
hunt other nations with international humanitarian law forbidding them
to use the same tactics and weapons for their security. When it comes
to choosing between international humanitarian law and the security of
America’s security they have never hesitated to opt for American
security without caring tuppence for human rights. Big power goes
invariably with big moral responsibilities. The principle of noblesse
oblige apply. But those responsibilites are kept aside for either
pious Sunday morning sermons, or to receive Nobel Peace prizes. From
Saturday to Saturday — give or take a few hours on Sunday service —
Americans have no qualms about bombing the hell out of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki and then sitting down, under the mushrooming nuclear cloud,
to draft the UN Charter enshrining all the grand principles of
preventing war.

But what effect has the Declaration of the UN Charter had on America?
Though there were no global wars since World War II America has been
in every bloody mini-wars since then — from the Bay of Pigs to
Afghanistan. In Vietnam America not only burnt the fauna, flora and
human beings in Vietnam by dropping “Agent Orange” but also exceeded
the tonnage of bombs dropped in whole of World War II. This, in short,
sums up the morality of America. And it has the audacity to invoke the
principles of the UN Charter in moving the resolution against Sri
Lanka at the UNHRC in Geneva. The resolution against Sri Lanka begins
by saying :“Guided by the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants on Human
Rights and other relevant instruments,……” If American is “guided by
the Charter of the United Nations ….and other relevant instruments” in
moving the resolution against Sri Lanka what relevant chapter, para,
sentence of international humanitarian law has guided America when its
drones killed 200 children in Afghanistan? Was it the UN Charter or
utter contempt for human life that caused the deaths of 600,000
children in Iraq (UN figures) when the American-led naval cordon
thrown round Iraq cut off medical and food supplies?

This contempt for human life is not only a common to all big powers in
the Troika targeting Sri Lanka but even among the UN officials who are
apppointed to keep the law clean, untainted by double standards,
hypocrisy or even gross violations of human rights. This is where Ms.
Navanethem Pillay, the High Commissioner for the Human Rights Council
comes in. In her opening statement to the 22nd session of the Human
Rights Council in Geneva the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms.
Pillay focused specifically on VDPA as the most significant
overarching human rights document produced in the last quarter of
century. Agreed. She also said that the most pertinent feature in this
document is its universality. Agreed wholeheartedly. So how come she
sees the mote in the eye of Sri Lanka and not the log jams in the eyes
of the bullying Troika — the axis of anti-Sri Lankan evil ?

Right now the focus is on issues of transitional justice that are
touted as panaceas for the post-conflict period. In the transitional
period between May 2009 and the final settlement of the issues arising
in the post-conflict phase there has to be a mechanism for achieving
peace and reconciliation. It is the transitional justice aimed at
achieving peace and reconciliation that is contested domestically and
internationally. Should it be truth-telling commissions like in S.
Africa? Should it be ad hoc international tribunals for war criminals,
as in Nuremberg? Should it be community-based explorations of the war-
torn past at the grassroot level to build a new future as in gacaca in
Rwanda? Or should Sri Lanka evolve its own method based on the LLRC
report, or an alternative to it, or a mixture of both?

There is no one-size-fits-all solution in coming to terms with the
past of each country facing complex post-conflict issues. Different
nations have chosen different routes to reconciliation and peace. The
riots this week in Bangaladesh were caused by sentencing to death
Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, one of the leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami,
Bangladesh’s biggest Islamist party, for the murder, abduction, rape,
torture and persecution of his countrymen that occurred in the violent
movement that gave birth to Bangladesh in 1971. Rwanda, where 800,000
Rwandans were massacred in 100 days, rejected both the S. African and
the Nuremberg trial models, and adopted its own grassroot gacaca
model.

Whatever the infirmities of these models may be, small nations have
made serious attempts to reconcile with the horrors of the war-torn
past. But why are these mechanisms for accountability missing in
America? Who was responsible to protect the 600,000 Iraqi childred
that died because the naval cordon of the Coalition of the Willing led
by America cut off life-supporting essentials , using food and
medicine as weapons of war? No NGO has asked for accountability of the
600,000 children killed under the watch of Gereoge Bush. On the
contrary when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked by
Lesley Stahl on US “60 Minutes” (5/12/1996) whether the price was
worth it she replied : “I think this is a very hard choice, but the
price–we think the price is worth it.” Chilling, isn’t it? The blood
runs cold when the highest ranking official in charge of American
foreign policy says that it is worth killing 600,000 children just to
protect America’s security from imagined threats of weapons of mass
destruction never found in Iraq. Can moral depravity sink any lower
than this American example of showing utter contempt for human life —
and innocent children at that!

Anyway, the known models of reconciling with the past in conflict
zones have varied from traditional grassroot gacaca in Rwanda to do-
nothing-about-war-crimes policy in America and India. The vindictive
international and national campagins against Sri Lanka have refused to
acknowledge Sri Lanka’s own model. So far four methodologies have been
operating at different levels: 1. the political process at the very
top which seems to be in a stop-start mode with no consistent
traction; 2. economic development which has gathered momentum and
produced tangible and visible results right across the board from
north to south which has resulted in an extraordinary growth of 27% in
the north compared to 8% overall average nation-wide; 3. people-to-
people programs initiated at individual and institutional levels and
4. implementation of LLRC report in parts. There is also the
possibility of recasting the constitution to address the new post-
conflict ground realities. Though these are discrete and independent
processes which are moving on different planes, taking different
routes, all are heading towards the same goal of reconciliation with
the promise of arriving jointly and simultaneously on the ultimate
destination of peace in the long run.

The hue and the cry so far has been on the lack of speed and not
conforming to the political agendas of the Big Troika and their agents
in the NGOs. When Robert O’Blake went before the Congress his main
criticism was that Sri Lanka is “slow” in implementing the LLRC
report. He did not say that Sri Lanka was not implementing it. Their
indecent haste demanding instant solutions to a vexed and complex
issue that had bedevilled the nation from the thirties of the 20th
century is totally unrealistic and immoral, particularly in the light
of America’s own historical experiences. For instance, O’Blake should
know that Abraham Lincoln made the historic Emancipation Proclamation,
freeing the Negro slaves, on January 1, 1863. What would O’Blake’s
reply be if President Mahinda Rajapakse ask him why America failed to
elect a prototype of an Obama in 1864?

Historical problems have not been solved according to the time table
or mantras, or theories of imported from abroad. A telling example is
the ending of the 33-year-old Tamil terrorist war. It was not done
according to any foreign formula but according to the home-grown
strategies and leadership. Each historical problem must find its own
solutions which can evolve primarily from the soil which created the
historical problems. Besides, the idiosyncratic peculiarities of the
uneven development of history makes it impossible to make giant leaps
from one stage to another overnight — the fatal flaw in Trotsky’s
theory of the Permanent Revolution. He argued that feudal societies
like Russia can skip the capitalist stage and jump straight into his
ideal socialist state. Mao too failed in his Great Leap Forward.
Modern China and Russia have proved that history takes its own
evolutionary time to transit from one stage to another. In America too
it took 150 years for the Emancipation Proclamation to mature
historically and manifest itself in the person of Barrack Obama. Why
is it right for America to take 150 years to make the change, taking
their own route and why is it wrong for Sri Lanka to take its own
route in its own time?

Incidentally, the record it has set now within less than four years is
by any standards of post-conflict recovery a remarkable achievement.
As Scott Morrison, the Shadow Minister in the Liberal Party
Opposition, wrote in The Australian, (March 1, 2013) if this level of
achievement was recorded in Afghanistan or Iraq they would have been
awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Instead Sri Lanka is hauled up before the
UNHRC with some sections of the local media going along with their
sponsors in NGOs singing hossanas for the Troika in the axis of anti-
Sri Lankan evil.

The fundamental failure in the interventionist foreign policy of the
bullying Troika is in pushing demands that serve their domestic
interests and not the interests of Sri Lanka. Their interventionist
politics, dictating terms to Sri Lanka, are actually counter-
productive impediments obstructing the road to smooth progress for the
simple reason that they are intervening to resurrect the forces that
destabilized Sri Lanka. It will be four years since the end of the
Tamil terrorist war only in May this year. To expect overnight
miracles, based on the political agendas of the Big Troika and their
NGO agents, is contary to historical reality and even theoretical
rationality. The South African Truth and Reconciliation took seven
years (from May 10, 1994 to November 30, 2001) to close just the work
of the Commission. Rwanda abandoned the Western Nuremberg model of
international tribunals and adopted its own traditional model of
reconciliation through gacaca and is yet to complete its work. To
insist that Sri Lanka should do its job according to the time table of
the Big Troika and their NGO agents amounts to nothing less than neo-
colonialism.

It is time that Sri Lanka dismissed the hypocritical moralities
passsed by UNHRC with contempt. Instead Sri Lanka should follow the
excellent example set by India which had thrown into the waste paper
basket all the resolutions passed by the Security Council on Kashmir —
a territory occupied by India against international law and
principles laid down by the UN. When India talks of militarisation of
the north and not holding elections in the north Sri Lanka should
counter it by telling India bluntly: Mr. India, you set the example in
Kashmir by withdrawing your forces and holding the referendum
recommended by the UN Security Council then we might — mark you,
“might” not “will” — consider reducing our forces in the north and
holding provincial council elections in the north according to your
time table.

Until then the most pragmatic course of action for Sri Lanka is to
tell the Troika to “fforeggub”, a la Dylan Thomas’s “llaregubb”!