THE BRITISH HIGH COMMISSIONER VISITS EDITORS
It is clear that it is not only the leader of the opposition who wants to oust Mr. Gotabhaya Rajapakse from the position of the Secretary, Ministry of Defence. The LTTE would welcome such a move and the diplomats and the statespersons of the western countries would be more than happy to see the back of Mr. Gotabhaya Rajapakse just as much their cricketers would like to see Sanath Jayasuriya walking back to the pavilion. In fact, I would say that Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe has been activated by the western countries and their henchmen in the country not only to send Mr. Rajapakse home, but the government of his brother too if possible.
We do not know what Mr. Gotabhaya Rajapakse told the editor of Daily Mirror. Even if what was communicated was against the freedom of press, what business has the High Commissioner of UK to visit the editor and tell her that he is with the newspaper? Can the High Commissioner of Sri Lanka in UK visit the editor of a newspaper in Fleet Street and express her opinion on matters internal to the country? The trouble with the western diplomats, especially the British, how does one refer to the people living in the so called United Kingdom, which is neither united nor a kingdom, is that they think that Sri Lanka is still a colony of Britain. The high commissioner of UK is not the governor of yesteryear appointed by the King or the Queen, and the diplomats should know where they stand vis a vis the interests of the country. The Indian diplomats also sometime tend to consider Sri Lanka as their backyard, as reminded by the behaviour of Dixit and others.
Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse is following Mr. Premadasa in certain ways, and the former should have studied how the latter took action against a British high commissioner who was more than interested in the conduct of elections in this country. If he does not act that way very soon he will find that he is surrounded by all the human rights activists not only in this country but also in the west. We do not want to go into the way the newspapers have been controlled in UK even recently, but we have also to point out that the newspapers in that country know what to report and what not to report when the sovereignty of the country is under threat.
The newspapers in this country generally follow the traditions of UK, and it appears that to some of them the interests of Britain are more important than those of Sri Lanka. After all the newspapers in Sri Lanka were founded by the British, and if they did not cultivate their interests in at least some of the journalists, then they would not have been British. The human rights are only relative and what we practice or what we have been asked to practice are the human rights as formulated by the west including the British, AFTER they established themselves as sovereign states. How much freedom the Irish, the Welsh and the Scots had from the English not in the distant past is a valid question that can be put to all the human rights activists coming from the west.
The diplomats are expected to lie on behalf of their countries, and very few people would question that right of the envoys. However, it is not the prerogative of the diplomats as exemplified by the statements of the British Prime Minister during the Iraq war. Some newspapers in Britain supported the Prime Minister, and nobody in Britain wanted to oust the Prime Minister or his officers in Whitehall responsible for defence on these counts. The British know how not only to formulate laws but also to interpret them. After all what we practice in the name of human rights and other democratic rights are principles formulated by the west AFTER they were firmly placed in the saddle. How much freedom was enjoyed by Beckets and Cromwells is a question that no ordinary person lived during that time would have asked as those yakkos would not have known much on freedom.
Leaving the Daily Mirror and the British high commissioner for themselves it is not difficult to understand what is happening behind the scenes. The limited retaliatory operations against the LTTE are not to the likening of the west and India, and they want to stop them as soon as possible. The British who created the so called ethnic problem in this country so as not to give Sinhalathva its due place by favouring the elite Tamils and other non Sinhala Buddhists, from the days of the first legislative assembly of the country, when the British governor appointed one Sinhala and one Tamil to represent their respective communities, ignoring the history demography and the culture of the country, and the rest of the west, together with India are hell bent on stopping the limited operations. Therefore the man mainly responsible for the operations has to be ousted. The stories on violations of human rights are for the same reason.
Mr. Wickremesinghe who perhaps has a marvellous human rights record according to the west, (the west would not have liked Mr. Premadasa though he led the same party that Mr. Wickremesinghe leads, as he did not come from the same garden (watte), he came from kehelwatta and not from kurunduwatte, and would not have ben considered as a great human rights activist) is busy with organising human rights associations for the benefit of those who have apparently been kidnapped. In the meantime the amnesty international lost their balls trying to campaign against apparent human rights violations by the Sri Lankan government. However, they had to include other organisations that were violating human rights just in case somebody pointed out that there were others who did not have a good track record in respect of protection of human rights.
The human rights will be the buzz word during the period to come as the west is preparing to send their UN peacekeeping force and/or to impose economic sanctions on the Rajapakse government. The balls of amnesty international, the visit of the British high commissioner to the Daily Mirror, the human rights organisations of Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe, the supreme human rights activist, are only preparatory work for the final battle cry on human rights. It is only a cover to protect the LTTE, as the west does not want to see the terrorists defeated before they extract a federal solution offering the northern and the eastern provinces to Tamil racism that they created, thus depriving those two provinces to the Sinhalas.
The west is mainly responsible for creating the impression that there is discrimination by the Sinhalas (or the so called Sinhala government) against the Tamils. They and their henchmen including some cabinet ministers from those anti imperialist (British!) Marxist parties justify the existence of a terrorist organisation on the pretext that there would not have been a LTTE if not for discrimination against the Tamils. The government has to warn the people of the impending threat posed by the British and the rest of the west in the name of human rights violations. The west is thinking of using the slogan of human rights in order to deprive the Sinhala people their fundamental rights whether formulated by the west or others, and more importantly to take away even the limited independence that the country enjoys.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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