Human Rights And Wrongs
by Qadri Ismail
Human rights is the last resort of the hopeless.
Its liberal advocates don’t see it that way. They find it heroic, the foundation of a new international order that will, when established universally, guarantee secure lives for everyone, everywhere ‘rom Tibet to Timbuktu. But would the subaltern, the oppressed ‘the target of human rights’ ‘necessarily agree ?
Take the following story. (Its details have been fudged to protect the innocent from the brutality of the Rajapakse regime and its paramilitary partners.)
A Tamil man was abducted by the military, at a checkpoint, somewhere in northeastern Sri Lanka recently, witnessed by many civilians. His wife inquired at every nearby military camp, but they denied having or ever detaining him. Someone advised her to contact a paramilitary group. They work closely with the government, she was told, and so could help. Desperate, she did. (This would be the EPDP or TMVP.) They noted her details and promised to investigate.
A few days later, members of this group abducted the woman and raped her.
Her husband is still missing, presumed killed by the military.
Seeing no other option, she told her story to a human rights organization.
The point should be obvious. The western powers and their human rights groups would have nothing to complain about if the Rajapakse regime did not treat its citizens, mostly the Tamils, but also Muslims and, increasingly, Sinhalese who resist, with systematic brutality. For the case of this woman and her husband is not isolated. It is not something ‘collateral’ that occurs, inevitably, regrettably, in the course of fighting a war on terror.
Her rape, if not her husband’s murder, was planned, deliberate. As was the mass expulsion of Tamils from Colombo last year, a move the odious Defense Secretary advocated and defended publicly. As were the killings of Franklin Raviraj and T. Maheswaran, both MPs who spoke eloquently, often in Sinhala, in the Sinhala media, against the horrors of this government.
As is the ongoing expropriation of Muslim land in Amparai district by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. The legalized violence against Muslims is not the unintended consequence of the war against the LTTE. Neither is the recent spate of attacks against Rupavahini employees.
The counter-argument that the LTTE does similar things, while true, is an incredible response. Is the government’s best defense that it is like a terrorist group?
The Rajapakse regime understands its mandate as promoting the greed and bloodlust of its thugs, whether in the cabinet or defense establishment, not the welfare of its citizens. Indeed, it has demonstrated that Mahinda Chinthanaya could be reduced to just one idea: if the people aren’t quiet while we pillage the south, bombard the north and pacify the east, our thugs will terrorize them.
If our people, then, with nowhere else to turn, take these matters up with, to put it bluntly, white people, are we to blame them?
Space for the intervention of western human rights groups in Sri Lanka only becomes open in a political vacuum. This space should have been occupied by political resistance, the left. But, quite apart from the ineptitude of the current UNP, our left parties have, over the last forty years, largely surrendered to Sinhala nationalism.
For, despite the valiant efforts of the LSSP to remind us recently, through the republication of old speeches, that comrade Colvin warned, in 1956, that one language (’Sinhala only’) would lead to two nations, the same Colvin also said, opposing the DC Pact in 1965: ‘Dudleyge badey masala vadey.’ The same Colvin, in 1972, authored a constitution making Buddhism effectively the state religion. Our left never recovered from such surrender. Indeed, in asserting that one could sell out the minorities and still call oneself left, it only made itself an example for the JVP to emulate.
I do not hold the left responsible for the horrors of the Rajapakse presidency. But what is it doing abetting them? Whose good is served by D. E. W. Gunasekera and Tissa Vitharana sitting with the government?
The complicity of the left, the lethargy of the UNP, helps justify the western human rights argument that, in the absence of the space for resistance in Sri Lanka, they must intervene. Since we cannot save ourselves, the west will save us.
This is a version, a revision, as my teacher Gayatri Spivak argues in her new book, Other Asias, of the old colonial notion, ‘the white man’s burden.’ Read any classic work of liberalism, John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, for instance, and you will see that civil society, as a concept, is inseparable from civilization. To Locke, the savage, that’s us, was incapable of instituting civil society because she lacked the capacity to civilize herself. That is how civilization, the establishment of civil society for the savage, became the justification for colonialism, an alibi for political domination and economic exploitation. In that precise sense, Sri Lankan ‘civil society’ groups are the consequence, continuation, of colonialism.
Things are not quite the same today. The white man, and woman, is still on a mission to save us. This time, however, a lot of us, whether in Sri Lanka or the west, are actively helping them. Some do so sincerely, enthusiastically, convinced that the west is right, that human rights is an unqualified good thing. (Before we rush to criticize this position, we should remember that Marxism also came from the west. The famous opening line of The Communist Manifesto exclusively addresses Europe.) Some do so for the perks, the money. (But then we shouldn’t forget, as Rajan Phillips reminded Sumanasiri Liyanage on this very question: people who take money to wage peace are infinitely preferable to those who make money, from the President and his bothers to the military commanders and others, from war.)
Some of us do so critically, sometimes stifling ironic smiles. For the self-righteousness, tone-deafness, of human rights folks, whites usually, but not exclusively in the west can be quite amusing. Not to mention the hypocrisy of western diplomats. Do we need mention, once again, that the Sri Lankan Prevention of Terrorism Act was modeled on the British, who were oppressing the Northern Irish at the time? And what gives any U.S. ambassador, anywhere, the balls to lecture anybody on human rights or democracy? when its own president was first elected by the Supreme Court and it continues to hold prisoners, in Guantanamo, without due process? When George W. Bush, in speech after speech, justifies torture (’enhanced interrogation techniques’). And still supports perverse Pervez Musharraf.
The west needs to be educated. That the history of human rights is intertwined with colonialism. That their credibility will decline further every time they continue to use a double standard. For, surely, no U.S. backer of human rights could be taken seriously if they are also, like just about every senator and congressperson, unreconstructed supporters of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people. That they need to acknowledge, and legislate, social and economic rights as equally important as political rights.
At the same time, the non-west needs to change, too. China is the first example that comes to mind. But the Indian treatment of Kashmiris is not very different from the Sri Lankan treatment of Tamils. Muslims in Gujarat and elsewhere live in as much fear as Tamils in Colombo.
But it does not follow, while we wait for these things to happen, that we shut up and let the Rajapakse regime wage a war against the Tamils and, more generally, democracy. I mean: what plausible argument can the president fabricate to justify his continued violation of the 17th amendment? In his insistence that he, as president, is above the law, Mahinda Percy Rajapakse sounds exactly like George Walker Bush.
In its undisguised racism, its brazen brutality, its pathetically insecure inability to take even the mildest criticism, the sheer volume of its corruption, its utter ineptitude, its intimidation of the population at large, the Rajapakse regime is approaching the J. R. Jayewardene as the worst in our history. It is a sad feature of our moment that, like the SLFP then, the southern political opposition now is virtually non-existent. It is, if anything, even sadder that the Tamil opposition, today, has taken the monolithic, viciously murderous, exclusivist form of the LTTE. No one has let the Tamil people down more than they.
In this context, the only ethically effective space of resistance to the Rajapakses has, for better and worse, become that of human rights activists; and I don’t just mean folks in Colombo. In Mannar, Jaffna, Vavuniya, Mutur and Batticaloa, ordinary people resist the Rajapakse ruffians and its paramilitary predators daily, in the name of human rights. We know their efforts count because the government screams hysterically in response. Or arrests those who publicize their work, like J. S. Tissainayagam, guilty only of the crime of expressing his opinion.
I am not an uncritical supporter of human rights. But if given a choice between just two alternatives, the Rajapakse regime and human rights activists, I will back the latter any day. They are in the business of tending lives. The Rajapakses, of destroying them. They are the human wrongs of Sri Lanka.
nathan said,
March 24, 2008 @ 10:29 am
Tamils are “expendable” in the consolidation of political power by ALL sinhala parties – UNP included.
The UNP shouts about ‘human rights’ only when they are in theopposition.
The Rajapakse Junta is all powerful, and they know it – and do not care for “human rights” or about world opinion.
Unless the world takes serious note of what is happening, this “nazism” will continue.
Devinda Fernando said,
March 24, 2008 @ 10:40 am
While this person makes a Valid point that Individual Human Rights are not a top priority of the government,…. after all they are fighting a Death match with one of the most Brutal Terrorist organizations on the Planet, …. what this author fails to do is put this in context.
This year there were about 100 abductions,… a drastic reduction in numbers from when the major fighting first started in 2006. Back then it was about 1000 or so?
In that time we have had Hundreds of civilians dead in Suicide and Claymore blasts, casualties caught in the crossfire of LTTE and armed forces combat… (funny how the LTTE never seem to want to fight out in the open) and 3000 Soldiers dead. So Excuse me if I yawn every time I hear a story of lawlessness and Human rights violations at the hands of Paramilitaries… While their situation is tragic, in the grand Scheme of this conflict they are not that high of a priority. Sorry if you label me the bad guy for saying it but they are not….
Think realistically and stop thinking idealistically…. We are dealing with a government of limited Resources and capabilities… The Bigger issue of the War has to be sorted out and settled before the smaller issues of Human Rights can be taken care of.
ratna said,
March 24, 2008 @ 12:38 pm
For any Tamil speaking person, if they have a choice, they will chose Tiger Terrorists over Rajapakse Terrorists.
(This is a good lesson for the people who played a role in bringing Tigers down before they win North-East peoples rights. If only some Tamil speaking moderates and Eastern people have waited for some more time, Tigers would have got some rights for the region and then they could have gone after them afterwards.)
Expatriate said,
March 24, 2008 @ 3:02 pm
Ismail: “In its undisguised racism, its brazen brutality, its pathetically insecure inability to take even the mildest criticism, the sheer volume of its corruption, its utter ineptitude, its intimidation of the population at large, the Rajapakse regime is approaching the J. R. Jayewardene as the worst in our history…”
Well-said.
And what does that say about your erstwhile friend who has taken on ‘diplomatic’ garb in Geneva to not just abet such a regime, but actively defend it?
It is time for decent people like you to name, condemn and expose people who are on the other side of this moral divide.
On the action front, R. Hakeem and R. Sampanthan should find common cause, bury any differences and jointly seek help from any country that is willing to help the minorities.
While your critique of colonialism and the West ’s hypocrisy maybe valid, one has to pick his fights and focus on the issue at hand; in trying to defend the innocent people who are being terrorized in Sri Lanka, one should not have any reservation in seeking the help of any country that can apply concerted pressure on the Rajapakse regime.
JeyP said,
March 24, 2008 @ 6:25 pm
Lets face it people. If the Tigers had not been around Tamils would have been sept underth ecarpet by JR and his gang. Now they have outgrown their usefulness for some. I dont think much of Tamil politicians who go on and on about the misdeeds of the Tigers but on the other hand say nothing about the GOSL violoations.
In comment #2 the writer seems to think that the means justifies the end. When will it dawn on him and those like minded that once you unleash the tiger (so to speak you wont be able to hold him back ever again. It will come back to bite everyone. Next it will be the Sinhalese. These sort of things always happen. Watch and see next it will be the wives and daughters of the Sinhalese who will be raped and murdered. IT will be the Sinhalese businessmen who will be kidnapped and ransomed. There will be no end to it. This war will never end. We’ve heard talk of it ending for more than 20 years now. Mig 27’s Mig 29’s MBRL’s, what more ? How much of our future goes down the drain for a blasted piece of land. How many preciious lives lost. Damn it when will it ever end. Let the Tigers have what they want then atleast we can all live again. Instead of this nightmare. At the end of the day the only result will be that the “junta” will be rich and can live in luxury in their homes in the States while the common man in Sri Lanka will be on the street begging ofr his life. May God damn demoracy in Sri Lanka and all it resultants
Raj said,
March 24, 2008 @ 8:58 pm
Amazing that all of the sudden we have dozens of ‘human rights’ activists coming out of the wood in Sri Lanka, to echo the sometimes accurate sometimes very inaccurate claims made by HRW ( issued incidentally from that bastion of Human rights in NY US) when no to long ago they
These crackpots are fast loosing credibility when they only see human rights abuses by one side and for many years turn a blind eye to the outrageous abuses of human rights by the terror networks here and abroad.
punitham said,
March 24, 2008 @ 9:32 pm
Devinda
If you sort out the human rights first there may not be a war at all. This government has decided to ’sort out the war’, ie annihilate the minorities and then only Sinhalese will be left in the island. Long live the Sinhalese.
RATNAYAKA said,
March 25, 2008 @ 1:32 am
Actualy I dont know,why a country & individual people use thes HR worls for diffrent way. If terrorist breache human right(HR) such as blasting of suiside bomb,use child as child sildier, killing innocent people ( for instance tamil & sinhala) ,in most situation no EU countries or America or so called HR organisation,such as ammenesty international not atlest condemt or blame fo that.
But if a dedocratic goverment is tried to contral terrorisim in order to save their people,
Some organisation and country tried to protect such terririst organisation by using HR word
Ultimately,I dont know what is the real meaning of HR in global political world.
abraxus said,
March 25, 2008 @ 6:19 am
Keep yawning Mr. Devinda Fernando, 100 abductions are a ‘drastic’ reduction is it? Come now shall we abduct just one: YOU yourself, so you can yawn at your captors bravery and distaste for “Human rights”. Keep yawning, why not keep farting while you are abducted, tortued until some relative of yours scrapes enough money to release you from those said abductors. That is if you are not killed before that. Keep yawning you arrogant patriot, keep yawning.
Dayan Jayatilleka said,
March 25, 2008 @ 7:03 am
His “erstwhile friend ” now in Geneva, never forgot a lesson learnt in the second half of the 1980s, while underground during the jayewardene regime. (a lesson learnt and publicly theorised but unsuccessfully or only episodically imparted to erstwhile friends, it seems.) that lesson was this: there is a fate worse than state. however bad the jayewardene regime was, there was something worse, as represented by the LTTE and the armed JVP. no state with any democratic space and accountability, and no elected government, is as dangerous as an armed, fascistic or neobarbaric movement….against which the state – deeply flawed but correctible – is the most important material bulwark, when all is said and done.
JeyP said,
March 25, 2008 @ 10:12 am
in reply to #6
Please remember that HRW cannot be expected to give pronouncements on terrorist groups who by their very definition are human rights abusers. Bur a democratically elected governments ? Or maybe this government wants to be known along the lines of the governments of Rwanda, Germany and all other good Abusers?
Expatriate said,
March 25, 2008 @ 6:54 pm
Those who can read can see how Qadri Ismail has marshaled his arguments to show that it is indeed the Rajapakse gang–the ‘ruffians’ (and that includes the mendacious henchmen in Geneva)–that is “armed, fascistic, or neobarbaric…”
Those who don’t see that are either insane or have learned nothing from their “experience”; so pathetic are they that any ‘theorizing’ they do is worse than the scribbling of those poor human beings who have been forced to stay at Angoda.
Such people–if one can call them ‘people’ at all– have nothing to ‘impart’ to morally and intellectually superior beings. The pursuit, annihilation and defeat of these cowardly ruffians should be the goal of any sane human being.
Nexus said,
March 26, 2008 @ 8:10 am
Big deal Mr Ismail stop , in the words of the FBI the government is dealing with the most dangerous terror network in the world the pioneers of suicide bombing no less. To tackle this multi headed monster the govt has at times stumbled (the mass arrests etc) but on the whole is trying it upmost to do so within the laws of the land, lets not forget that the supreme court serves as the ultimate backstop and forced the release of those held without reason.
In the US the president no less recently vetoed the use of torture by the CIA during interrogation of terror ’suspects’ not those convicted by court of law but mere suspects. This is the same country that is turns around to wag the finger at others (and whose reports the Mr Ismails of he world regurgitate ad nauseum) , give us all break stop the duplicity.
Devinda Fernando said,
March 26, 2008 @ 12:10 pm
*** If you sort out the human rights first there may not be a war at all. ***
Utter Nonsense Punitham. You have the cart before the horse. 2002 to 2005 (during the CFA) there were no Human rights violations, no abductions, and no check points… All this started because the War started,..or should I say the war was started by the LTTE. Explain that to me genius?
***Keep yawning Mr. Devinda Fernando, 100 abductions are a ‘drastic’ reduction is it? ***
And let me respond to this other Genius Abraxus,..
Yes, 100 abductions in a year down from 1000 is a Drastic drop… if you do the math that is a 90% drop in abductions… Your idiotic comment illustrates the irony of the point I was making about perspective.
But of course you think we live in a world where no one dies, or there is no crime. So therefore a single Tamil dead or kidnapped is a National Tragedy in your eyes. In the late 1980s in New York city the Murder rate was almost 4000 a year, that is 10 people a day getting strangled, shot, stabbed, dropped out of windows, poisoned, etc… During the height of the clean up that number dropped to 800 a year. That was just over 2 a day,… in a city of 7 million people. You can’t eliminate crime completely. Get the picture?
Dayan Jayatilleka said,
March 26, 2008 @ 2:05 pm
Dear Expatriate,
Your prose and tone, are indeed a model of sanity and reason.
ilaya seran senguttuvan said,
March 27, 2008 @ 9:17 am
Dayan (15) – Are you about to switch loyalties again?
Expatriate is frying your current “bossa” the 2 mallis and
other hench-aiyas – to use his words “ruffian gang”
Wanna re-phrase your question in case you were on a
“trip” when you wrote 15?
karan said,
March 27, 2008 @ 9:31 am
Double standards,balls to lecture others,west need to be educated, these are the words of Qadri Ismail. Indeed so Mr.Ismail,can you remember what happened to Muslims of Srebenicia? Saudi Arabia sent money and volunteers to spread their version of Islam.Please do enlighten us(the lackeys of USA) more about how the islamic world behaved?
Expatriate said,
March 27, 2008 @ 8:06 pm
Only sub-humans ‘theorize’ while standing on the murdered bodies of innocents who were abducted, raped, disemboweled and mutilated.
No civilized discourse is possible with such creatures.