It has been attributed to many. Whether it was the then British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli who first coined the phrase “lies, damned lies and statistics” to describe three kinds of lies or someone else it is hardly material.
What does matter is that there is more than a kernel of truth in those words. If ever its truth needs to be proved one has only to turn to the publicity that has overwhelmed Sri Lanka in the last few months as the so-called international community began to take an increasing interest in a war that all the foreign pundits ( not to mention a few local know-alls) claimed could be won by either side.
Now that the expertise of these wunder kinder including an array of western diplomats who presented themselves greater arbiters of warfare than Clausewitz and Sun Tzu combined, have been exposed as particularly hollow, they have been trying desperately to cover their own nakedness by drumming up support for their humanitarian concerns. Take, for instance, the wildly differing statistics on the number of civilians trapped in the war front in the Wanni. Some said with what seemed like unimpeachable authority that there were as many as 300,000. That was far in excess of the combined populations of the districts of Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu at the last census some two decades ago.
Since that census many inhabitants from these areas sought refuge abroad many as economic migrants under cover of asylum seekers. So, whereas the population in those areas should have diminished, the numbers that are trotted out with a shocking casualness even by UN agencies suggest that the number of people there has multiplied.
The only explanations that seem possible are that the people of the Wanni have been breeding faster than rabbits or some people were lying through their teeth to magnify the figures.
I doubt that the people of the Wanni, whatever the shortcomings in nightly entertainment, have still been able to emulate the habits of the rabbits. So there must be other explanations why these false figures or, to be charitable, questionable ones, are being circulated including by the UN office in Colombo which decided to convey such dubious statistics to the donor community and was caught with its collective pants down.
Without taking a lesson from that error of judgment as well as its arithmetic, Naveenitham Pillay of the UN Human Rights Commissioner also jumped headlong into the numbers game talking of 2800-odd civilian deaths and 7000 wounded in the first couple of months of this year. Pillay’s certain certainties were equally exposed for what they were when both UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s spokesperson and Under Secretary-General John Holmes claimed that these were unverifiable figures and they were not in the habit of counting bodies.
As though there was not enough garbage piling up in and around Colombo, up jumps a supposedly- learned law man to up the ante, as it were, with figures that seemed to work themselves out in some new-fangled geometric progression. Consider the profound words of this person called Prof. Boyle who is introduced as the professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law.
How prestigious this Law College is I have no idea. But if the statistics proffered by Prof Boyle are an indication of the reliability of its assessments or that of the professor himself then I suppose one cannot be faulted for taking it with a large dose of Epsom salt. In a note to Tamilnet, Prof Boyle is reported to have said that “with respect to the current situation in the Wanni where the lives and well-being of 250,000 Tamils are at risk and in grave danger the United States Government has an absolute obligation to intervene directly……..”.
The Tamilnet story was carried early last week. Whether it is exactly what the professor said or it is Tamilnet’s construction of his words one cannot be certain naturally. But assuming that the pro-LTTE website quoted him correctly, the learned professor does not appear to be very proficient in the matter of addition and subtraction which is usually taught to young school kids, at least in our part of the world.
Some extra-terrestrial being with more mathematical sense looking down on us would think that this was some crazy place. It is a war in which civilians are said to be dying each day. That is very likely true. But what drives one round the bend is those who try to manipulate and even manufacture statistics to mislead the world. According to different sources the daily death toll varies from a couple of dozen each day to a 100 daily according to a protestor in London which some UK media faithfully carried. Even if one takes the average figure of 50 a day it adds up to 350 a week and around 1500 a month. Add to this the 68,000 or so civilians who have escaped from the LTTE. If one takes a round figure of 70,000 and subtract that from the high figure of 200,000 trapped civilians it is impossible to arrive at the 250,000 civilians still in the no-fire zone, unless Prof Boyle employs a new math unknown to man.
Prof Boyle represents the kind of par-boiled argument many western agencies and diplomats are employing in an exercise of disinformation now that their confident predictions of no military victor in this war have been shattered. Some of them are now publicly stating what Under Secretary General John Holmes clearly said- that it is the LTTE that is preventing the civilians from leaving the no-fire zone to safety on the other side. If their humanitarian concerns are genuine then their ire should be directed at the LTTE for holding the civilians hostage and exposing them to danger.
That is why when British parliamentarians such as Labourite Keith Vaz and Liberal Simon Hughes play to the TV cameras whether on the streets or in parliament and the Tamil voters in their constituencies the more percipient people, their motives are hardly pure.
The writer is a serving Sri Lankan diplomat. |
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