Columns
British arrogance and ignorance live on
View(s):Hardly had the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government taken its seat when the two western powers mainly responsible for the resolution at the UNHRC most critical of Sri Lanka sent their diplomatic path-finders to sound out where the new Government stood and where it is going.
The first to arrive a few days ago was Britain’s Foreign Office Minister Hugo Swire. This was his second coming since he made an appearance at that hugely extravagant summit called the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) which brought little or no tangible benefits to this country but did so to some individuals.
Some might recall Hugo Swire’s rather obnoxious and irrelevant political intervention during the Commonwealth Business Forum, a side event of CHOGM, in November 2013 that left many foreign and local participants wondering whether the British were losing their marbles having earlier lost their colonies.
Swire travelled once again to Jaffna faithfully following in the footsteps of his leader David Cameron who, with the British media in tow, made CHOGM a mere convenient platform to peddle his wares on human rights, war crimes and media freedom, little realising how unhealthy it is to look up and spit.
If Cameron made a great show of British concern for media freedom in Sri Lanka then, Swire swore by the Cameron cornucopia and played his role as his master’s voice even up to the uppity public school snootiness that the great leader is often wont to display in public.
One cannot quarrel with the British if they wish to urge that the perceived grievances of the Tamil community be addressed and solutions found. Some might well argue that as the British parliamentary elections draw near, British politicians, some of them dependent on the minority Tamil vote for their parliamentary survival are likely to raise their voices by more than a few decibels as happened a week ago at a Westminster Hall debate in the Commons on Sri Lanka.
There will be more of the same as we move towards the May elections. Perhaps this is excusable. After all we went through an election only the other day and those who followed the campaign closely enough as I did for nearly two months, know some of the zany platform and media arguments that were raised to insult and humiliate political opponents.
But nothing is so galling as the attempts of the present British Government to hector others about media freedom when it has done more to damage and destroy that freedom in the UK.
Coming from David Cameron and his cohorts these lectures on the lack of press freedom elsewhere sound so hollow. For it is Britain under the present government that has moved strongly to stifle the freedom that Britain had safeguarded for some 300 years and has done so with political stealth undermining the democratic processes that it so vociferously advocates to others.
Through the anachronistic mechanism of a Royal Charter agreed to by party leaders in the dead of night, Britain’s political establishment sought to impose what had been formulated by the media.
Britain’s Foreign Office Minister Hugo Swire meeting President Maithripala Sirisena as Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera looks on.
I dare say the system as it operated had its faults and shortcomings. I should know because I clashed with the system nearly 15 years ago.
Not only did the Cameron initiative run into a barrage of criticism but it also laid bare Britain’s spurious claim to be in the forefront of defending media freedom against political marauders in the Commonwealth and outside it.
Those who have followed the battle in Britain to keep the tentacles of state intrusions from throttling the media would well know the doings of security agencies and other institutions to strangle the right of the media to expose government shady deals in both the foreign and domestic spheres.
It was not too many month ago that the heavy hand of the law came down hard on the Guardian newspaper for publishing leaks by whistle blower Edward Snowden that exposed the insidious ways in which so-called champions of democracy acted in violation of international laws that they advocate other nations should assiduously adhere too.
Not only did law enforcement agencies enter the Guardian offices and destroy the computer hard drives that contained the source material but threatened journalists with legal action.
Besides this threatening behaviour and intimidation of journalists and the media, the Metropolitan Police have been using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) which is intended to deal with crimes and criminal activity, to tap the phones of journalists and obtain their phone records in an attempt to identify their sources.
The other day the Interception of Communications Commissioner’s Office reported that police forces have obtained the phone records of 82 journalists in the last three years in violation of the law including European law.
This signifies the creeping intrusion of the state and its agencies against one of the most sacred freedoms that Britain has safeguarded over three centuries.
Yet it is we who are being lectured to by the likes of Hugo Swire and others in the British parliament when Sri Lanka has recently begun unshackling the restrictions on the media which includes the proposed introduction of a Right to Information law and lifting the curbs on some websites.
Moreover, the Government has announced that it will remove the restrictions imposed hitherto on visits by foreign journalists to the country.
The more one listens to debates in the Commons on Sri Lanka the more one is struck by both the arrogance and ignorance publicly displayed. At the recent debate Conservative MP Bob Blackman, for instance, made a statement relating to security that must surely rank high as a stark display of colonial arrogance.
He said, ” We have allowed a situation to develop” (meaning the British I suppose) where in south of Sri Lanka, the Chinese have built a major airport and a sea port that are close to what are for the world strategic lanes.
“That is a threat, I believe, to western civilisation and our links to the east”. If these two installations are a threat to western civilisation then surely that civilisation must be terribly threadbare and in need of major repair.
Such is Blackman’s understanding of the impending threat to western civilisation that he wants Sri Lanka to answer (to him and the western world I suppose) why “that situation has been allowed to happen”.
I mean is this chap for real or just another ignorant Tory who is simply warming a seat and claiming expenses in excess of the actual amount. According to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, Mr. Blackman has made 700 “inaccurate” claims since January 2013 and has been asked to repay £1000.
He should worry less about the threat to western civilisation and spend some time improving his arithmetic so that a distance of 33 miles will not appear as a 54-mile round trip.
As for Sri Lanka answering questions regarding the building of airports and sea-ports by the Chinese I thought the days when we had to seek the permission of a decadent empire is long gone.
There is much more to be said about that debate but space does not permit it. Perhaps at another time.