Editorial

If last week we wrote about the utter chaos unfolding in the United Kingdom’s domestic affairs which overflowed to the suspension of its Parliament, its external affairs seem blissfully in a world of its own, teaching other countries how best to manage theirs.

Having taken over the baton from the United States to browbeat smaller nations, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office is suffering, almost haemorrhaging, from some massive inferiority complex by the looks of it.

On the one hand, the European Union is giving Britain the runaround over the ‘Brexit’ issue which its politicians brought on themselves; The US cares ‘tuppence’ for Britain’s views on matters these days; and the rest of the world has little time for the UK as well.

But as chair of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) core group on Sri Lanka, the UK’s International Ambassador for Human Rights, while gratuitously conceding that there have been “important developments since 2015 which demonstrate good intentions on the part of the Government”, adds the “pace of progress has remained slow” etc. The subject is on reconciliation in the post-armed conflict years. Calling for a “clear timeline for action”, it aligns itself with the “concern” expressed by the UNHRC chief over the appointment of the country’s new army commander.

The Ambassador’s colleague in New York had probably not transmitted a cable to London referring to what our former envoy to the UN headquarters said only three months ago, that: “oversimplified narratives of events that are nuanced and complex in nature” are being made through “prisms of stereotypical labels” by international players commenting on the situation in Sri Lanka. These, he said, were statements that demonstrate a limited understanding of events and are an expression of preconceived opinions.

Or probably, the ‘Foggy Bottom’ of London chose to ignore that advice anyway and merrily marches on with its own agenda.

Needless to say, the UK is facing challenges of an unprecedented scale on reconciliation within its own borders. In the House of Commons just the other day, a turbaned MP lashed out at the Prime Minister for making “derogatory and racist” remarks in a newspaper article and asked him when his Government was going to have a debate on the increasing Islamophobia sweeping the country, as had been promised by the Premier and his Cabinet colleagues on national television (during a June debate among seniors when they were contesting for the ruling party’s leadership). The PM responded by saying he had Muslim ancestors, but dodged answering the specific question about Islamophobia in the UK. Now, he is being accused by Scotland’s highest civil court of “lying” to the Queen.

The British Labour Party MP’s comments came just days after anti-racism charity ‘Tell MAMA” found there had been a 375% week-on-week increase in Islamophobic incidents since that column by the current Prime Minister. The Prime Minister shot back at the Labour Party and questioned the “virus of anti-Semitism that is now rampant in its ranks”.

And so, these accusations and counter-accusations about British politicians and their party policies on race and religion come at a time the British International Human Rights Ambassador is asking for timelines for good race relations in Sri Lanka.

Knife attacks on immigrants leading to death or grievous hurt are on the rise in Britain’s capital, London. Modern Britain is no longer the liberal state it wants to portray itself as and its recent foreign policy ranges from its illegal invasion of Iraq, to the secret arms sales to Saudi Arabia to bomb civilians in Yemen, to its ‘side-support’ for the US wars in the whole of West Asia. This can hardly be associated with the peace and reconciliation it calls for in Sri Lanka. Reconciliation, like charity, begins at home.

And for those who organised yet another get-together with those British MPs at Westminster last week to commemorate the International Day for Victims of Enforced Disappearances, taking advantage as they did of a possible snap general election in the UK that has sent MPs scurrying to seek votes, charity begins at the home they left behind for a better future.

They have left behind those who couldn’t – or didn’t want to, leave their beloved Motherland and to whom have been fed dozens upon dozens of paper resolutions and Diaspora demands for ‘peace and reconciliation’, and very little else.

It is not for the first time we say this; in the North there is a buzz about the ‘Talking Diaspora” and the ‘Doing Diaspora’; those who lobby foreign lawmakers and bureaucrats in foreign capitals to grab headlines, and those who have returned to their beloved ‘homeland’, rolled up their sleeves and helped rebuild the war ravaged province. The former have ‘long pockets and short hands’, the local inhabitants say disparagingly; the others are held in high esteem as they ‘walk the talk’.

All that the Provincial Council did in the North was to pass resolutions by the reams calling for war crimes tribunals against the Armed Forces. When the Chief Minister went to the UK and the US to ask the Diaspora to invest in economic projects that were identified to help uplift the province, he returned without a dollar or a pound.

The upliftment of the North has fallen back on the Central Government. There is no financial support coming from the West or the Diaspora. So too is the responsibility of the Government not to ignore the many recommendations made by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) without mouthing mere platitudes of a South African-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission on top of the LLRC recommendations.

The South African model is not necessarily a successful model to follow though it was hailed at the beginning of the post- apartheid era.

For the moment, there is a flurry of speechifying emanating from the North and promises galore with an eye on the vote bank, come the presidential election. They are being promised 13 plus, development and peace, if elected.

The voters of the North must not feel discriminated against. Those of the South have also been promised the moon and the stars, only to be left staring at them.