Columns

Some of our politicians appear to have a penchant for autocratic rulers. Others are more likely to label these foreign rulers with local admirers ‘dictators’ and perhaps rightly so.

What’s in a name after all, as the Bard said. Never mind if they are leftists, rightists, centrists, or of some other unconscionable type such as the hated Adolf Hitler.

Our own politicians are egged on by supporters or their saffron-robed promoters to emulate such despicable leaders as Hitler. More recently some lowly state minister also from the hills like the robed monk and whose knowledge (if any) of 20 century European history appears terribly rusty encouraged our own leader to play a modern Hitler.

In recent years, our favourite foreign ruler seems to be President Xi Jinping who often wears what some like to call a constant smile that is said to hide many sins. Any time the country is in trouble, a call to Xi with a simple request for a few dollars more and the bowl is filled though some of our people might say chee, chee for asking Xi the whole time.

All these years Xi has been pulling us out of the morass we keep slipping into with an unbelievable efficacy that people wish was displayed in daily governance.

That is probably why (and to pat the Chinese leader on the back) we are anxious to replicate some policies and practices adopted by the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee. But, as is oft stated, there is nothing called a free lunch especially when the cheapest buth packet today is 300 rupees.

Scant wonder that some of my old Lake House colleagues are still around to recall the days when the best harbour lunch packet was available
at five rupees but that’s another story.

And now like an answer to the prayers to deities both at home and abroad to rescue Sri Lanka from the prevailing ignominy, the autocratic militarist Vladimir Putin has come to the aid of our beleaguered leaders to save their collective face from being rubbed on the floors of the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

At the time of writing the 47-member UN Human Rights Council has pushed back by a day or two the debate on Sri Lanka based on the updated report on the country by the High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet.

But one does not need to wait for the outcome of that debate or be a soothsayer to offer a general comment on the content and tenor of the debate when the sparring begins.

The Bachelet report is clear enough. It indicates the areas of new concern besides pinpointing previous shortcomings which have remained untouched or where progress has been tardy.

The high-powered delegation to Geneva included three lawyers and the state minister of pharmaceutical production and supply and a retired admiral now a foreign affairs maestro after being all at sea.

What on earth state minister Prof Jayasumana is doing there would remain a mystery to the public, unless his mandate is to bring enough drugs back to fill the yawning gaps at home.

If the sturdy delegation was expected like the Roman soldier Horatius Cocles to hold the bridge across the Tiber against the Etruscan advance somewhere in the late 6th century BC, there is some speculation whether up to the time of writing it had managed to block even a suspension bridge against the more confident critics.

Foreign Minister Prof GL Peiris’s speech to the High-Level Segment is the only address to the Council so far and a friend who watched his address on the screen described it as “pedestrian”.

One cannot blame Minister Peiris entirely. If his was a lacklustre performance it was largely because he had a bad brief and not all the accompanying help could, like Humpty Dumpty, be put together in a really impressive defence.

I listened to his speech on the widely-circulated video and separately read the text. If the minister’s speech lacked the perceptive thrust as he was obviously hoping for including criticisms of the UNHRC itself for its purported failings and seeming lack of objectivity, perhaps it might have been more effective if his attempted defence of the actions of successive Sri Lankan governments had the objectivity he finds lacking in the council itself.

Prof Peiris talked of striking “a just balance between human rights and national security” when dealing with terrorism. But then he left it hanging in the air. Since national security and human rights both concern the people of Sri Lanka who are reportedly sovereign — at least that is what our constitution says — and in whose interest all this is being supposedly done, it behoves him to spell out what this purported balance is and what type of scales he uses to achieve this balance.

He then appears to gloat over the fact, both in the Government’s response to Michelle Bachelet’s country report update, and in his address to the High-Level Segment of the Council, about the amendments to the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) he tabled in parliament.

That is a small step for the Government but certainly not a giant step for Sri Lanka. If this was what he called a “just balance” then there is a huge gap between that cupful of amendments and the lip. As many have pointed out some of the most obnoxious provisions of the PTA remain.

More over the minister appears to suggest that the PTA is being used only to combat terrorism. Would that be true, if truth is what the people seek? But poor rhetoric hardly provides truth which is in short supply like many other commodities and only opens the door to more criticism.

Hardly had the minister’s words left his mouth when a group of 15 UN experts issued a statement calling for an immediate moratorium on the PTA saying “There is a grave risk to the rights and liberties of people who may be detained arbitrarily, especially religious and ethnic minorities, and the use of the law may curtail political dissent with no effective due process guarantees,” the experts said.

Dr Colvin.R de Silva, a renowned lawyer and a practicing one at that, used to say in parliament that “those who come for equity must come with clean hands” a worthy maxim for Sri Lanka’s politicians and some of its lawyers to adhere to.

With little space left, one could only say that the vicious conflict now on in Ukraine that has caused untold deaths mainly civilian, has not only roused world anger as the UNGA resolution shows, but also the intense attention of the United Nations in New York and Geneva now engaged in trying to deal with war and the a million or more refugees who have poured into other European countries.

This catastrophe has hugely overshadowed the accumulated criticism Sri Lanka was to face in Geneva especially from a group of western nations that have their own cupboards full of skeletons to hide as they endeavour to open the cupboards of others.

One might call it a lucky escape for Colombo. But all is not forgotten as the UNHRC will meet again in September and European Union will have its own say when the GSP+ issue comes up
for consideration.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London)