Amnesty, oh, Amnesty where art thou fled, child?

By Neville de Silva

If those wunder kinder at Amnesty International had been invested with the slightest degree of sensitivity they would not have made such a mess of its human rights campaign. One thing that unites the Sri Lankan people, irrespective of prevailing differences, hardships and even conflict, is an unprovoked assault on the country's cricket team; any attempt directly or indirectly to drag it into the centre of our concerns.

This is evident here in Britain, too, where many persons of Sri Lankan origin across racial and religious lines support and publicly cheer the national team whenever they show up here or when the team is playing elsewhere. Like in many other countries where sports bring friend and foe together, Sri Lankan cricket is a binding glue, even if it is not everlasting.

Some years ago British cricket writer Christopher Martin-Jenkins was quite surprised to learn that there were more spectators at the annual Royal-Thomian cricket encounter than at a Sri Lanka-England test match being played at the same time. Naturally to old boys of the two schools, this was a more important event than seeing England at play even though they might have taught us the game. And long after that test between the two nations we were still playing by the rules, rules we had learned when cricket was still in the hands of gentlemen and being played in gentlemanly fashion, not by match fixers, bribe takers and drugs consumers, nor by those who seek to taint the game by their insidious campaigns that are purported to raise great moral concerns .

So when Amnesty International (AI) now wants the world to tell us how to play by the rules one is naturally amazed since the rules are being openly waived in some sports where hooligans reign such as football, and in the public domain in this very country where AI is headquartered.

The issue is this. Amnesty International can point its collective finger all it wants at those who are perceived to be guilty of or are turning a Nelsonian eye to, human rights abuses. That is its legitimate right, as everyone, whether organisation or individual, has the right to free expression, especially those who live in the Wanni where dissenting voices are stilled. But does that concern AI? No, to judge by its own deafening silence on this abuse. Surely the right to freedom of expression is also a human right as any reading of the human rights conventions would show.

While it is true that in recent years AI's credibility has suffered in the eyes of the wider public because of what many see as its prejudicial and one-sided advocacy, one should not deny its right to raise human rights concerns. As people with a conscience we cannot and should not ignore the sufferings of our fellow beings whether we agree or not with their ideological stance or value systems.

What has raised the ire of the Sri Lankan public across the political spectrum and cultural and economic lines, is AI's crassness in trying to cross the threshold from the political to the non-political, thereby dragging a sports team into the political arena and possible embarrassment or disgrace.

Perhaps AI's campaign organisers are a throw back to Roman times when Christians were thrown to the lions for public enjoyment and gladiatorial murder was applauded by a blood thirsty public seeking ghoulish entertainment. Perhaps AI still hankers after the Roman diversion called panis et circensis-bread and circuses.

AI's campaign, despite its specious protestations about not targeting the Sri Lanka cricket team, is an attempt at public humiliation of our national sportsmen by belittling the nation and accusing it of human rights violations. Amnesty's campaign reached critical mass when it decided to launch it to coincide with the World Cup and chose to use spurious cricket balls to press home the connection.

AI was so out of touch with the realities of the Sri Lankan situation that it did not seem to have anticipated the kind of reaction it would receive from persons of Sri Lankan origin from round the world. Even the opposition United National Party and the so-called Free Media Movement both of which have been critical of human rights abuses, denounced the AI campaign.

Such is the lack of AI's understanding of the Sri Lankan psyche and the cementing effect of cricket that its campaign organisers rushed in like the proverbial bull that smashed up the china. Amnesty tries to cover its nudity by saying the campaign was not intended to target the cricket team in the West Indies. But AI had alerted its activists in Bermuda and the Bahamas to join the campaign, according to media reports.

Unless the Bahamas has drifted away from its previous location due to global warming or AI has some problems with its knowledge of geography, the Bahamas is one of the three main island groups that make up the West Indies. Bermuda itself is not all that far away from the Caribbean.

Why would this campaign be carried out from those two locations particularly unless AI wanted its publicity material including the foam balls, to find their way into the islands where the games are being played? Surely AI cannot also be that naïve to believe that news of this campaign would not reach our cricketers trying to concentrate all their energies on the games ahead of them, given today's multiple means of communication.

Though Amnesty includes the LTTE and other militant groups in the campaign by 'selling' it as a campaign against human rights abuses in Sri Lanka, by concentrating attention on Sri Lanka the country, it creates a perception in the world outside that it is aimed at the Sri Lanka government.

This is precisely what AI intended because it wanted to minimise the impact on the LTTE which it could not help but include. By so doing AI has conveniently opened the doors for the Tigers to now make the preposterous demand for a sports boycott of Sri Lanka as happened to South Africa.

The pro-LTTE website TamilNet quoted the Tiger's spokeswoman Selvy Navaruban as welcoming the Amnesty campaign saying it would raise awareness abroad and also among the majority Sinhala population about the "brutality of their government against the Tamil population."

Navaruban not only shows total ignorance of the South African circumstances that led to the ban on sporting contacts but also blithely ignores her own organisation's dismal record on human rights and the numerous international reports that condemn the LTTE unequivocally.

This has been made possible for her by the manner in which AI framed the campaign, perhaps deliberately. We already know how at the behest of top officials of Amnesty, the report of an AI survey mission to eastern Sri Lanka headed by Clare Castillejo in August 2005 was deliberately not made public for several months despite assurances given.

That report was highly critical of the LTTE. But since AI's secretary-general and or her officials wanted to be welcomed and accepted by the Kilinochchi leadership that report was delayed. It would be legitimate to ask, given the background to that episode, whether the anti-LTTE findings were watered down or other neutralising remarks were incorporated to make the report more palatable to the Tigers.
And what happened to Clare Castillejo? According to the rumour mill, and one cannot vouch for this, she left the organisation and joined the department for international development. Some say things were made uncomfortable for her at AI and she quit. As I said this is all in the realm of speculation.

But AI's attempt to whitewash the Tigers is no speculation, the story goes. Which brings one right back to AI's campaign slogan that each cricket match needs an umpire (actually two!) to make objective decisions. One wonders when AI's campaign strategists last played or followed cricket. They probably don't know that the rules have changed. It is because the umpires were making many mistakes - and therefore making subjective, not objective, decisions contrary to AI's assertion - that there is now a third umpire and even a match referee to adjudicate on a range of matters. Even the umpires are linked by communication systems and the third umpire is provided with TV replays.

Like umpires make mistakes, so do these watchdogs who labour under the delusion that they are infallible and their observations and recommendations must be accepted ex-cathedra. One must thank Amnesty for one thing at least — citing the analogy of the umpire. The game of cricket has discovered that umpires, like other ordinary people, err too. So they have revamped and modernised the system by having a third umpire.

Likewise, organisations such as Amnesty International cannot be relied upon to make objective judgements. As in the case of cricket, a host of facts prove this contention.

A century or so after Christ the poet Juvenal wrote in his Satires:

"Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes".
For the benefit of AI let me translate it into English. "But who is to guard the guards themselves?" he asked.
Indeed. Who should chastise watchdogs like AI when they continuously bark at the moon and let the real culprits get away unscathed?