Lone crusader has Norway hitting the panic buttons

By Neville de Silva

Falk Rovik

As children many of us have read the tales of Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen. Those fairy tales surely gave us hours of pleasure as we entered a care free world of make believe. Now another Andersen from another Scandinavian nation has taken to writing ‘fairy’ tales. But this time it is about the real world, the dark world of politics, foreign intervention and duplicity. He has neither the felicity of language nor the capacity to make his fiction in the least bit believable.

Unlike his internationally-known name sake, this particular Andersen hardly brings pleasure to his readers. Rather he invites derision.
I refer to a letter written by Roy Freddy Andersen, the Head of Information of the Norwegian Foreign Ministry published in this newspaper last Sunday. What prompted this letter all the way from Oslo was apparently an article published in The Sunday Times on April 15 in which an organisation called Norwegians Against Terrorism (NAT) had made some serious charges against Norway and its conduct as a facilitator in the Sri Lanka peace process.

This open letter to the Editor of The Sunday Times was distributed to other media too, though the response is to what appeared in this paper. The two Andersens are as far apart as Socrates from a smorgasbord. But what links the two is not only that they have a common family name and are from the same region. Most readers would be familiar with Hans Christian Andersen’s well known tale “The Emperor’s Clothes”. What reminded me of that story is Norway’s nudity though there are many Oslo-funded NGOs and other busy bodies to sing the praises of Norway’s attire when, in fact, like the emperor, it has no clothes on. Having tried to dismiss some of the charges against Norway’s dubious conduct and its sometimes clandestine and questionable relationship with the LTTE, Freddy Andersen ends his letter thus: “This information is being disseminated on behalf of the so-called Norwegians Against Terrorism (NAT).

NAT is not a registered organisation in Norway. It has only one known member, and there is no indication of any other Norwegian membership base.” Right. Dear Freddy does not explain what it means to be a registered organisation and whether it has advantages, if any, over non-registered ones. But the fact is that there is such an organisation as NAT and it seems to worry Freddy. Now if it has only one member, as Andersen strongly implies, why is it that Oslo has been carrying out a campaign against this organisation dating back to August 2004 when a Sri Lankan organisation in association with NAT held a conference in Oslo to expose Norway’s dirty hand in the Sri Lankan imbroglio.

At that time stories appear to have been planted on friendly Norwegian journalists castigating Falk Rovik, the NAT organiser as a convicted killer and decrying the conference with the help of Sri Lankan NGO wallah such as Jehan Perera of the National Peace Council who was quoted as saying that the Sri Lankan organisers were “extremists.” If NAT is only a one man show and Rovik had an unsavoury past and therefore not to be taken seriously – which is what all the adverse publicity is about – why is the Norwegian government and its money-receiving friends in Sri Lanka, so very concerned? Three years after Rovik was first hounded over his past why is Oslo pursuing him all the way to Sri Lanka?

Readers will recall that in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale about the emperor, it was one little boy who exposed the truth that the emperor had no clothes on while all around him, courtiers, hangers-on and the public extolled the emperor’s new clothes. The Norwegians cannot be unaware of the moral of that story. One individual can expose all the lies and the glorification that are carefully crafted to keep a false image intact.

In the minds of some in the Norwegian political establishment such as that shooting star Eric Solheim who emerged from obscurity, Rovik is that little boy in the emperor’s tale and he needs to be destroyed publicly so that his charges of Norwegian collusion with a terrorist organisation will be erased along with him. So when it was announced that Falk Rovik would be in Colombo to participate in another conference along with Sri Lankans critical of the Norwegian role in the peace process, Oslo rolled out the same character-discrediting material that they had used three years earlier.

Such material, I am made to understand, was not made available only to the Sri Lankan media but to media organisations elsewhere as well. This sustained campaign against Rovik, somewhat similar but on a smaller scale to Amnesty International’s foam ball campaign against Sri Lanka, started with an attack on his past and later to discredit him by denying the charges made by him. I could understand the latter. Oslo has the right-unfortunately the kind of right not available to those living behind the LTTE’s cadjan curtain – to reply to charges made against it.

But it tests one’s credulity when Rovik is attacked through the media as a person who had been convicted some years ago. If there is some causal connection between having past convictions and making false accusations of a political nature, it sure escapes me. This is the same kind of illogicality that invested Norwegian ambassador Hans Brattskar’s spat with another local newspaper in which he raised issues of journalistic conduct and the credibility of news sources which he blithely ignored when dealing with others such as Ulf Henricsson, the former head of the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission and his hastily written last report.

It is interesting that unlike earlier, the letter to this paper does not come from Ambassador Brattskar who has been badly battle-scarred in his confrontations with the media, but all the way from Oslo. Andersen (Roy Freddy not Hans Christian) wants us to believe that his government has acted in the best interests of Sri Lanka, that as a facilitator it has acted with the decorum and propriety demanded by its role, that it has respected all laws and not had clandestine dealings with the LTTE.

If so, one would have expected the head of information of the Norwegian foreign ministry to deal with ALL the accusations levelled against Norway by Rovik. However Freddy Andersen has been selective. He writes that the foreign ministry would “like to set the record straight on some of the allegations” and goes on to deal with them.

He says that Norway has not provided military training or military equipment to the LTTE. It is difficult for us to know whether this is true or false. But it might be recalled that the Norwegians claimed the visit to the Rena camp in April 2003 by an LTTE delegation was to acquaint them with Norway’s peacekeeping role and how they prepare for it.

But judging by the video of that display by Norwegian troops it seems to be much more. It shows troops armed with shields and wearing headgear in formations and accompanied by an armed vehicle. It seems more like riot control. Is this to cow civilians in LTTE controlled areas in case there is dissension? The video also shows how to conduct body searches etc. Naturally the video does not show what else went on. We are expected to believe what the Norwegians say and that is not easy given their past.

It would take too long to catalogue all the acts of omission and commission of the Norwegians since its involvement in the peace process – a tragic mistake many would say. But there are a few points that need to be raised. Andersen says that all financing of projects with Norwegian money is audited according to regulations. But what he does not deny is that large sums have been doled out to various NGOs and others in Sri Lanka which Rovik exposed through documents obtained from his own foreign ministry.

If some researchers sit down to collate all statements issued and remarks made by local NGOs in support of the peace process, in support of Norway and against the Sri Lanka government’s response to terrorist atrocities they should come up with some intriguing results.

Perhaps Oslo University might even grant a doctorate for a thesis on this.
Off hand one could say that most such observations would come from NGOs that receive Norwegian money for their upkeep and for so-called conflict resolution and peace studies. The accounts might be audited. The important question is whether the Norwegian tax payers are fully aware how their money is being spent, by whom and for what.

They are also surely not aware how Norwegian politicians and diplomats worked overtime to stop the European Union from introducing sanctions against the LTTE and the eventually banning it, with the help of Sweden and Denmark who are members of the EU. They are also surely unaware how Oslo worked hard to have an anti-Sri Lanka resolution before the UN Human Rights Council.
A word of advice to dear Freddy and Brattskar. Please put your clothes on. Your nudity is far more unsavoury than Rovik’s past.