Reports indicate that Gordon Weiss, a former UN spokesman in Sri Lanka, has been doing the media circuit to air his views on the last stages of Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE. The string of articles and interviews he has arranged appears to be aimed at garnering advance publicity for a book he is to publish. Having left the UN as well as Sri Lanka towards the end of 2009, Weiss seems to be exercising a new found freedom to speak out on his version of what happened during the last months in the battle zone.
Some of Weiss’s recent utterances to the media have been intriguing. BBC’s Sinhala service (25.04.11) started an interview like this:
“Governments that provided weapons to the Sri Lankan military during the last stages of the war should also be investigated, says a former UN spokesman. Gordon Weiss told BBC Sinhala service, Sandeshaya that there were high civilian casualties when the Sri Lankan military moved in to overtake the Tamil Tigers in May 2009.”
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| Gordon Weiss |
A little further down it quotes Weiss saying that "If foreign governments knew what was going on in this latter stage of the war and continued to supply arms, then I think it is a matter worthy of investigations in those countries."
Still further down the report says:
“The former UN spokesman said the Indian government which wanted to "see the Tamil Tigers destroyed" was "fully aware" of the real situation in the battle zone.” I believe that Indians were aware of the civilian casualties that were happening, because they had pretty good intelligence inside the siege zone," he told BBC Sandeshaya. “
Many questions arise here. Did Weiss think the Indians were supplying arms to Sri Lanka (they were not) and is that why he makes special reference to them? (Note that he mentions no other country by name to Sandeshaya.) Would Weiss like to have India “investigated” because “they were aware of the civilian casualties” and “they had pretty good intelligence?”
Under whose directive would such an “investigation” take place? What would be its modalities? Would India agree? Would the UN Secretary General be constrained to appoint yet another ‘expert panel’ to advise him on whether India was culpable for some reason (what reason?) and should India be punished? And oh my goodness, wouldn’t this be an awful lot of bother for an already embattled Secretary General…?
But perhaps it was not India that Weiss had in mind when he said that countries that supplied arms to Sri Lanka should be investigated. Perhaps it was just the countries that DID supply arms. But this brings up another tricky question. Why only Sri Lanka? If Weiss’s argument is to be taken to its logical conclusion, it would mean that countries that supply weapons to any conflict region of the world (in the knowledge that civilian casualties were taking place) would also require “investigation.”
Who supplied weapons to the Arab despots who are using those weapons to crack down on people rising up in rebellion against their tyranny across the Arab world? Which country’s Prime Minister did a full tour of the Middle East with arms manufacturers in tow, no sooner the crises erupted in Tunisia and Egypt? Whose weapons were used in the butchery that took place in Duekoue and elsewhere in Ivory Coast, during the UN-sanctioned intervention that helped to dislodge the losing candidate and instal the (western-backed) winner of their November election? Whose weapons continue to kill hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the ongoing battle against al Qaeda?
It looks as if Weiss would like to take on the whole world! Or perhaps he will be content with just the permanent members of the Security Council? Or would they be exempt if they could prove they didn’t know how many civilians were being killed with their weapons? This is all very confusing!
After the Sandeshaya report, the current UN Spokesman Tom Hockley told TNL Radio that his predecessor Gordon Weiss “is entitled to express his own views.” Two days later Weiss gave another interview on ABC Lateline, where he talked about the UN role in Sri Lanka during the latter stages of the war, saying the UN got some things wrong etc. Hockley the same day hastened to tell the Daily Mirror that “The UN does not endorse any statements made by former UN spokesman Gordon Weiss” and that his comments are his personal views.
This was not the first time the UN distanced itself from Weiss’ comments. In February 2010 he appeared on an ABC television programme where he cited “anything between 10,000 and 40,000” civilian deaths in the ‘seige zone.’ After that the Office of the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sri Lanka issued a statement saying “These views, communicated to the media are his personal ones and do not represent those of the United Nations.”
Many observers in Sri Lanka thought the figure of 20,000 civilian deaths, claimed by the UK ‘Times’ in their ‘investigation’ published May 29 2009, was bizarre - not least because of the peculiar method of its calculation. In arriving at that figure the report cited ‘unnamed UN sources’ saying that after the end of April the toll surged, “with an average of 1,000 civilians killed each day until May 19” when the war ended. The seeming correspondence between the Times’ ‘unnamed UN source,’ and the astronomical civilian death toll figures now in circulation elsewhere that can be traced to Weiss, is curious.
The number of civilian deaths is one of the most contentious areas of the report of the UNSG’s advisory panel on Sri Lanka. It states categorically that “there is no authoritative figure for civilian deaths or injuries in the Vanni in the final phases of the war.” But it is scattered with a variety of statistics, even soaring to the giddy height of 75,000. In spite of the highly inconclusive nature of the numbers, Weiss hails the report for its ‘absolute clarity’ and for being ‘unambiguous’.
It appears that Weiss makes his comments in earnest. But the question is, are they anywhere near the truth? If anything, sections of western media and now the UNSG report would seem to show that a lot of overseas reportage on Sri Lanka is driven not by a pursuit of truth, but the pursuit of agendas.
Be that as it may, Weiss’s media interactions and his observations on weighty matters such as the need to ‘investigate’ countries supplying weapons to Sri Lanka etc., etc., should give the prospective reader a sense of the exciting creative writing experience that awaits them in his book.
The writer is a senior freelance journalist
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