Columns

After weeks of laying siege to Ukraine, the Russian leader did to one of the founding socialist republics of the now defunct Soviet Union, what his predecessors did in earlier times to Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

The Czechoslovak invasion I remember distinctly. I was in London when the situation in Prague was on the boil. Like in Ukraine the question during those weeks and months was whether Soviet troops would march into this Soviet satellite struggling to loosen the apron strings.

On August 19, 1968 afternoon, I flew into Vienna from London. At the prestigious Hotel Sacher where I was staying I got into an animated conversation with a hotel manager who insisted that Moscow, then under Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksei Kosygin would not invade. I differed. We made a wager — more in fun than anything else — that the loser buys the other a couple of drinks.

Next morning, August 20, when I went down for breakfast, the same manager, crestfallen now, apologised and switched on yet another TV set that showed Russian tanks rolling, apparently heading for the Czech capital Prague. The “Prague Spring” was turning into a disastrous winter.

I was hoping to enter Czechoslovakia that day with four Austrian journalists through Bratislava, the only open border at the time, but that is another story.

What does come to mind as they gather in Geneva for the ritual ‘hanging’ of Sri Lanka is how big and powerful nations such as Russia–despite the break-up of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev–are ready to intimidate and overpower smaller countries that do not toe their ideological line or pay homage to their political dogma, or even cock-a-snook at others to please domestic audiences.

This is not to say that Sri Lanka is an innocent victim and is being martyred in the name of human rights, rule of law and democracy. No sirree! It would surely be delusionary to deny that some of these problems that have now come to haunt the country are not the work of our own governments, the outcome of hasty and ill-thought of actions precipitated by some inexperienced and macho advisers in inner circles.

Political malignity, irresponsible policies and governance and sheer churlishness have led the country to where it is. It would be foolhardy to blame other nations for our political miscalculations and short sightedness.

That would be to presume that the Sri Lankan citizenry is unable to read the message loud and clear and the world outside is equally or more ignorant.

The more we act with mounting naivete the more we leave the doors in Geneva and elsewhere ajar for increasing numbers of critics, virulent propagandists and myth peddlers parading in the name of civil society to gather outside to spread gloom and doom and yell genocide.

Not that there are no genuine activists and others concerned with human rights or with ethnic, religious and personal grievances to raise in the wings of the official Geneva sessions, lacking an opportunity to do so inside.

But if these gatherings multiply, one major reason is that domestic policies and actions have created the environment for their voices to be heard and names of the allegedly harassed to be spread far and wide as victims of human rights violations and holes in the rule of law which we have promised to remedy.

Ever since UNHRC resolutions were moved against Sri Lanka, successive governments have acted belatedly, a few weeks or a couple of months before the Geneva sessions to convince the domestic constituency and more so the world outside that Colombo is responding to Council resolutions.

Releasing detainees held without charges or trial, amending repressive laws and tying up some other loose ends, might seem progressive measures. But when such action comes virtually on the eve of important council sessions at which Colombo is in the dock, many seem to regard these spurious gestures as lacking genuine intent. These last-minute reprieves are viewed as cynical exercises in magnanimity.

Such conduct leaves the doors open for those who have harmful intentions in mind — whether they be persons of Sri Lankan origin now living abroad and their local politicians dependent on the votes of antagonistic migrants to save their seats in parliament or local councils — to pick up cudgels against Sri Lanka.

Why some of those advocates of human rights do not show equal enthusiasm in castigating the policies of the state they now owe allegiance to with the same vigour and venom is rather mystifying.

Here in the UK, the Conservative government has introduced a Nationality and Borders’ Bill (NBB) that will be discussed by the Lords for the last time by end February. It has some highly obnoxious clauses that are essentially directed at the ethnic minorities — those of African, Asian and Caribbean origin.

While limited space does not permit a detailed examination, it is suffice to say that it has cleared the way for the Home Secretary to deprive persons of their citizenship even if they are born in Britain and live in Britain and so are British citizens.

But if their parents were born elsewhere which was at any time part of the British empire, they can be deprived and deported on the basis they are eligible for citizenship in another country.

What is even more heinous is that those deprived do not have to be informed of their loss of citizenship before being deported. Clause 9 hands over these powers to the Home Secretary to remove someone’s citizenship in secret without notification, effectively making appeals against such a decision impossible and statelessness a real possibility.

This clause has been described by respected legal experts as “astonishingly unjust”. It will affect the citizenship of almost half of all Asian British people and two in five of Black British.

This enhanced power for the government to deprive British-born persons of their citizenship was described as a “profound exercise of state power” by Baroness Shami Chakrabarti, a human rights lawyer and a former Shadow Attorney-General and Lord Simon Woolley, a racial equality activist, who have campaigned vigorously against this Bill.

This is only the tip of the iceberg in British moves to enhance powers of the state. I have not touched on the Police Bill that is designed to clamp down on street protests, the right to demonstrate and “stop and search” powers of the police thus shrinking the rights and freedoms of speech and association.

It sure is a profound exercise in hypocrisy when Britain and some other nations point an accusatory finger at others while violating the very international laws and conventions they hurl at others.

(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)