US
First Lady Hillary Clinton pays her respect to Mother Teresa at her state
funeral service at Netaji stadium yesterday. Many VIP's laid wreaths for Mother
Teresa at the funeral - Reuter
CALCUTTA, Saturday (AFP)- Mother Teresa's "poorest of the poor" were notable by their absence at the requiem mass celebrated at the Nobel Peace Laureate's state funeral here on Saturday.
Those who did attend complained they had been marginalised from the event.
Most of the crowds watching the Roman Catholic missionary's funeral cortege and its military escort pass through the city seemed to be middle class, white-collar workers.
"The people closest to her are not being allowed to take part. I don't know who this Hillary Clinton is," said Anugrah Tiwari, a 42-year-old blind man from the industrial town Durgapur about 200 kilometres (miles) from Calcutta.
"We have come from miles away and we should be allowed to get near to Mother Teresa, rather than the top people." Jitendra Kumar Trivedi, 26, a teacher at a girl's school, added: "Mother belonged to everybody, not only to VIPs. We all came from a long distance and we want to see her."
Mother Teresa, who died on September 5, won the Nobel prize for her work among the poor and destitute in Calcutta's slums.
The Missionaries of Charity, the order she founded in 1950, had asked for half of the 12,000 seats in the Netaji stadium where a mass was held for Mother Teresa on Saturday to be reserved for the people she championed.
But volunteer helpers in the stadium said the number was far less.
Deepa Gupta and Neha Jain, two high school student volunteers, said: "We saw very few poor people. There should have been more."
There were reports before Saturday's state funeral that Calcutta's Archbishop, Henry D'Souza, and the Missionaries of Charity had been concerned about the military style of the event and the lack of the poor likely to take part.
In public, however, they said India's decision to give Mother Teresa a funeral normally reserved for national leaders should be seen as an honour.
Madhusudhan Mandal, a bare-topped blind man with a red towel around his waist, leant on a stick as he argued with police blocking his way to the stadium.
"I came from Bishnupur today by bus. It's around 250 kilometres (155 miles) from here. I came to see Mother and I came to get some money.
"Somebody told me they are giving money to people like us outside the stadium."
A policeman moved him on, complaining: "There are letting all kinds of people through here."
A group of 10 ragpickers who live off refuse tips, were sitting behind the main crowds outside the stadium.
Mohammed Dawood, a Moslem who said he was about 35 years old, said they had never seen Mother Teresa.
"We came to see her because we heard she was great," he said.
Neena Devi, a Hindu woman in the group, was asked why they were sitting away from the main crowd.
"That's because the police always drive us away. We tried to go near but were turned back. We just came to see what she looked like."
Salim Khan, a fruit juice seller in a dirty white cap and a sarong, said he lived near the Missionaries of Charity headquarters in Calcutta. He saw nothing to grumble about.
"We are small people — why should they allow us inside?" he said.
Meanwhile Hillary Clinton left here Saturday after praying with "deep sadness" at the grave of Mother Teresa and spending time with orphans at a home set up by her Missionaries of Charity order.
Before leaving on her private jet for Washington, Clinton said she was "moved by the warmth of the citizens of Calcutta."
The US first lady also said she had accepted an invitation from the Marxist government of West Bengal to visit the state capital of Calcutta again, but did not elaborate.
Clinton was the only visiting foreign dignitary invited to Mother Teresa's hedquarters after the Roman Catholic nun's state funeral, attended by presidents, queens, prime ministers and a host of international VIPs.
The 87-year-old nun, who died on September 5, was laid to rest in Mother Teresa's headquarters, Mother House, at a private burial after the state funeral with full military honours.
All Ceylon Tamil Congress leader Kumar Ponnambalam in an open letter to Tamil party leaders has asked whether they were perpetrating a fraud on the Tamil people.
The following is the text of his letter to leaders of the EPDP, EPRLF, EROS, PLOTE, TELO and the TULF.
I write this open letter to you because your silence is deafening at this moment. I write this open letter to you through the English papers because for long you have said one thing to the Sinhalese and another thing to the Tamils. Somebody must cry halt to your deception.
Your matriarch has just launched "a campaign of awareness" that this island consists of "one people" and "one nation", who are all "Sri Lankans". The simple question before you is whether you, too, subscribe to this nonsensical concept? Do not answer me; answer to the peoples inhabiting this island. Answer to the Tamils. But answer you must, because the time has now come for you to answer.
For almost the last half century or so, the Tamils of this island have articulated their aspirations as being, that the Tamils of this island are a distinct nation and that they have traditional homeland of their own and also that, on the basis of these two facts, they have the right of self-determination, which is inalienable.
These aspirations of the Tamils were put into a meaningful form and placed before the representatives of the Government on July 13, 1985 in Bhutan at the Thimpu talks which was held under the aegis of the Government of India. They were so placed by all of you, together with the LTTE, and when the EPDP, then, was a part and parcel of the EPRLF. You went further and you described yourselves as "the sole representatives of the Tamil nation" by saying you were "the delegation of the Tamil people".
The Thimpu talks were no joke. The whole world had its eyes on you. One would even say that there was third party mediation with India playing a pivotal role.
On that fateful day, you placed before the world what has now come to be known as the Thimpu principles consisting of four matters. They are the three matters concerning the aspirations of the Tamils, mentioned above, and a fourth principle concerning the citizenship rights to all those who chose to make Sri Lanka their home and also extending the basic democratic and fundamental rights to them also. This fourth matter clearly emphasises and underlines the principle of equality.
This, if I am correct, is the only occasion when the aspirations of the Tamils were placed before the world. You wanted the Sri Lankan Government to recognise and accept these principles. They refused to and you went home - and quite rightly so - because you could not compromise on those principles, as they laid down the aspirations of the Tamil nation.
Since then, what have you done to work towards the aspirations of the Tamils? Since then, what have you done to take the "Thimpu principles" forward? In these dozen years gone by, you stand indicted with having done sweet nothing.
Did you ask successive Sri Lankan governments, even at the time when they told you to your face that this island did not belong to the Tamils also because it was the land of the Sinhala people and that it was a Buddhist land and that the Tamils were only creepers and vine on the Sinhala tree and when the identity, status and standing of the Tamils in this island were being assailed, that you wanted the aspirations of the Tamils first incorporated in the constitution, in order to ensure the separate identity and status of the Tamils in this island?
Or, is it that you really put forward the Thimpu principles with your tongue in your cheek? I ask this question of you because of the recent rumblings in the English newspapers that you put forward the Thimpu principles without being serious or sincere or honest and wanting those principles to be rejected. If what these journalists say is true, did you perpetrate a downright and stupendous fraud on the innocent and unsuspecting Tamil nation? It seems to be so because of the stony silence from your quarter on this matter. You have not sought to refute what these journalists have written, nor can it be said that you have not seen them.
Let me categorise them:
In the "Weekend Express" of May 31, 1997, Sathya writes, in his concluding sentence on this matter, that "the Tamil organisations represented in the Tamil delegation had willed that it (the Thimpu principles) should fail!" Did the whole lot of you will that the Thimpu principles should fail? If this is so, you have perpetrated a fraud on the Tamil nation and you must go.
In the "Sunday Leader" of June 15, 1997, Roving Correspondent says that "the Tamil groups correctly assumed that the Colombo government could not agree with such a set of principles (the Thimpu principles). The idea was to make Colombo reject these proposals outright, thereby providing an opportunity to the Tamil side to wriggle out of the talks without stepping on India's toes." Do you agree with this statement? Was this your game in the name of "the delegation of the Tamil people" and on the basis of being "the sole representatives of the Tamils"? Were you perpetrating a fraud not only on the Tamil nation but also on India as well, the India you are still looking to for succour? If you have been so downright, dishonest on the matter of the Thimpu principles, you must go.
In the "Sunday Island" of August 3, 1997, D.B.S. Jeyaraj states that "the Tamil groups wanted to abort the talks without alienating India. So the Thimpu principles were proposed as a strategic ploy to evoke a negative response from the Sri Lanka side. It was deliberately calculated that Colombo would reject these immediately thereby rendering the talks useless. This succeeded to some extent." If this was your game, then you were perpetrating a fraud on the unsuspecting Tamil nation and must go for this dastardly act.
This does not seem to be so as far as the LTTE is concerned. Very rightly they are carrying on the fight to establish the aspirations of the Tamils because you have sold out on the Tamil nation. You have sold the past.
Even today, what are you doing? Your hide and seek politics was exposed, once again, on television, this time by a Sinhalese. Mahinda Samarasinghe said in a Rupavahini programme on August 23, 1997, in answer to a question from a member of the public, that none of you, whether in Parliament or in the Select Committee proceedings or in your deliberations with the UNP has ever taken up the matter of the traditional homeland of the Tamils. (Also reported in "Thinakkural" of 27.8.97). It has always been your position that the merger of the North-East was a non-negotiable matter. Have you betrayed the Tamil nation even on this matter today? Come clean and tell where you stand.
Some of you, dishonestly, of course, have called upon the Tamils to support your matriarch's proposals. But the DUNLF has requested the Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) to reconvene the PSC in order to discuss to a finality, matters concerning the character of the Constitution, the unit of devolution, law and order, land, finance, etc., matters which some of you have chosen to describe as "the core issues concerning the Tamils". Is it not then clear that you called upon the Tamils to support your matriarch's proposals even when these so-called core issues were still hanging fire? Were you not committing a fraud on the Tamils even on this matter? If it is your position that the core issues concerning the Tamil Nation have been already settled in the proposals in the state at which they are at the moment, will you specify the chapter and verse where these issues are dealt with even in the latest version of these proposals, though the clarion call for support for the proposals came much before even these latest proposals?
As I end this open letter, I see the pathetic spectacle of the leader of the TULF sending a wishy-washy letter to your matriarch seeking a feeble amendment to the slogan "One Nation; One People" by suggesting that the cliché should be "One nation; Many Peoples".
What then is the position of the TULF? Is it that there is only one nation? Let us see whether the matriarch will heed the shameless pleas made on this matter.
It is a crying shame that those who put forward the incontrovertible position of the Tamil nation are today frightened or ashamed to even pay lip service to that position. In this context it must not be forgotten that it was the TULF which, twenty years ago, goaded the Tamil youth, publicly from platforms, to take to arms and even formed their own militant wing under the name and style of Tamil Eelam National Army (TENA) and is today masquerading as a moderate party and allowing the media and their forgetful friends to describe them as a moderate party. What hypocrisy! What dishonesty!
The Saama Tavalama or the Peace Donkey Caravan is at best a misplaced tamasha with street dramas, dances and floats etc. At a time when the Tamils of the North-East are suffering like never before, the TULF, in its letter, nor the rest of you do not have the good sense to request your matriarch to either stop this tom-foolery or to stop this war.
And you hold yourself to be speaking for the Tamils. No Sirs, the salvation of the Tamils will dawn only when slaves like you are removed by the Tamils, lock, stock and barrel from the political firmament of this country.
The Princess is
dead but the 'story' is decidedly not
Princess Diana is dead but "the story" as it is called in the newsroom or at the subsdesk is decidedly not. It still makes the frontpage, with each mass-circulating paper, most certainly the tabloids, presenting a new "angle."
The driver, the 41-year-old Henri Paul, who died when the S-280 Mercedes crashed had 175 mg. of alcohol per 100 ml. of blood, when the French legal limit is 50 mg. "This meant that he would have drunk the equivalent of at least a bottle of wine," reported Liam Halligan and Andrew Jack, who as investigative journalists, had done their job well.
Not many journalists, evidently, cared to report how much alcohol if any, was in the blood of Princess Diana's companion, Dodi Fayed, Harrods' heir. Just another Arab? Not quite. He was a Muslim too. And that's what thrusts this tragedy on to the world stage, the United Nations included. "She was killed by British intelligence to save the monarchy... Nobody since Cromwell, who called for a republic in the 17th century has been able to shake the Royal family as Princess Diana did," observed columnist Anis Mansour, a confidant of President Sadat, the man who made history with his "peace accords."
In a situations such as this, it is impossible to keep the irrepressible Colonel Gaddafi silent. He accused Britain of setting up the accident, and France of carrying it out... co-operation between the secret services, no doubt. And so we are in the world of John le Carre!
It was UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan who reminded the world that Princess Diana was a frontline fighter in the campaign to ban landmines, an issue on which the United Nations has now intervened. President Nelson Mandela also focused on the issues she had chosen to campaign internationally - a roving ambassador for victims of landmines, orphans of the world's many "wars" and the sick and the needy. She was "breathlessly unconventional by traditional standards of propriety and role-modelship" in the eyes of the Washington Post.
American columnists like Anthony Lewis hope that her death would move President Clinton to give up some of the remaining American reservations to the landmine treaty.
Made a celebrity by the media, was she "killed" by the printed word and the prying camera eye? Or was it the system? The media certainly is on trial, though President Jacques Chirac recognised in Diana a "truly young woman of our age." The publicity she so easily attracted was perhaps second only to the media attention reserved for the Pope. Each paper, each cameraman and columnist saw in her what he (or she) wanted... as journalist or individual.
But culture and environment did make a difference, says Clay Harris.
In Germany, the emphasis in last week's coverage, he says was on her humanitarian activities. In Latin America, and in France and Spain, it was the mix of glamour and royalty and tempestuous romance which only the Princesses Caroline and Stephanie of Monaco - and their late mother, the actress Grace, in a far less prying day - could in any way rival. For the Japanese, Diana's image was the ideal of a Princess - beautiful, graceful and kind. For gym-mad Californians, her stunning good looks proved conclusively the merits of having a personal trainer. Her openness about personal problems struck a chord with the publicly confessional professional American... She charmed the powerful from Henry Kissinger to Colin Powell. She championed the powerless - from AIDS patients to the homeless and victims of landmines. She also won a reputation as a devoted mother, an attribute heavy everywhere after her death.
Princess Diana's death also caused trouble for the Labour Party and Prime Minister Tony Blair's plans to hold referendums on two critical issues - devolution in Scotland and Wales. The Scots will have a Parliament and Wales an assembly. The Scottish vote had been fixed for September 11. Dodi Fayed was buried on September 10 at a Guildford cemetery, after a religious ceremony was held at the Regent's Park mosque.
The contribution of the mass media to this personal tragedy provoked A.M. (Abe) Rosenthal, the former editor of the New York Times, the internationally respected paper, to provoke the profession with a contribution on "the jackals of journalism." Evidently he had been moved by the indictment that the brother of Princess Diana had written. "It would appear," said the grief-stricken brother, "that every proprietor and editor of every publication that has paid for instrusive and exploitative photographs of her, encouraging greedy and ruthless individuals to risk everything in pursuit of Diana's image, has blood on his hands today..."
Rosenthal wrote: "No hiding place - none for the executives, who permit and encourage press harassment unto death, for no other reason than the increase of their own profits, and salaries, and none for journalists, who say they would never use such pictures but create excuses of moral, ethical and professional garbage to explain those who do.... Someday I believe the words of Earl Spencer will hang in the private offices of publishers, network chiefs and print and electronic editors worthy of any respect and trust."
Tamil refugees in Canada
A Comment on the decision of the Canadian Court in the case of Suresh Manickavasagam
On August 29, 1997 the Ontario Federal Court Judge Max Teitelbaum after more than fifty days of hearings, held a certificate under the Canadian Immigrants Act, based on a Security Intelligence Report prepared by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, issued under the hand of the Minister in charge of the subject and the Solicitor-General of Canada, to be reasonable on the facts and circumstances that transpired before him. The certificate was on the basis that there were reasonable grounds to believe that the detainee (Suresh) was a person falling within the statutory description that makes him "inadmissible to Canada" (i.e. one whose admission into that State would be detrimental to the national interest).
The relevant limbs of the Section which were found applicable in the case of Suresh, as paraphrased for convenience, were three- pronged. He was alleged to be: (a) a member of an organization (viz., the L.T.T.E.), in respect of which there were reasonable grounds to believe that it will engage in terrorism. (b) a person in respect of whom there were reasonable grounds to believe has engaged in terrorism and (c) "a member of an organization (viz., the LTTE) in respect of which body there are reasonable grounds to believe that it is or was engaged in terrorism. In short, the allegations were that Suresh himself had engaged in terrorism or that he was vicariously liable, by reason of his membership of the LTTE which was an organization that engaged in terrorism. The Judge held that the certificate naming Suresh as an "inadmissible person" under the relevant provisions was "reasonable on the basis of the evidence and information made available to him in both the public and camera hearings held before him". Although the Judge's Order of the 29th August does not make this clear it appears from a statement made by Suresh's Counsel, Ms. Barbara Jackman to the Toronto Star that the Judge had found no evidence that Suresh himself had been involved in criminal activity but that he had, to use her own words "propagandized for the L.T.T.E."
The Judge in giving his verdict briefly stated his conclusions but refrained from giving the detailed reasons which were postponed, sine die, since as he said they were 'going to require a lot of work and good period of time'. In view of the fact that the record of submissions made by Counsel is not yet available, these preliminary comments are offered on the basis of the questions put to the witnesses called on behalf of the detainee and in the light of the final conclusions reached by the Court.
The determination by the Judge, after hearing evidence and submissions of Counsel, intermittently for nearly 18 months, confirms that there were reasonable grounds for the Minister and the Solicitor-General, two high level members of the Executive, to form the aforesaid conclusions on the evidentiary material placed before them. Accordingly the Judge has rejected the objections of the detainee and the submission of his Counsel, based on a theory of the legitimacy of force when used in a struggle for national liberation, making him liable to deportation. The Judge's findings on the issue of reasonableness on the joint executive decisions is by implication, at least, an affirmation of them and thereby acquire the added validity of a judicial imprimatur.
The horrendous nature of the acts of terror by the L.T.T.E. and the frequency of their commission are matters of such international notoriety that it would have been futile to deny their occurrence.
The evidence needed to establish the nexus of membership on the part of Suresh and the LTTE or a refutation of the allegation, would not have entailed such a long and protracted hearing or elaborate argument. They appear to be straight-forward issues of fact capable of easy and simple ascertainment.
Nor would the inquiry have meandered on for so long a time had the case against Suresh rested solely on allegation (b) alone, which involved his direct and personal complicity in acts of terror. He would probably have had to fend for himself and the LTTE would have given him a wide berth. Evidently there was incontrovertible evidence of his membership of the LTTE, despite the weak attempt at denial. A finding on (a) and (c) on the other hand would have had the most far-reaching consequences for the LTTE itself. Hence they strained every nerve to avert adverse findings on these allegations which would have serious repercussions on their activities in Canada and may even have a domino effect on their organizations in other countries which have similar immigration legislation.
The main plank of the defence appears to have been that the LTTE was a National Liberation Movement fighting the case of the Tamils of Sri Lanka for self-dertermination and liberation from oppression and that the acts of force or violence attributed to the LTTE ceased to be terrorism by reason of this. Even assuming that the contention that the LTTE was engaged in national liberation had prevailed, its viability as a defence would have had to depend on the further contention that national liberation of itself had some special efficacy - that it was some kind of holy water that laundered even terrorist acts! Faced with this dilemma the defence sought to contend that such acts when directed at civilians or non-combatants, may be "war crimes' but not acts of "terrorism", which was in effect a plea contesting the jurisdiction of the Court to inquire into so called "war crimes', as though the two categories were mutually exclusive. Furthermore, this contention assumes that Protocol 1 of the 1949 Geneva Convention applied as between the Sri Lanka Government and the LTTE and Professor Boyle, called by the Defence, incorrectly asserted that the LTTE had acceded to it and assumed that the Government of Sri Lanka was already a high Contracting Party.
No proof was offered that the instrument of accession by the LTTE had been deposited with the Government of Switzerland which is the depository. Neither the Government of Sri Lanka nor the United Nations has been notified of any such accession.
Even conceding the application of International Humanitarian Law the LTTE has violated several cardinal provisions of the Geneva Convention which itself recognises a category of acts regarded as acts of terrorism. The LTTE has violated Article 51.2 which prohibits attacks on the civilian populations. It recruits children under 15 years to take part in hostilities in violation of Article 77.2. The LTTE has murdered some hundreds of Sri Lankan Policemen who were directed to surrender and thereafter taken prisoner in flagrant breach of Article 3.1. The Convention is quite clear that a party cannot assert rights and privileges under the protocol while repudiating obligations thereunder. Apart from the provision of the Convention, the LTTE has a grisly record of murder, torture and other barbarities inflicted on innocents which indelibly impose on them the stamp of terrorists.
The defence pleaded by Suresh also raised many seminal questions in regard to the nature of the right of self-determination and in regard to the use of force in such struggles. In fact they are unresolved controversies in International Law and could not have been confidently determined in favour of the detainee in a proceeding of this nature where the question in the final analysis turned on the reasonableness of an executive discretion. It seems to have been an ill-considered defence because the plea raised a multiplicity of collateral questions of some complexity in regard to which dubious propositions of law have been advanced by some scholars which no cautious judge would have accepted with alacrity, having regard to the amorphous state of the law.
To mention just a few of them: what constitutes a people possessing a right of self-determination? This is pivotal to the defence because national liberation stems from this right. Is the right available to any ethnic or religious group within a State? Or is the right available only to an aggrieved majority living within a generally accepted political unit? Can the international status of a national liberation movement be granted by the international community to any group save one which is fighting for freedom from colonialism, alien occupation or against a racist regime? This is the current state practice and the indications given by the pronouncements of UN bodies and States. If even States, in the lawful exercise of the right to use force, cannot in any event violate International Humanitarian Law, how can non-State entities like rebel groups arrogate to itself the right to have recourse to what are commonly recognised by all civilized beings as acts of terrorism? It is obvious that unless these controversies are finally and authoritatively settled, the pleaded defence could not have got off the ground, let alone made to fly. The only reason why such a fragile defence was ever attempted was perhaps due to the incontrovertibility of the facts on which the Government of Canada relied.
In this setting it is regrettable that the Judge, in the face of the enormous uncertainties that enfeeble the component elements, all of which were integral to the whole defence plea taken on behalf of Suresh, should have ventured to pronounce on the peripheral issue of discrimination when the real and substantial issue was whether there was in Sri Lanka institutionalised racism of such an oppressive nature as to warrant the use of force. All the more regrettable is the fact that such an obiter dictum was made without affording the Sri Lanka Government an opportunity of being heard on such allegations made by partisan witnesses called by the Defence before reaching an adverse finding. Even the most learned and experienced of judges sometimes overlook the cardinal rule of audi alteram partem.
Return to the News/Comment contents page
| HOME PAGE | FRONT PAGE | EDITORIAL/OPINION | PLUS | TIMESPORTS
Please send your comments and suggestions on this web site to
info@suntimes.is.lk or to
webmaster@infolabs.is.lk