Satire

“Protecting” people for whom you have no feelings

How can white people (“suddan”) who come from abroad have feelings of concern (“kekkumak”) about the people of this country that I don’t have? The protection of my people is my responsibility.” — President Mahinda Rajapakse, Embilipitiya, April 30, 2009, quoted in the Divaina of May 1, 2009.

The President’s statement possesses an amazing logic and a wonderful honesty, made more powerful because neither the structure of the argument nor the nature of its substance is intended. The sentiments expressed, moreover, are deplorable and shocking, both for their callous majoritarian ethnocentrism and for their megalomaniacal arrogance.

In effect, he asks majestically, speaking from Embilipitiya on April 29th, ‘if I do not feel in this way for the people of the north (who are my own), how can foreigners feel for them?’ I believe the point he is making is that the concern of these vocal foreigners, ostensibly on behalf of the IDPs and civilians trapped in the war zone, is false and contrived.

He alleges that these outsiders are agitating on behalf of the civilians to fulfill ulterior motives and on the basis of hidden agendas. The proof he adduces is that if he cannot and does not feel such concern for these civilians, who are his own, how can outsiders have any real feelings for these people? The expression “my people” takes on an ominous sense of ownership here, as if they are property to be disposed of at will.

Need to examine

There are a number of admissions, assumptions and implications in the President’s statement that need to be examined. First and most importantly, is his admission that he feels no concern for these civilians. The President of Sri Lanka, the Head of State for the whole country and not merely a part of it, has gone on record in words of one syllable – so there can be no confusion or misunderstanding – that he feels nothing for the welfare of a significant section of the population that he represents and leads. A section of the population, moreover, that he claims (sole) responsibility over.

Very telling, indeed. No, more than this. It is more spine-chilling than a vintage Hitchcock film, because this truth, now in the open, has threatened the very foundations of our unitary state.  Not only is he stating that he does not feel concern for these civilians himself, he is denying the validity of anyone else feeling for them either.

The argument goes like this: I (as the most legitimate person) do not have the kind of feelings that these foreigners claim to have, and therefore these feelings that they claim to have cannot be real or legitimate.

This is not a surprise, of course, since the past actions of this government have demonstrated, unequivocally and repeatedly, that it does not care a hoot about the lives and safety of the civilians trapped in the conflict area. What is surprising is the blatant, unequivocal expression of this callous lack of concern, which cannot be accepted from a head of state, even from a godforsaken country such as this.

Propaganda

During the past week or so we have been deluged by media propaganda of “rescued” and “grateful” IDPs and other civilians, demonstrating government concern and military humanitarianism. Now the cat is out of the bag, and we know that this is a sham: by a simple extension of the President’s argument, all the President’s men cannot feel legitimate concern for these people, when he himself doesn’t.

In order to establish the mala fide nature of foreign agitation on behalf of the displaced and injured, the President has exposed his own views on this vexed and vexing subject. In his exasperation and anger at the persistence of these foreign “busy bodies,” he has thrown caution to the winds, laid down his guard, giving voice to the unsayable: the Head of State does not really care for the people that he claims to be liberating from the yoke of LTTE tyranny.

Oops, the truth is out. It’s a slip, unintentional, unfortunate, undeniable now, and, from a Head of State, alas, unforgiveable.

The President has made it irrevocably clear that he does not treat or feel for all the citizens of this country in equal measure. He goes even further by denying the validity of others to feel for a group of people trapped and traumatised by the way he dismisses the feelings of all foreigners who do so. He invokes the crudest nationalist demagoguery and xenophobia in ridiculing the legitimate concerns of international humanitarian organisations and UN bodies for the safety and security of a section of the population of this country.

No concern

Yet, over these people for whom he does not care, he claims ownership, and pulls rank. He admits responsibility over them, but negates the validity of concerns for their wellbeing. As pointed out in this column in previous weeks, he has expressed no concern himself for the civilians, and now we know exactly why: he has no concern to express.

These are not new ideas at all, but rather a more blunt sledgehammer way of saying aloud hate speech of a kind that even the most diehard of Sinhala chauvinists dare not utter. Among the worst kinds of discrimination is this utter lack of concern, this complete lack of feeling, especially as it is directed against those who have no recourse to any other form of power or alternate hegemony.

The Emperor’s new rhetoric, like Macbeth’s clothes, cleave not to their mould, even seem strange now because they do not have the aid of use. They may appear to most to be ill-fitting for a ruler, but, more dangerously, to this writer they are manifestly well-tailored to justify the present actions of the state as well as to point to a longer-term future where the new robes will sit easier than the old, exposing Tamils in the north to naked discrimination at its worst.