With the temperature rising around the issues dealt with recently at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) meeting in Geneva, the matter of ‘command responsibility’ is being bandied about increasingly in connection with any transgressions that might have occurred during the final days of the campaign to annihilate the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Since, apart from anything else, that debate has been entered by many commentators, the real kind as well as the ‘wanna-be’ variety, I would like to deal with the issue of denial of human and civic rights by the foot soldiers and apologists acting for and, often, on behalf of the ‘commanders’ in the day-to-day existences of Muniamma, Podi Banda and Cader Saibo.

Let those who have already entered the ring in the other dispute continue their arguments and discussions. My focus in this brief submission will be what can and should be done about the destruction of civil and human rights in our collective day-to-day existence since May 2009.

Even here, one might say that the principle of ‘command responsibility’ should be of primary importance and that one needs to go after the ‘commanders’ rather than the ‘other ranks’ that they continue to direct. One reason for not doing that in this presentation is that, in the matter of identifying the ‘commanders’, the dots (or is it blood-splatters?) are only too obvious and it hardly needs a Sherlock Holmes to lead one to those having command responsibility for them. More often than not, they don’t even bother to deny what they are responsible for and the manner in which such transgressions are committed. In simple terms, the blanket explanation for the ultimate in impunity is simply that the perpetrator was ‘our man!’

Thanks to the untrammeled authority of those who command them, the ‘torch-bearers’ who act as the extended arm of a violent lawlessness without precedent in this country, escape even identification after committing the most heinous of crimes – rape of children, unprovoked murder, political assassinations, etc. These people continue to fade into the shadows and even into the community at large with not so much as identification for what they have done, leave alone being held accountable for deeds that cover the entire gamut of criminality.

To suggest that the rule of law has ceased to exist in this country is to state what has become an inalienable fact. To say that the best that an aggrieved citizen can hope for is either intervention by the President or divine intervention (the same thing?) is to state an even more obvious fact.

But the edicts of They-Who-Occupy-the-Pinnacle-of-Power need to be carried out by lesser minions and these lesser minions cannot escape their culpability by saying ‘He made me do it’ or ‘It was in my job description.’

While the knee-jerk reaction to this state of affairs might be to bring in legislation creating a whole new bunch of offences to cover the behavior of these men (and women), that is more easily said than done. Also, such definition of criminality after the offence is committed hardly suggests an adherence to the elements of elementary justice. I believe that this was precisely the grounds on which the accused in the first attempted coup in Sri Lanka’s history were exonerated after an initial finding of guilt. Even if such draconian law-making has become common-or-garden in the Debacle of Asia, it should be rejected on ethical and moral grounds.

Instead, I would suggest a twin track approach to the need for justice for those who’ve contributed knowingly and with malice to the destruction of democracy and the establishment of the kleptocracy that is our current ‘reality.’

One track would be an examination of all financial transactions that these individuals have been engaged in during the time they’ve been active in the ranks of the Rajapaksa Sycophancy. This would include but not be restricted to checking out foreign bank accounts, investments, etc. This would be a completely ethical and legal measure.

The other track would be to conduct full and comprehensive public hearings into injustices perpetrated against members of the general public driven by the need to stifle dissent and disagreement. If, during such investigations, it is revealed that acts of blatant criminality have been conducted by the ‘torch bearers,’ they should be dealt with to the full extent of the law.
What I am suggesting is not a witch hunt but an attempt to re-establish justice and decency in this country because what is being trotted out with regard to post-conflict policy – forgive, forget, push the ugly stuff under the rug – is not going to work. We need a cleansing of the filth through which the public has been compelled to navigate these many years. NOTHING LESS will suffice if Sri Lanka is to return to sanity and decency.

media.
They determined that Sri Lanka won some kind of moral victory and suggests that everyone from the Congo to the United Arab Emirates who voted “for” Sri Lanka practiced democracy and human rights on their home turf, when, in fact, the only countries which appear to be close to practicing democracies in that list are Venezuela and Ecuador! The tragedy, though, is that these monumental idiocies are likely to be believed by the semi-literate that constitutes a significant part of the English-language newspaper readership of this country!
This rubbish deserves appropriate dismissal, particularly considering the source.
When Sinhala Buddhist triumphalism rose another notch with the Rajapaksa regime’s cobbling together more votes in Geneva than those seeking to censure the Debacle of Asia, I described that event as a
Pyrrhic victory.
Anyone with two brain cells to rub together would have realized that “victory” was not going to provide final determination in the matter of international attitudes towards Sri Lanka’s human rights record.

Despite a pompous professorial boast about having vanquished the forces of evil, two years later those chickens have come home to roost. In fact, the first resolution of censure came last year and this one only serves to confirm opinion and intent.

The abuse of any and all critics and a new plethora of fabrications and bluster has been the response of a bankrupt regime.
It was NEVER likely to work, despite the smarm on its edges provided by the “academic troika” that continues to sup at its table while preparing the ground for a departure from its ranks should the opportunity present itself!

Now you have the spectacle – again – of the “circle-the-wagons-and-shoot-madly-in-every-direction” gang at full volume.
We have one thanking India for its conduct in Geneva while another seeks to take back from the Lanka Indian Oil Company its storage tanks on Orr’s Hill in Trincomalee, in an act of petty revenge.
You have an alleged civil servant who arrogates unto himself the authority of some middle-eastern Pasha expressing his disappointment over India’s conduct at Geneva.

The contradictions are numerous, to say the least, and to expect any reduction in the days ahead would be completely unrealistic and is akin to providing a troop of monkeys with cut-throat razors and then expecting them to use those tools and march up and down the parade ground in military formation!

Sri Lanka’s spokespersons, have lied over and over again in a manner that has put Richard Nixon’s famous “I am not a crook!” to shame.

The difference here is that Nixon was no fool and they are distinguished only by their determination to write the definitive guide-book on self-aggrandizement with little intelligence to apply to that exercise.

To repeat for the umpteenth time: the only support for those concerned with the moral dimension of what has happened and is happening in Sri Lanka are the people of decency in organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group.

Let me anticipate the usual babble from them by asking them to please substantiate their endless accusations that all and sundry critical of the Sri Lankan government are “in the pay of the LTTE-rump” or whatever their current term of choice is.

Put up or shut up once and for all! The simple reality is that it is such organizations and individuals with a social conscience – be they from Trincomalee, Timbuktu or Toronto – that have kept the fires of morality and ethics in Sri Lanka despite significant personal risks to themselves and their families from a junta that will
brook nodissent.

To repeat what I have said before, what will force the final denouement is the looming economic collapse. Even though there is a significant (and noisy) moronic fringe insisting that the “White Economies” will collapse and Sri Lanka will emerge Phoenix-like, out of that carnage, reality
suggests otherwise.

Add to that the fact that the means that might have been available to us in the national treasury to alleviate the looming financial crisis have either been plundered or frittered away through monumental incompetence in administration.

It is more than a year since the invasion of a mosque in Dambulla by a thousands-strong Buddhist-priest-led mob and nothing has been done to bring those responsible to book. Even worse than a government from which little better can be expected, the religious hierarchies, inclusive of those of the Islamic faith, have done, as the saying goes, “diddley-squat” in the matter of seeking appropriate investigation and justice. As for even the usual mealy-mouthed motherhood and apple pie statements that are traditional in this nation of invertebrate religionists, forget it! Either they haven’t even uttered the usual hypocrisies or our permanently supine media has not even bothered to quote them.

The artificially-generated “Halal controversy” has been another nail in the coffin of those wishing to practice their faith in a country where that right is supposedly guaranteed in its very constitution. But then, after the so-called “impeachment” of the Chief Justice for not doing the bidding of the Chief Executive of this country, one might as well whistle Dixie as expect law, order and common decency to prevail in this land of 2500 years of Sinhala Buddhist Civilization, particularly after the appointment of Ms. Bandaranaike’s successor whose credentials more than speak for themselves.

The continuing attacks on Christian denominations reached a point when even that “evangelical luminary,” Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, was embarrassed into appealing to the government to intervene when one of his denomination’s churches in the Sabaragamuwa Province was vandalised and a statue of either the Virgin Mary or Jesus Christ, built at very considerable expense, totally destroyed. Of course, his Eminence, after going through the motions of “protest,” then retreated to the Vatican where, not untypically of a denomination that produced a Pope that collaborated with Adolf Hitler and the Borgias before him, was considered a candidate for the Papacy! As used and abused as that saying is, “O tempora, o mores” is apt in the circumstances!

Unethical conversions

Of course, the so-called Evangelical Churches have proved, once again, to be sitting ducks for the saffron-clad storm–troopers of this regime. The primary reason for this is that they appear to be the most successful in bringing people into their fold, mostly because they are prepared to lay emphasis on dealing with the worldly needs of the very poor and offer them succour in a form that the “main-line” churches usually don’t deign to do. That success, obviously, lays them open to allegations of unprincipled conduct in effecting those conversions. As one who dealt with this mode of operation in another country at another time and sought, as a community organizer, to ensure that unprincipled methods were not applied in efforts to convert the most vulnerable members of a community, I believe I can state with some objectivity and, certainly, with a significant degree of experience, that these “unethical conversions” are not always what they seem to be. In fact, there were a number of occasions when I and other community organizers ended up with egg on our faces when the “converts” proved a lot savvier than we thought they were and abandoned their new-found faith after extracting whatever material benefits they needed at the time from the evangelists! To the disappointed evangelists, all we could offer was the old piece of advice, “Caveat emptor” or buyer beware, more than partially tongue in cheek!

However, this self-righteous objection, backed by a proclivity for violence, to “unethical conversions” is coming (surprise! surprise!) from those who wouldn’t know ethics if they came and bit them in that part of their anatomy in which their grey matter obviously resides. To call these self-righteous goons unprincipled thugs would be to understate the case. To expect them to act with a modicum of decency and intelligence would call one’s own intelligence into serious question.

Just a matter of time

Of course one of the strange things up to now has been the fact that there have been no major recent attacks on Kovils or other Hindu places of worship, at least no very high-profile incidents that rival the recent attacks on mosques and mullahs and Christian churches and their pastors. However, a friend, better versed in the manner in which attacks such as these are orchestrated, has warned me that it is just a matter of time before those places of worship will also come under attack. After all, people of this stripe have a precedent going back more than half a century – the immolation of the Pusari of a Hindu temple south of Colombo during the communal riots of 1958. And the current crop of goons has more than tacit support for their murderous behavior, something that the hypocritical S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike didn’t openly offer those who launched the attacks on the Tamils.

As a side-bar, it is interesting that the two heads of government when the pogroms were launched against the Tamils in 1958 and 1983 had very similarly dismissive evaluations of those landmark events. Bandaranaike described them as a few isolated incidents and was ready to ignore the behavior of the “goondas” until the Indian government allegedly threatened to land troops at Ratmalana airport to bring law and order to the streets and villages of Sri Lanka.

As for J. R. Jayewardene, his official response to the bloodshed of Black July was more than dismissive. He suggested quite clearly that “the Tamils had it coming to them”.

I have one little piece of advice for those Sri Lankan observers of what is obviously a wave of intolerance and hysteria that is being built to tsunami proportions by those determined to camouflage their moral and ethical nakedness, our relegation to the status of a pariah state and the looming economic collapse: don’t waste your time looking for events in Sri Lankan history where some statesman came galloping in on his white steed to save all that is (was?) decent in this country where many of its loudest defenders claim that the philosophy of Gautama is sacrosanct and will be maintained forever. There was no such person in the past and it is even less likely that there will be such a savior in the future. Pretty well all those who might have had the intelligence to engage in such a task are too busy either raiding the public coffers or directly or indirectly helping those who are!

It’s bad enough being threatened on the streets of the city in which you were born, in broad daylight, no less, for “writing against the President” but having burly motorcyclists coming up one’s approach road, with pillion-rider in tow, checking one out on the weekend is getting to be a bit much!

And this is not some “carpeted” highway that the guy had traversed in order to reach my abode, but a road which the local Pradeshiya Sabha ensures is kept in a condition that has now led to commercial vehicles refusing to bring our “bread and butter” – paying guests – to our home.

In all fairness, one has to give what might be outriders for a potentially more sinister follow-up visit some credit for being intrepid enough to negotiate a track that would be a challenge even for a bullock cart of yore. After all, if the attempted reconnaissance came unglued, rider and buddy could have been in serious trouble if their vertical stance dissolved into a horizontal one!

But, to the narrative…

Given the fact that most of those who work for us and live in the neighbourhood have been associated with my family for the better part of my lifetime and, in some cases, going back a generation or two, both in their families’ and mine, there is a certain camaraderie that prevails across class, cultural and language divisions. Having demonstrated that we are not mahatmayas and nona-mahatmayas of the ruling class who merely issue orders to those who might earn a living on our land or in our business, we all tend to look out for each other and perform the odd little courtesy when required, pretending, perhaps, to the status of “good neighbor.”

Anyway, last Saturday, one of our neighbours who happens to be on our payroll as well, encountered what he described as a rather large man with a companion on a motorbike, a good way up our approach road. This individual had inquired after me, with the usual reference to the “suddha” (white man) who lived at the top of the hill, saying that he wanted to meet me. “Our man Friday” who had developed a particular and consistent response to inquiries of this kind, with the knowledge that people of certain political affiliation appeared to take an inordinate interest in me ever since I had begun writing for The Sunday Leader, pretended that he had no particular connection to us but advised the motor-cyclist and his passenger that the gate at our home was kept locked and only those who had provided advanced notice of their arrival were let in. Our potential visitors had then gone on to the only other house located off our road.

When my informant spoke with our neighbours who had been visited by the motorcyclist and his passenger subsequently, he had been told that the strangers were interested in building a timber storage depot of some kind and were checking out the area for suitable prospects. Given the weird and wonderful reasons that people have for riding motorbikes on very inhospitable tracks, this could well have been the absolute truth. However, the entire incident brought home to us the current “reality” in the Disaster of Asia where the rule of law is conspicuous by its absence and crime of all descriptions is rampant. While we haven’t lost any sleep over this incident, our level of alertness was raised a notch or two and would stay that way for a little while at least, “just in case!”

In days gone by, the response to this business of strangers loitering around one’s neighbourhood would have been a phone call and/or a visit to the local police station with the request that one of their number check out who this person might be and his bona fides. In short, whether there was any cause for concern and what the local constabulary could do to alleviate any potential hazard. And, at this point let me say that I have generally found the local police personnel a pretty decent bunch who appear to live up to the old motto, “To serve and protect.”

But times change, and since the visitor could well have been an unsavoury “emissary” of some kind with “political connections,” such an approach on our part could well have been not only an exercise in futility but an invitation to behaviour of a kind that you would not want visited upon you when you don’t have so much as a blunderbuss for protection.

To us, the significant realization is that what would be totally abnormal in any democratic country is totally normal in Sri Lanka and, dare I say it, magnified if one is not seen as an acolyte of “the powers that be?” Interesting stuff, indeed, and something that I could have very appropriately included under the title of my column last week that talked about black being white and white being black.
While our Sri Lankan world is, without the shadow of a doubt, an upside-down one, is it necessary to spend your waking hours standing on your head to make any sense of a culture of unfettered criminality and lunacy? Seems like a hell of a poor use of one’s time!

While I certainly do not, through personal experience of its history, subscribe to the view that the current Debacle of Asia was ever paradise on earth, I certainly remember a better time in its history – pre-S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike certainly – when we seemed to have more than a fighting chance of fulfilling the promise of continuing to be the pre-eminent democracy in the region.

Warts and all, the Uncle Nephew Party of the Senanayakes, Kotelawalas and Jayewardenes practiced a brand of democracy to which the current pretense does not bear the slightest resemblance.

Yes, the elites, by and large governed and they constituted not much more than 10% of the island’s population. However, thanks to a sense of noblesse oblige or belief in the rule of law being absolute, the vicious violence that is the ruling reality did not exist. I distinctly remember the sense of horror with which many of us greeted the mysterious “suicide” of Dodampe Mudalali held in detention by the CID in their immediately-infamous 4th Floor. Particularly since the Che Guevara uprising of 1971, not a hundred, nay a thousand, Dodampe Mudalalis committing “suicide” would even merit mention on the back page of any of our tabloids or broadsheets today. Think about it, folks, even such a seemingly outlandish statement would hardly raise a ripple in our Land of a Thousand White Vans!

Apart from the White Van Disappearances that have become a dime-a-dozen in this country, we have a virtual procession of prisoners in custody hanging themselves with ingeniously constructed nooses while still others are taken into custody and then have to be shot “in self defence” while trying to escape on their way to revealing hidden caches of contraband, guns, ammunition or whatever. The stories that accompany these deaths verge on the hilarious either because of or in spite of their banality.

An interesting vignette is the story of the most recent major outbreak of violence at the Welikada prison. The media trumpeted the fact that they were on the scene throughout the conflict and that the pictures showed several prisoners armed with the automatic weapons they’d broken out of the prison armoury. To my recollection, there was only one prisoner in one picture that fitted this description and one could hardly be certain that the man appearing in the photograph was toting an automatic weapon in the first place!

Even if the entire Sri Lankan nation did not swallow this rather grim fairytale hook, line and sinker, I heard hardly a whimper from those who are constantly extolling the state of discourse and disputation that allegedly prevails in the Disaster of Asia today!

Now we hear that, leave alone hand over (yet another) of those famous “Reports to the President by a Commission of Inquiry” appointed by him, that report has been further delayed. Surprised? If you are surprised and you are an Eskimo from Anchorage, I’d like to sell you a very large refrigerator!

In any event, even IF this great and, I am sure, revelatory Report is handed over to our reigning monarch (or one of his siblings or progeny who are his heirs) I wouldn’t exactly, as the saying goes, bet the family farm that it will EVER see the light of day. After all, it doesn’t take the genius of an Einstein to anticipate that future behavior invariably follows past patterns of conduct!

I have tried to inject a modicum of humour, if not wit, into what I have written up to now and if it comes across as laboured, I crave your indulgence because it is certainly not easy to adopt a jocular tone with regard to matters that are, literally, those of life and death.

A colleague for whose skills and integrity I have nothing but absolute admiration, described our Monarch as viewing the world from an upside-down position. That was being kind because it suggested simple misapplication of one’s faculties. To me the facts suggest otherwise. They suggest, in that old but nevertheless appropriate phrase, Hannah Arendt’s old phrase – the banality of evil.
None of what is happening in this country that should cause absolute revulsion in any civilized society and certainly in an allegedly Buddhist one, can be described as accidental. All of it flows from a culture deliberately created by those who rule this land with an iron fist.

The rapes, the gangland killings, the brutality that exceeds the bestial doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens in a culture that either actively or passively encourages it. The Caligulas of this world didn’t simply pop out of the ground like some exotic and unique bimmal/hathu (mushrooms to those unfamiliar with the Sinhala language). As aberrant as the behaviour of such monsters was, they were a creation of the culture and civilization that spawned them.

That the violence and cruelty that was a day-to-day reality in this country for nigh on three decades certainly conditioned a nation into an acceptance of this horror is inarguable. However, I don’t recall ANY nation that endured the horrors of the worst conflict of its kind in the history of the world – World War II – having what we are experiencing in epidemic proportions in this land that claims to be the epicenter of Buddhist culture and civilization. Not even the fact that we are governed, overall, by those who conduct themselves as dictated to by the occult explains what this country is currently experiencing.

If ever there was an occasion when the seemingly simplistic “Those who are not with us are against us” bears application, this is it.
Are you for the violence and corruption and cruelty that assail Sri Lanka today or are you against it?

More important, if you are against it, what are your prepared to do about the horror that threatens to engulf all of us?

To repeat: all of this is intended to confuse a gullible population and conceal whatever facts might be evident. If nothing else, there is a consistency to all of this: it has fed on malice against “the other” since the time of independence from the British Raj and even before.
The military defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE/”Tigers”) left a vacuum in the matter of a communal target because successive Sri Lankan governments had, very successfully, made the terms “Tamils” and “Tigers” interchangeable in the minds of the Sri Lankan nation – particularly the Sinhalese Buddhists. What is left of the Tamils sans a physical presence such as the Tigers hardly produces enough grist for the unprincipled racist mill of our current regime, having long passed its “best before” date.

As ham-handed as the efforts have been, I have little doubt in my mind that they are already successful, will become even more so and spawn off-shoots of similar virulence as the days go by. Particularly given a cowed and frightened population – frightened of being “disappeared” as the last couple of three-wheeler drivers whose services I’ve used assured me would be the fate of anyone being critical of this lot. This is an endeavour that will, doubtless, be very successful for one major reason: it caters to the lowest common denominator – venting one’s frustrations on the least powerful segments of the population in a situation where there is no law and order and those usually responsible for safeguarding the weak and helpless are conspicuous by their absence or, worse yet, complicit in the conduct of the law-breakers. The treatment of the BBC crew covering the BBS rally at Maharagama by the storm troopers of that organization should give pause to anyone doubting the potential for mob violence by these supporters of the “territorial/religious integrity” of the land we live in. More important yet is the fact that the police present actively supported the goons in seeking to take the BBC crew hostage!

As one with no affiliation to any formal religious entity, I would be stupid not to consider the current Sri Lankan “reality” as having implications for such as myself. Given the new religious fundamentalism that Sri Lanka is giving birth to, the simple reality is that for every action by the Bodu Bala Senas of this land there will be a reaction from victimized religious groups, fundamentalist or otherwise, because they are left with little other choice. Those of us consciously rejecting formal religious affiliation or being seen as doing so will, in the end, be permitted the least leeway by those who wear their “faith” on their sleeves. We could well end up between the jaws of that particular vice. Not a fate to be anticipated with much glee!

You might well ask, “So what? You’ve chosen to criticize and oppose the bullying criminals and those who believe in violence as the solution to the problems of this country and yet another set of enemies shouldn’t make too much of a difference, should it?”
Before I deal with this contention, though, a couple of facts need to be recorded.

One of these is that those who have no formal affiliation to any of the recognized religions in Sri Lanka – Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and their many branches and off-shoots – are going to be targets whenever the harassment of the current “other” minority has run out of steam. Also, those who owe no affiliation to Temple, Church, Kovil or Mosque will, thanks to the very nature of the country, be the ultimate minority. And in a country that has made Majoritarianism a virtual religion, this is a bad place to be. After all, aren’t those of no identified religious affiliation easiest to identify as belonging to “the other,” particularly since every adherent to denominational religion is able to differentiate themselves from the free-thinkers, atheists and agnostics, “jointly and severally” as the old legal expression has it? All denominational religionists could well be united against a common enemy – those not declaring allegiance to any of their faiths. The ideal “common enemy,” if you will.

In all reality, being a target of “militant Buddhists,” (no matter how dichotomous the term!), those who believe in Jihad being the solution to the problems of the world, the adherents of the Hindutva or those who believe that heresy of any kind should be dealt with by burning at the stake is NOT going to be fun!

Throughout history we’ve had the phenomenon of minorities being persecuted because of their geographic location, beliefs or some other superficial factor. It seems that, in relatively modern times, particularly since the advent of Christianity, the primary targets have been those in a minority insofar as religious affiliation is concerned. That these have, more often than not, been ethno-religious groups is also a fact. What is symptomatic of the Sri Lankan reality is that there also appears to be no acceptance of the fact that a citizen may NOT belong to one or the other of the formal religious groups. The next time anyone reading this column has the opportunity to do so, it would be salutary to check any government (or other?) form requiring personal identification because you will NOT find provision for entering “Agnostic,” “Atheist,” “Free-thinker” or any such term!

Welcome to the Sri Lankan version of the New World (Dis)order! One that does not recognize the fact that the vast majority of the world’s population does not adhere to any formal religion!

Let me say, at the outset that, given the fact that no one has been charged in the execution-style slaying of Lasantha Wickrematunge despite almost half a decade having elapsed, to expect anything worthwhile emerging from yet another directive issued by an all-powerful President to the Inspector General of Police is nothing if not the most blatant of wishful thinking.

Given the proclivity of Sri Lankans to burst into verse and their particular skill in pillorying those who think they are God Almighty, I would have expected that by now someone would have come up with a take on “Who killed Cock Robin” which would have exceeded the “bite” of that old piece of doggerel with a turn of phrase, particularly in Sinhala, that would have provided all of us with a great deal of enjoyment and food for thought. Alas, we haven‘t even had a simple re-writing of:

“Who killed Cock Robin?
I, said the sparrow
With my bow and arrow.”

Instead, we have had the inevitable (now terminally boring) press release from the Centre of the Universe aka The Plumeria Palace/Araliya-gaha Waluwwa/Temple Trees – take your choice – informing us that the IGP had been directed to investigate the attempted murder of (yet another) journalist. I have serious doubts that anyone with an uncorrupted brain cell in his cranium was waiting with bated breath for this unique announcement. There had to be even more serious doubts that this directive was, in the last analysis, going to amount to even the proverbial hill of beans. After all, if proof was needed that future conduct (and results) were best judged on the basis of past behavior and the results therefrom, here was as good an opportunity as any. However, we were saved the proclamations of affection and alleged friendship with the victim that was the case when Lasantha was killed.

Such is the state of the Rule of Law in this country! All the blathering of sycophantic hypocrites, some dressed in academic garb and in or out of favour with our replication of Mediaeval Royalty, cannot obscure that fact one whit! Not even when they strive desperately to portray themselves as champions of human rights now and forever.
What is fascinating, though, are the theories that are emerging from various quarters as to who was behind the shooting and why it was done. The “why” part has produced as much conjecture, inclusive of wild and woolly guesses, as the “who” part.

It is symptomatic of the times though, that there are so many wildly-disparate theories being peddled. The reason for that particular state of affairs cannot but be obvious to anyone who is familiar with what happens when there is massive repression of basic information, leave alone the expression of opinion. I am constantly informed by those near and dear to me that I should not, ever, express an opinion that is, in any way, contradictory to the official line. The manner in which this is expressed is totally unlike what I (and many others) have experienced in countries where common-or-garden democratic practice, inclusive of dissent, prevails. What I am speaking about is not disagreement of a polite or angry nature. What I am being told, over and over again, is that dissent of any description is just not “on” and simply places one in danger of being “terminated with extreme prejudice.”

And now with the attempt on Faraz’s life, the number of “I told you so” comments has simply exploded! And the definition and the extent of “declared allegiance” in Sri Lanka should be evident to anyone with even one of the earlier-mentioned uncorrupted brain cells in his cranium.

So where does one go for information of a kind that might be considered un-doctored, un-censored and with at least a kernel of truth?
Using web-proxies, many are getting round the fact that the government has blocked various websites that are critical of the Rajapaksa Regime and are likely to publish some “informational dynamite.” If one has this capacity and unfortunately I don’t, it could be most entertaining if not informative. Then there are those places in the wide world of the internet that presumably escape the attention of a government with access to Chinese technology that is pre-eminent in the matter of intercepting, hacking and doing all those weird and wonderful things to communications out in the ether. And lastly, there are those websites carrying material critical of the government which can be accessed by Sri Lankans because they also carry significant amounts of propaganda from the government’s paid hacks, professorial and otherwise.

This still leaves a substantial part of the Sri Lankan population with no access to any information that isn’t simply of a Goebbelsian dimension. I speak here of those people in a country that has a justified reputation for being addicted to matters political and do not possess computers, leave alone access to the internet.

This fact is the reality for a large (larger?) part of the Sri Lankan population and it carries some real advantages as well as risks to a repressive government which has left no doubt but that it is headed to a complete subjugation of a population the size of Australia’s.

The plus side of that ledger insofar as the Rajapaksa Regime is concerned is the obvious advantage of being able to treat Sri Lanka like a large mushroom farm, keeping it totally in the dark and feeding it bulltweet.

The debit side of that self-same ledger is the fact that word-of-mouth becomes the means by which pretty well all information, particularly of the political kind, gets conveyed.

Do I have to remind anyone reading this column of what happens when information, particularly of a potentially volatile kind, gets conveyed from person to person without benefit of an editorial red pencil of any description? Think about it, folks, and I particularly include our Monarch and Our Rulers in this invitation!

The highest in the land are once more wallowing in the trough of pander to the racist elements of Southern Sri Lanka with a diatribe about foreign conspiracies and the need for “unity” to repel those elements seeking to “destabilize” that paradise on earth otherwise known as the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. Incidentally, a whole column (at least!) will be needed to describe why the official title of our land constitutes the biggest oxymoron of its kind anywhere on planet earth. However, that will have to wait for another column at another time.
To return to the title of this piece, the mindless berating of “foreign conspirators,” “white imperialists” etc. etc. is so familiar now as a response to every mess created by those doing the berating that it has entered the realm of serious boredom with anyone with even half a brain operating.

The Dambulla Mosque invasion has gone without even the charade of yet another ‘Commission of Inquiry’

The endless “anti-this” and “anti-that” diatribes are devoid of the entertainment value they once held even for the moronic hordes thirsting for the blood of some minority person as a means of assuaging a thirst for scapegoats to blame for messes of their own creation. However, it must be admitted that, by the looks of it that well of hatred has a long way to go before it runs dry. The reason for its survival is its constant replenishment with the bile that sycophants who have nowhere else to go after committing to the most corrupt and amoral government in our history keep regurgitating in order to maintain their protected positions with their masters. To place that old truism in a modern context, there’s nowhere to go but down after you’ve allied yourself with what are, truly, the unmentionables of Sri Lankan history.
This government has actively encouraged the most reprehensible behavior of bigots, chauvinists and racists of the most despicable kind. How else can one explain the fact that the Dambulla Mosque invasion has gone without even the charade of yet another “Commission of Inquiry?”
How else does one explain the inordinate delay in a Minister of the government being brought to trial after, allegedly, organizing the stoning of a Tamil judge.
How else can one explain the burning of churches and statues built for installation in them without so much as a peep from our so-called “law enforcement agencies?”
How else can one explain the destruction of a Hindu Kovil in the city that is viewed as the birthplace of Buddhism in this country?
How else can one explain the violent demands made to businesses owned by members of the minorities to put up their shutters and get the hell out before it’s, presumably, done for them?
How else can one explain the hysteria generated by the efforts to have food qualify for the “Halal” tag when such as the fast-food giant McDonalds has, for decades, acted sensitively to the religious prohibitions of the Muslims in the matter of food in their restaurants and Kosher food is a reality all over the world? What is driving this is only too evident when every Sri Lankan has to adhere to (alleged) Buddhist precepts/prohibitions with regard to the consumption of alcohol and meat, regardless of what OTHER faith they might subscribe to.
The thinly-veiled incitement to violence against the Anglican Bishop of Colombo by a stereotypical lackey of the current regime in a government-owned English-language newspaper is but the most recent of these reprehensible acts that an all-powerful government CHOOSES not to take any action against.
What are we waiting for? An assassination of a churchman in the manner that befell Archbishop Romero in another place at another time? A Sri Lankan Kristallnacht with the Muslims taking the place of the Jews eighty years later?
The government of this land, countenancing White Van Disappearances by pretending they don’t occur, is creating the climate for massive mayhem because, no matter how passive and afraid minorities of a religious, ethnic or other description might be, they are going to be FORCED to react violently once that threshold is crossed and they know their lives are on the line. To put it mildly, what we can expect, in good Sri Lankan slang and to seriously understate the case, is “one pol mess.” Remember, if it believes that its life is at stake, even a worm will turn. There will be little other choice for the “worms” of the minorities.
Of course the owners of casinos, drug-networks and ultra-luxury cars will continue to have state-financed private armies with even better weaponry than is now available to them within their current “security” arrangements.
And, for a time at least, the temporarily pandered-to minions from the peasantry who are being deliberately separated from their brethren by the bribes of enhanced salaries and perks will jig to the tune of their masters. The question that those setting up this scenario better ask themselves, though, is how long a brother is going to turn his gun against his sibling, how long are adult children going to ignore the plight of their less-fortunate parents or their children deprived of the necessities of life?
Rest assured, though, when violence is coupled with stupidity or a gross lack of intelligence or total ignorance of the lessons of history, this kind of thing will unfold in duly ordained fashion, no matter how tragic the consequences.
That appears to be the fate awaiting ALL of us, thanks to the combination of an electorate who, perhaps, received adult universal franchise prematurely, politicians who exploited that quirk of history to reduce governance to a sub-human, “might-is-right” exercise and a so-called “leadership” that is without equal in its capacity for maliciousness, caprice and pure, unadulterated greed.
Welcome to the rest of the 21st Century (or whatever we are going to be left of it) in the Debacle of Asia!

Most of the responses in this vein have, up front, stated the ugly reality of the status quo as the rationale for their throwing my suggestions for peaceful change into the garbage can of journalism.
More than one critic of my scribbling has made out a very cogent case for not following a policy of peaceful protest and disobedience by stating the obvious: the Rajapaksa Regime and its attendant sycophancy has provided clear and irrefutable evidence of its readiness to assault those seen as its ‘enemies’ both physically and verbally. The examples of those who were gunned down while protesting against the efforts of the government to appropriate the savings of workers by a spurious ‘pension scheme’ and the fate that befell a fisherman who protested against the increase in boat fuel prices were provided as irrefutable evidence of the futility of democratically-orthodox protests against the brazenly unprincipled and violent behavior of the current government.
In conversation, my friends have been even harsher in their opinions of what they view as my ‘pie in the sky’ beliefs about peaceful protests being capable of removing a government that has displayed no let up in its need to control everyone and everything on the face of this island.
My response has been much of a kind as that which I advanced in defence of Ranil Wickremesinghe as leader of the United National Party and the opposition. It is Hobson’s Choice we are faced with in both cases, because in neither case does there appear to be a viable alternative.
Though I have retreated from my defence of what seems increasingly like a lifetime-leader of the Uncle Nephew Party, I am not about to do the same about the need for peaceful opposition to the Rajapaksa junta because Hobson’s Choice still appears to prevail where that proposition is concerned.
If you don’t adopt peaceful measures to display opposition to the Rajapaksa Regime and all it stands for, what is the alternative? Don’t tell me that a government surrounded by a band of murderous thugs whose legal defence they consistently and constantly give evidence of being prepared to ensure to the point of their not being taken to task for any offence, the capital one of murder included?
On the most practical level, isn’t it not only unrealistic but suicidal to try to meet violence with violence when you do not have as much as a fraction of the means of practicing that violence at your disposal? I know the armed-forces-in-waiting in such places as Australia marched and paraded with broomsticks in lieu of guns in preparation for invasion by Hirohito’s Japanese. But they did have the prospect of an array of weapons on land, sea and air which were superior to anything the Japanese possessed (from the British and Americans). That weaponry and everything that went with it did materialize and the rest, as they say, is history. I would submit that the current opposition to the Rajapaksa juggernaut does not have that prospect now or in the immediate future.
I know there are those who dream in technicolour that the fate that overtook this government’s bosom buddy, the late Muammar Ghaddafi and his family, awaits the family that have absolute power in this country. That will continue to be a dream in technicolour because the ‘Western democracies’ are not about to gallop over to Sri Lanka on their white steeds to save democracy and slay the family of dragons ruling that bastion of 2500 years of Sinhala Buddhist civilization.
Sorry, folks, those guys are a part of the problem that afflicts us and not even close to being a part of the solution. They are on the same wavelength as the Rajapaksa Horde, they share the same ‘values’ and let’s not kid ourselves on that score.
I know there are people of decency and principle, particularly in the international human rights organizations, who will raise their voices in condemnation of what is happening here, but they do not have the capacity to enforce a ‘no fly zone’ over Sri Lanka or to enforce a debilitating embargo on a government that has given up even the pretense of practicing democracy. Remember, these are governments that are apologists for the brutality in Bahrain, the huge corruption and criminality of Karzai in Afghanistan and …. The list could go on and on. They will only display any symptoms of real opposition to the government of Sri Lanka if they or their minions in the business community and their class allies are threatened. And if you’d take a good hard look, you’d be hard put to identify even one instance where Sri Lanka’s financial elites or their Western associates have been, in any way, threatened financially or otherwise.
What cannot be denied, however, is the fact that the monumental corruption afflicting every aspect of life in Sri Lanka will, by its very weight, bring this entire nation to its knees. All the high-interest loans from China will then prove inadequate as a life-saver to this bloated mess of venality. What is likely then is a collapse of everything around us, every vestige of what has been referred to in the most grandiose of overstatements as ‘governance.’ That there will then be change, is an absolute certainty. However, the nature of that change is anyone’s guess. We could emerge from such a holocaust cleansed by its fire. On the other hand we could end up as an Asian Haiti with the disadvantage of having more than one ‘Baby Doc!’.

The Obama inauguration

Watching the huge crowds in Washington on the occasion of Barack Hussein Obama’s inauguration couldn’t but push one’s imagination towards a relocation of the event to Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan practices.
Given the Sri Lankan, officially-approved and promoted reality, video-documented on at least a couple of occasions, where “pro-government demonstrators” are seen releasing their hold on their weapons in order to accept a five hundred rupee note for “services rendered” (or being rendered) much of which is in the form of assault and battery visited upon those having the temerity to display a lack of support to their Lord and Master, I looked really hard at the milling crowds in the US federal capital at a once-in-four-year’s event for so much as a glimpse of a spindly stick, not even for a 2×4 or a pole. Alas, that expectation of excitement was not realized! There were not even sandwich boards in support of the US’s recently re-elected President, leave alone giant cutouts.
I then looked for masses of hamburger wrappers in lieu of the debris from kiribath or buth packets which one might have expected to be in evidence in the home of the hamburger. Alas, I was, again, to be disappointed because the usually ubiquitous flotsam emanating from McDonalds outlets was nowhere to be seen. That suggested that free hamburgers and coke had NOT been distributed in order to attract the very impressive crowds at Barack’s inauguration.
Going through news reports of the event however, I finally unearthed a sign of democracy in action a la Sri Lanka. Some (rap?) musician, whose lyrics were turning anti-Obama or anti Obama policy during the event, was swiftly removed from his performing stage. Here, again though, the event proved most disappointing because the guy was not roughed up and not incarcerated for rehabilitation under the Prevention of Terrorism Act or its US equivalent. If nothing else, this lack of drama, violence and bloodshed reflected very poorly on a country that is home to Hollywood, that source of so much blood and gore in the area of broadly disseminated public entertainment. Surely, the home turf of Spaghetti Westerns and Quentin Tarantino could have done better than cutting the sound from a rap musician’s performance and removing him from the gaze of the television cameras? Oh well…Hollywood ain’t what it used to be and one better learn to live with this deterioration of performance standards, I suppose.
The relative bonhomie surrounding the celebration of the re-election of a “visible” and ethnically “different” person was in stark contrast to what would have happened if by some weird and wonderful confluence of the planets something similar had occurred in Sri Lanka. Imagine, if you will, a descendant of Ponnambalam Ramanathan or Razik Fareed or (God forbid!) Pieter Keuneman was elected, as Senior Organizer for the Mattakkuliya area. There would certainly be protests against this potential sullying of the national political gene pool.
Buses would be made available to bring large numbers of “patriots” to wherever any such inauguration was to take place. Special provision would be made with roof-racks to carry poles appropriate for the assaults to be launched on those who might be foolish enough to enter public space to celebrate such an event. If it was more convenient, contracts would be given to supporters of the “protest against inappropriate celebration” to provide poles of adequate strength and length at the sites where “dissuading action” was to be taken. These contracts would be given to those with a proven record of unquestioning loyalty to those organizing the “anti-celebration” and would constitute significantly higher rates than for common-or-garden “dissuading actions” of the past. After all, payments to friends for such a worthy purpose should take into account the meteoric rise in the cost of (really) living.
However, the dearth of entertainment from the US Presidential Inauguration was somewhat compensated for by a local event that arrived on our doorstep recently.

The “Great laptop theft mystery”

Some afternoons ago just after we’d sat down to lunch with visitors, our “domestics” burst in on us with the news that the police were here, together with a dog. Now police calling on us, usually when they need a “donation” of some description is not unusual but doing so with a trained canine in attendance was certainly out of the ordinary and merited immediate response.
At the front door was a burly policeman in “civvies” (I presume he belonged to our League of Protectors because he said so and one doesn’t question such introductions with a request for identification in this country and in this day and age unless seeking a thick ear or worse!)
He said he was here in connection with my reported theft of a laptop computer and seemed quite annoyed when I told him I had not experienced such an event. It transpired that a part of the ill humour of our policeman was attributable to the fact that he (and the canine and its minder) had had to trek up our not inconsiderable hill after their police vehicle, riding on bald tires, had skidded off the road while conveying them to our abode!
A flurry of calls on his ubiquitous mobile phone ensued and it transpired that the directions given had been completely cockeyed. The reported theft was in an area which was in the opposite direction to our home insofar as the location of the police station was concerned and there had been a mix-up because of the free use of racial references. They had mistaken me, a “suddha” in their parlance, for an Englishman who lived in another area also within their jurisdiction. A little lesson here in the matter of the free use of racial references leading to hugely unnecessary confusion. Anyway, another police vehicle which had pulled its predecessor out of the ditch appeared and everyone – policemen and K9 – departed for goodness knows where!

A footnote to the comedy

Incidentally, it seems like Sri Lanka must be one of the few, if not the only jurisdiction in the world, using Dalmatians as police dogs given the fact that these lovable canines have a reputation for being among the least intelligent of dogs!