By Michael Roberts –

Apart from the extended session with Sandra Beidas of the OISL (or OHCHR) team at Geneva, the three ‘advocates’ from Marga and CHA also participated in some side-events where they presented their interpretations of Eelam War IV and the evolving processes in Sri Lanka since then. The photograph immediately below and that at the end of this post depict one such event when they met representatives from a number of INGOs with interests in Sri Lanka, with the chair being a gentleman from a Sri Lankan organisation in Geneva.

In the course of a brief telephone chat Godfrey Gunatilleke indicated that the discussion was quite heated at times and that one of the human rights activists in the assembly, Derek Whaley, wished to know if the visit by Marga and CHA was funded by the government of Sri Lanka. In short, his suspicion was that they were government stooges. Reasonable enough as inquiry. But the boot can be placed on the other foot as well. One could direct a similar question at Whaley: was he – since he probably was a person immersed in a moral crusade and a compassionate believer of Tamil victimology in the manner Arundhati Roy and/or Radhika Coomaraswamy[i] — a stooge of the Tamil activists worldwide because captivated and captured by their clever agit-prop work? The problem here is that secular fundamentalists of the type Whaley would be so immersed in their righteousness that such challenging questions would not ever be entertained.

Michael Roberts: International Complicity in the LTTE-cum-Tamil Strategy

International powers were active players in the unfolding course of Eelam War IV in Sri Lanka, especially in 2008/09. They bought into the clever LTTE and Tamil strategy of creating the prospect of a humanitarian disaster through massive civilian deaths.[ii] They exerted continuous pressure on the government of Sri Lanka to adopt a ceasefire and even to cease military advances in circumstances when the SL Army was squeezing the Tiger forces to death. Clear evidence of this programme can be located in the dispatches of the US ambassador in Sri Lanka, Robert Blake, thrown open to the world by Wikileaks. That is, in effect and in practice, the international powers became de facto allies of the LTTE and Tamils.[iii]

For instance, in a face-to-face meeting circa 18^th March 2009 with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Rohitha Bogollagama, the American ambassador Robert Blake “strongly cautioned the government not to enter the safe zone forcibly” and asserted that “if there were civilian casualties the government of Sri Lanka would be accused of war crimes” (dispatch of 18^th March 2009 from Wikileaks) – truly a Sword of Damocles in the garments of US liberal-democratic pursuits and US interests. It was a sword that was wielded — through the UNPoE Report  (March 2011) and thereafter through the Petrie Report (November 2012). Its consequences were precisely those that Marga and CHA were seeking to address.

The term “international powers” refers in this summary to USA, Canada, Britain, France, Norway and the UN bureaucracy. Let me underline the last reference: the “UN bureaucracy” as distinct from “the UN.” Indeed, I would go further and suggest that the “UN bureaucracy” in this scenario was more or less an extension of the US State department. For one, USA more or less owned the branch named as the “UN Department of Political Affairs” with two of its foreign ministry officers filling the leadership roles in that department[iv] from 2005 through to 2014. For another, scour the dispatches sent by Ambassador Blake to his superiors in Washington and you will see that senior UN officials who came on flying visits to Sri Lanka (e.g. Holmes[v] and Nambiar) were acting in step with USA’s desires and more-or-less its handmaidens. In that context, both USA and UN were in fact handmaidens of the LTTE,[vi] while the Tamil activists in Sri Lanka/abroad were obedient Tiger followers who aided and abetted the LTTE strategy by bombarding the US embassy and Washington offices with emails.[vii]

It is truly an irony of history and the present world order that it is feasible for a party to a conflict to mount an investigation of that same conflict, and then proceed to become prosecutor and judge.

My cynical interpretation of these happenings as a voice in a little dungeon in a little islet in the Indian Ocean derives from this interpretive framework. From this standpoint I admire the efforts made by my old friend Godfrey Gunatilleke, the Marga Institute and its sundry allies to mount a defense of the Sri Lankan authorities (not just the Rajapaksa clan) and Sri Lankan society writ large in the circumstances they faced then in 2006-09.

Their brave stance is underlined further when it is contrasted with the reading of the UNPoE by other sections of the Sri Lankan intelligentsia such as the Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Friday Forum. At one point the Friday Forum usually held their meetings at the Marga offices so it was a momentous step for Godfrey Gunatilleke to disapprove of their interpretation of the international scene vis a vis Sri Lanka under US direction. Indeed, it would be of some value for serious analysts to explore and decipher the thinking of the civil rights campaigners in the Colombo circles who went along with the pursuits of the UN bureaucracy and ICG from 2008 to the present-day – as long as it is not turned into a witch-hunt or muckraking exercise.

“The circumstances they faced” is a key phrase and a broad heading for a complex delineation of the context that is vital for any comprehension of the course and outcome of Eelam War IV as well as its outbreak in 2006 (Roberts, “Realities,” 2015a). That is precisely what the United Nations Panel of Experts did not do because (a) a rounded evaluation does not seem to have been their goal; and (b) they were desk-bound people of intelligence who could not transcend their cloistered imprisonment in office-perspectives in a manner that would have enabled them to decipher the knitty-gritty of modern warfare in messy battle theatres.

Pinpointing the horrendous deficiencies in the UNPoE Report was the first step taken by the Marga directors (Marga 2011). But their considered study of this report and their subsequent distillation of the literature on the war and its sequels was restrained by their physical situation: in island Sri Lanka. Their advocacy had limited reach as I have argued in “Lilliputs in a World of Giants” (Roberts 2015b).

So one must applaud the further step they took in association with the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies, whose Executive Director Jeevan Thiagarajah has useful international connections and whose ability to secure funds enabled a combined venture advocating their interpretations of the war-and-its-aftermath in the international circles where the US powerbrokers were pursuing their agenda.

FOOTNOTES & CITATIONS

[i] David Blacker has pulverized Arundhati Roy’s stance in April 2009 (yes 2009) in this sharp analysis: “The one single thing standing between the Wanni Tamils and safety is the LTTE. And there is very little the diaspora or anyone outside Sri Lanka can do to make them let their people go. Twice the government has declared ‘no fire zones’ in LTTE territory and urged the civilians to find shelter there from the fighting. The Tigers have, however, blatantly violated these zones, operating within them and using them to launch attacks against the SL army. Meanwhile, the LTTE continues to hold the thousands of Tamils in these ‘no fire zones’ hostage, conscripting even the elderly and very young as slave labour and cannon fodder …” (Blacker 2015 –a reprint). This sharp analysis anticipates my own writings in later years. It also provides a retort to Radhika Coomaraswamy’s total immersion in the grief of victims to the degree that she could not perceive who had set up the parametres for that situation; namely the LTTE (Roberts, “People of Righteousness,” 2011a)

[ii] This argument has been elaborated and expanded over the years in Roberts, “Blackmail,” 2012a; “Generating Calamity,” 2014b. Also see the anthology Tamil Person and State, 2014.

[iii] Thus see Roberts, “Targeting,” 2015a and “American Action,” 2015b.

[iv] B. Lynn Pascoe served as Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations at the UN Department of Political Affairs from 2007 to June 2012,; and was followed by Jeffrey Feltman, also from the US Foreign Ministry. Alsos ee Gamage 2014.

[v] For instance, re Holmes’s visit see Blake dispatch, no. 180, 19 Feb. 2009 (Wikileaks).

[vi] I have moved to this emphasis over the years and the strongest arguments on these lines, with documentation, can be found in Roberts, “Targeting,” 2015a and “American Action,” 2015b.

[vii] See Blake, dispatch No. 314 of 20 March 2009 (Wikileaks). The ambassador distinguished between the extremism of the majority and h those who w ere more temperate. Thus, in the form of unintended impact the extremist Tamils opened the door for the moderates to influence the thinking of the ambassador and the S-of-State’s department. One can be certain that the officials in Washington were also bombarded with emails and perhaps even phone calls and lobbying. Note that the leader of the Tamil National Alliance in Sri Lanka, Sambanthan, greeted Hilary Clintons’ selection as Sec-of-state with a short letter that ran thus under the title “The Tamil National Question in Sri Lanka,”

“We write to you as the representatives in the Parliament of Sri Lanka of the Tamil people of the Northeast region comprising the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka – the areas of historical habitation of the Tamil speaking people. Of the 23 Tamil representatives elected to Parliament from the Northeast, 22 belong to our Party.

May we extend to you our warmest congratulations and very best

wishes on your assumption of office as Secretary of State of the

United States of America.

We annex herewith a copy of the letter we have addressed to

President Barack Obama.

We would earnestly urge you to use your good offices to address the issues that we have raised in the said letter. We are confident that during your term as Secretary of State there

can be a turnaround in the situation in Sri Lanka.

Thanking you and with our warm regards.

Yours sincerely,

//s//

R. SAMPANTHAN M.P.

Parliamentary Group Leader

Tamil National Alliance

END TEXT.

BLAKE

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