{"id":119368,"date":"2014-02-02T00:02:54","date_gmt":"2014-02-01T18:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=119368"},"modified":"2014-02-08T14:07:57","modified_gmt":"2014-02-08T08:37:57","slug":"a-note-to-nisha-biswal-on-accountability-and-patience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-note-to-nisha-biswal-on-accountability-and-patience\/","title":{"rendered":"A Note To Nisha Biswal On Accountability And Patience"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Malinda Seneviratne<\/a><\/span>\u00a0–<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Malinda<\/a>

Malinda Seneviratne<\/p><\/div>\n

Assistant Secretary of USA for South and Central Asia Nisha Desai Biswal<\/span><\/a>, currently visiting Sri Lanka, has issued a warning.\u00a0 The lady, sent here by President Barack Obama<\/span><\/a>, says \u2018if Sri Lanka doesn\u2019t make meaningful progress in addressing the accountability issues, the patience of the international community on Sri Lanka will start to wear thin and urged Sri Lanka to take some \u201cconcrete steps\u201d to address the issue of human rights, accountability and reconciliation process\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018Accountability\u2019 is the word here.\u00a0 \u2018International Community\u2019 is the definer.\u00a0 \u2018Patience\u2019 is the commodity in short supply.\u00a0 And charity begins at home, they say.<\/p>\n

President Obama is a man of words (which, by the way, is not the same thing as \u2018a man of his word\u2019).\u00a0 On Wednesday the 13th of May, 2009, Obama urged \u2018both sides in Sri Lanka’s 25-year civil war to take measures to avert a humanitarian crisis and aid tens of thousands of people trapped in the war zone.\u2019 \u2018Without urgent action this humanitarian crisis could turn into a catastrophe,\u2019 he worried. “Now is the time to put aside some of the political issues that are involved and to put the lives of the men, women and children who are innocently caught in the cross fire, to put them first,” he pontificated.<\/p>\n

Obama probably knew and still knows the meaning of the word \u2018catastrophe\u2019 and one assumes that Biswal does so too. So let\u2019s talk catastrophe. \u00a0Policy-driven catastrophe.\u00a0 Ms Biswal might have heard that around the time that Sri Lankan forces are supposed<\/b> to have committed war crimes, the US Air Force dropped bombs in Bala Boluk, Afghanistan, killing some 150 people. That\u2019s just one of thousands of such policy-driven, systematic crimes against humanity.\u00a0 She knows of Drone Attacks.\u00a0 She knows about how her country bombed Iraq into the middle ages, when thousands of air sorties dropped millions of tons of bombs on places where there were millions of civilians. I am being brief here by the way. But briefly, let me remind Nisha (and the world) that US-led sanctions on Iraq caused the death of half a million Iraqi children.<\/p>\n

She knows that her government maintains over 190,000 troops and 115,000 civilian employees in 909 military facilities in 46 countries and territories, and that\u2019s not counting the on-going wars including the non-declared troop deployments in subversive actions to gift democracy (read \u2018instability, submission, anarchy\u2019) to certain selective Arab nations.\u00a0 She knows of abuses and usurpations of American standing armies and they include rape, murder, sexual harassment, robbery and other crimes such as the seizure of people\u2019s lands, destruction of property and cultural imperialism.\u00a0 All this is not catastrophe-recipe, is it catastrophe-ongoing [if unpunished, uncompensated crimes is the subject, the international community would have nothing else to do but investigate, investigate and investigate the USA let\u2019s not forget \u2013 that\u2019s catastrophe-past-tense].<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s forget it all.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go back to accountability.\u00a0 Nisha must have heard that the Deputy Prime Minister of Britain, Nick Clegg<\/span><\/a>, confessed that the invasion of Iraq was illegal. She knows also that the whole Iraq adventure was about WMDs or Weapons of Mass Destruction.\u00a0 A country was invaded after obtaining the green light of the US citizenry through their elected representatives who were told that Iraq possessed WMD. It was a lie and those who uttered it knew they were lying. <\/i><\/b>And today, more than a decade later, Obama cannot straighten his twisted tongue to admit the fact.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s get to this accountability business.\u00a0 And also \u2018credible, transparent, domestic investigative mechanisms\u2019.\u00a0 Dear Ms Biswal, is there such an entity back in the USA that\u2019s inquiring into the invasion of Iraq on the basis of a deliberate lie? Is there an entity that is inquiring into the systematic use of torture on political prisoners?\u00a0 Is there an entity that is inquiring into deliberate and indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations?<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know and we don\u2019t know if Ms Biswal knows or if she does whether she would tell us.\u00a0 But the world knows that her president announced to block the release of photographs documenting American military personnel torturing detainees in Iraq, in a reversal of an understanding given earlier. The justification is that releasing such photographs would demoralize his troops. So it seems that Mr. Obama, who has \u2018eyes\u2019 to see \u2018catastrophes\u2019 where none exist, does not have eyes to see the catastrophes his country orchestrated and perpetuated and worse, wants to world to close its eyes as well.<\/p>\n

So when Ms Biswal meets the press, someone might ask her a few questions.<\/p>\n

How many WMDs did US and allied trooped find in Iraq?<\/p>\n

Nick Clegg said the invasion was illegal.\u00a0 It is known that there was absolutely no evidence of anything warranting an invasion but the US Congress and Senate were deliberately misled into believing otherwise.\u00a0 Is there any mechanism to investigate how all this happened?<\/p>\n

President Obama himself has said \u2018don\u2019t talk to us about such things\u2019, clearly implying that the USA is not willing to subject itself to the kind of international scrutiny it demands for when it comes to other countries. But in the clear absence of a credible, transparent domestic mechanism to investigate these crimes against humanity (and here we are talking about concrete evidence and not allegations made by people totally dependent on hearsay and that too from unreliable sources such as terrorists or terrorist sympathizers), is an international investigation, distasteful as it may be, the only way to get to the truth?<\/p>\n

One can get away with murder (as the USA has) when one is judge, jury and court reporter. But Ms Biswal must understand that at this end of this political economy of justice, the general perception is that the world has too much colonial posturing and too little reason.<\/p>\n

In other words, the leaders of this country are<\/b> answerable. They are answerable to the people of this country.\u00a0 They are not answerable to a bunch of terrorist who use wealth and weapons to convince the world that the rivers of blood they make flow are the inevitable juices that give life to democracy, peace, civilization etc.<\/p>\n

And that brings us to \u2018patience\u2019.\u00a0 The world, Nisha, has been patient over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to mention the D-Day massacres.\u00a0 The world has been patient over your country\u2019s use of chemical weapons in Vietnam and other unhappy places.\u00a0 The world has been patient about CIA operatives disguised as diplomats sowing discord, fermenting anarchy. We have watched patiently as the USA toppled one democratically elected head of state after another in Latin America and while it moved to install despots instead.\u00a0 We have watched tyrannies being propped up, monarchies having their lifespan extended and the most ruthless autocrats being embraced as benefactors of humankind by your leaders, Obama included.<\/p>\n

And we have patiently observed the machinations of your \u2018friendly-to-Sri-Lanka\u2019 government in Geneva and elsewhere, even as it continues to perpetrate horrific crimes against humanity across the globe.\u00a0 Do you think that we think that if this Government cures itself of all its ills you will get off our national back?\u00a0 No. We have no illusions.\u00a0 That\u2019s a discard that accrues, paradoxically, when people have been as patient for as long as we have.\u00a0 In fact, the one concrete thing that will result from these games people like you play, is the further strengthening of the regime.\u00a0 Perhaps that\u2019s what you want?<\/p>\n

So, spare the lectures.\u00a0 Spare the tuition classes.\u00a0 Say your piece, by all means.<\/p>\n

*Malinda Seneviratne is the Chief Editor of \u2018The Nation\u2019\u00a0and his articles can be found at\u00a0www.malindawords.blogspot.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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