{"id":224323,"date":"2021-12-15T10:03:25","date_gmt":"2021-12-15T04:33:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=224323"},"modified":"2021-12-21T02:18:40","modified_gmt":"2021-12-20T20:48:40","slug":"how-gotabaya-dug-the-govts-grave-in-geneva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/how-gotabaya-dug-the-govts-grave-in-geneva\/","title":{"rendered":"How Gotabaya Dug The Govt\u2019s Grave In Geneva"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dayan Jayatilleka<\/a> –<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka<\/p><\/div>\n

Uditha Devapriya, uncannily close to a reincarnation of Ajith Samaranayake in the same vital social and intellectual role he plays as the<\/em> Critic, reviews in The Island<\/em>\u2019s SatMag, Prof Rajiva Wijesinha\u2019s indispensable book, or notebook, on Geneva, the UNHRC and Sri Lanka\u2019s diplomatic trajectory of triumph and travails. He entitles it \u2018Downhill All the Way\u2019.<\/p>\n

Devapriya<\/a><\/span> closes-in on my contribution in a tightly framed \u2018shot\u2019, rightly embedded in a more sweeping recounting of Rajiva\u2019s role<\/a><\/span>:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026Nothing epitomised these developments better than the removal of the man responsible for the 2009 diplomatic victory. Dr Wijesinha is justifiably nostalgic in his recollections of Dayan Jayatilleka\u2026That this ploy succeeded tells us just how much the reversal of such strategies after 2009 cost the country. In that sense, the author is right in considering Dr Jayatilleka\u2019s removal as \u2018the silliest thing Mahinda Rajapaksa did.\u2019 In effect, it marked the beginning of the end.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

In his slim memoir, Rajiva Wijesinha opines:<\/p>\n

\u201cHis [Dayan\u2019s] appointment was, apart from making Gotabaya Rajapaksa his Secretary of Defence, Mahinda Rajapaksa\u2019s most inspired selection. Where Gotabaya led the fight to overcome the LTTE, Dayan led the fight to overcome those who wanted to help them survive through international pressures.\u201d <\/strong>(\u2018Representing Sri Lanka: Geneva Rights & Sovereignty\u2019, p 13.)<\/p>\n

UNHRC Geneva May 2009 remains the equivalent of our Cricket World Cup victory\u2014unprecedented and unrepeated. There is more scholarly scrutiny internationally on that single period of Sri Lanka\u2019s diplomacy (UNHRC 2007-2009) than on any other period or achievement of our diplomatic history. The central critical concern running through all those research reports, academic papers, undergraduate, post-graduate and post-doctoral dissertations, book chapters and books, is the problem: \u201cHow did Sri Lanka evade R2P in 2009?\u201d<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t shocked or surprised that I was sacked six weeks after we had won in Geneva. It had happened to my father, Mervyn de Silva, at the hands of earlier administrations. The late Izeth Hussain (NMMI Hussain), former Ambassador and literary critic, a few years my father\u2019s senior at the university, put it best:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026For here was a journalist widely recognized as exceptionally brilliant, a world-class journalist as we say, arguably even Sri Lanka\u2019s greatest journalist, and he of all people gets sacked not once but twice, on both occasions from state-owned newspapers. That says a great deal about the vicissitudes of Sri Lankan journalism in our time\u2026\u201d<\/strong> (The Weekend Express<\/em>, July 10-11, 1999)<\/p>\n

Fifth Column? Sabotage? <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

What really shocked and disgusted me was the attempt to sack me earlier, when the war was at its height in its closing months and the West was closing in to forestall final victory. That attempt was thwarted by the build-up of public opinion especially in and through The Island<\/em>, culminating in a decision by President MR. This attempt was in early 2009 and ended on March 30th<\/sup> 2009, just before the West began to collect signatures for its draft resolution on Sri Lanka and its call for a Special Session which we managed to delay till the war was over in May, and defeat when it was held.<\/p>\n

Shamindra Fernando wrote a story in the Island, titled \u2018President Extends Dayan\u2019s Term Thwarting Moves to recall him\u2019. It provides the timeline:<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Mahinda Rajapaksa has ended a simmering controversy over the move to recall Sri Lankan ambassador in Geneva, Dayan Jayatilleka\u2026Political sources said that the President had informed Jayatilleka of his decision on Monday, March 30th<\/sup> [2009] in recognition of his significant contribution to Sri Lanka\u2019s successful effort at last month\u2019s Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva…\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

In her book \u2018Mission Impossible-Geneva\u2019 (Vijitha Yapa, Colombo, 2017), Sanja de Silva Jayatilleka, my wife, recounts this attempt in the section \u2018First Rumblings of a Sacking\u2019 (pp. 73-84). She quotes extensively from veteran diplomat Ambassador Nanda Godage\u2019s long letter to the Editor on February 26th<\/sup> 2009, urging my continued stay at the crease in Geneva despite efforts to secure my recall.<\/p>\n

On February 19th<\/sup> 2009 Secretary\/MFA Dr. Palitha Kohona had written a letter to me titled \u2018Termination of Contract\u2019, when the war was still being fought, the West was trying to prevent the military victory by diplomatic means and the decisive battle was looming in Geneva, stating that \u201cin accordance with your contract your services\u2026will come to an end with effect from 31.05.2009.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The attempt to remove me in wartime only ended with an official communication dated March 26th<\/sup> 2009 also from Dr Kohona, which informed me that \u201cH.E. the President has decided to extend your tour of duty till 31. 05. 2010\u201d<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This was later rescinded by fax on July 16th<\/sup> 2009 six weeks after our diplomatic victory at the UNHRC, and I was instructed to quit by August 30th<\/sup> 2009, without even a cross-posting i.e., a lateral move to another state. But that is far from being my main point.<\/p>\n

The historical record shows that powerful liberal-interventionist hegemonistic forces were closing in on Sri Lanka\u2019s war effort from early 2009. Wikileaks<\/a><\/span>\u00a0disclosed that in April 2009, the UK Foreign Secretary\u00a0David Miliband<\/a><\/span>, spent 60% of his time on Sri Lanka due to the \u201cvery vocal Tamil Diaspora in the UK\u201d. Much more crucially, Hillary Clinton<\/a><\/span>, the Secretary of State of the world\u2019s sole superpower, had instructed in a personally signed cable dated May 4th<\/sup> 2009 that its Mission in Geneva to throw its weight behind the move on Sri Lanka at the\u00a0UN HRC<\/a><\/span>\u00a0Special Session:<\/p>\n

\u201cMission Geneva is requested to convey to the Czech Republic and other like-minded members of the HRC that the USG supports a special session on the human rights situation in Sri Lanka and related aspects of the humanitarian situation. Mission is further requested to provide assistance, as needed, to the Czech Republic in obtaining others, signatures to support holding this session\u2026Mission is also instructed to engage with HRC members to negotiate a resolution as an outcome of this special session, if held. Department believes a special session that does not result in a resolution would be hailed as a victory by the Government of Sri Lanka. Instructions for line edits to the resolution will be provided by Department upon review of a draft.\u201d<\/strong> [Cable dated 4th May 2009 from Secretary of State (United States)]<\/p>\n

If I had been recalled in February-March 2009 or any time until the war and the diplomatic battle had been won, what would have ensued? Could any new Head of Mission have maintained the broad alliance that had been painstakingly built in 2007-2009 as described by Prof Wijesinha? The proof of the pudding being in the eating, the abject failure to do so in 2012, 2013 and 2014 when we were defeated by successive resolutions at the UNHRC, and then again in 2021, under Permanent Representatives of quite diverse politico-ideological orientations, answers that question.<\/p>\n

If my recall had taken place in the 1st<\/sup> quarter of 2009, a UNHRC resolution\u2014the UN mandate the West was seeking and couldn\u2019t obtain in New York due to the Russo-Chinese \u2018veto wall\u2019\u2014would have been secured, calling for a cessation of hostilities. Action is then likely to have been taken invoking R2P, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Foreign Secretary David Miliband doing the joint, concerted pushing, to stop the war from reaching its victorious conclusion. That this was the game-plan is evident from published western material including a Report archived in the House of Commons.<\/p>\n

Had my recall by May 30th<\/sup> 2009 (as in Secretary \/MFA Kohona\u2019s Feb 19th<\/sup> letter) gone ahead and Mahinda Rajapaksa had not intervened to modify it\u2014reversibly, as it turned out– I would have been packing to leave at the end of May 2009 and saying my farewells. No Ambassador would have been persuaded by what I said and voted with us because it would have been known that I was on my way out. With a May 30th<\/sup> departure date, I would have been unable to devote full attention to the Special Session\u2014which in actuality I did with only one (just arrived) Foreign Service officer (Mr. Jauhar) to assist me, because the Ministry had overruled my request to keep my young de-facto<\/em> deputy, Mr. OL Ameerajwad (now a superb Ambassador) until the Special Session, so vital to Sri Lanka, was over. My de jure<\/em> deputy had left for Colombo weeks before for his sister\u2019s wedding. He was later employed by the Commonwealth Secretariat\u2019s Geneva office.<\/p>\n

GR & Geneva Redeployment<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It gets (arguably) worse. I had supported President Mahinda Rajapaksa in his re-election bid in late 2009, despite my sacking and to the surprise and disapproval of many. Much as I admired General Fonseka, I believed that the voters should not visit on MR what he had visited\u2014or permitted to be visited– upon me: the injustice and unwisdom of dismissing someone from a post in which he had successfully defended and furthered his country\u2019s interests against all odds. I also held\u2014and in this I have been proven amply correct\u2014that someone with no experience in governance should not be elected over someone who had.<\/p>\n

In late-2009 when Lalith Weeratunga tracked me down at lunch at Prof GL Peiris\u2019 and offered me the ambassadorship in Tokyo -which Ajith Nivaard Cabral had already congratulated me on at breakfast that day (to my confusion) — I politely told him that if my help was required in the presidential re-election campaign I was quite ready to extend it (which I did), but he needn\u2019t bother to incentivize me with the offer of an ambassadorship. Instead, I went to the National University of Singapore as a Visiting Senior Research Fellow.<\/p>\n

When Prof GL Peiris who was attending the Shangri-la strategic dialogue in Singapore in 2010, conveyed to me over dinner President MR\u2019s puzzled remonstrance that I had suddenly disappeared from SL after his re-election, shared his concern about the forthcoming Darusman report, mentioned that Ambassador Kohona in New York had expressed apprehension about the stand of France, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and communicated MR\u2019s request that in that emerging context I return to diplomacy and serve in Paris, I agreed in principle but reminded Prof Peiris that I had a commitment to the ISAS\/NUS. He said he had already cleared that up at breakfast that morning with the Institute\u2019s Chairperson, Ambassador Gopinath Pillai. To Sanja\u2019s dismay I pulled up stakes from the NUS. (We took the financial hit of having paid an advance for an apartment.)<\/p>\n

During my tenure, Minister G.L Peiris arrived in Paris and the Embassy arranged a series of meetings including with the Foreign Minister of France, Alain Juppe. The relationship built up by me with the Quai d\u2019Orsay was such that at Prof Peiris\u2019 meeting with Alain Juppe the case of the killings of the 17 ACF employees did not come up.<\/p>\n

Upon completing my two-year term in France, I returned home in January 2013. Sri Lanka had just commenced its losing streak in Geneva, with Delhi\u2019s distancing from Colombo (which I had warned about while in Colombo in 2011; a warning dismissed by then High Commissioner to Delhi, Prasad Kariyawasam) and SL\u2019s first defeat in 2012.<\/p>\n

My immediate redeployment in Geneva was suggested but ignored by Foreign Minister GL Peiris and dismissed outright by Secretary\/Defence Gotabaya Rajapaksa. India\u2019s High Commissioner Ashok Kantha, a friend of Sri Lanka who had served in Colombo from late 2009 to 2013, had told GL Peiris that things were going badly in Geneva and GoSL\u2019s best bet was to follow the foreign policy advice in my columns, and also to send me back in. Prof Peiris had replied that he had received rather more optimistic reports from the Geneva end.<\/p>\n

High Commissioner Ashok Kantha\u2019s father was a high-ranking military-man who had been commanding officer of the famous Jungle Warfare Training School in Mizoram when Gotabaya Rajapaksa had trained there. This cemented the High Commissioner\u2019s friendship with the Secretary\/Defence. Travelling together on official business to Delhi he urged upon GR the same counsel he had given Foreign Minister Peiris: send Dr Dayan Jayatilleka.<\/p>\n

GR\u2019s response to Ashok Kantha\u2019s recommendation had been quite decisively negative and for the most interesting reasons. He had expostulated with a gesture, that I was \u201con another plane\u201d and furthermore, had sorely offended Israel by my stand while Ambassador to France and UNESCO to the extent that he had to fly to Tel Aviv to explain it. (With MR\u2019s encouragement we had successfully supported Palestine\u2019s entry to UNESCO securing a more-than-two-thirds vote while defying Hillary Clinton\u2019s personally delivered warning of a Congressionally-mandated 60% budget cut. Prof Tissa Vitarana was witness and enthusiastic participant). But what did incurring Israel\u2019s ire have to do with the ability to effectively defend Sri Lanka\u2019s national interest?<\/p>\n

UNP\u2019s Collaboration & Capitulation <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In late 2009 when MR faced the electoral challenge from the Army commander who had won the war on the ground, he was not only the President who had given political leadership to the war effort in which his rival General Fonseka was the warrior who headed the miliary effort, he was also the leader who had led Sri Lanka as a country to the heights of overall achievement including internationally, as seen in the Geneva UNHRC victory under his hand-picked Ambassador.<\/p>\n

After he had dismantled the Geneva team weeks after May 2009 and did not exercise the option of reassembling it after we had lost the first time (2012) or even the second (2013), it was the serial defeats of 2012, 2013 and 2014 that shattered the myth of invincibility of Mahinda Rajapaksa, emboldened his domestic opponents including critics inside the ruling SLFP, and gave momentum to the external push for regime-change. The triple Geneva defeats made landfall in the defeat of January 2015 (an election in which I stood by MR).<\/p>\n

This opened the door to the abject capitulation by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera in Geneva in 2015. The recent testimony of John Sifton of Human Rights Watch (HRW) to the US Congress at the initiative of Congressman Tom Lantos, confirms the ugly truth about that betrayal of national sovereignty:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026Sri Lanka joined a consensus resolution of the UN Human Rights Council in 2015, resolution 30\/1, which included\u2026justice through a hybrid mechanism including international investigators, prosecutors, and judges.\u201d <\/strong> (<\/span>hrw.org<\/span>)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The Rajapaksas opened the gates for this capitulation by dismantling our successful May 2009 team, destroying our Geneva defenses, and failing to give the effort to resist and reverse the triple defeats that followed at the UNHRC in 2012, 2013 and 2014 the (proven) best shot.<\/p>\n

Endgame 2022<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The Gotabaya administration\u2019s March 2021 defeat in Geneva was the worst yet. UN Human Rights High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet\u2019s written report of March 2022 will activate universal jurisdiction and international prosecutions, while providing caches of evidence for cases. These will dissuade foreign investors and tourists while shrinking demand for our products in Western markets. Protecting and promoting those found guilty could trigger unilateral sanctions. \u201cDownhill all the way\u201d, as Uditha Devapriya concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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