PROFESSOR RAJAN HOOLE’S HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD
C. Wijeyawickrema [email protected]
Lankaweb
/news/items09/170209-12.html
Feb 17 2009
Sri Lanka
"27 Dum Americans" was a newspaper headline in Turkey. The 27 "dummies"
were the congressmen from the House Foreign Affairs Committee who
voted in favor of the Armenian genocide resolution on October 10,
2007. Some Tamils tell the western press that in Sri Lanka there
is Tamil genocide. On September 18, 2006 U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy
"stopped" U.S. military assistance to Sri Lanka citing human rights
violations in the island (Leahy Law-P.L. 104-208; Foreign Operations
Appropriations Act, Sec. 563 of P.L. 106-429). The U.S. President and
the Secretaries of State and Defense vehemently opposed the genocide
It is doubtful that even the SL embassy in USA did any homework
on the subject either before and after the Leahy outburst. What is
important is that the two incidents made it clear that "Human Rights"
has become a political football in the hands of former colonial
masters. resolution not because in 1915 such a thing did not happen
but in 2007 Turkey’s airport is a strategic hub in the U.S. war
against human rights violations in Iraq. A genocide resolution will
unnecessarily upset the goodwill of Turkey. The Leahy reaction,
on the other hand, has no such political-administrative significance.
White man’s (human rights) burden
The Martin Ennals Foundation (MEF) website has a quotation from Kumar
Rupasinghe, who perhaps is the father of the lucrative human rights
business in Sri Lanka. It is also possible that he spoke with MEF
members about the work of UTHR (J). I have no issue with the work
done by UTHR (J) or Prof. RH (which brother, the math professor or
the one appointed as VC of Jaffna Univ.) in fighting to protect human
rights. My concern is that the HR bandwagon of UNO and other INGOs
in 2007 has become the new Hudson Bay Company (1670) or the new East
India Company (1600) from the West. Instead of fur trade in North
America or spices, elephants and gems from Sri Lanka, the White man
now has a new burden of protection of HR. He says he is not coming
to fragment countries so that further exploitation of resources of
these countries becomes easier for the global capitalist. Yet, do we
have even an iota of doubt that just like in the past when Columbus
(1492) and Vasco da Gama (1498) came with the Bible and Sword,
the likes of Gareth Evans come in 2007 with HR-R2P? HR has a dollar
connection. For example, London newspapers waited to write about the
plight of plantation workers in tea estates in Ceylon until they were
nationalized from British ownership in the 1970s.
Buddhism: rights of animals and plants
I wonder how Mr. Martin Ennals (ME), who began with AI (Amnesty
International) and ended up with IA (International Alert), would react
from his grave if he heard that his disciple in Sri Lanka gets paid
at the rate of over million rupees per month for HR services. He pays
a quarter million rupees a month to his assistant. I have however no
doubt that ME (or Kofi Annan) did not know that for Buddhists HR is not
a western-developed western idea. West reacted to actions of Hitler,
Stalin and the cruelties by the Japanese army. In Buddhism animals
and even plants have rights. This is what the Native American Indians
also believe. Those who wrote HR charters for the UN were a collection
of white or black-white people who grew up under the Judeo-Christian
paradigm where life is uni-directional (one-way path- no rebirth) and
killing others for self-defense is the accepted norm. For Buddhists,
life is cyclical and killing even an ant is a sin. With impermanence
of life reminded on a daily basis a Buddhist cannot harm or hurt
another human being. This is why Louise Arbour should be given a copy
of the Theri Gatha to introduce her to Buddhism. A Buddhist is also
guided by the basic concept of "the Middle Path" which in the western
jurisprudence is known as the Doctrine of Reasonableness.
This is why Buddhists saw a clear difference between Rajan
Kadiragamar versus Stanley Tambiah or between Col. Karuna versus
Anandasangaree. This was why Buddhist monks came from all over the
country to attend to the funerals of Christians such as Kadiragamar’s
or Jeyaraj Fernando Pullai’s mother’s. This was why an Englishman
became the elected representative from the Anuradhapura electorate
in 1931 and again in 1936 uncontested. This was why a Catholic,
R.S. Perera, represented the Kelaniya seat, and a Tamil Christian
female defeated the professor of Buddhist Philosophy at the election
for the Mirigama seat. This was why remote village temple monks
provided lodging and meals to Christian priests from town when in
the 1900s they went on circuit looking for possible converts. This
was why the King allowed the Catholics and Muslims to settle down in
his kingdom when the Dutch and the Portuguese were killing them in
the coastal areas.
Human right soup and cooks
In the face of organized propaganda against Sri Lanka, it is
unfortunate that even its embassies abroad are failing to give "facts"
to their host governments. Because of their Christian background it
is possible that the late Rajani Thiranagama or Prof. Hoole did not
know this Buddhist approach to human life. The first thing a Buddhist
is expected to do before preaching anybody is to feed him because
an empty stomach is the source of all other problems. This is what
Maslow identified as a "basic Need." When you come to think of it
all the prominent NGO agents in Colombo are Christians.
Buddhists believe that one’s salvation is in one’s own hands and that
there is no God to do it for them. There are lesser gods and spirits
in the world but it is the internal revolution (spiritual) that brings
happiness and not the external revolution (material). Maslow’s highest
level, "Self-actualization," rests with this spiritual growth. This is
why Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Karl Marx, Lenin, Mao, Nehru, Castro,
Tony Blair or George Bush/Dick Chaney are different from the former
Indian president Abdul Kalam, who said that the solution to world’s
problems lie in Buddhism. The "me-culture" of the west always asks
"what is in it for me," because of its materialistic individualism,
whereas Buddhist societies promotes "us and the community" thinking
always with an eye for personal spiritual growth. Without personal
growth community development is not possible, and vice versa. Western
HR gurus armed with the magic word of democracy could perhaps
understand this difference by looking at the Panchayathi concept in
India. If there is an agreement among five people then god speaks
through them
In this context we have to ask the world HR network (or lobby) how
they define human rights, how they find them or collect data on them,
how they prioritize them and how they use R2P on them. Do they not find
Maslow’s basic needs data in USA in the Katrina-damaged New Orleans or
crime-infested inner-city slums in America, Brazil or Mexico or in the
aborigine lands in Australia? One also needs to know who changed the
UN HR Committee setup to a one person show of UN HR Commissioner. We
know what AI agents did at the Sri Lanka-Australia cricket match. Yes,
Sri Lanka has an IDP issue in the cleared areas. Yes there can be rouge
army soldiers who should be punished for putting drops of dung to the
pot of milk. But of all the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs how Global
lobby of HR became so interested in the Sri Lankan case is a mystery.
In addition to indirectly working for global capitalism, can there
be philosophical links to Harvard Professor Huntington’s clash
of civilizations or the last Pope’s desire to covert Asia into
Christianity? With the Chinese threat may be the suspected designs
of balkanization of India are buried, but Sri Lanka is the only place
where the Theravada Buddhism is still surviving after 2600 years. In
India Buddhism got wiped out, in South Korea it is decimated and
Koreans lead the evangelization movement in Asia.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality,
2nd ed., Harper & Row, 1970
Gandhian satyagraha with "boys"
With the above introductory background, one can now ask whether Prof
RH did tell "the good, the bad and the ugly" in his acceptance speech
of the Martin Ennals Award (Island, 6/10/2007)? Prof. RH had to perform
an impossible task. This was the task that the late Neelan Thiruchelvam
also had to struggle with then, and what Mr. Anandasangaree is unable
to avoid now. They cannot tell the whole story, unvarnished. They
cannot support a mad terrorist group but they cannot fully condemn it
either. Tamil separatist politicians from Colombo, even when they had
the Leader of the Opposition position, felt that the "boys" provided
them a "comfort zone," a raw power that Mao-Tsethung said was coming
from the barrel of the gun. Sinhala politicians in Colombo who thrived
on a beggar’s wound called the "ethnic war," agreed to all kinds of
"concessions" (devolution packages, CFAs, P-Toms?) when they found
that their lives in Colombo were not safe from suicide bombs made
in Jaffna (they never expected that what had happened to Alfred
Duraiyappa and the CID Inspector Bastianpillai could happen to them
in Colombo 7). It is this "bargaining chip" that the "international
community" is desperately trying to save. They and the NGOs and the
German ambassador vehemently demand to stop bombing the terrorist
bunkers in the Wanni. So HR agents go on comparing Sri Lanka with
Nazi Germany and Rwanda or Darfur. The likes of Prof. RH are trapped
in a prison of their own creation.
Dilemma of Tamil intellectuals
Tamils like Prof. RH are facing a dilemma because they want it both
ways. Hence, despite such carefully placed words like "we suppressed
nothing," "we gave frank account of how both sides acted," he cannot
yet hide the singular fact oozing out of his speech that he is for the
Tamil demand that began in 1919 (just one year after Tamilnad made a
demand for a separate country in India) for a separate Tamil country
in Sri Lanka. For the 16 million Sinhalese "Federated Lanka" is a
"two-state island fighting in the north, east, central and even in
Colombo. Col. Karuna who once saved Prabakaran’s life realized this
and he framed the Tamil grievance in its correct perspective: "give
us what Colombo gets." This is not just a Tamil "aspiration" but an
"aspiration" of the Sinhala and Muslim villagers in Sri Lanka. The
recent exit and re-entry of CWC as ministers also proves this point.
What then is the "dignity and justice (that Prof. RH says) that
the Tamil community lost in Sri Lanka?" What kind of "ideologically
directed violence was there against the minorities and especially
Tamils?" Where is "Sinhalese hegemonic state?" Who are the "Sinhala
chauvinists?" By not telling "the truth, nothing but the whole truth,"
in my view, Prof. RH had violated the spirit of Martin Ennals and
joined the world-wide HR network which has become an instrument
promoting global capitalism. The rest of this essay attempts to show
the unreasonableness of the foundation that Prof. RH has used as his
international HR platform.
1. Sinhala Buddhists never discriminated against minorities
Mr. Anandasangaree said this publicly. Then who harmed Tamils? If
there was specific harming of Tamils it was done by the ruling elites
in Colombo who are known as the "black-whites" (coconuts in Mexico,
brown outside-white inside). When the power of English of about 5%
of people were to be replaced with swabhasha, Sinhala, Tamil and
Muslim elites and Marxists living in Colombo created a Sinhala-Tamil
language conflict. If a Tamil doctor wants a job in the Sinhala areas
he cannot expect his Sinhala patient to learn Tamil (or English).
2. Sinhala Buddhist chauvinists
This idea was first promoted in the 1970s by Mrs. Vishaka Kumari
Jayawardena (nee Soyza) who grew up in London with her English
mother. For her, A. E. Gunasinghe’s objection to imported Malayali
or Indian labor was un-socialist and nationalist. AEG had a 2500-old
heritage to protect. Vishaka was thinking in terms of Irish labor
living in slums in London in the late 1800s and the early 1900s of
which Engels (1840s) and later the American Jack London provided
first-hand accounts (The people of the Abyss (life in the East
End of London in 1902), 1903.)According to Vishaka’s "Fourth
Internationale-based theory," the present debate in USA against
Mexican labor is unscientific!
Not a single true Sinhala Buddhist leader preached discrimination
against other religions or other minorities. The writings of Anagarika
Dharmapala, Gunapala Malalasekara or Tennakoon Vimalananda did not
ask Buddhists to discriminate against Tamils, Christians or Muslims.
3. Sinhala Buddhists faced humiliation for 500 years
4. Tamils enjoy more rights in Sri Lanka than in their homeland in
Tamil Nad
5. Tamils in the South are richer than the Sinhala people in the South
6. Tamils prefer to live with the Sinhala chauvinists!
7. World Tamil Federation wants a country for Tamils
8.
9. …
10. mmmm 11. Liberation from majority oppression
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