Politics
Get ready for the next round of ‘Vexatious Persecution’!
by Malinda Seneviratne
There’s a bill currently at the ‘Committee Stage’ in the UK’s House of Lords which that country’s High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, Sarah Hulton, cannot pretend to be unaware of. It’s called ‘The Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill.’ The second reading of the Bill was passed by Parliament last September by 331 to 77.
It was essentially a bipartisan piece of legislation with just 18 Labor MPs opposing it, along with the SNP and Liberal Democrats. The Labor leadership urged Labor MPs not to vote against it. They were ordered to abstain, warning that those voting against it would have to resign any posts they held. MPs Olivia Blake and Beth Winter duly stepped down from their roles. Nadi Whittome, the shadow health secretary’s parliamentary private secretary (PPS), was sacked.
The Bill is said to be part of the UK government’s response to ’the judicialization of war: the extension of human rights norms to overseas combat operations and the birth of a litigation industry that has unleashed a torrent of “vexatious claims” against British forces. ‘Lawfare’ is what the UK wants to trump. In short, it would give British forces the license to do whatever, absolute or near absolute impunity is what is to be legislated.
Now what has all this got to do with Sri Lanka? Well, we’ve had Hulton making noises about Sri Lanka and human rights. She tweeted, ‘UK raising human rights concerns with Sri Lanka, including forced cremation of #COVID19 victims. UN report to be published next week, will inform the approach to @UN_HRC.’ Meanwhile UK’s Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva, Julian Braithwaite, has said that his country would be considering the new UN Human Rights report on Sri Lanka at the upcoming session of UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). That’s more diplomatic, but then again both Braithwaite and Hulton know the adage ‘charity begins at home,’ but they are far away from their respective villages and washing dirty linen in public is not their business. Understood.
Hulton is worried about how dead bodies are to be disposed of, i.e. of Muslims who succumb to Covid-19. Hulton could of course have expressed serious concern about the blatant violation of the principle of equality and especially the open subjugation of women embedded in several pieces of legislation including but not limited to the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act. The living oppressed aren’t her concern. They don’t disturb the likes of Braithwaite and that’s all good as far as the other interlocutor Aliana B Teplitz, the US Ambassador, who also talks of the cremation issue and condescendingly wants Sri Lanka to come up with a meaningful plan at the UNHRC, the body which her government withdrew from after calling it ‘a cesspool of bias.’
One wonders if Ms Hulton and Ms Teplitz ever met the UN Resident Coordinator in Sri Lanka, Ms Hanaa Singer. Singer does meet with the leaders of Tamil political parties and probably advises them on how to draft petitions to the UNHRC, human rights outfits and of course submissions to the Experts’ Committee on drafting a new constitution. It’s an old game. You script it, the script is played and the script-writer explains, ‘what a performance, what a script!’
If these individuals do meet it is quite likely that they talk of (if not plot) moves against Sri Lanka. One wonders if, say during a break or in a lighter moment, they guffaw about US and UK war crimes. One wonders if Singer chuckles and tells Hulton ‘isn’t it a hoot that you are planning to drag Sri Lanka over the coals and at the same time want to legislate against lawfare, so-called?’
Here’s a question none of them would have considered or would wish to be put to them: ‘What if Sri Lanka did a xerox of “The Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill,” only expanding its relevance to include all operations including those targeting terrorists and terrorism at home?’ What if Foreign Minister Dinesh Gunawardena invited Ms Hulton, Ms Teplitz and Ms Singer for tea/coffee, cookies and bibikkan, handed a copy of proposed legislation along those lines, remarking with a chuckle, ‘we were inspired by our former colonial rulers, the mother country, the empire on which the sun never sets and the fact that neither the USA nor the UN seem to find anything wrong with the bill,’ and ask, kindly, politely, ‘could you help us by tweeting warm and supporting comments?’
Could happen, but probably won’t. At least not in this way. Still, it’s something that the government could think of. If not for anything but to call out the humbuggery and to drive home the point that none of these people give a hoot about human rights and that the circus is about persecution. Vexatious persecution, in fact.
What’s the government’s response, is the question that we need to ask. Reactive or proactive? It looks like the former. Typically actions against countries, honorable and otherwise, are long-drawn affairs where the planning begins at the conclusion of one session with all manner of interventions carefully phased to climax at the next session. Those at the receiving end of vexatious moves ought to do the same. We are less than four weeks away from ‘Geneva.’ There will be other Genevas. The balance of forces obviously is skewed against Sri Lanka and this will be the case into the foreseeable future. All the more reason for round-the-year work on these issues, not just to counter outrageous claims, but to tell our story and get our house in order.
On the other hand, as the anti-Sri Lanka lobby well knows, UNHRC resolutions are non-binding and what teeth they have depends on co-sponsorship. It’s at the General Assembly that things can get hot. And that’s where we have to fight the hardest. And that’s where we have to figure out who our friends are.
There’s talk about taking a nonaligned stand with regard to the play of global powers in the Indian Ocean. That’s all bunkum. There’s no such thing as neutrality. There are no ethics. There is lawfare. There are vexatious claims. There’s threat, as a more cost-effective arm-twister than its execution. In the long run, countries such as Sri Lanka are best served by unity and maybe Sri Lanka could take the lead in reviving the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Of course many of the NAM members are aligned (read, subservient) to one or more of the major powers. Some have moved on, like China, which is set to take over the No 1 spot from the USA before the decade is out.
A 21st Century version of ‘The Tricontinental’ championed by Ernesto Che Guevara is an option, but that’s a long term plan and obviously a long shot. What do we do right now? The USA is, as pointed out, slipping. It has to hold hands with India, Japan and Australia to counter China. The UK wants to join this ‘Quad,’ a ‘Quin’ is the shelter that country seeks. What does Sri Lanka do? Where does Sri Lanka go?
The answer is ‘tried and tested.’ Obviously the US is not a friend. The UK? Well, they are yet to return the loot and compensate for genocide, ethnic cleansing, cultural erasure and other forms of vandalism and outright theft. The UN is a creature of the USA, notwithstanding damning censure of its ‘soft’ (arm-twisting) arm (UNHRC) as, as mentioned above, ‘a cesspool of bias.’
China. That country has been vilified no end by the leaders of countries that have no moral authority to do so and of course by their lackeys. China: a country that has always stood with Sri Lanka against vexatious prosecution/persecution. China: never said ‘change your constitution or else…!’
It looks like Sri Lanka will not have to choose. The choosing is being done by the likes of Teplitz, Hulton and Singer.
India? Well, India has kindly offered to help counter the Covid-19 pandemic via vaccine diplomacy. India decided to send a bunch of stuff, FoC. Sri Lanka will have to pay for the rest. It’s a decent price, admittedly. We don’t know if this ‘decency’ is the price India pays to take control of the Colombo Port, beautifully positioning that country to obtain full control of transshipment business in the region by a) wrecking operations here, and b) developing a home port in South India.
The vaccine is cheap in other ways too. In any case 99.5% of the infected recover. No vaccine is 100% reliable. That unreliability could be less than 0.5%, more than 0.5% or 0.5%. In other words, hardly something to go wild about. It would, however, boost confidence in the entire public and that’s fundamentally necessary to get life back on track. Thanks are due to Prime Minister Modi, let us not be ungracious.
Let us also retain perspective, though. And perspective, right now, means we cannot drop our guard. We should not be persuaded to roll over and die in Geneva. We are not required to remain silent when we can and should call out the humbuggery. Vexatious Persecution: that’s a term that the Foreign Ministry needs to learn. And use!