- Crudities from the Asian Human Rights Commission

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Crudities from the Asian Human Rights Commission

Wednesday, 30 April 2008

Basil Fernando of the Asian Human Rights Commission has finally gone over the top in attacking the Head of the Peace Secretariat in scatological terms, though clothed in impeccable literary references as befits a former scholar.

He is upset that I am amused by much, but doubtless he intends everyone to be amused by this latest effusion, which suggests the direction in which he is taking the poor Asian Human Commission. Certainly I am amused, but there is room for sadness too, in his failure to think, which is unusual in the man and suggests that he is very deeply involved emotionally.

Basically he attacks me for criticizing Sir Nigel Rodley’s skepticism about a statement of the Sri Lankan government regarding a letter sent by the Head of the IIGEP, Justice Bhagwathi. Basil’s basic argument is that, instead of pointing out the absurdities of Sir Nigel’s performance, I should have produced the letter. Surely he should, instead of judging others by himself, have realized that I would not have been so confident about my facts had I not had a copy of the letter in my possession.

Basil Fernando

I did indeed fax a scan of the letter along with my press release, but this was not reproduced. The letter had however been previously reproduced on the website of the Sri Lankan Mission in Geneva, and it will accompany this release on the Peace Secretariat website, in case there are others like Basil who judge the world by standards they would not dream, I hope, of applying to themselves.

Sir Nigel Rodley

Typically Basil has not addressed the points made in my release, but instead engaged in a long disquisition in scatological terms on what he sees as the failure of the peace process. This is accompanied by personal criticism based on my book, ‘Declining Sri Lanka’, which he obviously has not read, since it makes clear my very different readings of the situation under J R Jayewardene and what obtained since. He is at liberty to disagree with my interpretation of events, but to assume hypocrisy without addressing my arguments is unworthy of a former scholar. Certainly the existence today of forceful critics of the government who are the beneficiaries of massive amounts of international funding, Basil being in the forefront, in itself shows the difference between now and then, when those of us who spoke out were a tiny lonely minority, with hardly any public forum for our analyses. Finally, since he seems to understand literature, let me note the relevance to my case of an extract from his poem ‘Just Society’ –

I who was grieved at my school mate,

my neighbour, my friend,

my guru and fellow worker,

when he died, when he went into hiding,

when he fled to escape the mob,

suddenly departed to other lands empty handed – I, who cried holding his hand

at the Harbour bidding him farewell,

am now to bear this insult.

I did not bid farewell to Basil at the Harbour when he fled Sri Lanka, for I did not know him then, but I published him since, and held his hand metaphorically in Phnom Penh, when he was working there. I did more, for in the early nineties I acquiesced in the request of his great friend Oranee Jansz that we purchase multiple copies of his book ‘The Village by the Mouth of the River’ and prescribe it for students on the pre-University General English Language Training Programme we coordinated nationwide. She thought this would help him, and I could not disagree with the argument that it would be good for young students to read about Basil’s youth and the trials and tribulations of caste discrimination which he described so vividly.

I have done my bit for Basil, but of course no gratitude is necessary, for I did it not as a favour but because the poetry was good and the prose instructive. Sadly success has not suited Basil and one can no longer say the same about the prose. I hope the poetry has not suffered, but his crude prosaic rendering of Chaucer worries me. However there is no doubt that Sir Nigel Rodley, if he reads Basil’s explosive response, thankfully not a bomb but mere hot air, will be duly grateful.

Prof Rajiva Wijesinha

Secretary-General

Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AHRC-STM-112-2008
April 30, 2008

A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission

SRI LANKA: The Peace Chief and the Summoner's Tale

The Executive Director of the AHRC, Mr. Basil Fernando replies to:
Sri Lanka slams Sir Nigel Rodley’s “Sanctimonious
Bluster” by Dr. Rajiva Wijesinha of the Peace Secretariat

In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, one of the greatest satirical
pieces is the Summoner’s Tale. In it the Summoner responds to
the Friar’s Tale and attempts to insult the shameless cleric by
saying that friars live in the devil arse.

Out of the Devil's arse-hole there did drive Full twenty thousand
friars in a rout, And through all Hell they swarmed and ran about.
And came again, as fast as they could run, And in his arse they crept
back, every one.

Reading the peace chief’s comment on Sir Nigel Rodley’s
statement, “that any representation by the government of Sri
Lanka about what any of us (IIGEP) says should be looked at with
extreme skepticism,” leaves no doubt that the residence of the
so-called peace secretariat, is the same place where the friars were
found in the Summoner’s tale. This conclusion comes not only
from this piece by Rajiva Wijesinha, but the rest of his writings
too, which have the same style. On an earlier occasion we compared
his role to that of Squealer in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
(Please see: ASIA: Orwell, Rajiva Wijesinha and the discussion on
human rights monitoring in Sri Lanka at:
http://www.ahrchk.net/statements/mainfile.php/2007statements/1233/).
His reply was that he was amused and, indeed, he seems to be a person
who lives in a perpetual state of amusement. He even begins this piece
on Sir Nigel Rodley’s statement by saying that he was amused by
it.

Where is Justice P N Bhagwati’s purported letter?

A simple reply to Sir Nigel Rodley’s skepticism about Justice
P.N. Bagwati’s statement would have been to produce the letter
purported to have been written by the Justice retracting the
IIGEP’s earlier criticisms to the effect that the Sri Lankan
government has no political will to find out the truth about gross
human rights abuses of state officers; that the Attorney General's
Department’s role in the Presidential Commission of Inquiry
implies conflict of interest; and that the absence of witness
protection is a fundamental denial of international norms and
standards of any inquiry into human rights abuse. Since no newspaper
has produced this letter “the peace chief” could have
simply demolished Sir Nigel Rodley’s skepticism by producing
it.

The familiar game that the peace chief in his role as Squealer tries
to play constantly is to accuse people by all sorts of names and
thereby create the impression that he is representing the truth as
against them. He refers to Sir Nigel Rodley’s comment as
‘sanctimonious bluster’ which in fact is a suitable
appellation for his own work. He also refers to Sir Nigel Rodley as
shallow and snide. It is this extremely profound peace chief who is
calling others shallow. A good study to enable anyone to find out
what exactly is shallow might be to read the writings of “the
peace chief” himself.

This peace chief, who at one time devoted himself to writing long
books on the executive presidency in Sri Lanka, is now one of the
propaganda chiefs of the incumbent executive president. Among his
writings is his book, Declining Sri Lanka – Terrorism and
Ethnic Conflict, the legacy of J.R. Jayewardene (1906-1996). The
legacy continues today through the present executive president and
the ‘peace secretariat’ continues the legacy of political
failures and the worst types of propaganda traditions that came into
being with absolute power being vested with an executive president.
The dictionary meaning of ‘sanctimonious is to be
hypocritically devout. To pretend that Jayewardene’s legacy was
bad for democracy and liberalism and that the present regime’s
legacy is good for democracy and liberalism is nothing but
sanctimonious cant.

What is this ‘peace’ that “the peace
secretariat” claims to be committed to? How is this peace going
to be distributed to all the people of Sri Lanka? To find that aspect
of the contribution of ‘the peace secretariat’ to peace
in Sri Lanka we could go back to the Summoner’s Tale. The friar
that was satirized in this tale badgers a man to make a donation for
the promotion of faith and the building of a church. The man, who is
aware of the friar’s hypocrisy, says to him:

“Now then, come put your hand right down my back, Replied this
man, "and grope you well behind; For underneath my buttocks shall you
find A thing that I have hid in privity." "Ah," thought the friar,
"this shall go with me!" And down he thrust his hand right to the
cleft, In hope that he should find there some good gift. And when the
sick man felt the friar here Groping about his hole and all his rear,
Into his hand he let the friar a fart.

Then the story teller raises a theological question as to how the
gift given to the friar by this man can be equally divided among all
of the friar’s brethren.

This is the type of cynical and most despicable way the peace chief
approaches some of the most fundamental problems, not just of peace
but of the very existence of criminal justice in Sri Lanka. The
questions raised by the IIGEP are not new questions at all to anyone
who is familiar with the legal system of the country. To a person who
has been writing books about ‘Declining Sri Lanka’ the
questions that have been raised should not have caused any surprise.
The entire criminal justice system of Sri Lanka has suffered a great
fall, like the fall of Humpty Dumpty, and it is virtually impossible
for this system to conduct credible investigations into crime in
general and crimes by state officers in particular; and furthermore,
the prosecutorial system has also failed the country. The questions
of criminal justice are as important to a nation to stay together as
any peace deals. The collapse of criminal justice makes life
unbearable to all the citizens whatever their race or religion. It is
about those matters that the peace chief is amused about.

Anyway, we hope that the purported letter by Justice P.N. Bagwati
will be made public.

Basil Fernando
Executive Director
Asian Human Rights Commission
19/F, Go-Up Commercial Building,
998 Canton Road, Kowloon, Hongkong S.A.R.
Tel: +(852) - 2698-6339 Fax: +(852) - 2698-6367