Human Rights should be a serious business, but the way in which some heavily funded NGOs approach it with regard to Sri Lanka suggests more a sense of theatre than genuine concern for people who suffer. The pattern has now become familiar, a comprehensive assault on the integrity of the government of Sri Lanka, delivered just in time for sessions of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. This means every three months for the very rich, every six for those with less support.
The assaults are usually accompanied by some desultory criticism of the LTTE, immediately ‘balanced’ by a much more devastating attack on the government. In order to build up the statistics, the reporting period is extended backward, specifically to cover 2006, when bitter internecine warfare between the LTTE and former militants increased casualty figures. Though the situation improved in 2007, and particularly in the latter part of the year, since the catchword is a deteriorating situation, past problems have also got to be piled up.
This is accompanied by a catch all technique of criticism, in which anything nasty must be heaped on the shoulders of the government. Colombo’s Law and Society Trust, one of the NGO Network Neelan Tiruchelvam set up in the Kynsey Terrace Enclave, a Network that now seems to have forgotten how he was murdered by the LTTE, provides continuous examples of this trait. Six months ago it declared that six Sri Lankan officials, including military personnel, who had been killed by an LTTE attack, were amongst the disappeared. Another preposterous example of their reporting techniques, which they claimed involved eyewitness reports or those of close family, was the assertion that a Philippine national, sent to Singapore for medical treatment, had vanished.
This time they have decided to concentrate on persons in humanitarian service, ostensibly ‘to remember and pay tribute to all humanitarian actors who have made a supreme sacrifice to serve all Sri Lankans’. This would be heart-warming were it not for the timing of the exercise, six months after the last one, aimed clearly at the same audience in Geneva. Naturally, the figures are from 2006, with no recognition of the fact that, of the 44 killings, 28 were in the former year, while of the 23 disappearances, only 7 were in 2007. This distinction is not shown in the many colourful pi-charts they use to make their case.
They are also disingenuous, if not altogether fraudulent, in their description of the killing of the 17 aid workers in Mutur, which is the single incident that has allowed so much hype about Sri Lanka being so dangerous for aid workers. Their account ignores completely the fact that the aid workers were sent into a dangerous situation, in contravention of Clauses 14, 15 & 18 of 61/133 on UN regulations on Aid Workers. They also seem to have been completely misled in claiming that,
‘The thirteen males and four females killed—all Tamil except for one Muslim—were residents of Trincomalee and visited Mutur daily to carry out their duties as Water and Sanitation Technicians and Hygiene Promotion Agents on behalf of civilians affected by the war and the tsunami. As was customary for these aid workers, they would take the morning ferry from Trincomalee to Mutur and return home taking the evening ferry. Since the military adventures of the government forces and the LTTE came unannounced amounting to artillery bombardment and mortar attacks resulting in the rapid movement of the battleground from Maavil Aru towards Mutur town, the evening boat service was suspended resulting in the aid workers being trapped in Mutur.’
This is just plain vulgar in its revelation of total prejudice. Far from there being ‘military adventures of the government and the LTTE’ what happened was an unprovoked assault on Mutur by the LTTE, which had to be resisted if the whole of Trincomalee were not to become vulnerable to attack. The fight back was tough, but finally proved successful. Law and Society Trust may think this is an adventure, in what they doubtless see as a sort of cricket match, caring not a whit that they and their ilk continue to function because of the protection against terrorism they receive from the State within which they function.
It also flies in the face of all previous accounts of what happened at Mutur. The detailed analysis of the Jaffna University Teachers for Human Rights makes it clear that ACF took a deliberate decision, contrary to that of other NGOs, to keep staff overnight. To quote at length from their report,