The leader must be conscious of ‘the gathering’

The discussion I launched on the Pagnamakkanuvattanasutta or the ‘First on the turning of the wheel,’ a couple of months ago was unfortunately interrupted by a necessity to comment on issues of national import.  The Pagnamakkanuvattanasutta, contained in the Raja Vagga (discourses referring to kings) of the Anguttara Nikaya (Numerical Discourses) details some very interesting observations by Siddhartha Gauthama, our Budun Wahanse, about the ideal attributes of the Chakravarthi or the Universal King. 

As mentioned in previous discussions on this subject, this sutta lays out five characteristics of the (successful) universal monarch and can be applied in the modern context to any ruler or indeed any leader of any institution, public, corporate or cooperative. I’ve already discussed the first four requirements i.e. the need to consider profitability, be conscious of the righteous, be tempered enough to ascertain appropriateness of action and have a sense of timing.  Today, I shall consider the last of these attributes, that of parisagngnu, i.e. taking cognizance of the gathering or the public.  

No leader, be he/she monarch or corporate head, can hope to be successful by ignoring the stakeholders.  A leader must always be conscious of the various people-segments, the problems they face both in their generality and specificity, their needs and how they can be expected to change over time. 

What are the kinds of ‘people-segments’ that a leader has to consider?  First there are those who are considered loyal and those who are not.  A leader must be aware of who he/she can trust, who he/she should be wary of and who the detractors are. 

In a democracy, leaders are elected by the people.  Thus there are those who expressed support and those who expressed preference to someone else.  A democratic leader who has to keep in mind the next election and therefore be mindful of the needs and aspirations of the core constituency, even as moves are made to win over the doubters and the virulently opposed.  In all related engagements the leader must show fidelity to the satharabrahma viharana (loving kindness, compassion, equanimity and the ability to rejoice in another’s joy), be conscious of the thrilakshana – anityaa, dukkha and anathema – and the verities of mortality (birth, decay and death).  An opponent is not won over with hatred but with compassion. 

There are other kinds of people-segment. Societies are not flat. There are distinctions along the lines of class, region, gender, age, ethnic and religious identity, political loyalties etc.  The great leader will not only be mindful of these distinctions and particularities with respect to grievance and aspiration, but will design policy in a manner that obtains the optimum outcome this side of causing social rupture.  The leader will have to make decisions for the ‘here and now’ without compromising the future of several generations down the line. 

The leader, moreover, will have to exercise both wisdom and compassion.  The emotional element of grievance, in addition to their true and verifiable dimensions, will have to be taken into account and yet, at no point should the leader be swayed by rhetoric and frill.  The truth value of claim will have to be ascertained. 

Delivering redress to grievance of all people-segments is of utmost importance and the onus is on the leader to allay apprehension of other elements that may take issue with the particularities of ‘resolution’.  The successful leader will do so with conviction and force of argument.  By the same token, the onus is on the leader to set up mechanisms of verification whose integrity is unquestioned.  Where it is found that claim has no foundation, it is up to the leader to boldly say, ‘can consider aspiration but not bound to deliver, certainly not on account of fiction and not at the expense of aggrieving others’.  

All leaders operate within a geographical reality, bounded by laws of jurisdiction.  While they need to understand that the world is larger than their ‘kingdom’ and that this larger world has to be engaged with, the leader’s first and foremost responsibility is to the ruled. 

All leaders, weak and powerful, ruling countries or other entities big and small will have to take note of the political economies pertaining to the overall of which country and/or entity is only a part.  Leaders no doubt will have to operate in contexts of power imbalance and therefore be forced to contend with arm-twisting, threats, invasions and other instruments that seek to undermine the interests of the particular political, financial or social institution/unit and the constituents therein. 

Negotiation and concession will figure in relevant solution-matrixes, but the honourable and successful leader will have a keen sense of costs.  He/she would not give that which undercuts the core of what makes ‘nation’ or ‘organization’ meaningful, will fight to protect the core values that gels individuals into a people, geographies into ‘nation’.  A ruler endowed with such qualities will always have the support of the people and will place utmost trust in that support. 

If ‘people’ are central in the manner described above, the leader should always be in conversation with them; soliciting view, encouraging criticism and recommendation, debating merits and demerits and in this and other ways stand shoulder to shoulder in nation-building and nation-protecting even as he/she stands above, articulating and implementing their will. 

The leader is a special citizen or stakeholder, but the leader is not divine.  A leader can have aides and advisors, but must also have mechanisms that are capable of filtering out the negatives that the inevitable sycophancy breeds. 

The leader must understand that in his/her being resides a nation and understand that this nation is made of people, invariably made of diversity’s richness, their joys and sorrows, hopes and aspirations, hurts and anger.  It is not an easy body to own; the humours therein are not easily balanced or governed.  The leader must be acutely aware of all the body parts within.  This, I believe is the crux pertaining to the parisagngnu considerations articulated by our Budun Wahanse.

This concludes the 5 part series on the Pagnamakkanuvattanasutta.

Sabbe Satta Bhavantu Sukhitatta. May all beings be happy.

Amnesty International’s mouth stumped by its tongue

Peter Splinter, Amnesty International’s representative to the United Nations, commenting on Sri Lanka, said that Sri Lanka’s position on issues of human rights is akin to someone who, having murdered his parents, is now demanding sympathy on account of being an orphan.  

It is now clearly established that Amnesty International (AI) has received funds from LTTE front groups and that as such its position on Sri Lanka has been compromised beyond salvation.  While AI’s unholy friendship with pro-LTTE groups and operatives has been well known for quite a long time, its assertions regarding Sri Lanka are, not surprisingly, informed by the wild claims made by terrorist proxies.  To place value on the claims made by such unsavoury sources says a lot about AI’s integrity and professionalism.  In this instance, the metaphors of parent, child, patricide and matricide, and orphaning, warrant lengthy comment.

Who pioneered suicide bombing?  Who is the biggest culprit when it comes to abducting children and forcing them into combat operations?  Who was responsible for lining up and summarily executing some 600 unarmed policemen?  Who ethnically cleansed an entire peninsula (Jaffna) of Muslims? Who killed in cold blood some 400 Muslims while at prayer in two mosques?  Who was engaged in human trafficking, drug running, arms smuggling, credit card fraud all over the world?  Who has been found guilty of extortion and arms purchase for terrorist purposes?

The LTTE.  The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.  The parent organization of the Global Tamil Forum, British Tamil Forum, Canadian Tamil Congress, Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam and others. That’s the answer to the above set of question.  Does Peter Splinter know? Does he care? What says Amnesty International?

So who is the parent-killer here?  Who is demanding sympathy and redress?  Sri Lanka was held to ransom by LTTE terrorism for over thirty years.  The LTTE stymied all attempts at a negotiated settlement to end the blood-letting. The LTTE, in all its operations, were backed to the hilt by the very same organizations that are pointing fingers at Sri Lanka and egging on outfits such as AI.  Had not the war ended in May 2009, it is reasonable to assume that hundreds of thousands of people would have died, some caught in crossfire but most from LTTE attacks deliberately targeting civilians by way of suicide attacks and bomb explosions. 

The Sri Lankan security forces brought the war to an end, but more importantly rescued approximately 300,000 civilians held hostage by the LTTE.  The primary aggressor here is the LTTE.  Having effectively held a nation to hostage, caused untold damage to the economy, destroyed livelihoods, the LTTE (represented by its international rump) it is that is now painting itself as ‘orphan’.  It is this ‘orphan’ that Splinter and his politically and morally corrupt outfit is shedding tears over.   

What does Splinter and AI have to say about Afghanistan and Pakistan today, about Libya yesterday, about the yesterday, today and tomorrow of Iraq where there are true orphans who really don’t have a voice to talk about those who killed their parents, the US Government?  If we talk ‘proportion’, then whereas Sri Lanka ended a war, secured the release of hostages and created conditions for normalcy, including but not limited to resettlement, reconstruction and rehabilitation of ex-combatants and their reintegration into society (with marketable skills), the United States and its European allies have bombed and continue to bomb civilian areas.  This is not to rescue hostages.  It is to kill people suspected of being terrorists. 

Splinter knows well that the LTTE forcibly recruited children, snatching them from their parents and even murdering parents who refused to part with their children.  These children were put in the line of fire.  The LTTE sent children with explosives strapped to their person targeting civilians.  That was the ‘childhood’ that Splinter’s funders supported with bucks, arms, whitewashing and such. 

Only one thing remains to be asked: What does Splinter know about orphans and orphaning? 

There’s a Sinhala saying: kata boru kiwwath diva boru kiyanne nehe.  It means that even if the mouth tries to lie, the tongue does not.  Peter Splinter’s tongue has stumped his mouth.    

Let’s take accountability seriously

The United States has tabled a resolution on Sri Lanka at the 18^th Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.  While it appears on the surface to endorse the report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), calling for the swift implementation of recommendations, the resolution includes a demand for the kind of oversight mechanism that the USA itself has not and will not allow with respect to her general conduct.  These include the conduct of military operations, the treatment of prisoners and the overall internal processes of accountability and loopholes in the law that consistently let perpetrators off the hook. 

These machinations are complemented by the work of international human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, both well-known for selectivity and chronic dependency on unsubstantiated claims made by individuals and organizations with dubious track records, including those who have unabashedly funded and/or supported terrorism.  Amnesty International, for example, received donations from known LTTE groups.  The links between such organizations and LTTE front organizations like CTC and TGTE are already well known.

The moves against Sri Lanka have also been buttressed by unprincipled institutions such as Channel 4 which pays scant respect to even the basic principles of media ethic and appears not to understand the meaning of veracity, verifiability and the reliability of sources.  

It is clear that all these three groups are working with together, targeting the member states of the UNHCR.  This campaign is now ready to fire another salvo with the release of a ‘new’ Channel 4 ‘documentary’ in Geneva.  

This production, titled ‘War crimes unpunished’ is said to focus on heavy shelling of civilians and a hospital in the ‘No Fire Zone’, strategic denial of food and medicine to hundreds and thousands of trapped civilians, killing civilians during the ‘rescue mission’ and the systematic execution of naked and bound LTTE prisoners and footage of a 12-year old boy who has been brutally executed.

The timing is of course politically motivated.  If it were pure journalistic pursuit of truth, then whatever ‘evidence’ would have been in the public domain the moment it reached Channel 4.  Channel 4, moreover, in all its previous releases have shown a remarkable tendency to hide the terrorism-associated histories of its main characters.  It has fudged numbers, citing and/or extrapolating from claims made by individuals forced to mouth numbers at gun point by the LTTE.  It has shown no investigative zeal into the activities and links of its key contacts, LTTE fronts in the West.   Most crucially, nothing that Channel 4 has shown so far indicates systemic or policy-related abuse by the security forces.  Channel 4, if it was really interested in the issue of human rights, would train its cameras on the party that has tabled this resolution, the USA, whose violations make the kinds of allegations leveled at Sri Lanka look like the transgressions of errant schoolboys. 

Still, it is no doubt incumbent on the Sri Lankan authorities to conducts its own investigations into such allegations, including those leveled by Channel 4 and as recommended by the LLRC.  With respect to civilian deaths and allegations of summary execution, what is already available in the public domain or the ‘open sources’ clearly indicate that investigation is warranted, and that is exactly what the LLRC has recommended.  What has to be done is to keep things sober. Channel 4 has a stake in sensationalizing things and pandering to emotions and that with a motive to support pernicious moves against a sovereign nation is to be expected.  The law has to defer to reason. 

There are certainly photographs which ‘show’ summary execution.  The authenticity must be examined and if it is the genuine article then prompt action must be taken to investigate and bring to book the offender(s).  Even though it is US policy to throw out Human Rights caveats when dealing with suspected terrorists, this is not good enough reason for Sri Lanka to follow suit. 

Sri Lanka, contrary to assertions and in stark contrast to how the US deals with military offenses, has a long history of zero-tolerance of deviance.  This was evident in the trial of the Lieutenant and Sergeant responsible for the rape and murder of Premawathi Manamperi in 1971.  In the case of Krishanthi Coomaraswamy (1996), the culprit was identified and charged.  Of the 4 accused, three were sentenced to death.  In another incident in 1996, where V. Rajini was gang raped and murdered, 4 soldiers were identified, put on trial and sentenced to death.  It was a verdict by an all-Sinhala jury.  It is good to note that white police officers of the LAPD responsible for violations against blacks in Los Angeles were all acquitted by an all-white jury. 

With respect to what happened during the last stages of the war, the LLRC has clearly mandated investigations.  The Attorney General and Police have been tasked to look into all abductions and disappearances.  This is not easy work because many among the ‘disappeared’ were LTTE cadres who fled to other countries.  It is necessary work and enforced haste will only be disruptive. 

The current moves spearheaded by the USA and supported by Channel 4 focuses on civilian casualties and excessive use of force including shelling.  As of now, there is clear evidence that the LTTE shelled a church during the last stages of the war.  Civilian deaths due to shelling by the Army are for the most part claims and accusations of shelling hospitals deliberately remain unfounded.  As for essential humanitarian supplies being deliberately blocked, the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming except for the fact that it was the LTTE pilfered heavily, an outcome no one could prevent. 

Most crucially, in addition to general military procedures, a 5-member Court of Inquiry has been appointed by virtue of the powers vested in the Army Commander by Regulation 4 of the Courts of Inquiry Regulations, read with the Regulation 2 of the Army Disciplinary Regulations, to probe into all observations made by the LLRC regarding civilian casualties and also to probe with respect to the contents in the Channel 4 video footage, irrespective of the authenticity or otherwise of the video presentation.

Such a Court of Inquiry is an initial and necessary fact-finding inquiry akin to a non-summary inquiry by a Magistrate. If there is a prima facie case disclosed against any person from the evidence led before the Court of Inquiry, a General Court Martial is convened to try the alleged offenders. A General Court Martial has the jurisdiction that is identical to a High Court Trial-at-Bar and can award any sentence, including the death penalty.

One of the objections raised has been the issue of ‘independence’, but that is downright silly because it implies that no military can investigate abuses by its own personnel.  It implies, further, that all allegations of misconduct by any military outfit of any country have to be investigated by another country or some outside agency.

So far, in the open sources, there is photographic evidence of one 12 year old boy who has died of gunshot injuries, Prabhakaran’s younger son.  If there is any evidence of this boy having been alive close to the time he was shot, then it indicates execution.  There is ample evidence that the LTTE used children as suicide bombers, including a child who was sent along with fleeing civilians and programmed to detonate at the receiving point manned by the Army.  The USA would, following a statement issued by its Attorney General, think nothing of eliminating a suspected terrorist regardless of age, gender or health because of the perceived threat. Sri Lanka can and must do better. 

The Court of Inquiry is mandated to investigate such incidents and moreover to institute a witness-protection mechanism to facilitate the unearthing of evidence. 

Sri Lanka should be commended for these measures which came on the heels of the LLRC report.  It is scandalous to demand haste, especially when the demand is made by a known abuser of human rights and moreover one that has a nothing policy in terms of accountability. 

Justice is about truth.  It is not about frills and fabrication.  Not in the ideal, anyway.  It is about sober, painstaking, methodical and comprehensive work.   The wails and screams of terrorist lovers, ill-educated and mischievous operators including global thugs and mouthpieces of criminals against humanity make good headlines, but the members of the Human Rights Council should not be swayed by any of it.

 

Balance, sanity, an understanding of context (Sri Lanka is just emerging from a devastating 30 year long struggle against terrorism) and an appreciation of all the positives under extremely trying circumstances, is what can help Sri Lanka and its process of reconciliation.  Bullying does not.  

           

[first published in 'The Nation', March 11, 2012]

 

Snapshots of the accuser

The United States of America talks a lot about accountability.  It has put together a new lexicon to deal with the subject, in fact.  That is, when it comes to their own ‘excesses’, which itself is a misnomer considering the fact that ‘excessing’, if you will, has always been the norm when it comes to dealing with designated enemies.  Oh yes, the usual ‘regrets’ are trotted out whenever someone gets caught, along with promises to investigate and bring to book offender.  I thought it might be pertinent to highlight some of the more prominent cases with a couple of ‘today’ stories thrown in to show the chasms that exist between word and deed. 

On March 16, 1968, US soldiers of ‘Charlie Company’ killed between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam (‘The My Lai Massacre’).  On November 17, 1970, the United States Army charged 14 officers, including Major General Samuel W. Koster, the Americal Division's commanding officer, with suppressing information related to the incident. Most of those charges were later dropped. Brigade commander Henderson was the only officer who stood trial on charges relating to the cover-up; he was acquitted on December 17, 1971.  Captain Medina, Calley was convicted on March 29, 1971, of premeditated murder for ordering the shootings. He was initially sentenced to life in prison. Two days later, President Nixom had Calley released, pending appeal of his sentence. Calley's sentence was later adjusted, so that he would eventually serve three and one-half years under house arrest.  Captain Medina was acquitted of all charges.

[Comment: This is the Medina Standard that has overshadowed the ‘accountability’ process in the USA with respect to violations of international conventions on military activity].

 ‘The U.S. government is legally justified in killing its own citizens overseas if they are involved in plotting terror attacks against America.  In this hour of danger, we simply cannot afford to wait until deadly plans are carried out, and we will not.’  -- US Attorney General Eric Holder (March, 2012)

[Comment: So much for due procedure, fundamental rights and self-righteous posturing about elimination of terrorism]

 ‘Al-Qaeda is working alongside Syria’s armed opposition, while Washington considers extending support to the rebels.’ -- US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (February 2012)

[Comment: So much for ‘Zero tolerance of terrorism’]

‘I am disappointed that the United States government has not closed the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and at the failure to ensure accountability for serious human rights violations, including torture that took place [there].’ – Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (March 2012)

[Comment: There have been NO resolutions against the USA for these and other abuses, and no ‘Expert Panels’ to report to UNSG on a) the widespread use of torture in interrogation, b) police-driven bombing of areas with a high civilian population in Afghanistan and Pakistan, c) the acknowledged illegal invasion of Iraq (confessed to by the Deputy PM of Britain, Nick Clegg) and the countless war crimes perpetrated in that country.]

Towards the end of the Second World War, with Japan about to surrender, the USA bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima, killing hundreds of thousands of people. 

[Comment: It was an unmitigated act of revenge and the most horrendous crime against humanity perpetrated by allied forces in the war.  The USA has been involved in 20 wars since then and as a matter of policy targetted the assassination of leaders of countries who did not toe the US line]

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