http://thewire.

in/65729/un-secretary-generals-visit-and-tears-of-sri-lankan-survivors/

The UN Has Done Little to Help Those Awaiting Justice

in Sri Lanka
By Ruki Fernando on 13/09/2016
Madushka De Silva disappeared on September 2, 2013 in Anuradhapura Sri Lankas SinhaleseBuddhist heartland in the North Central Province. The third anniversary of his disappearance
coincided with Ban Ki-Moons visit to the country. On that day, the UN secretary general was so
close, and yet so far from De Silvas wife, Mauri Inoka.
While Inoka, along with about 12 activists, was confronting a hostile police on the streets of
Colombo, who claimed to be concerned about the security of the secretary general, Moon was at
the nearby Hilton Hotel with his delegation, politicians, government officials and some of
Colombos diplomats and civil society activists. The secretary general, or even a member of his
delegation, had no time to drop by and spend a few minutes with Inoka, who had submitted a
formal complaint about the disappearance of her husband to the UN. When she went to the hotel
to attend the secretary generals public lecture, she was turned away, as she was not on the list
of public who were invited to this public lecture.
Beyond the physical distance and barriers, Inokas frustrations with the new government
appeared to be in stark contrast with the secretary generals optimism and praise for the new
government. Or perhaps, it showed the distance between the diplomatic niceties of the UN and
the tears of Inoka and her children along with the tens of thousands like her.
Attacks on freedom of expression and assembly
Inoka had spent the previous night and day on Colombos popular beachfront, Galle Face Green,
observing a 24-hour protest vigil. For three years, she had been calling on authorities to
investigate the disappearance of her husband and provide some interim relief to her and her
children. However, she hasnt receives any answers in the past three years and they dont appear
to be forthcoming in the future.
In desperation, Inoka, together with 12 friends and supporters, organised a peaceful and silent
march towards the Presidential Secretariat and the Hilton Hotel. We were armed with only
photos of Madushka and banners. Vehicles and pedestrians passed by us freely, with absolutely
no disruption. But despite our pleas, we were stopped by the police, violating our rights to
freedom of expression and assembly, she said. After we were compelled to disperse, a lawyer
and an activist at the protest were stopped and subjected to intimidation by the police when they
were leaving.
Instead of expediting the investigation into her husbands disappearance, the police have started
investigating Inoka and some activists who were supporting her. She and at least four activists

have been summoned to the Fort Police Station on the morning of September 14. Some of the
activists have expressed fears of being arrested.
On August 31, hours before the secretary general arrived in Colombo, several university students
were reported to have been hospitalised due to the teargas and water cannons used by the police
to disperse them from staging a protest march against a private medical college and demanding
an increase in the university intake.
On the day after the secretary general left from Sri Lanka, the police stripped a young man on the
road and assaulted him on charges of being a drug user. When a journalist challenged the police
conduct, he too was assaulted.
Although the space for freedom of expression and assembly has increased since January 2015,
such incidents have happened regularly in the past 20 months, especially in the highly militarised
North.
Despite these incidents, the secretary general chose to unreservedly welcome the good
governance initiatives of the new government.
Long wait
More than 100,000 Sri Lankan families, who have reported missing relatives since the 1980s,
share the pleas of Inoka.
Like Inoka, nearly all families await truth, justice and reparations. When the secretary general
visited the war-torn Jaffna, several Tamil families of the disappeared, from across the North,
lined up the streets with photos of their loved ones, placards demanding truth and justice, and
with tears in their eyes.
A few days after the secretary general left, a young Sinhalese boy was reported to have
disappeared in the Southern city of Hambantota after last being seen in police custody. The day
before the arrival of the secretary general, an ex-LTTE cadre a Tamil was reportedly abducted
in a white van, in the highly militarised Northern city of Kilinochchi.
He was later reported to have been found in police custody, just like several other Tamils who
were abducted earlier this year. The whereabouts of at least two other Tamils who disappeared
from the North earlier this year remain unknown despite complaints to the authorities.
Ironically, the abduction of the ex-LTTE cadre was reported to have happened on the
International Day for Victims of Enforced Disappearances, in the same month parliament
approved the setting up of an Office of Missing Persons (OMP) the governments latest
initiative to address disappearances and three months after Sri Lanka ratified the International
Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances.

Despite serious concerns being expressed about the consultation process and the OMP by
families of disappeared, by activists and by the governments own Consultation Task Force, long
before and even during his visit, the secretary general chose to welcome both.
Tamils, whose lands are occupied by the military, also took to the streets of Jaffna when the
secretary general present. Some of them travelled several hours and over hundred kilometers and
were probably consoled by the fact that the secretary general had called for speeding up process
of return of land so that they could return home.
Before the secretary general arrived in Colombo, families of the Welikada prison massacre and
eyewitnesses who were being threatened and intimidated appealed to him for a meeting. They
also pleaded with him to highlight the lack of progress in investigations and prosecutions in his
private meetings and his public remarks to the media. While the contents of private discussions
are unknown, there was no reference to impunity in relation to this single largest post-war
massacre in any of secretary generals public remarks.
He, however, did emphasise that the victims deserve to have their voices heard, that they deserve
credible, transparent and solid transitional justice mechanisms and that they cannot wait forever.
He also indicated that he had stressed the importance of these with political and military
leadership.
UNs failure and attempts to move on
The secretary general was forthright about what he called the big mistakes that the UN made in
relation to Sri Lanka under his leadership, and that if the organisation had been more engaged,
they could have saved several more human lives.
Despite this having been acknowledged in 2011 by the secretary generals panel of experts and
subsequently by a UN internal review report, the secretary general personally acknowledging
this in Sri Lanka was of significance. He, however, stopped short of apologising for this
monumental failure under his leadership and avoided facing those who were abandoned by the
UN, despite some of them lining up the streets in Jaffna while he was there.
Instead, the secretary general remarked that the UN had learnt very hard lessons from Sri Lanka
where the fog of war had obscured the centrality of human rights and that the UN had taken
steps to ensure that human rights were at the centre of all its decision-making. He squarely
attributed the Human Rights up Front (HRuF) initiative as a response to the mistakes the UN
made in Sri Lanka and the lessons they had leant.
Looking ahead
If the UNs HRuF were to become a reality, a good place to start would be Sri Lanka the
tragedy that led to the initiative. The report of the panel appointed by the secretary general
helped kick start subsequent actions on Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council and by the

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). However, a coherent rightsbased strategy from the UN towards Sri Lanka is not yet visible.
The new government has improved relations with the UN and intensified engagement with UN
officials. But despite this, the secretary general doesnt appear to have elicited a major
commitment from the Sri Lankan government during the visit, such as ways to engage with the
Human Rights Council beyond March of next year, or establishing an OHCHR field office in Sri
Lanka.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to engage with UN officials and the member states,
especially to get a response for people like Inoka, the families and eyewitnesses of the Welikada
prison massacre and the many survivors and families of victims from the North who ask, will
the UN listen to us, what they will do for us?
Last week I choose to be with Inoka at her vigil and forego the meeting with the secretary
general. But, despite survivors, families of victims and some activists trying to communicate
reports of continuing violations, and the limited progress in addressing impunity to the UN,
rights issues didnot feature prominently in the secretary generals public remarks.
Neither was there much symbolic action expressing solidarity and support for the struggle for
rights by Inoka and others like her.
The UN, especially the incoming secretary general should be careful not to get carried away with
the charm offensive of the Sri Lankan government and its ambitious promises. Changes for the
better, after an end of a three decade brutal war and a decade of authoritarian rule, should not
lead to Sri Lanka being prematurely marketed as a success story, even before the survivors and
the families of victims experience tangible changes in their lives.
While much of the reform must happen within Sri Lanka, the UN officials and member states
still have an important role to play beyond praising the positive initiatives and the progress made.
The secretary general, the High Commissioner for Human Rights and UNs various mechanisms
and institutions should try to provide an objective picture of the situation in Sri Lanka to the UN
member states, find ways of continuing engagement over the next few years and give a central
place to the tears, cries, struggles and expectations of Inoka and others like her.
Ruki Fernando is a Sri Lankan human rights activist who worked with families of the
disappeared, and was involved in documentation, campaigns and advocacy in relation to the
disappearances. He is a member of Watchdog Collective, Advisor to INFORM Human Rights
Documentation Centre in Colombo.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/questioning-the-liberalleft/article9104473.ece?homepage=true

The Hindu, 14 September 2016

Questioning the liberal Left

Tabish Khair
By short-circuiting all internal critiques of societies, the liberal Left has played into
the xenophobia of politicians like Trump.

The issue is not whether Republican party presidential nominee Donald Trump will lose or win.
The issue is that he is even in the running. And something similar can be said of populist
politicians in other countries such as the leader of the Party for Freedom, Geert Wilders, of the
Netherlands.
The leftist and liberal reaction to the rise of such politicians has been ineffective. It seems that
politicians like Mr. Trump and Mr. Wilders have no agenda, except that of xenophobic
belligerence and demagogic half-truths. And yet they are surprisingly popular. The liberal Left
can only blame it on a culpable system (such as a sensationalising, complicit media) or on the
ignorance of the masses. While there is some truth in both the explanations, they do not cover the
main reason.
The main reason is a failure of much of the Left to take a stand on some very real issues. People
like Mr. Trump and Mr. Wilders succeed because they seem to take a stand on issues that worry
ordinary people in their countries. Their answers might be all wrong, but at least they face up to
the questions.
I recall talking to a cab driver outside London a few weeks before Brexit. The driver, a grizzled
white man in his sixties, wanted me to understand why he was going to vote for Brexit. He said,
I am not a racist, but I am worried about losing my culture. I want my children to speak and
hear English in my own country. I want to have my ale. Or as his English sounded to my ears:
Oi wan ter ave me ale.
Issue of immigration
Before we on the Left laugh away such fears, we need to ask ourselves: would we dismiss
similar fears expressed by an aborigine in Australia or Africa? Very few would. If so, what is it
that makes us downplay the fears of this white London cabbie about losing his tribal identity?
Yes, it is true that the current focus on immigration is basically an attempt to avoid the main
problem, which is the totally free movement of international capital, and the criminal lack of
curbs and taxes on it. But lets accept the London cabbies fears as genuine to begin with and
offer credible solutions.
It does not help to keep reiterating that immigration is good, because, honestly, immigration, like
almost every other human matter, is neither good nor bad on its own. A lot depends on what is

done with it. It is because the liberal Left is usually too blas about such issues that rightist
politicians take them up and peddle volatile non-solutions.
The liberal Left also has a tendency to short-circuit all internal critiques. It thus abandons that
entire space to the othering xenophobia of politicians like Mr. Wilders. For instance, in most
liberal Left circles, it is very hard to critique Muslim societies as containing gender inequality.
The moment an Indian Muslim aims such a critique at interpretations and practices within his
religious formations, he is accused of catering to the West and indulging in re-orientalism.
One can see where this argument is coming from. We know that Orientalist discourses
constructed the reality of othered spaces under colonisation. For instance, by focussing on the
minority practice of sati, Hinduism was defined in a certain way. Similarly, by focussing on
matters like multiple wives, zenana and veiling, Muslim societies were defined in a certain way.
Such definitions in the above cases, Muslim and Hindu societies were stereotyped as
oppressing women could then be employed to justify colonisation, and obscure the many
other realities of such colonised societies.
Yes, such colonial Orientalist discourses still influence the way Oriental societies are seen in the
West today. To this extent, the argument is valid. But to use it to degrade all internal critique of
such societies is another matter.
The reverse side of Orientalism
Let us say that some Muslim (or Hindu) circles do not give women full freedom to choose their
profession, education, or attire. Does it mean that any bid to write about this is automatically reorientalism? Isnt such a prohibition just the reverse side of Orientalism that is, we cannot
talk about our cultures as we encounter them, but only in opposition to Orientalist discourses? By
doing so, we allow Orientalist discourses to take over our complex realities, and hence reduce
the complexity of our realities to simplified discursive formulations (which was Edward Saids
main objection to Orientalism). If Orientalism reduced the spectrum of our realities to black, we
reduce them to white in opposition.
To put into place an Orientalist discourse that stereotypes Muslim (or Hindu) societies as
oppressing women is a reduction of the rich complexity of such societies on the ground. But to
react to this by decreeing that one cannot talk of gender inequality or oppression in Muslim (or
Hindu) societies is to do something similar: put in place a discourse that denies the complex
realities on the ground. This also enables reactionaries in our societies to claim that we are just
perfect or would have been so, but for foreign influences!
Interestingly, the liberal Left is quite critical of the flaws of Western societies (and rightly so): for
instance, it strongly (and correctly) condemned the French bid to ban burkinis. But for the
French equivalent of my London cabbie, this looks lopsided: after all, only some far right mayors

(who came to power largely on the back of Islamic State atrocities in France) tried to ban the
burkini.
To generalise about the French by using these far Right examples is surely not that different
from generalising about Hindus by using sati as an example? Moreover, my imaginary French
cabbie heckles: it is good that you oppose the burkini ban in France, but how about also opposing
the imposition of the hijab in Iran and Saudi Arabia?
I can hear my French (and London) cabbie, but much of the liberal Left has chosen not to do so.
And hence we get Trump, Wilders and Co.
Tabish Khair is an Indian novelist and academic who teaches in Denmark.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/suhasini-haidar-on-the-afghanistanpakistantransit-trade-agreement/article9104492.ece?homepage=true
The Hindu, 14 September 2016

In trade, three is not a crowd

Suhasini Hider
Far from being the unifier it was planned to be, the Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade
Agreement has become a point of deep discord

In July 2010, a few months before he died, Richard Holbrooke, U.S. President Barack Obamas
special envoy, was in India after visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and had some advice for
South Block. Whatever India does, dont give up on the APTTA (Afghanistan-Pakistan
Transit Trade Agreement), he said, enunciating every word. The Afghans fought too damn
hard for it. As President Ashraf Ghani lands in Delhi for talks with Prime Minister Narendra
Modi, amidst a new storm in ties with Pakistan, the envoys words hold a relevance that must not
be ignored by the leaders.
Breakthrough on Wagah
The American envoy was referring to the agreement that had been negotiated through several
bitter rounds in 2009. As cables from Anne Patterson, the American Ambassador to Pakistan at
the time, released by Wikileaks show, talks between Afghanistan and Pakistan officials often
came to a standstill over the issue of trade to India. Eventually on December 28, 2009,
Ambassador Patterson wrote that there had been a breakthrough on Wagah.
In return for being allowed to drive Afghan trucks with fruit and dry fruit up to Wagah,
Pakistan would be given transit to Central Asian countries bordering Afghanistan, where

Pakistani textiles, and agricultural and surgical goods have a good market. However, the APTTA
clearly noted that no Indian goods could be imported under the agreement, and that the Afghan
trucks would have to drive back empty to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where they could, if
they wished, load up with Pakistani goods instead.
When [the Afghan official] asserted that this was less than national treatment for Afghan trucks,
[the Pakistani official] insisted that Pakistani trucks also had to carry transit goods on prescribed
routes, which did not include Wagah, said the U.S. Ambassadors cable records, indicating that
like everything else, India-Afghanistan trade could only improve when India-Pakistan trade did.
Holbrooke contended that both were a possibility, adding that the national treatment clause in
the APTTA would give Afghanistan the benefit from any future trade deal negotiated between
India and Pakistan, and could well open the door for Afghan prosperity as well as India-PakistanAfghanistan peace.
However, Holbrookes words went unheeded by history. Since 2010, India-Pakistan relations
have shown little improvement, and an India-Pakistan-Afghanistan trilateral seems out of the
question. Although most favoured nation (MFN) talks between New Delhi and Islamabad made
some headway in 2011 towards the Non-Discriminatory Market Access (NDMA) agreement,
Pakistan reneged on its commitments in 2013, and once the Modi government came into power,
trade talks have fallen by the wayside like all bilateral dialogue between the two countries.
Far from being a unifier, the APTTA itself has become a point of deep discord. Bitter IndiaPakistan relations mean Afghan trucks carrying perishable fruit face long delays on both sides of
the border where they must be loaded and unloaded, often more than once. Last week, Mr. Ghani
told the visiting U.K. envoy, Owen Jenkins, that Pakistan was deliberately slowing procedures or
shutting down trade in fruit harvesting season, thus causing severe losses to Afghan farmers and
traders. Mr. Ghani went on to threaten, not for the first time, that if this continued, he would cut
off access for Pakistani trucks to Central Asia. Pakistan in turn has rejected any changes to the
APTTA that would benefit India.
Meanwhile, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan are moving at a furious pace to cut one another out
of the trade equation. India is working on a corridor via Irans Chabahar port, where goods will
go up the land route and connect to the Zaranj-Delaram Highway without touching Pakistan.
Pakistan will connect directly to China through the small strip through PoK and Gilgit-Baltistan
once the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is ready, avoiding both India and Afghanistan.
Afghanistan too is assiduously cultivating its options to the north, and its position in Chinas One
Belt, One Road plans. Earlier this month, an 84-carriage train carrying millions of dollars of
goods from the eastern city of Yiwu reached the Afghan-Uzbek border bound for Mazar-i-Sharif.
A single trip of 7,500 km takes 15 days, half the time needed for maritime transportation and a
sixth of the time it takes via Pakistan or Irans land route. The service will run once a week by
the end of this year, and will connect up to the brand new airport built by Germany and the
United Arab Emirates in Mazar.

Separate routes
If anything, all three countries have proven that they can live without improving trade with one
another. But what they also need to realise is that they will do so at a cost to their people,
amongst the worlds poorest. India and Pakistan have played the charade for far too long: while
formal trade figures between them are about $2.3 billion, it is estimated that their informal trade
via Dubai is an estimated $4.71 billion. Of that, Indian exports make up about 80 per cent, $3.99
billion.
As a result, Indias insistence on no talks without the end of terror, with no such outcome in
sight, may come at the cost of Indian traders and manufacturers. Similarly, Pakistan avers it is
protecting its markets from being flooded with Indian goods, when the greater threat in this
regard is from China. Afghanistan too can work around the mountains and across thousands of
kilometres without finding an option for goods and markets that is as viable to the ones in the
SAARC region. In 2015-16, 61 per cent of Afghan exports and 53 per cent of its imports came
from South Asia (India and Pakistan).
As hard as political ties between them are at present, President Ghani may find negotiating the
entry of India to the APTTA, as Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj has proposed, an important
idea to pursue. This may become easier if it includes Tajikistan, a country Pakistan is keen to
induct in exchange for Indias entry to the Agreement. Regardless of the hoops and the circuitous
routes India, Pakistan and Afghanistan employ, the most sensible option remains the simplest
one: the shortest distance between any two points, it is proven, is a straight line.