Physician heal thyself, hand over that nurse!- Island Editorial

Island Editorial -Courtesy: The Island

5-June 2009
Will a person with a skin disease ever want to consult, let alone follow the advice of, a dermatologist with a massive rash, scratching himself like mad? We don’t think so. (We hope good skin specialists won’t take umbrage; we are only trying to drive a point home.) Likewise, champions of global democracy with a deplorable human rights record cannot expect others to take them seriously.

Sri Lanka is being hauled over the coals–nay, an attempt is being made to barbecue it at the UN–for what the western bullies call ‘war crimes’. Some of the knights in shining armour joined forces in Geneva the other day to burn Sri Lanka at the human rights stake, albeit in vain. They pretended that they had been shocked by what happened in the run up to the final battle in Mullaittivu. Even thought a group of countries comprising over four billion people torpedoed a move to pillory and harass Sri Lanka in the name of human rights, some countries and UN bigwigs with Tiger links have not yet given up their vilification campaign.

‘War crime’ charges that the UK, the US and other international bullies were trying to press against the Sri Lankan government were speculative in nature. They were based on hearsay and some cock-and-bull photographs of the site of the final battle. But, the LTTE’s war crimes were proved beyond doubt such as child recruitment (for which the UN placed the outfit on the List of Shame), massacres, political assassinations and bombing civilian targets. For bombing the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, the LTTE leader Prabhakaran was sentenced to 200 years RI in Colombo. Therefore, before trying to haul up Sri Lankan leaders before international tribunals over ‘war crimes’, human rights champions must take action against the remaining LTTE leaders on their soil.

It is reported that Sri Lanka has asked Britain for prominent LTTE leader Adele Balasingham’s extradition. She has owned up to her involvement in the LTTE, which is banned in the UK and there is no reason why the British government should not hand her over to Sri Lanka. Adele, a nurse by profession, is believed to have helped the LTTE with producing human bombs and training LTTE killers. The British government stooped to the level of pandering to the whims and fancies of LTTE activists and rushing its foreign secretary here in a bid to save the trapped LTTE leaders. Now that a legitimate state — a Commonwealth member for that matter– wants the deportation of a key terrorist, the Brown government has to comply, if his government’s human rights concerns are genuine.

Sri Lanka must make similar requests from all other countries where LTTE terrorists have found refuge such as Canada, France, Switzerland, Norway and other EU countries. In the US, too, the LTTE is active and some American citizens are openly supporting its terrorist cause. Former Attorney General Bruce Fein has become the LTTE’s mouthpiece, though it is banned in the US as a foreign terrorist organisation. Would either the UK or the US have allowed any other country to protect Al Qaeda terrorists in that manner?

The US and the UK ably assisted by other western powers are unleashing hell on Afghanistan because Taliban are protecting Al Qaeda killers. Their ruthless military campaign is churning out death and devastation in that country. The reason they gave for bombing Iraq into the Stone Age and killing hundreds of thousands of people including children there was the threat of WMDs as well as the suppression of human rights. Ironically, while destroying other countries in search of their terrorists and in the name of human rights, the US and the UK themselves are harbouring terrorists responsible for far more heinous crimes! They are lucky that the countries looking for the terrorists they are shielding are not powerful enough to take them on militarily. Else, they would have suffered the same fate as Iraq and Afghanistan. However, they have invited nemesis in the form of terrorism which they are struggling to defeat!

Sri Lanka has a comprehensive list of LTTE killers operating in various parts of the world and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, who made a tremendous contribution to fuelling speculation that the Sri Lankan army had committed ‘war crimes’, is duty bound to help Sri Lanka have the LTTE leaders in the UN members states deported. Sri Lanka has officially requested Malaysia to extradite KP, the LTTE arms smuggler and fraudster, and Ban ought to intervene to secure his arrest and deportation forthwith.

Britain nursing a campaign to press ‘war crime’ charges against Sri Lanka now has a choice between handing over the murderous nurse and forfeiting its human rights credentials which suffered a huge dent from the manner in which it protected Chilean dictator Pinochet vis-…-vis a call for his extradition to stand trial for the killing of Spaniards during his killing spree from 1973 to 1990. Although Pinochet was arrested in 1998 in Britain, he evaded extradition. Former British PM Margaret Thatcher had the temerity to visit the much dreaded dictator, pledge solidarity with him and praise him for services rendered during the Falklands war. The then Home Secretary Jack Straw held that Pinochet was too old to be extradited and cited opinion of four doctors in justification of his claim. But, the sick old man miraculously recovered after returning home and Straw said he wondered whether he and his doctors had been duped. In fact, it is they who tried to dupe the world!

Adele is also likely to fall sick all of a sudden like Pinochet. A nurse, she knows how to feign sickness more than anyone else. And Miliband will declare her too sick to be deported. It is hoped that the Brown government will prove that the British democracy is not too sick to turn down Sri Lanka’s request for Adele’s deportation.