January 15th 2011
The Editor

The New Yorker

Dear Sir

Jon Lee Anderson’s depressing dichotomies

I write with reference to the recent essay in the ‘New Yorker’ by Jon Lee Anderson entitled ‘Death of the Tiger’. I met him along with James Clad while they were in Colombo, and was struck by his understanding of the Tigers, based perhaps on the earlier visit that he describes.

I was sorry however that, in his essay, he perpetuates a myth that I fear plays into the hands of those who wish to abandon all decency in dealing with terrorism. Towards the end of the article he reasserts a dichotomy between ‘a doctrine of counterinsurgency that tempers military action with nation-building and careful community work’ and what he describes as ‘the more effective counter- insurgencies, like Sri Lanka’s, (which) are hideous in practice. They involve killing many people and terrorizing many more’. The next sentences, about David Petraeus’ advice to drink tea having at best mixed results, seems a clarion call to those who want to eliminate terrorism to engage in more brutal tactics, and ‘outright killing, both on and off the battlefield’.

I am not sure if this was Mr Anderson’s intention. I would like to think not, given his previous record. I hope he would prefer the characterization of the piece as ‘soft left Naipaul’, by Dayan Jayatilleka our former Ambassador in Geneva who was responsible for the affirmation of our efforts to protect human rights by most of the world, excepting European elements, at the Special Session of the Human Rights Council in May 2009. But even our ambassador noted that the article was an ‘Orientalist piece for sure, but in progressive guise’.

What is sad is that Mr Anderson cannot look objectively at the evidence that suggests that, while we had to be very tough with the Tigers, we did our best to protect the civilians they were using as human shields. Some died, but he scarcely mentions the evidence that many of them died at the hands of the Tigers. For instance he confidently reasserts the Tiger claim that we repeatedly shelled the No-Fire Zones we declared. However, on the first day – after several months of war – in which Tiger media outlets asserted mass killings, the Head of UNDP informed us that most of the firing came from the Tigers. This was after he had woken up my Minister (I was then Secretary to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights) before dawn to claim, as Mr Anderson does now, that we were targeting the No-Fire Zone.

My Minister and I spent much time that morning checking on things, talking to those involved. The Catholic Bishop of Jaffna, who had also initially expressed the same worry, called us later to say that he was issuing a statement (which is on record) asking Government to expand the No-Fire Zone – which he would scarcely have done if he believe the canard initially spread that we were firing into it – and was also asking the LTTE to withdraw its heavy weapons from the Zone. It is sad that Mr Anderson completely ignores this evidence, which I put before him, of the Tigers taking weapons into the No-Fire Zone to launch attacks, oblivious of the harm they were causing civilians. Details about what they did in 1986, in his evocative trip down memory lane, are no substitute for hard facts about the here and now.

Again, it is surely strange that the pastor and his sixty children survived even though Mr Anderson claims that the pastor told him a soldier said that ‘We have orders to shoot everyone’. I realize that I am not a journalist, and perhaps my background in education and Human Rights work imposes an analytical rigour that more successful journalists must avoid; but, whilst recording the sensational as told me, I would also in Mr Anderson’s place have found out how many of the children survived, and where they are now.

St John’s Jaffna, one of the best private schools in the country, where we conducted several training sessios for youngsters after the war, has taken on several of those orphaned by the War. It would have been good if Mr Anderson had also recorded some of the excellent work done in this regard, and in particular with the former combatants. The children amongst them spent much of last year in one of the principle Hindu Colleges in Colombo; now, almost all the girls have been released, and nearly half the boys. Last week I was in Vavuniya to observe Counselling and Leadership Courses being conducted for those who are still being rehabilitated. To quote from the feedback from one of the few who responded in English, ‘Shakthi sir’s class and games are fantastic. Thank you so much. God bless you.’

A balanced picture of the conflict and its aftermath would have included some of this. But, sadly, Mr Anderson seems stuck in a mindset dictated by those with a single agenda. Thus, he talks of the video of killings without mentioning the doubts about it, which were noted even by one of the UN’s experts, who found it difficult to explain the moving leg of someone who seemed dead. His account of what might have been the case is classic - ‘It has not been definitively established whether this person was already deceased or merely wounded, intoxicated, sleeping or possibly even uninjured and feigned death after being shot at and missed in order to evade actual injury or death at the hands of a more competent marksman.’

This is complete rubbish, the idea that the man might have been sleeping while people were being shot through the head around him. Mr Anderson is not so bad, but when writing for the ‘New Yorker’ he could at least have registered the possibility that the video was a fake. And it was certainly irresponsible to claim that ‘groups like the Asian Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International have documented numerous cases in which Sinhalese soldiers raped Tamil women and girls’ without noting that none of these is recent. He was after all told of the recent allegation by Hilary Clinton that Sri Lanka was amongst countries using rape as a weapon of war, for which the American Ambassador in Colombo apologized – though without telling us who precisely had misinformed the good Secretary of State.

Mr Anderson is not however in the class of the British journalist who claimed that 14 women had been found with their throats slit next to the displaced persons’ camp, who failed to consult the Ministry – though he claimed he had tried, desultorily, since he had only used my office line on a public holiday and not my mobile, which he otherwise called – and then later told me that he had realized his source was unreliable and he would not be using it again. No correction however was published. Similarly, the Times, which claimed that 20,000 civilians were killed, gave three different reasons after I had disproved earlier ones, for what it now admits was an extrapolation – while ignoring the ICRC figures of a total of just 6000 wounded over four months, which suggests the number of those killed, combatants (including those forced by the Tigers into the lines) and civilians altogether, was far less.

I am sorry too that he gives so much credence to Marie Colvin, who has been a strong supporter of the Tigers ever since she was injured whilst coming back to government controlled land after visiting them clandestinely. She believes the shooting was deliberate, because it only started, according to her graphic account, after she shouted out, ‘Journalist, journalist’. I trust no New Yorker journalist would assume as a matter of course that all foot soldiers understand the meaning of that exalted term. Incidentally, it is typical of the Tigers Marie Colvin knew and loved, that they should have had packets of meat and chocolates, while telling the world that they were being starved.

Mr Anderson’s description of the current situation too is, one would think almost deliberately, misleading. The displaced civilians were not sent to a ‘series’ (whatever that means) of camps. Except for a very few in Jaffna and in the East, to which they had gone early, the majority were near Vavuniya. In 2009 it was claimed that we intended to keep them there for years, but as Mr Anderson knows, most were sent home within a few months. We made it clear that there were three factors that had to be dealt with before return, security checking, demining and the provision of basic infrastructure. At the time it was claimed that this was an excuse but, when rapid returns started, we were then accused of not having demined properly and of not providing enough basics.

He claims that foreigners required special permits to go to the North, which is nonsense. We did say that people needed a good reason to be there, but we were positive if this was provided, and in fact hundreds of foreigners were helping with our humanitarian programmes. Typcially, while in Colombo I was told that we did not allow anyone to visit the ex-combatants, they were present in profusion in the camps for these youngsters when I visited them. It was like the claim, reiterated most recently by a British MP, that we ordered everyone out during the last stages of the war. For good reason we did not want some NGOs, for instance those that had provided heavy earth moving equipment to the Tigers, to stay on, so we asked all of them to leave, but we did request the ICRC, UNHCR and the World Food Programme to remain. It was the UN that decided to pull out the last two, though we supported them to take in regular convoys of food, until the end of hostilities, whilst the ICRC remained throughout and brought away the wounded on ships manned by the Sri Lankan navy.

It is sad that the Sri Lankan story is not told properly, because I believe we have shown that you can win a war whilst observing humanitarian norms. Obviously there was some collateral damage, but it was much less than in other theatres, where protagonists would like to claim that adherence to humanitarian values is counter-productive, and it is better to do anything to win quickly. It is extremely perverse then to claim that is ‘the Sri Lankan government’s official dogma: the post-war peace justifies whatever was necessary to achieve it.’

Anderson does not cite evidence for this claim, because there is none. It springs from a statement made by Gen Kamal Guneratne which was more probably, from what went before, a claim that the sacrifice of so many thousands of Sri Lankan soldiers was worthwhile because the country is now free of terrorism. Certainly the Kamal Guneratne I knew was a man of great compassion, who supported us in our efforts to ensure rapid release from the detention centres of the vulnerable, even though there were some in the military, such as the former army commander, who wanted protracted detention and questioning, and who indeed upbraided the President for releasing the displaced too quickly.

But Sarath Fonseka must now necessarily be a hero for those who want to denigrate the Sri Lankan model. Instead the Secretary (not the Minister) of Defence is turned into a caricature of a James Bond villain, with pet sharks and a high pitched giggle, while James Clad, the Republican Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence, who was supportive of Sri Lanka, whilst not denigrated physically, comes across as a figure out of Naipaul, or perhaps le Carre, seeking to reform Sri Lanka’s public image. No credence is given to the declarations both make, that humanitarian considerations were and are important. How this squares with what Mr Anderson has decided is the official dogma of the government is never considered.

We know that journalists, like all writers, have their particular take on anything. But one would have hoped someone writing for the New Yorker would have at least tried to do justice to an alternative little tried. Whether Mr Anderson is recommending, as any policy maker digesting the end of his article would think, that a ruthless line is necessary to destroy terrorism, or whether he is criticizing such an approach and advocating some of what Petraeus says, while claiming it might not work, is not entirely clear. But it is this Manichaean way of looking at the world that has led to so much suffering, so I hope the New Yorker will publish this, to suggest that there is at least an alternative view of the way the world should, and can sometimes, work.

Yours sincerely,

 Prof Rajiva Wijesinha, MP

Adviser on Reconciliation to the President