The latest critique of Sri Lanka in the London Telegraph, in what is termed a blog by one of its Foreign Correspondents, Peter Foster, continues with misinformation based on information from what it terms a ‘veteran international aid worker’. The diatribe goes far to explain why such self-appointed guardians of morality are thought to be concerned more with their personal agendas than the work they are paid to do.
Foster begins by saying there are 200,000 civilians trapped in the conflict zone, while the Sri Lankan government says there are 100,000. Foster is caught in a time warp clearly, for the Government says 70,000 while even the UN has now begun to scale down its figures, and in a meeting on February 25th recorded that they thought there were between 70,000 and 100,000 civilians in the safe area. Of course Foster’s veteran may know better, as young John Campbell whom Foster quotes later on thought he did, when he pronounced on the BBC.
But Foster, as a diplomatic correspondent, ought surely – unless he thought blogging did not require high journalistic standards – have checked with senior staff. In the case of Campbell, the UN decided to send him away, to prevent further embarrassment, after he claimed to the BBC that the situation in Sri Lanka was as bad as that in Somalia.
Foster claims that ‘relations between the Sri Lankan government and the United Nations are strained on the ground’. That is certainly not the case, but Foster’s sources are obviously doing their best to poison relations. The veteran complains of what he terms ‘foot-dragging when it comes to meeting its humanitarian obligations’ on the part of the Sri Lankan government, and compares that with 'the LTTE shooting at fleeing civilians’ in saying that a democratically elected government should do better. Obviously the man has no sense of proportion whatsoever.
But the Government has to be careful. Foster obviously does not know of the several occasions on which UN staff members and other workers for aid agencies were found transporting weapons and concealing them in their homes. These may have been relatively innocent civilians forced into subservience by ruthless Tigers, but that argument will not help the civilians who might fall victim to such terrorist activity. The UN chief in Colombo has twice expressed to me his worries when informed of these difficulties, and has also been grateful to the Sri Lankan government for dealing with these incidents on a case by case basis and not treating the whole UN as suspect. But that is precisely why the UN, at more responsible levels, accepts the need for checks, while Foster’s veteran, and the callow young Campbell, who had evidently enjoyed playing God in Somalia, after an earlier stint in the British army, obviously cannot understand what a true sense of responsibility means in a very different sort of situation.
Foster’s veteran is horrified that UN vehicles and staff were searched, and claims that the Serbs in Kosovo in 1998 were not so disrespectful of international UN staff. But it is precisely because of the malign gullibility of people like Campbell and the unnamed veteran, who might carry what they think humanitarian messages for their staff and friends, that the searches have to be thorough. And if these pontificating imbeciles think that such checks prevent an effective aid operation, they have obviously learnt nothing of reality and forgotten nothing about their precious status.
Foster then goes on to claim that pro-Tamil groups want Sri Lanka censured at the UN but China and Russia will veto such efforts – obviously he has forgotten the claim that an attack on Iraq would be prevented by Chinese and Russian vetoes, which is why the UN was circumvented then, and forgotten too that Mr Bush, with Mr Blair tagging along, ignored that they could not even get a simple majority for their evil design, and therefore used simple sanctimoniousness to justify their invasion of Iraq. But Foster doubtless still thinks that Telegraph readers will get collywobbles if Russia and China are mentioned.
Foster believes that the claims of some Tamil groups that the Sri Lankan government is engaged in genocide are ‘given a certain amount of force by the apparent reluctance of the Sri Lankan government to be more transparent and co-operative with international agencies as it conducts its war’. Since the only evidence he produces for genocide is the checks which his sources resent, he must have almost as perverse a sense of his obligation to the truth as those who precipitated the attack on Iraq, which President Obama, who understands where real challenges from terrorism lie, is now trying to recover from.