Over the last few months I have had to travel quite a lot, which has allowed me greater access to foreign papers than I had enjoyed for a long time. Coincidentally, on almost every trip I came across descriptions of inadequacies with regard to the protection of human rights on the part of Britain and America. In fairness to the Anglo-Saxon world, I wondered whether, had I read French or German papers, I would have seen similar allegations about those countries. At the same time I realize that Anglo-Saxons tend to beat their breasts (and those of others) more dramatically than most, perhaps secure in the knowledge that their control of the world will allow them to limit the damage (to themselves, though not to others), as required.
So some months ago there was an anxious article about the fact that, after years of inquiry, the British had found only one person guilty with regard to the well attested torture at Abu Ghraib. More recently there was a long article about the impact of the war in Iraq, which spoke of the instances ‘when America’s intentions were betrayed by its troops in more personal ways, with the abuse and torture of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, with the shooting deaths of 24 civilians in Haditha and with the rape and murder of a 14-year-old-girl at Mahmudiya, along with the killing of three other members of her family’.
I have no quarrel with the benefit of the doubt being given to America as to its intentions, just as I should record, as the newspaper did, that these incidents led to court-martial hearings. But, as the British newspaper pointed out with regard to their little contribution at Abu Ghraib, the consequences of those hearings was not commensurate with the damage that had been inflicted. Indeed, coincidentally, shortly before the visit to Sri Lanka recently of a Congressional delegation that had some concern with human rights, I had been reading ‘Shalimar the Clown’, with its graphic evocation of the Rodney King case, when white police officers had been recorded on film when they beat up a black suspect. The case went to court, but a white jury acquitted the officers despite the evidence. I mentioned this, when they asked about allegations of human rights abuse and delays in justice.
One of the earnest young Congressional aides noted that he came from Los Angeles himself and this was an occasion to feel proud of the American system, given the outrage the incident evoked, but even he could not explain away the fact that the culprits had been acquitted. I hastened to add that I was not alleging endemic injustice. My point was that, in the British system we both had inherited, convictions were not easy to secure. What upset me was the failure of the Anglo-Saxon world to extend to Sri Lanka the same indulgence it extended to its own institutions.
Problems with independent institutions
So I was fascinated too by a recent defense of the British Independent Police Complaints Commission, in response to the claim that it ‘faces a crisis of confidence after a network of (lawyers) resigned from its advisory body’. I was reminded then of the brouhaha when first four local NGO activists resigned from an Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights (which was claimed in some media reports to be resignation from the National Human Rights Commission), and now with the departure of the International Independent Group of Eminent Persons tasked to observe the proceedings of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into a variety of cases.
There has been no similar beating of breasts in Britain, but the Chairman of the IPCC clearly thought it necessary to respond to a newspaper article of February 25th. He pointed out there that the lawyers had not in fact attended the IPCC External Advisory Board since summer 2007, reminding me of the fact that the four activists had not often attended the MDMHR Committee, and the IIGEP personnel had been conspicuous by their absence from the CoI proceedings, often leaving attendance to a group of assistants who certainly did not have the eminence which had prompted the setting up of the Group in the first place.