The recent Guardian article by a Human Rights Watch officer exemplifies what EM Forster described as the world of telegrams and anger. Today, he would have used the term "soundbite", and this is what HRW has engaged in relentlessly against Sri Lanka, with no attention to accuracy, nor to engagement.
This is not the first time we have found HRW seeking to further its own agenda by adopting a selective approach to evidence. Not only this, but it seems ready to overlook the real progress that is taking place in Sri Lanka. Before outlining the key plans we are undertaking to improve Sri Lanka for the benefit of all, let me provide some background on our own grievances against HRW.
In 2007, HRW issued a press release referring to "indiscriminate attacks on civilians", regarding a report about the liberation of Sri Lanka's eastern province from terrorists. The report only cited a single example of civilian casualties in these operations, and our forces, in granting this, explained that it had happened because of their use of mortar-locating radar. The HRW report conceded that the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) had used weaponry in a civilian encampment, but claimed that this was not heavy weaponry and therefore they could not be held responsible. After one casuistic reply to our reasoned protest, they stopped answering letters.
After one meeting with a new representative in Geneva in September 2007, we were promised a response, but none was forthcoming. Since then, HRW has avoided discussion altogether, refusing to meet government representatives in Geneva, cancelling a meeting in the House of Commons when it heard the Sri Lankan government was sending someone who would refute its allegations. It claimed to our High Commission that it did not want to be "rubbished", but the way to avoid being rubbished is to refrain from lies, not dodge reasoned discussion.
Typically, while refusing to talk – quite unlike Amnesty International, which readily discusses problems at length – in 2008, HRW issued a glossy booklet that claimed abductions were on the increase in Sri Lanka. This report distorted the reality: it contained only three examples from 2007, with the rest of the 90-odd cases recorded dating from 2006.
We accept there were problems in 2006, largely arising from diminishing LTTE domination following years in which it had freely killed members of Tamil groups opposed to them – their claim to represent Tamils clearly did not extend to those who challenged their supremacy. By 2007 however the situation was better and, in the last couple of years, instances of abduction have fallen still further – though even a single case is one too many and we are working to prevent this in its entirety.
Now, with regard to the pronouncements of Philip Alston, the UN independent expert who explained to me why he feels obliged to "behave like a bulldog" towards Sri Lanka, HRW pronounces on a controversial video on which he bases his report that the "government has consistently claimed the video is fake, without providing any evidence that the gruesome scene was staged or the footage tampered with."
This is simply untrue. Even Alston's three experts declare that a moving leg of a supposedly dead person is strange. The experts note, too, that there "are unexplained characteristics of this file, the most troubling of which appears in the final 17 frames of video", while they are equally unable to explain why the date on the footage is six months later than the incident was supposed to have taken place (and after the battle had been concluded). The claim that there may be a legitimate explanation remains simply a claim, with no effort to justify it. Thankfully, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, has adopted a more measured approach. Earlier this month, Ban distanced himself from the report – something not as widely reported as Alston's claims – suggesting that Alston "acted alone" and that his report does not represent the view of the United Nations.
We are also accused of refusing to investigate allegations of human rights abuses. And yet this is precisely what we are doing. In response to the US State Department report, presented in a balanced manner last October, on alleged incidents during the military action last year, President Rajapaksa appointed an independent commission to investigate. The report will be provided in April.