UTHR (J) forges ahead without narrow ethnic agendas!

Published in my column in The Nation on June 10, 2012 

By Darshanie Ratnawalli

This is a horror story. It follows a classic plotline of the genre; the gradual emergence of the hidden revenant from under the guise of apparent goodness. At night, during a thunder storm, the hero would be necking in the car with his beautiful girlfriend (who is really the female revenant, a malignant supernatural force in human guise). Suddenly, in a flash of lighting, for a fraction of a second, he would see the beloved face as the face of a rotting corpse. The next moment, it would be the familiar beautiful face and he would dismiss the revelation as a trick of the light. But these sightings will intensify during the coming days, until…

The equivalent moment in my horror story comes when an intense bloke with little warmth but earnest and assiduous, a Calvinist to the bone, enjoying extremely good press for passionate defense of human rights, the recipient of an Amnesty International award in recognition of same, tries to straddle the moral high ground and slips. He pontificates in glorious vein (doing the beautiful girlfriend number); “Social and political forces with narrow ethnic or religious ideological trappings continue to undermine democracy in most of the developing nations… There is only one way forward. An initiative to forge a broad multi-ethnic and multi religious movement that challenges these narrow ethnic and religious agendas… While the Government and Sinhalese chauvinism must be fought through alliances with Muslims and Sinhalese who understand the dangers…” And then voila, the sudden glimpse of the rotting corpse underneath in the shape of an earnest invoking of the Tamil community’s claim on the North and the East. The bloke is none other than Rajan Hoole and this horror flick is shown in UTHR (J) special report 34.

The paragraph that afforded me my first, fleeting glimpse of the revenant under the skin of UTHR(J), straddles pages 9 and 10 of the special report 34; “Instead of showing generosity, the Government made maximum mileage of the misery it imposed on Tamil civilians to solicit funds from reluctant donors to pay for the extralegal incarceration of IDPs and for other projects with ulterior aims, such as resettlement or development schemes that could change the ethnic demographics of the north and east to further weaken the Tamil community’s claim on those areas.

The fear that the Government will not allow the IDPs to resettle in all the areas they inhabited before the war, and will instead introduce new Sinhalese settlements and their familiar consequences would remain a real fear for the Tamils. …Meanwhile the Government appears totally indifferent to the squalor of the IDPs. The effect of its actions amounts to the decimation of a people by crippling them from birth through deprivation, routine harassment and dirt.”

What left such a profound impression of horror on me was the fact that they were not even bothering to camouflage the chauvinism with a democratic spin, i.e. ‘demographics confer political clout in a democracy and systematic plans to deprive minority communities of regional political clout they have traditionally enjoyed by changing established demographics are not exactly cricket’. Even that would have sounded dodgy without definite evidence of a systematic agenda. For example it’s not enough to show that the President got up one morning full of plans for Northern development and North-South highways and remarked to his brothers, “you know what all this would ultimately lead to, don’t you fellas?” and they remarked with relish “yes demographic change!” and looked like cats with cream. You need to show systematic manipulation of the system, to exclude or sideline the Tamil component of the population from participating in the enterprise, in order to bring about the desired demographic result.

However, where was I? Ah yes being horrified at Hoole’s chauvinism and hypocrisy. This horror led me to ask the opinion of someone who (in my perception) had always been liberal with the scorn for Sinhala chauvinism but trodden softly, like through fields of Tulip, when it came to anything that could be reasonably be interpreted as Tamil chauvinism. This person is none other than Dr. Michael Roberts who replied to my query in an email dated August 2011;

“Note that Rajan and the UTHR cluster in the north were caught in the middle in the period 1987-2009; and that both Rajan and Sritharan had to go into hiding from the LTTE. In short they were in extreme danger once Rajani T was assassinated. Even in Colombo Rajan moved around and when I set up a meeting with him once circa 2001 had to wait his call via Nesiah and for them to arrange a meeting.

He is an intense bloke with little warmth but earnest and assiduous. A Calvinist to the bone. This does not of course preclude errors of judgment but he will in my view never concoct material in the manner of Channel 4, Darusman etc. Whether he accepts or reprints testimony from liars is another matter.

If Rajan is buying into the standard claims re the Eastern Province as part of the “traditional homelands” then I would challenge him.

Re the present fear that the present govt is going to settle Sinhalese in areas that housed Tamils in the recent past (not just the pre-48 past): in voicing this fear Rajan is moving with the tide of articulate Tamil opinion (and some anti-govt Sinhalese). As far as I know this fear is unsubstantiated and has not come to pass but I have an open mind on the issue.

As for his comments on the IDP camps as “extra-legal” and having terrible conditions, my response would be (a) yes extra-legal but requisite in the interests of the rest of the population on a short-term basis and (b) the conditions were not that terrible and a remarkable job was done by govt and NGO and INGO agencies in catering to those people. On this issue he is speaking from the cloisters in Colombo or wherever.

In 1987-20009 Rajan and Co were in a crunch sandwich situ between Sinhala-dominated state and the LTTE (with latter as greater threat). NOW with the LTTE out their structured political situation is that of a former Tamil dissident faction that pursues its Tamilness by taking up Tamil grievances and thus liable to press exaggerations, pedantic claims and unrealistic demands.”

Hoole is not cool

Published in my column in The Nation on May 27, 2012 
By Darshanie Ratnawalli

“When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back..” - Friedrich Nietzsche

The testimonies of the hoards of civilians who recounted their NFZ experiences to the LLRC contradict the set of testimonies culled by Rajan Hoole and Co and included in the UTHR(J) special Report 34. It’s not a case of a lot of blind men trying to describe an elephant. The two batches of testimonies are plain irreconcilable. They do not complement but contradict each other on the most fundamental level.

We do not know Hoole’s methodologies of collecting testimonies. The popular impression is that they are insider testimonies culled from a more aware inner circle. For example, a common feature of LLRC civilians is not being able to tell exactly from which direction shells came while being shelled. The typical LLRC dialog on shelling; ““We were running in fear because there was continuous shelling.” In response to a question as to who was shelling – she stated “we can't tell you definitely because shells were being fired by both sides – Tigers and Army.”” Ditto on shelling of hospitals. None of the LLRC civilians were sure who shelled. In contrast Hoole’s insider civilians were extraordinarily aware; “…Within three minutes shells were fired by an MBRL further east of where the first shells fell, just north of Charles Mandapam (Hall), killing all together 16 persons. He is certain that the shells were fired by the Army from Kalliady, which is across Nandikadal lagoon, south of Puthukkudiyiruppu…” However let us concede the point. We know that any civilian community consists of a clueless majority and a sharply observant minority. Only where were the latter when the LLRC was moving around?

The whole point of appointing a public commission and having them move around holding public sittings is to obtain a representative, across the board sample of voices that will accurately represent the slice of life under investigation. We know that of the hundreds and thousands of civilians who wanted to meet the LLRC, not all were given the opportunity. But that opportunity denial was not through systematic screening. There was no pre-LLRC board that the people first had to pass, so that dangerous material could be filtered. Subject to inevitable limitations, people went and told their stories unhindered. They said we surrendered together but now my husband is missing, we were waiting in line in the NFZ to get Thriposha and the Navy shelled us and so many expectant mothers died, we went in a boat with white flags towards the Navy and they fired. One witness even recounted a cluster bomb experience and it was given wide publicity in a Tamil Newspaper. None of these civilians have disappeared.

Meanwhile Hoole’s civilians who told him that much of the government shelling into the NFZs were independent of any LTTE provocation, that NFZs were roomy places where combat and civilian spaces were generally well separated, that SLA shelling mostly fell on these civilian spaces, that punitive, vengeful and indiscriminate shelling was the norm; where are they? They were conspicuous by their absence before the LLRC. Since telling their stories to Hoole these civilians seem to have disappeared. Which is strange, because they can’t have been some niche group of random carpetbaggers. They had to have been a representative cross section of IDPs for Hoole to treat their account as an accurate representation of the general reality in the NFZs and a bedrock to base the conclusions in his executive summary;

“…But this time, from January 2009, indiscriminate brutality causing huge civilian casualties was used when the LTTE was virtually broken and was merely prolonging the war by throwing in conscripts. This time, moreover, the bombing and shelling of areas full of civilians seemed almost vindictive. The largest civilian losses came at the last stages due to indiscriminate fire when the LTTE was virtually finished…”- (Pp.16-17)

Is this bit of executive summary actually based on a representative cross section of IDP testimonies? Less than two years later the LLRC, whose transparency in opening the door to civilian voices remains uncontested, throws the issue into serious doubt. It uncovered a narration, which categorically contradicted not a mere detail but a major pillar of Hoole’s narrative.

Apart from 6 specific episodes recounted by witnesses of shell attacks on civilian assemblies allegedly by government forces, the everyday reality experienced by civilians who came before the LLRC was that the Army never initiated attacks into the No Fire Zones. In the life-world of even an accusing LLRC witness, the ultimate accusation against the Army re NFZs was of retaliating; “…The LTTE infiltrated this security zone and they came inside along with the ordinary people and used it as a base to attack the Army. When this happened the Army retaliated and this act of the Government despite the announcement that they have already announced the area as a security zone, how can they start retaliating when the civilian population was there and this is the main question we wish to pose to you as this cannot be justified. … From my point of view it is the Government that gave the LTTE an opportunity to use the civilian population as pawns and as a human shield... the people went into that area because the Government had made the announcement that it was a safe place. As a result of this that area became besieged by the LTTE…”.- (LLRC 4.58). It was not only from this but from the entire body of the NFZ experiences relived before it, that the LLRC reconstructs the firing practices of the SLA;

“4.271 It further transpired from these and other representations that the Army had never initiated attacks in the Safety Zones and return fire was in response to LTTE attacks.”

Why didn’t Hoole encounter these civilians? There is not a shadow of a doubt that they existed and walked and talked while Hoole was collecting testimonies for his report. Even the US State Department picked up their voices;

“May 14-18 – An organization reported that, at the beginning of the final operation, the SLA used shelling that resulted in some civilian casualties. However, the IDPs to whom the organization spoke were uniformly emphatic that the SLA shelled only in reply to the LTTE’s mortar and gun fire from among the civilians. Civilians also said that on May 15 the SLA stopped shelling when the LTTE began destroying its own equipment. The organization also reported that some LTTE cadres were going to bunkers where civilians were sheltered, asking “So you want to run away to the Army do you?” and then opening fire against them.”-(Report to Congress on SL-Pp. 46)

Why didn’t Hoole hear any of the civilian voices that would have challenged his thesis on vindictive, pointless, brutal SLA shelling of civilians and his conceptualization of NFZs as vast, rolling planes with clearly segregated civilian and LTTE zones?

“Several civilians who were interviewed by the Commission stated that right up to the final stages, the LTTE had used heavy artillery from civilian populated areas in the NFZs to start firing at the Security Forces.”- (LLRC 4.51)

“A civilian, who was interviewed by the Commission referring to the Mullaivaikkal East area, stated that at the last stages there was no space at all and the LTTE and the civilians had been in a very congested area and the LTTE had continued to fire at the Army from this area and the Army had returned fire.”- (LLRC 4.53)

I think it was the abyss. You think you can stare into it with impunity. But it gets you eventually.

Travelling between the Planets UTHR (J) and LLRC

Published in my column in The Nation on May 13, 2012 
By Darshanie Ratnawalli

Marga in their analysis of the Darusman report says that it presents possibly the strongest case against the Government and the Army. This is wrong. The strongest case is presented by UTHR (J) special report No.34. It came before everything; Darusman’s, The Cage, Marga Seminar report and the LLRC.

In 2009 December, UTHR (J) proclaimed to an impressionable audience (Thisaranee Gunasekera et al.) that a comfortable separation between the combat targets and the non combatant civilian presence was the norm (what is usual, general) within the NFZs. This separation was clearly detectable by SLA’s technology (UAVs, counter battery radar). “Witnesses report the LTTE firing mortars from among them, but they were usually out of sight or at a distance outside the error in detection systems. In general they were far enough to avoid danger to civilians, if civilian safety had been one of the Government’s aims.”-(pp. 18)

Could such a generalization be made? Should ‘the artillery in proximity to civilians’ factor be demoted to a position of negligible importance? Was firing artillery in proximity to large groups of IDPs and civilian installations, not the norm for the LTTE in NFZs? If you read the UTHR report uncritically, worshipfully (like Thisaranee et al.) you will come away believing this. In fact you will feel like taking out your Darusman’s, turning to the 3rd core category of potential serious violations against the LTTE; ‘Using military equipment in the proximity of civilians’, and writing in the margin; ‘but in the vast majority of shelling incidents involving civilians and civilian installations, this was not a contributing factor to the death toll because the LTTE artillery was at a considerable distance (outside the error in detection systems) and precision guided mechanisms used in SLA artillery should have ensured that only enemy artillery was hit ’. But even as you write this, you would remember the Darusman account of the shelling of the famous 11th convoy, how the Tiger artillery was a full 500m away from the ‘UN hub’ and wonder about the nature of cross fire. Then you’d remember reading in page 11 of the Marga report; “The seminar panellists noted that 500 metres is not a huge distance in such a restricted battle space, and it is very possible for even a single shell, or two or three, that could have devastating effect on concentrated civilians, to fall 500 metres off target. One or two shells could kill and injure a hundred civilians, and seem to indicate deliberate intent even when it isn’t so intended.”

At this point, all would become clear. How do you show that instances of the LTTE firing at SLA from the proximity of civilians are ‘rarer than hen’s teeth’? Narrow down the meaning of ‘proximity’ and curtail its range to the ‘probable error in hostile artillery detection systems’. A neat way to puncture the ‘proximity’ balloon.

“Modern detection systems for hostile artillery have a circular probable error of about 0.45% of range (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-battery_radar). This roughly means that detection of hostile fire 6 ¼ miles (10 km) away could be measured to a working accuracy of 50 yards (45 m). This is again a probabilistic measure, inadequate for firing at enemy positions among civilian concentrations. LTTE had its large artillery guns usually in isolated places. Civilians on their own kept well clear of LTTE mortar positions… 


The Government had the technology to avoid hitting civilians; the fact that it did so almost daily points to a deliberate intention…” (pp. 17-18 UTHR (J))

Reading that last sentence was a profound experience, because I knew that I was seeing incontrovertible evidence of deductive failure in Rajan Hoole and Co. To be able to write this sentence a person had to make three ridiculous presumptions
1) The LTTE always kept the proper distance (outside the error in detection systems) between their artillery and civilians. (They didn’t. Specific instances when they did not is given in the UTHR(J) report itself)
2) All artillery strikes are directed by counter battery radar (No.Some are only called in by direct observations of UAVs and other aircraft, as well as ground troops)
3) When artillery fire is directed by counter battery radar, accuracy of the latter is the only thing that matters to the accuracy of the former. (Wrong. There have to be separate margins of error for the artillery crews and mortar teams that do not depend on technology alone. Counter battery radar is not a fire control radar and does not control the artillery, which is also at the mercy of human fatigue, human error, faulty fusing, etc.).

Comparing the two reports the UTHR (J) and the LLRC, you become conscious that they have taken testimonies from civilians inhabiting two different planets with no interplanetary communication. UTHR(J) civilians insist that ‘much of the shelling was independent of any provocation’(pp.32), that ‘worse than shelling from the army side was regular small arms fire’ which ‘changed positions but was usually not a response to LTTE provocation.’ (Pp.61-62), that ‘In almost all instances not involving direct combat, the Army’s return fire was directed at civilian presences, something it would have known from UAV information.’(pp.17). LLRC civilians maintain ‘SLA never initiated attacks in the NFZs and return fire was in response to LTTE attacks.’ (4.271) (However incidents of seemingly targeted SLG attacks on civilians emerged from planet LLRC too; 4.106, 4.107, 4.109, 4.110, and 4.111)

From planet LLRC; “…After January 2009, fighting areas were not clearly defined because the dimension of the war has expanded to that extent. … at the last stage of the battle, the people converged to a very narrow area of Mathalan and Pokkanai. The LTTE launched their shelling attacks on the Army from these places. The Government forces retaliated to the spot that the LTTE was staying, as a result there was a number of deaths...” (4.84).

From planet UTHR (J);
“2nd Week of March, LTTE’s Two Deep Penetration Missions 
The civilian victims of shelling were well outside the zone where fighting was going on. …. the LTTE fired only a little above ten shells in support of the two related operations as they were short of ammunition. …During these two attacks civilians in the north of the zone near Valaignarmadam were subject to reprisal shelling, although the LTTE’s guns (130mm and 122 mm) were generally to the south of the civilians.” (pp 45-46)

A civilian in planet LLRC had a different take on Valaignarmadam; “Another civilian who was interviewed by the Commission stated that the LTTE had gun boats in Valayanmadam area as well as heavy artillery.”(4.75)

Can you forgive her?

Published in my column in The Nation on April 08, 2012 
By Darshanie Ratnawalli

How did the UN Panel report on Lanka affect the local commentators? I say nothing about foreign commentators because all cultures across the world have popular tropes that depict foreigners as credulous fools (the Brooklyn bridge story, the ‘parangiya kotte giya’ story, etc.) and we can draw on this common heritage to come to terms with the acts of some foreign commentators. But what about the natives (who are savvy individuals full of native cunning according to the same tropes)? I suggest that the report made sucklings out of some local commentators and caused them to imprint on the UN Panel as dispensers of absolute wisdom. Just so do animal cubs imprint on the first moving object they encounter as ‘MOTHER’. It has little to do with reason and all to do with blind instinct.

For instance take Tisaranee Gunesekara (http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2011/08/14/lies-agreed-upon-but-whose-lies/ ). In chiding the Government for positioning the Fourth Eelam War as a ‘humanitarian rescue operation’ with a policy of ‘zero civilian casualties’ she says; “The lies were unnecessary and the excessive measures taken to sustain them needless. Truth, with all its scabs and warts, would have served Sri Lanka better…More damagingly, the lie of ‘zero-civilian casualties’ was maintained, against all logic and reason. Assuming perfection was unnecessary; claiming infallibility was unconvincing. These poses were, in the final analysis, far more damaging than acknowledging mistakes and apologising for misdeeds.”

Look carefully and you will find hidden among the words of moral rectitude and good sense, like a gun among lingerie, the UN report’s legacy to Tisaranee. There is an unauthorized item in her chain of reasoning which she has surreptitiously smuggled in. Did you spot it Watson? By unauthorized, I meant not authorized by the normal rules governing chains of reasoning. Such rules would direct a person critical of the denial of civilian casualties, to urge…acknowledging civilian casualties. Instead Tisaranee urges…acknowledging mistakes and apologizing for misdeeds. Probably unknowingly and qualifying herself to be included in a case book for Freudian slips, Tisaranee reveals a conceptualization, which equates acknowledging civilian casualties with acknowledging mistakes and apologizing for misdeeds. Ipso facto categorization of Fourth Eelam War civilian casualties as Government mistake and misdeed is an act of positioning, a market spin, a selling proposition and the lady slips it in such an unobtrusive, taken for granted manner, that one wonders what to do. Sneer and express the wish that some mentor had succeeded early, in encouraging her to find avenues of self expression other than political analysis? Or whistle in admiration and nominate her for the Sri Lankan subliminal propaganda awards?

The last stage of Eelam War IV was a context made impossibly, unprecedentedly complex by the hellish juxtaposition of four irredeemable factors; a civilian hostage situation, a progressively decreasing battle space, an orchestrated merging of civilian and combat spaces and a fraught international situation throbbing with interventionist potential. One day they will invent a proper slot, a correct classification that can comfortably sum up such a unique circumstance. Mistake and misdeed don’t even begin to do it.

Which is the actual Thisaranee? Clever smuggler of presumption disguised as basic reality or a genuine cognitive failure? Perhaps the following long quote (from Godfrey Gunatilleke in 'Truth and Accountability : The Last Stages of the War in Sri Lanka', an evaluation of the UN panel report on SL) will give us some light;

“THE PANEL REFUSES TO CONSIDER THE OTHER CREDIBLE EXPLANATIONS AVAILABLE FOR CIVILIAN CASUALTIES.

As stated earlier the panel’s own account of the fighting on the ground and LTTE’s use of civilians for various military purposes in order to defend themselves were leading to high civilian casualties. At this point the options that were available for minimizing civilian casualties short of stopping the military operation, would have posed dilemmas of inconceivable proportions. The Panel does not grant that the GOSL might have acted on its judgment that if it did not move in to destroy the LTTE’s military and defence capability as early as possible, the plight of the civilians would have deteriorated and the LTTE would have engineered a major humanitarian crisis. On such a premise, issues of intentionality and proportionality take on a different character and would have to be examined in much greater depth than what the Panel has been able to do, given its rejection of the government version and the circumstances in which it had to operate.”

Now hold that light steady and read more of Tiisaranee; “…As a civilian stated, “If the Government openly admitted that it had crushed and injured these people, it would be easier to accept than what it does now. It claims that it rescued the civilians without a single casualty, is caring for them, feeding them, resettling them and looking after all their needs. That kind of lie is the lowest thing you could inflict on another human being” (UTHR Special Report No. 34 – 13.12.2009).” Admitting that there were civilian casualties is not interchangeable with admitting to ‘injuring and crushing these people’. It doesn’t automatically follow Watson. A government can admit civilian casualties without admitting to ‘crushing and injuring these people’. What transforms civilian casualties into ‘crushing and injuring a people’? Not magic. It’s a premise, a presumption that transforms it. This presumption, of murderous intent, of ruthless, criminal disregard of civilian life, flows from the UN Panel Report and is accepted and used insidiously as a fundamental principle by Tisaranee as well as by the civilian proxy of the UTHR report she quotes.

There are serious credible allegations against the UN Panel: viz., that knowingly and deliberately while in the grip of the above presumption and to give credence to such presumption, they have committed gross intellectual misdemeanors including the following;

Failure to correlate in a manner indicating cause and effect, the strategies and actions of the LTTE disclosed in the Panel’s own account, i.e. use of civilians as a buffer, shooting of civilians who were escaping, conscription of civilians and pushing them to the front lines as cannon fodder, fortifying the no-fire zones, using mobile artillery, shooting from proximity of hospitals, with the courses of action open to a government pursuing a military goal.

Omitting or sidelining significant details from the Report that could provide a different explanation of the government’s strategy and actions. Such as the erasure of vital contextual details from the picture of civilian casualties within the NFZs. Thus firmly placing civilian casualties in a vacuum and giving ‘no information of Tiger units coming under fire in close proximity to the civilians, something which many eyewitnesses have admitted to seeing themselves’. Inferring in this way ‘that there was very little or no military activity in the areas around the civilians, and that therefore there was no reason for any shelling by the SL Army’.

Inability to form complete cognitive pathways incorporating such facts as ‘a lot of UAV footage as well as SL military statements point to the fact that the Tiger units were actively fortifying and defending terrain even in the NFZs, often relocating high value weapons and ordnance within the NFZs and in close proximity to the civilians, and that far from the civilians and hospitals being easily recognizable islands in a sea of calm, they were right in the middle of an intensely contested battlefield’. (See http://www.margasrilanka.org/Darusman-Seminar%20Report.pdf Pp. 10-13)

Such cognitive failures are starkly manifest when placed alongside functioning cognitive pathways of contemporary commentators close to the thick of the action, such as the Bishop of Jaffna, who in asking the government to extend the safe zone, ‘declared that he and his colleagues “are urgently requesting the Tamil Tigers not to station themselves among the people in the safety zone and fire their artillery-shells and rockets at the army. This will only increase more and more the death of civilians thus endangering the safety of the people”.(http://www.peaceinsrilanka.org/press-releases-details/press-releases-details/1520 )