R2P - latest acronym for neo-colonial interventions

Delivering the Eighth Neelan Tiruchelvam Memorial Lecture at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES), Colombo, on July 29th 2007 Gareth Evans, President, International Crisis Group (ICG), has in his characteristic eloquent style clinically analyzed and described the new instrument of international intervention needed to prevent future "Holocausts and Cambodias and Rwandas and Bosnias of the past, and the Darfurs of the present, and maybe the Iraqs of the near future…" happening again.

He names the new instrument as "R2P". It is Gareth Evans' shorthand for "responsibility to protect". He also spells out his reasons to justify why R2P is applicable to the Sri Lankan situation.
Both are controversial. Despite the lucid exposition of the parameters and the import of R2P and its uses, his argument is mired in deep political, moral, legal and philosophical issues that the way out for existing and impending "humanitarian crises" through R2P seems to be nowhere nearer than in the old linguistic model, or envisaged in his lecture. The new terminology is neither an advancement on the old concept (it tastes more like old wine in new bottles) nor does it seem like a viable and satisfactory solution to the prevention of humanitarian crises. (More of this later).

Second, the political analysis on which he proposes to apply R2P to Sri Lankan crisis questions not only the validity of R2P but also the premises, the principles and the criteria recommended by him for its application anywhere, let alone Sri Lanka. He states that Sri Lanka is not another Rwanda, or Cambodia or Kosovo but R2P must be applied. This reveals his hidden agenda. In the name of delivering a memorial lecture on Neelan Tiruchelvam he has come to lay down the law of the imperial masters who judges, defines and implements their own definitions in accordance with their political agenda.

The overall flow of his lecture leads to his main political agenda of stopping the Sri Lankan military from advancing into the north on his assumption that it has the potential to descend into another Rwanda or Cambodia. Obviously, he is not aware that the Forces had regained Jaffna and the east (despite threats of blood bath by the Tamil Tigers) without descending anywhere near to a Rwanda or Kosovo.

The Sri Lankan forces had even quelled two Marxist uprising in the south with heavy casualties no doubt, more than the north-south conflict. The "balance of consequences" he points in Iraq has not occurred. The failure to take the ground realities and assess the overall picture makes Gareth Evans' argument rather unsustainable. It is a pity that he has merely regurgitated what has been fed to him by the local NGOs without making a realistic assessment of his own. This explains why he has misdiagnosed the Sri Lankan case. That is, perhaps, excusable for a misled pundit who had misread the symptoms. But to prescribe the wrong surgical operation is unacceptable in any language.

But before getting down to the Sri Lanka situation a brief examination of R2P is necessary. For all intents and purposes, R2P is a moral and a legal instrument sharpened to override state sovereignty and to impose the will of the international community. His argument amounts to ram R2P down the throats of sovereign nations in the Westphalian system, without overtly being overly imperialistic or interventionist. There is a reasonable argument for intervention, when the state fails "through incapacity or through ill-will", as in the case of Cambodia, Kosovo or Rwanda. But why should R2P apply to Sri Lanka when he states categorically that it is not in the same category of Kosovo or Rwanda?

As head of the ICG and as a leading proponent of R2P he sets out to draw "the limits of state sovereignty, and the proper role of the international community in responding to catastrophic human rights violations - genocide and other mass killing, large scale ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity - occurring within the boundaries of a single country." Nicely put. The main thrust of his argument is to by-pass, wherever necessary, Article 2 (7) of the UN Charter which states: "Nothing should authorise intervention in matters essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any State" and to replace that with the phrase coined by Bernard Kouchner, the founder of Medicines Sans Frontier and now France's Foreign Minister, of 'droit d'ingerence' - the 'right to intervene', or, more fully, the 'right of humanitarian intervention'. In other words, he attempts to draw the distinction between straight out intervention for political, economic, strategic or other interests and the "right of humanitarian intervention", with the emphasis on the elastic and even all-embracing word "humanitarian". Quite rightly, he points out the difficulties of applying this principle to all humanitarian crises

Citing Francis Deng, the Sudanese scholar and diplomat now named by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon as his Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, Gareth states that "its essence should now be seen not as 'control', as in the centuries old Westphalian tradition, but, again, as 'responsibility'. The starting point is that any state has the primary responsibility to protect the individuals within it. But that is not the finishing point: where the state fails in that responsibility, through either incapacity or ill-will, a secondary responsibility to protect falls on the wider international community. That, in a nutshell, is the core of the responsibility to protect idea, or 'R2P'as we are all now calling it for short."

Here Evans is making a big play on semantics. He is shifting the emphasis from "control" to "responsibility" as if it makes any significant difference. No, it doesn't. "Responsibility" is a substitute word to sanitize the opprobrium in the offensive word "control". In essence, both words converge in a meaning that is not much different from the other for the simple reason that those who take "responsibility" do so to take "control". There is no point in taking "responsibility" if those doing so cannot "control" the situation.

Evans' focus on semantics is pivotal to his argument. Without it his argument fails. He throws the linguistic net to catch everyone who comes within the realms of his political agenda. In his legalistic mind (he was a Professor in the Law Faculty of Melbourne University, Australia) he is well aware that those who formulate the rules have an advantage in any contest. His law of contracts would have taught him that.

The powerful combatants invariably set the rules, define the limits and force the other weak combatants to play according to the imposed dictates. This ensures that the battle of the powerful is won even before it begins. Defining ultimately is a key political act to achieve the desired goal. Definitions make all the difference to winning or losing. Taking control of the language to redefine the framework is a prime necessity to fix the political agenda. The semantic framework in which the discourse is held gives the upper hand to those who pre-plan the agenda. Once the definitions and the language are established all actors will have to play according to the rules that arise from the new definitions and language.

Evans acknowledges this when he said: "The first was to invent a new way of talking about 'humanitarian intervention'……. (T) he whole point of embracing (the new) language (R2P) is that it is capable of generating an effective, consensual response in extreme, conscience-shocking cases, in a way that 'right to intervene' language was not." Besides, political actions do not take place outside the linguistic framework. Refining the language to define the actions, the programme and the action is a prerequisite to pursue and achieve the preordained goals. Controlling the discourse through an authoritarian, imperialistic language is another way of imposing the will of those who craft the draft. The language invariably precedes the implementation of the political agenda. Evans has done this with finesse.

But in defining R2P he has (perhaps unwittingly) brought the meanings of the two words - "control" and "responsibility" - together. He says that "it means reacting effectively in situations where genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity are currently occurring or imminent. But it also means preventing situations, not yet at that conscience-shocking stage but capable of reaching it, from so deteriorating. And it means rebuilding societies shattered by such catastrophes to ensure they do not recur.

"The action required by R2P is overwhelmingly, preventive: building state capacity, remedying grievances and ensuring the rule of law. But if prevention fails, R2P requires whatever measures - economic, political, diplomatic, legal, security, or in the last resort military - become necessary to stop mass atrocity crimes occurring."

His definition makes it amply clear that taking "responsibility" is to take "control". He is trying to make out thattaking "responsibility" is a higher moral duty as opposed to taking "control" either through unilateral or multilateral interventions. But it is a distinction without a difference when it comes to "reacting effectively," as he states. No power on earth, not even the ICG, can "react effectively" without taking control.

However, in his nuanced argument Evans does not bluntly go all out to maintain that international intervention is necessary for each and every humanitarian crisis and applicable to every situation. He takes great pains to emphasize that the first opportunity must be given to individual states to take R2P action. He says: "As to who should in practice bear the responsibility in question, for individual states, R2P means in the first instance the responsibility to protect their own citizens from such crimes, and to help other states build their capacity to do so. For international organizations, including the United Nations, R2P means the responsibility to warn, to generate effective preventive strategies, and when necessary to mobilize effective reaction. For civil society groups, R2P means the responsibility to force the attention of policymakers on what needs to be done, by whom and when.

According to paragraph 138 of the World Summit Outcome Document the responsibility of the international community is to help countries to help themselves in taking preventive action. So how should this principle of helping Sri Lanka to help themselves be implemented by the international community? The Sri Lankan state "has the responsibility," according to Evans, "to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity." Everyone of these crimes has been committed by the LTTE and that is why they have been banned by the international community. That is also why Velupillai Prabhkaran is wanted by Interpol, India and Sri Lanka.

Evans goes further. He says: "This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. The international community should as appropriate encourage and help States to exercise that responsibility

All the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the LTTE have reached unacceptable proportions over the years. The regional super power, India, intervened (violating international law) and forced the Indo-Sri Lankan Agreement in the name of "humanitarian assistance". The LTTE ripped it apart and took up arms against the Indian Peace Keeping Force. The biggest boast of the Tamil Tigers is that they defeated the fourth biggest army in the world. Then the stars in the nebulous international community worked out the Ceasefire Agreement. LTTE not only walked out of talks shortly after signing it but violated 95% of its terms and conditions, according to Scandinavian Peace Monitors.

The Tamil Tigers have reneged on agreements with the UN to stop recruiting children - a war crime. Since the international community and the regional super power have failed to stop the war crimes and crimes committed against humanity whose responsibility is to take the only option available in the last resort to restore normalcy and decency in Sri Lanka: a regime change in the Vanni. This is also endorsed by the Tamils in the democratic stream, not to mention the look-alike and act-alike breakaway group of the LTTE led by Karuna in the east. According to the principles and criteria laid down by Evans, it is the responsibility of the international community to help Sri Lanka "to build capacity to protect (its) populations from these crimes (genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity) and to assist those which are under stress before crises and conflicts break out," says Evans, citing Paragraph 139 of the document approved unanimously by the world leaders.


So isn't it necessary and appropriate for the world leaders to adhere to their principles enshrined in Paragraphs 138 and 139 and help Sri Lanka to prevent these crimes? Instead Evans is threatening to stop the very forces that are advancing to fulfill the objectives outlined in Paragraphs 138 and 139. After the failures of the Indo-Sri Lankan Agreement and the Ceasefire Agreement what options are available in dealing with an intransigent and incorrigible perpetrator of these crimes against humanit? In summary, Evans concludes that Sri Lankan is a R2P case which requires international intervention. He says: "It may not be one where large scale atrocity crimes - Cambodia-style, Rwanda-style, Srebrenica-style, Kosovo-style - are occurring right now, or immediately about to occur, but it is certainly a situation which is capable of deteriorating to that extent."

His argument defies logic and commonsense. First, this argument runs on the same logic of the policeman who was produced a man before a magistrate for distilling illicit liquor. As evidence police said that he had all the necessary equipment for distilling liquor. The man said that he should then be charged of rape too because he has equipment to commit that crime! Second, what justice or rationality is there in pushing an agenda of his own when he brings imaginary charges against the he Sri Lankan government and ignores the criminals who have been found guilty of committing acts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity? Where is his commitment to Paragraphs 138 and 139? He says that Sri Lanka is not - nor is ii likely to be in near future - a Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrenica or Kosovo. But he imagines that "it is certainly a situation which is capable of deteriorating to that extent."

Here he is parroting the hype of NGOs. Their tactic has been to over-emphasize violations of human rights of the state fighting a grim battle to protect a democratically elected state to cover-up for the gross and horrendous violation of the Pol Potist regime in the north. In falling in line with this line of mono-ethnic extremism of the north Evans loses his balance and targets the victims of the brutal terrorist violence who, based on historical experience, can be saved only by a regime change in the Vanni.

Evans should know enough of history and heaps international machinations to understand that an unrepentant and unrelenting political criminal like Prabhakaran, who had killed more Tamils than all the other forces put together, according to the son of the father of Tamil separatism, S. J. V. Chelvanyakam, can never be reformed or contained by throwing flowers of constitutional reforms or arguments of human rights. Even if he doesn't accept this reality now he will long enough to realize it sooner or later.

Of course, he argues that the "government's sovereign responsibility is not to put its own citizens at undue risk. For this reason, the government must resist the temptation to continue its military campaign into the areas of the Northern Province held by the LTTE." At the Melbourne University he would marked down this argument as casuistry to cover-up for Pol Potism. If the priority of the world leaders is to prevent war crimes and crimes against humanity happening again, and if Sri Lanka is not like Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrenica or Kosovo (except in the projected imagination of Evans) what should be the response of the international community be? Based on Paragraph 138 and 139 (cited above) should it not be to help the Sri Lankan state to take effective action to protect its people held captive in the Tamil Terroristan?

To understand why Evans is going down this track, against all logic and available evidence, it is necessary to place in context the timing of his arrival to deliver the Tircuelvam Memorial lecture sponsored by the ICES. Without reading much into it, it should be noted that he has come at the time when the Security Forces had advanced, with commendable discipline and skill, avoiding the Srebrenica- Kosovo style of ethnic cleansing, or even Rwanda-scale horrors in the east. In 1995 the forces also occupied Jaffna without creating such horrendous ethnic catastrophes. In fact, in putting down violent challenges thrown at the democratically elected state, the Sri Lankan government had killed more Sinhalese (over a 100,000 at a rough estimate in the two JVP uprisings) than in this north-south conflict.

What Evans has not grasped is that there is no visceral enmity between the two communities as in the case of Kosovo or Srebrenica, or Rwanda. That is why the majority of Tamils live with the Sinhalese in the south. That is why the Sinhalese villages in the east were the first to rush to the Tamil victims of the tsunami, long before the state or the NGOs went in with their aid. That is also why that there has been no ethnic backlashes against the Tamil community (as in 1983) despite systematic provocations of the Tamil Tigers to needle the lower-level Sinhala leadership to retaliate violently against the Tamil neighbors each time they attack the sacred Buddhist sites, or massacre babies, Buddhist monks and pregnant mothers in villages.

Evans, of course, has missed all these realities. His political line can be understood only if it is compared with the fixed mind-set of the local NGOs whose main objective has been to tie the hands of the Sri Lankan forces with cries of human rights violations - cries raised to stop the advance of forces through international intervention. It is also reported that he has close rapport with Radhika Coomaraswamy who headed the ICES before the Sri Lankan government sponsored her to the post of an Under-Secretary at the UN. Sadly, both belong to that band of do-gooders in the world thriving on manufacturing sophisticated rationalizations for the evils staring in their faces. It is no coincidence that Evans was invited to deliver the Neelan Tiruchelvam Memorial lecture precisely at this time. He is the right spokesperson with the required high-profile who could be recruited, without any arm-twisting, to do the job of protecting the Pol Potist regime in the Vanni by stopping the advance of the Security Forces.

Besides, his analysis and his recipe of R2P have been written many times over by the foreign-funded International Centre for Ethnic Studies (meaning only partisan studies of Sinhala-Buddhists and not the northern Hindu Tamils), Centre for Policy Alternative (meaning policy alternatives only for the democratic south and not for the fascist north), National Peace Council (meaning a council to cover-up the war crimes committed by the war lords of the north) etc., etc. The only new aspect in Evans' lecture is the finger-pointing threat at the state if it goes into the north. This is a repetition of Indian intervention when the Sri Lankan forces were on the verge of de-clawing the Tamil Tigers. The Indians too came in the name of humanitarian intervention and air-dropped lentils, violating the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of its southern neighbour. The Indian language was different from that of Evans. They didn't come wrapped in fancy R2P but the effect was the same.

In the case of Evans, however, he seems to be all over the place with him wriggling, semantically, to intervene through his R2P language, despite him saying that the so-called "R2P situation …. demands preventive action, by the Sri Lankan government itself, but with the help and support of the wider international community, to ensure that further deterioration does not occur."

If he really means what he says then in what manner should the wider international community support and help Sri Lanka to take responsibility to protect its citizens? Hasn't the state the right to invoke Bernard Kouchner's 'droit d'ingerence' - the 'right to intervene', or, more fully, the 'right of humanitarian intervention' to prevent the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Tamil Terroristan? Or is R2P action a right reserved only for the imperial masters? Going against his own definition of R2P Evans labours, point by point. to argue against the Security Forces advancing to liberate the Tamil citizens -- a call, incidentally, made by the UN peace award-winning Tamil leader, V. Anandasangaree. All his arguments boil down to block the Security Forces taking R2P action.

This is why political observers see him as an agent of the local NGOs arriving in time to twist the arm of the government, with not-so-veiled threats from the international community. This threat also undermines his argument that the first preference is given to the state to initiate R2P action.
Consider, for instance is legal argument: "Recognizing that the government's primary responsibility, like that of any state, is to protect all its citizens, it must take steps to ensure that all its citizens are accorded the equal protection of the laws." It is unthinkable that he would confine the definition of the phrase "to protect all its citizens" only to those living in the south.

All citizens should include those living in the Tamil Terroristan too - citizens who are forced to endure crimes against their own children with, mark you, Radhika Coomaraswamy, a concerned Tail, presiding over hapless fate at the UN. How do Evans and Coomaraswamy propose to protect these children from falling into the clutches of the Tamil Tigers? Is it by giving another lecture? Or by writing another report for the UN Secretary-General? Their politics do not give priority to war crimes an crimes against humanity which they know for will not end as long as Velupillai Prabhakaran is allowed to reign with impunity in Tamil Terroristan.

They go down the other political tract of NGOs that argue in devious ways that priority should be given to power-sharing with the mono-ethnic extremists of the north over any meaningful consideration of the rights of children or the victims of the violations of human rights. Their intent is to keep the Tamil Tigers in power as a guarantee of Tamil rights and R2P should not be applied to the north until the south provides them an undue share of powers ignoring the aspirations of all communities. In this argument human rights takes the last place in their list of priorities. They invoke human rights only to force the state to submit to their political demands and not because they are genuinely concerned a bout protecting human rights. In other words, human rights are used as a political tool to beat the state, exonerating the so-cal de facto state guilty of horripilating crimes against humanity. This argument is a perversion of R2P. ICG must decide whether it wants to prioritize human rights, as it professes, or go along with the criminal politics of the mono-ethnic extremists.

Besides, going on Evans' "balance of consequences", the chances of Tamils finding political solution are far greater without the Tigers than with them holding a gun at the heads of those seeking peace. Sadly, Evans argument honed to stop the advance of the Sri Lankan forces does not go as far as protecting all those citizens held to ransom by a ruthless group of political criminals. His silence on this implies that those citizens either need no protection from the state or are not citizens of the state. In either case, he has virtually abandoned the "responsibilities" to protect those citizens, either by the state or by the international community. If Evans is keen on prioritizing politics as against human rights then he loses the moral high ground. Though he is bouond to reject it, he becomes anally of Prabhakaran and not the state which he states deserves international help to prevent violations of human rights.

He argues that the Sri Lankan government must take preventive action "with the help and support of the wider international community, to ensure that further deterioration does not occur." But in saying that the Sri Lankan forces must not advance to change the regime that is violating human rights on an unprecedented scale he is endorsing the NGO line that the status quo must be maintained, leading to further deterioration of the humanitarian crisis in Tamil Terroristan and, consequently, the rest of the nation.

On balance and by all the available evidence the most pragmatic course available deal with the deteriorating human rights crisis in Sri Lanka is for the ICG to unleash the full force of R2P against "the Pol Potist regime" (James Burns of New York Times - June 25, 1995) than against the Sri Lankan state. He mentions the nominal restrictions placed on the Tigers in Western havens. But to what effect? Roland Buerk, BBC, in his latest report from Killinochchi states: "But now there is new evidence that the organisation is forcing civilians into its ranks" -- one from each family to fight in a needless war. Evans is also aware of the forcible recruitment of child soldiers, reneging on all UN agreements from 1995.

He may not be aware of the Nazi-style concentration camps run in the heart of Terroristan, but he may be knowing of how 75,000 Muslims and 20,000 Sinhalese were ethnically cleansed from Jaffna. He, of course, is aware of how the cream of Tamil leadership has been eliminated. It has been an unceasing, on-going humanitarian crisis with no signs of abating. With all this evidence before him Evans refuses to accept that the Tamil Tigers have "crossed the boundary into mass atrocity or obvious genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity." He is stuck in his ideological blindness. If he acknowledges the plight of the Tamils under ruthless regime of Velupillai Prabhakaran he will be forced, by his own logic to encourage the Sri Lankan state to initiate R2P action "with the help and support of the wider international community, to ensure that further deterioration does not occur".

But where does he draw the line? He draws the line only to prevent the Sri Lankan government from taking the action to prevent future Rwandas and Cambodias. Sadly, ICG, like all local NGOs, is putting maximum pressure to prevent the subhuman source from these crimes originate. ICG, like local NGOs is pussyfoots around the war crimes and the crimes against humanity committed by the Tamil Tigers. In fact, Evans unashamedly states that "in recent times" the Tigers have been behaving well "without crossing the boundary into mass atrocity or obvious genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity." He even equates that behavior with that of the SL government.

Whatever the data base from which he derived this conclusion he seems to be quite comfortable with the forcible abduction of children, concentration camps, and door-knocking to recruit one young person from each family and, judging from his statements neither the state nor the international community need apply R2P to liberate the Tamils enslaved by Prabhakaran. R2P is only to be applied in the south exempting the worst criminals in the north. Compounding all these sins of omission is the fact that Evans failed to mention - not even in passing - that Neelan Tiruchelvam was assassinated by the Tamil Tigers. He does not view it as an integral part of inhuman LTTE outfit urgently in need of regime change under R2P action. On the contrary, he gloats over his assumption that the Tamil Tigers have not "crossed the border" recently, or that the Western citadels of human right, after nurturing them for decades, have at last made some ineffective moves to curtail their fund raising. Based on Evans' ideological blinkers, the peace-loving Sri Lankans can be excused for thinking that R2P is the latest devious route of a neo-colonialist fox sneaking its way into the hapless chicken coop.

One of the fundamental flaws in Evans' argument is the heartless way in which he subjects reality to airy-fairy theories imported from the West, or manufactured by the local NGOs. He states: "It has taken the world an insanely long time, centuries in fact, to come to terms conceptually with the idea that state sovereignty is not a license to kill - that there is something fundamentally and intolerably wrong about states murdering or forcibly displacing large numbers of their own citizens, or standing by when others do so." Well, there are two political entities in Sri Lanka - (1) the perfect Terroristan in the north and (2) the imperfect democracy in the south. On any scale of judgment, which side should he support in pursuance of R2P? Or to take an example from his homeland, if there was in the heart of Australia a subhuman pocket of tyranny violating all know canons of human rights and challenging the authority of a democratically elected government how would he apply R2P?

If Evans is worried about the "balance of consequences" aren't the military operations and the consequences of the capture of Jaffna, the east, and the ending of the two JVP insurrections good enough examples for him to go by? Besides, wasn't it during his time as Foreign Minister that Australia joined the multi-lateral force of throwing a naval cordon round Iraq that blocked food and medical supplies leading to reported deaths of around 500,000 children?

Without meaning to sound like a war-monger, it is most unlikely that even a fraction of those casualties would occur on the "balance of consequences" if the Security Forces should go north. It is against this background that Evans has launched him mission to stop the Security Forces advancing to the north and threatening the sovereign democratic state (with all it faults) with R2P. To prove his bona fides about his concerns for protecting communities in crisis there is a simple legal remedy available to Evans.

He has the capacity/power to initiate action to bring Prabhakaran before an International Criminal Court. This is, perhaps, the best non-militaristic approach available in R2P. This legal action can then circumvent any head-on collisions and prevent the grim scenario he paints.

But he won't do that either. As a professional immersed in the law he would have been aware of this option available to him and the international community. What is international law worth if it can't be applied to an open-and-shut case like this? Why is Evans, the ICG and the international community running away from their "responsibilities"? Is it only to be applied to small countries which can be bullied into submission by threats conveyed at lectures? With moral guardians like Evans is it surprising that the likes of Prabhakaran reign in the safe havens protected by those who failed to live up to their "responsibilities" -- responsibilities they never fail to proclaim from NGO roof tops?
All in all, it is indeed "conscience-shocking" to see Gareth Evans, the former Foreign Minister of Australia who pushed Austral-Lanka relations to the brink, as it were, by defending the Aussie team's refusal to play cricket in Sri Lanka fearing Tamil Tiger threats, standing up now as a cryptic defender of a haven for Tamil Tiger terrorists and, in the process, emerging as a toxic Aussie phrase-maker for peddling obnoxious neo-colonialism.

(http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items07/040807-5.html)