Thoughts from London

How noble of our British buddies
Shortly after discussing recent developments in Sri Lanka with the Norwegian Foreign Minister last month, Britain's Foreign Office Minister Mike O'Brien issued a statement that contained references to the peace process and the upcoming elections.

In his statement, O'Brien said: "It is essential that, throughout Sri Lanka, these elections are free of intimidation, fair and non-violent. It is also essential that the media are allowed to play a responsible and independent role in the democratic process."

Having said that one would have expected Minister O'Brien, whose commitment to the democratic process is not doubted though his lesson in democracy might seem somewhat gratuitous and patronising, to have promptly condemned the recent killings of candidates and political activists.

After all, Mr O'Brien, who is prepared to give free lessons on the democratic process, had insisted in his statement that the elections should be free of intimidation and non-violent "throughout Sri Lanka."

After that admonition from one who sits in the Mother of Parliaments that supposedly epitomises British democracy, the least one would expect is the condemnation of the murder of one who aspired to a seat in the Sri Lankan parliament.

Yet not a murmur was heard from Minister O'Brien probably because he was shell-shocked from the news that the killers of the candidate had murdered him in the hospital where he was taken after they botched the first attempt.

The US, on the other hand, did not suffer from convenient amnesia or whatever the ailment that reduced Mr O'Brien to silence. The State Department's Richard Boucher returning to his old job as spokesman after a stint at Consul-General in Hong Kong, was quite unequivocal in his condemnation of the political murder.

In fact, he went beyond condemnation. He clearly pointed the finger at the LTTE for the dastardly act and said that this was why the Tamil Tigers were a banned organisation in the US.

Never mind that the UNP, whose candidate was killed, had also apparently taken a vow of silence at the time and made, what would appear to outsiders, as a belated complaint to the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission.

Now Minister O'Brien is free to proffer advice and tell anyone who cares to listen or not, how to run their elections and their countries. After all, he is a minister in a country where free expression is permitted - except to the BBC - and everybody is equal except asylum seekers and those suspected of being terrorist on the faintest of evidence or better, none at all.

What is disconcerting, if not spurious, is that this advice comes from a government that is morally and politically tainted and has failed abysmally to adhere to norms of political conduct that it preaches others should practise. One shoul

d not, of course, be shocked by the behaviour of governments and politicians. It is in their nature to preach one thing today and do just the opposite tomorrow, to make faithful promises and break them as easily as eggs.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga, we are told, is seeking a mandate from the people to change the constitution or make a new one. But did she not promise to do the same 10 years ago when she contested the 1994 election?

If people in Sri Lanka are increasingly disillusioned with politicians and their myriad promises, the British people here are equally dissatisfied and disgusted with their own government and prime minister as opinion polls show.

The times that the west has lectured the rest of the world on human rights, the rule of law and democratic practices are numerous and unceasing.

One would normally suppose that such hectoring comes from those who unscrupulously adhere to the laws and conventions of international conduct and ensure that their own institutions do so.

But it appears that the roles are now being reversed. While those countries whose human rights records, adherence to the rule of law and democratic behaviour have been under constant scrutiny are, by and large, changing for the better, it is those that have been doing all the preaching who are now being called to account for their conduct.

This all round slippage in the west is being defended on the grounds of 9/11 and international terrorism. No impartial observer will condone or defend terrorism if terrorism means the use of terror against civilians and non-combatants.

But in the name of fighting terrorism all sorts of injustices are being done by governments to their people and citizens of other countries that questions are increasingly being asked whether the war against terror requires terrorising one's own people.

Laws and legal norms that have been in force for decades are being jettisoned in the name of fighting terrorism. Here in Britain, people are being held in detention without charges brought against them, without the recourse to legal representation and without a semblance of evidence being presented against them.

As a result the public is unaware why people are being held and what evidence if any, there is against them to prepare a legal defence. Just last week, three British judges accused the Home Secretary David Blunkett of detaining a man in a high security prison for 16 months without charges or trial on evidence that was "wholly unreliable and should not have been used to justify detention."

Much of the evidence against the man, identified only as "M", was heard in secret with none of his lawyers present. Two cardinal principles of English law are trial by jury and open justice. They are being gradually undermined and it will not be long before secret trials become more common and jury trials abandoned in some cases.

Why should this come as any surprise when international laws and conventions are being violated with impunity either alone or in collusion with other countries such as the United States?

The case against Katherine Gun, the analyst working for the top-secret communications eavesdropping establishment here who leaked a US/UK bugging operation ahead of the invasion of Iraq, was dropped not out of kindness. It was because the government feared that the Attorney-General's detailed opinion on the legality of that invasion would be in the open and prove a total embarrassment to the Blair government.

The bugging of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's private office, which has not been denied, was surely a violation of international law and the laws setting up the UN. The fact that others were bugging too does not make the act any more lawful. It would be as logical as saying that since others commit murder, you are entitled to do the same. How ironical that Britain and the United States call some countries "rogue states". The "rogues" are right here among us.

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