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Geneva has been a regular rat trap for Sri Lanka ever since this small nation began to attract international attention, especially from human rights activists and well-organised and well-financed organisations targeting offenders round the globe.

Just on one occasion, shortly after Sri Lanka finally overcame the LTTE, a well-armed Tamil separatist fighting force that held power in a substantial part of the north and east of the country.

That was almost immediately after the military victory when the then Sri Lanka Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva engineered and staged a counterattack on the western nations in particular that considered themselves as the arbiters of the application and exercise of international human rights law and the right to deal with offenders.

The UN Human Rights High Commissioner’s Office, which served as the centre of operations reporting aggressive regimes, was shell-shocked that May day when Sri Lanka moved its own resolution commending the country for ending terrorism and safeguarding Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and democratic governance.

What took the High Commissioner for UN Rights and the western nations that led the charges against Sri Lanka over those years was not only the content of the resolution but also the result when it was put to the vote.

The resolution was carried with two-thirds of the 47-member council, an obvious cross section of nations providing unprecedented support of Sri Lanka. Not before or since has Sri Lanka secured such an overwhelming vote.

It did prove that such a turn of events to strike back at one’s persistent ‘enemy’ is not impossible if one uses the correct tools, some of which may not be familiar to some of those now entrusted with the task of representing Sri Lanka in important international fora and the ability to conduct bilateral matters with a wide background of international knowledge.

The best for the occasion is one with historical knowledge of the subject or one who is armed with advisers and analysts who would assist ministers and juniors, not merely hand over scripted paper to be read or waved at the gathered council members as though it would suffice to meet the challenges facing the country.

This is it – what brings me to the recently held 60th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and Sri Lanka’s presence and performance there, which produced far more brickbats than bouquets. Among the wide variety of epithets used by political and other circles, the sobriquet thrown at Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath, who led the Sri Lanka delegation, and the rest was opposition politician and rising star Namal Rajapaksa’s dismissive castigation of Sri Lanka’s conduct as “lacking the backbone”, which I thought was the most apposite.

What we saw in Geneva was an abject surrender compared to other defeats it has suffered in earlier encounters with the Human Rights High Commissioner and the Core Group of mainly western nations that led the charge against successive Sri Lankan governments from the early 2000s.

While it is easy to blame the western critics for labelling Sri Lanka for violations of human rights and the use of legislative enactments that were not intended for what those laws were passed for, laws such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) were used without compunction.

Not only was the act abused by the government in dealing with dissent and street protests against the government and used to throttle criticism, but the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration also found itself placed in a situation where, unknown to the President, decaying colonial British-era laws were resurrected and served as a first course by former servicemen and bureaucrats who had passed their shelf life but were still talking of state secrets as though there were any state secrets that are secret to our Chicago-gang leaders that operate from abroad and home.

It is time that our great confrontationist politicians and diplomats who threatened to carry the flag for a beleaguered country, especially in those dark days when the whole of the Global North seemed ganged up against us.

Part of the problem confronting Sri Lanka is of its own making. Each time a Geneva meeting has Sri Lanka on the agenda, some silly politician or retired military figure sitting in an important seat he is unaccustomed to and dealing with a vital international issue he knows little of speaks out of turn and lands the country in a soup.

It is not necessary to resurrect every diplomatic faux pas that made our country a glass full of asses’ milk. And there have been plenty over the years. Those who have looked on in awe at what the minister’s political and bureaucratic acolytes have tried to fill media spaces to explain some ‘great’ strike back at home or in Geneva would surely remember the damage they did to the country with their childish gimmickry that saw ministers and others engaging in a mathematical exercise that brought international laughter covering our diplomatic backs.

The answers Foreign Minister Herath held out as reasons for the country’s insouciance are as hollow and childish as the NPP has offered on others to cover their intellectual deficit.

What causes us to be confronted with the government? It should have known, especially as it looks forward to Geneva. But it seems to have ignored how it should meet the challenges accumulating before it.

So its answer to the gathering storm is not to save itself from possible calamity. Oh no, its answer to an impending attack is to creep under cover and hope for the best—in the best defensive techniques, a new Marxist study—if that was what it was.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later, he was Deputy Chief de Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London.)