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How many days does it take for a visiting Iranian frigate to steam into the port of the hosting Government of India as an invited guest for an international naval gathering, to be welcomed with honour and glory by its host and then be torpedoed by the United States sending human beings serving on that vessel screaming to the bottom of the sea?

Was Nemesis playing a joke on Sri Lanka?

To answer that question, fourteen days, that is. In fact, many aspects of the current conflagration in the Middle East are callous at several levels. But the ghastly sinking of the Iranian frigate ‘Iris Dena’ had a special tinge of ‘other-worldliness’ associated with it despite the vessel being classified as a legitimate military target. The incident occurred some forty nautical miles off the coast of Galle.

Only an ‘oil slick’ was reported floating in the sea when Sri Lankan authorities responded to sudden distress calls. Some Iranian sailors were rescued by the Sri Lankan Navy with the majority of the crew on board the doomed frigate beyond any relief. Perhaps Nemesis, the Greek goddess of fury was playing a cruel joke on the country as ruling politicians ran helter, skelter to cope with this new disaster visited on their befuddled heads.

In the Galle mortuary, bodies were being stored on ice as the capacity to cope was exceeded.In Colombo, we were told that teams of government lawyers were frantically poring over law books. That was to acquaint themselves with the legal niceties of how best to cope with this extraordinary incident. The Second Geneva Convention requires countries to take all required measures to rescue wounded or shipwrecked sailors after attacks on their vessels.

The ‘belief’ of a President

Legal niceties were however, least in the minds of the ‘aggressors’ in deciding to wage war against Iran. As terrible as the reign of the Iranian Government had been in regard to its citizens, the puerile excuse offered by a former Prime Minister of Australia to an Indian television channel, that the invasion of Iran by the United States and Israel was required to ‘protect’ the people of Iran, resonated only with the extremely naïve or the extremely prejudiced.

Suffice it to say that the best interest of the ‘people of Iran’ will not come as a priority consideration in the political ambitions of the ‘aggressors.’ Norms of international law are being tossed aside as casually as if it were flotsam and jetsam in the face of the United States and Israel waging a ‘war of aggression’ against Iran which has all the hallmarks of a potential World War Three. ‘I strongly believe that Iran was going to attack’ Mr Trump said.

That was articulated by the US President secure in the conviction that his ‘belief’ is all that is necessary. So even the fig-leaf of ‘imminent attack’ used by previous US Presidents to justify launching a war of aggression against sovereign States on multiple instances, was discarded this time around. Regardless, as the ramifications of the war spread beyond the Middle East, the costs became deadly.

A hapless and helpless Indian Ocean

In particular, the nations of the Indian Ocean became both hapless and helpless, including the purported regional power, India. Meanwhile, two more Iranian ships also sought safe harbour which was granted by India and Sri Lanka. Both countries bleated ‘humanitarian operations’ to cover themselves. Indeed, Governments from West Asia to South Asia scrambled to avoid antagonising the United States.

It was a farcical exercise in play. To add to the irony, an international wire service agency has reported that the United States was ‘pressuring’ the Government of Sri Lanka not to repatriate luckless Iranian survivors of the first frigate, the crew members of the second auxiliary vessel or send back the bodies of the dead. This was even as the bodies of dead US soldiers were being repatriated from Middle Eastern countries back to the US.

The reason as to why the Iranians were not being accorded this fundamental courtesy was because the US reportedly wanted to avoid the bodies being used for ‘propaganda.’ But the US itself was engaging in exactly that same propaganda when it boasted of the submarine ‘kill.’ For many of us traumatised by these events out of our own control, it may be worth recalling the film ‘Invictus’ and William Ernest Henley’s quiet reminder, in the memorable performance of Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela; ‘I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.’

Remembering the sanity of great human beings

Forged in the crucible of intense political activism against one of the most brutal regimes that the world had known, human rights comprised a life-vision for Mr Mandela, to be lived, to be experienced in its most vivid and glorious sense. This rallying cry was as powerful against a white South Africa as it was when Mr Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi articulated much the same sentiments against the British Raj. Unlike India wracked by the terrible blood of partition, South Africa emerged out of the apartheid era with dignity and courage.

As the country advanced, it was not as if the country did not have its share of problems. In particular, the economic situation of many black Africans continue to be dire. However, Mr Mandela’s message endured. The post-apartheid constitutional structures that were put into place with its centre being an independent judiciary and a beautifully crafted Bill of Rights which worked effectively in practice, was testimony to this.

These are lessons that are relevant for the people of the world as they wrest with a world order that is very different from what prevailed at that time. Mr Mandela’s reference to South Africa being ‘outlawed’ from the world must surely strike a chord of empathy with thinking Americans who helplessly witness the blackening of their country’s image in the world. Even so, public consensus against the autocracy and repression of Governments must still prevail.

Keeping hope in the darkest of times

This must be the case even in the darkest of times and when missiles rain down on the heads of innocent people. A stirring caution was once issued by one of the most loved judges of the United States, Learned Hand in his famous Spirit of Liberty speech in 1944. He said, ‘what do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes.’

He went on to remind that, ‘liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it… The United States that Judge Learned Hand spoke to is, of course, very different from the United States of Mr Donald Trump. But the common themes that both he and Mr Mandela emphasized were justice, peace, human dignity, prosperity, non-sexism, non-racialism and democracy.

These are impossible dreams to hold on to in what seems, in many respects, the ‘end of times’ or at least something coming perilously close to a global doomsday scenario. Nevertheless, it is only on these foundations that the world can collect its senses and move on from the chaos that prevails currently.