Daya Gamage – US National Correspondent Asian Tribune
Washington, D.C. 31 January (Asiantribune.com): “The fact remains that as a reporter, unless I knew a Sri Lankan diplomat personally, I found the (Sri Lankan) High Commissions and Embassies very unhelpful and ill-prepared to put a professional effort into media activity abroad” says Barbara Crossette a well known, highly experienced, influential and well connected journalist who has specialized in South Asian affairs told the Asian Tribune when discussing the macro effect of Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, better known as Tamil Tigers, has on the international community especially in the West despite being on the verge of losing all the territory it held in the north and east of this South Asian nation making Sri Lanka look like having a genocidal regime.
Barbara Crossette
Drawing attention of Asian Tribune to the media release put out by the office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights on Thursday January 29 (2009) Ms. Crossette said:
"There is still a lot of foreign distrust around – as you can see in international media reports about who is to blame for holding more than 200,000 civilians hostage in the north. Today the UN more or less blamed the government, and only lamely included the LTTE. When BBC reporters in Colombo asked a UN official named Weiss (I forget his first name) why the LTTE would prevent these people from leaving their control, he said that the Tigers thought it would be too dangerous for them to cross over battle lines. The BBC reporter let that comment stand without challenge."
The Asian Tribune is privileged to get the input of an experienced journalist of the caliber of Barbara Crossette as she has accumulated a vast knowledge of Sri Lanka issue when acting as the bureau chief for The New York Times reporting in the late eighties and nineties from Colombo. She is now attached to the United Nations in New York for the widely read The Nation and works with The World Policy Institute, contributes to its World Policy Journal. The above comment shows how closely she watches the developments in South Asia in general and Sri Lanka in particular.
Barbara Crossette has been the New York Times UN bureau chief since September of 1994; a post she ascended to after serving as senior editor of the bureau since January 1993. She had previously been a correspondent in The Times' Washington bureau from 1991 until 1993, a bureau chief in New Delhi from 1988-1991 and a bureau chief in Bangkok from 1984-1988. Between 1983 and 1984, Ms. Crossette was deputy foreign editor for The Times, prior to which she reported on foreign affairs from Washington. In 1978 she was named assistant news editor and in 1977 she was an assistant metropolitan editor. She was also the first editor of the Westchester Weekly, which was introduced early in 1977.
Ms. Crossette is the winner of the 1998 Society of the Silurians 5-Year Achievement Award. She also won the 1991 George Polk Award for foreign reporting for her coverage of the assassinations of Rajiv Gandhi. In 1980, she was awarded a Fulbright teaching fellowship and in 1980 and 1981 she lectured on journalism at the Panjab University in Chandigarh and at the Indian Institute for Mass Communications in New Delhi. She was 1994 Ferris visiting professor on politics at Princeton University and was a member of the adjunct faculty at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In 2003, she led an advanced workshop in journalism at the Royal University of Phnom Penh for writers and editors from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Burma. In 2004-2005 she worked with journalists in Brazil as a Knight International Press Fellow.
Ms. Crossette is now a travel essayist and a freelance writer on foreign policy and international affairs. Her articles and essays appear periodically in World Policy Journal, published at the New School University in New York
The Asian Tribune would like to highlight her influence in Washington when she wrote "Will John Bolton Ruin the UN?" an article published in Foreign Policy, in the July/August 2006, presaged the campaign that led to the resignation of the US ambassador nominated by President Bush to UN..
In January 6, 2009 edition of The Nation Barbara Crossette under the caption ‘Will Peace Finally Come to Sri Lanka’ wrote: "Sri Lanka bungled its case diplomatically and very quickly lost an international propaganda war to the LTTE."
Then she opined: "Most of the world did not see what was happening in Sri Lanka, and outsiders were willing to believe that the Tigers were leading a legitimate fight for an oppressed minority and were the victims of official human rights abuses, not the instigators of terror. The voices of unarmed moderate Tamils were never heard. Most of them were soon silenced."
Iterating Sri Lanka’s failure on overseas public diplomacy and strategic communication Ms. Crossette says: "Sri Lanka, a small country without powerful international backers, still has not made its case in the West, where old habits and perceptions die hard. Last year a group of Western democracy and human rights groups led a successful campaign to deny Sri Lankans a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council (where such nations as China, Cuba, Pakistan and Azerbaijan enjoy membership.) A cause for smug satisfaction, perhaps, but no contest, really, in targeting a small and tormented nation. If peace can be achieved, Sri Lanka deserves better than that."
Barbara Crossette told the Asian Tribune how effective the LTTE public diplomacy was and how little the Sri Lankan state knows how to combat it: "When I was reporting from Colombo I was occasionally sent strange requests from either editors (in The New York Times) or others in the US that to me reflected that someone in a pro-LTTE group had got to them. In one case, there was a story that the Sri Lankan intelligence service had a torture center on the 4th floor of the airport (which didn’t have a fourth floor). Another time a public defender lawyer wrote to me to test the story she had been told by a Tamil client that seemed totally outrageous. It pretty much was. The Jaffna Tamils were not treated well, but his account made it sound like genocide."
She continued to say: "In both cases, no one had talked with a Sri Lankan diplomat, or may be tried and failed. Instead they had only the pro-LTTE version of life to work with."
Commenting on what this writer has been advocating the importance of overseas public diplomacy campaign and the effective use of strategic communication with the international community and Western powers to reverse the unfavorable trend to use all the resources to redress the grievances of all ethnic communities Barbara Crossette told the Asian Tribune: "The second point, more relevant to your work now: If and when the LTTE is formally finished in the field, what the Sri Lanka government does and how it handles public opinion inside the country as well as outside seems critical to overcome the mistakes of the past. Will the government turn to the pressing problems of poverty, as you mention, and try to build a multiethnic society, or will it give ground to the most radical Sinhala nationalists?"
Ms. Crossette says: "What has been lost in Sri Lanka? A reasonably egalitarian society with human development measures that still exceed India's--in better health care, near-universal education and literacy, protected rights for women and numerous other factors--descended on all sides into brutality for long enough to numb too many consciences. (Buddhist monks are among the fiercest of Sinhala nationalists.) Political civility has given way to the culture of the tinted-glass, gun-infested SUV. Resentment still lingers among distrustful Tamils; the LTTE, now cornered in a still-sizable patch of jungle and reliant on abducted child soldiers, may strike again with new ferocity. Suicide is part of its ethos."
She reminds the international community that: "Tamils were killing Tamils in this civil war before it became an island-wide, inter-ethnic conflict. By the late 1970s, the LTTE, under a ruthless and shadowy leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, had begun systematically to eliminate competing guerrilla groups and moderate mainstream Tamil politicians who tried to rectify wrongs within the political arena in Colombo, the island capital. Sri Lanka has had democratically elected governments since independence in 1948."
Way back April 1, 2002 Barbara Crossette wrote the following in World Policy Journal. What she told at that time of Tamil Tiger propaganda machinery and hopelessly ineptness of Sri Lankan officials and diplomats in telling 'Sri Lankan story' in a cogent manner to the international community and the powerful West still holds true at a time Sri Lanka is gaining all territories held by the LTTE but the Tigers are slowly and steadily painting the Sri Lankan regime as a genocidal one.
"Thanks to Prabakharan, Sri Lanka lost a generation of Tamil politicians willing to work within the democratic system in the 1980s and 1990s. All the while, the Sinhalese-dominated government was under international pressure to make concessions to the Tamils, who carried out one assassination after another, while also forcibly conscripting children, issuing them cyanide capsules and instilling the cult of martyrdom, practices still very much alive today. To many Sri Lankans, Tamils as well as Sinhalese, the advice from outsiders approached incomprehensible madness, and it left a residue of resentment, particularly toward international human rights groups, even though they have lately been far more critical of the rebels. The Tamil Tigers were skilled propagandists, while many Sri Lankan officials and diplomats were hopelessly inept in presenting the government's case."
- Asian Tribune -
Comments
Well said and hit the nail
Well said and hit the nail on the head! This is the main problem. We don't have a spokesman in our missions to get the message across to the Western World. The people who head these missions are camera-shy and the command of a foreign language is questionable.
Talking a foreign language is one thing; talking it in an intersting manner to win an audience is another thing. These are poles apart.
When some diplomats speak antiquated text-book English, the audience yawns! This has been the case all along. We don't have to employ people from the foreign service; we know what they achieved! Employ people who can talk and win an audience. The possession of paper qualification must be made the last thing in the list of necessasities, not the first thing.
What we need is an effective division of labour - the spokesman is more important than our High Commissioners or Ambassadors.
So call diplomats in Sri
So call diplomats in Sri Lankan missions overseas speak "ARCHAIC ENGLISH." They need training.
Correction: So called
Correction: So called
It is refreshing to hear a
It is refreshing to hear a respected journalist like Barbara Crossette who knows Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans well (especially people of the caliber of Hon. Lakshman Kadirgamar, a Foreign Minister who for the first time since the conflict got international attention, comunicated the Truth to the world's diplomats, but whose life was cut short by the LTTE, for obvious reasons), talk openly about this great gaping hole in Sri Lanka's diplomatic capability to communicate her story to the world.
The failure of Sri Lanka's diplomatic community has been largely due to the lack of political will emanating out of Colombo, and an antiquated attitude of aloofness from the conflict in order not to "take sides", that has resulted in obscuring the Truth. It has been left to public citizens to fill the gaping hole, but all too often ineffectively, and without reaching the eyes and ears of persons of influence in Washington and New York. Worse, it has permitted the LTTE propaganda machine and NGOs to drive the West's knowledge stream on Sri Lanka, both in the media and in the State Department.
So much so, that today there are demonstrations going on in various cities of the USA and elsewhere, in which it is being declared that there is "GENOCIDE" in Sri Lanka, by people who seem neither to know what the term "genocide" means, nor what Sri Lanka is today. They seem quite ignorant of the fact that more than 54% of Sri Lanka's Tamils are in the South, living and working, leading normal lives among the Sinhalese whom these expatriates demonize.
This anti-Sri Lankan mind set has been cultivated so far that a Tamil Grammy Award winner, MIA, who has specialized in terror-supporting lyrics to her Rap Music and has clinched a niche in the pop culture, goes on National TV and talks of "GENOCIDE IN SRI LANKA"!!
It is simply crazy that propaganda can have gotten this far into twisting the trut without exposeure. Thank you, Barbara Crossette!
It is refreshing to hear
It is refreshing to hear a
new
Submitted by voyager on Sat, 2009-01-31 09:07.
It is refreshing to hear a respected journalist like Barbara Crossette who knows Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans well (especially people of the caliber of Hon. Lakshman Kadirgamar, a Foreign Minister who for the first time since the conflict got international attention, comunicated the Truth to the world's diplomats, but whose life was cut short by the LTTE, for obvious reasons), talk openly about this great gaping hole in Sri Lanka's diplomatic capability to communicate her story to the world.
The failure of Sri Lanka's diplomatic community has been largely due to the lack of political will emanating out of Colombo, and an antiquated attitude of aloofness from the conflict in order not to "take sides", that has resulted in obscuring the Truth. It has been left to public citizens to fill the gaping hole, but all too often ineffectively, and without reaching the eyes and ears of persons of influence in Washington and New York. Worse, it has permitted the LTTE propaganda machine and NGOs to drive the West's knowledge stream on Sri Lanka, both in the media and in the State Department.
So much so, that today there are demonstrations going on in various cities of the USA and elsewhere, in which it is being declared that there is "GENOCIDE" in Sri Lanka, by people who seem neither to know what the term "genocide" means, nor what Sri Lanka is today. They seem quite ignorant of the fact that more than 54% of Sri Lanka's Tamils are in the South, living and working, leading normal lives among the Sinhalese whom these expatriates demonize.
This anti-Sri Lankan mind set has been cultivated so far that a Tamil Grammy Award winner, MIA, who has specialized in terror-supporting lyrics to her Rap Music and has clinched a niche in the pop culture, goes on National TV and talks of "GENOCIDE IN SRI LANKA"!!
It is simply crazy that propaganda can have gotten this far into twisting the trut without exposeure. Thank you, Barbara Crossette!
AML
Most HC's cannot even speak
Most HC's cannot even speak English.. This tells all.
"Will the government ... try
"Will the government ... try to build a multiethnic society, or will it give ground to the most radical Sinhala nationalists?" - Ms. Crossette
A doubt in Ms. Crossette's mind, this indeed is the billion-dollar question. The government's actions towards building a just society will speak a lot more than the words of any diplomat. The government has yet to prove that it is committed to this crucial undertaking. Until it does so, and proves itself through measurable actions, the government will not win the confidence of the Western governments - no matter what the diplomats say.
One sentence say the
One sentence say the achievements of Tamils over 30 years. It still fails to state the economic and Human destruction caused by Tamil diaspora. "Thanks to Prabakharan, Sri Lanka lost a generation of Tamil politicians willing to work within the democratic system in the 1980s and 1990s. All the while, the Sinhalese-dominated government was under international pressure to make concessions to the Tamils, who carried out one assassination after another"
On another point, if the Sri Lankan Embassies cannot speak and disseminate the truth about Sri lanka in foreign countries, the Foreign Ministry in Sri Lanka should engage speech writers in Colombo and spoon-feed the Embassies.
Sri Lankan patriots in foreign countries are now taking up the slack. But they cannot speak with the authority that Embassadors and High Commissioners have.
There is no need to educate
There is no need to educate the high commissioners in English, who are westerners to judge Sri Lankans or to put Sri Lankan government on trial and request them to defend in English. These are the suckers to western worlds who suffer from inferior complexes and think that Sinhalese cannot run governments. We have a history over 2000 years where Sinhalese use to rule the country where Tamils and Muslims lived peacefully and well looked after. Sri Lankans should learn to manage their disputes internally and get rid of most of those western embassies. The main 2 culprits to the current situation are SWRD Bandaranayke and JR Jayawardena. SWRD destroyed the chances of majority Sinhalese due to his dirty and bogus nationalism, Sinhala only rubbish where he cunningly made sure that no non elite Sinhalese or Tamil youth (except his dumb children) would speak English or none of them would speak each others language so that there would be disharmony among them, try yourselves by talking to Sri Lankans who were born in 1950s to 1980s. JR made sure that he will turn a blind eye to Tamil terrorist for his own power hunger. This is the looney who released Prabhakaran in 1970s and banned Sirmavo Bandaranayke from public office so that Tamil terrorist would get an international voice. We are glad that at last we have a president who knows how to govern, there is no need to educate westerners, they created and supported LTTE, India included. It is our sheer luck that China, Iran and Pakistan came to our rescue. We should teach our high commissioners Chinese, Urdu and Persian so that we get help we deserve, NOT English.
Yet another exposure on the
Yet another exposure on the bunglings of some of our diplotmats. But all is not bad with our foreign missions. Beware of complacency!
Be true to thine own conscience!
I have personally thanked Ms
I have personally thanked Ms Crossette saying that only she and very few others such as Paul Harris have been able to see through the LTTE propaganda and that not only the internation media and the gullible western public, but also many of our own politicians swallowed the LTTE propaganda hook, line and sinker.
But I also pointed out to her that there were deeper issues that caused the LTTE to rise up, such as being rejected by the Tamil people when they returned from Tamil Nadu in 1982 as terrorists (having gone there as as simple criminals and smugglers), and why it was impretaive that they should have a separate State, the reasons why they rejected an offer of a federal state, Interim Self Government and devolution during the various failed peace processes.
The following makes it clear:
Most international media releases continue to carry the following, which is based on LTTE propaganda:
a. “The rebels have been fighting to create a homeland for the ethnic Tamil minority”.
b. “Successive Sinhala-dominated governments have been discriminating against the Tamils since independence”.
c. “Analysts say that unless the legitimate grievances of the Tamil minority are dealt with, there will be no peace in the country”.
All of this is incorrect, but continues to be recycled as the “background to the conflict” in many news articles even today, using old boilerplate text. These are what the LTTE propaganda is based on. In fact, their entire existence is based on this propaganda.
This article shows that the LTTE, rather than being the representatives of the Tamils, actually has the Tamils intimidated and afraid to come out against them under pain of death (summary punishments have been carried out on many Tamils during the past twenty years, both in Sri Lanka and overseas). The Tamil Diaspora is not supporting them because they want the LTTE to fight for a Tamil homeland, but because they too are in its grasp.
The article also shows that the LTTE is not trying to create a homeland for the Tamils, but is trying to create a mini-state as a safe haven for the LTTE leadership from International law enforcement authorities and which will also serve as a base for their international criminal enterprises.
The so-called "atrocities", discrimination and "genocide' are false-propaganda by the LTTE on a massive scale to hoodwink the World's population, particularly those Tamils born after the events of July 1983 when the LTTE who know nothing of the harmony that existed before.
The following describes how the present conflict actually began, in chronological sequence. Those who doubt these need only check records and newspaper articles to ascertain the truth.
a. Prior to 1976, the Tamil politicians made use of the call for a Federal State in the North and East as an election issue to gain Tamil votes. The ordinary Tamil public was neither for it nor against it as they were quite content with their lot.
b. The LTTE and 32 other quasi-political groups were raised overnight in 1976, mainly from the criminal underworld and smuggling rings of Jaffna as a result of the Vadukkodai Resolution of the Tamil politicians to introduce sabotage to pressure the government to accede to their demand for a federal state.
c. Differences arose between the Tamil politicians and these groups causing disturbances such as lamppost killing of Tamil politicians, resulting in law enforcement activities that forced the groups to take refuge in Tamil Nadu.
d. At the time (1979) the Indian government, which was pro-USSR, was not favourably disposed towards Sri Lanka, which was pro-USA, and therefore India, using the RAW, provided training in military operations and terrorism to these groups, converting them from mere criminal and smugglers into trained and equipped terrorists.
e. Meanwhile the 1978 Sri Lanka government had granted all the demands of the Tamil people (other than a federal state which was impossible), and the Tamil people had no cause for political agitation. The leading Tamil politician was even the leader of the Parliamentary opposition.
f. The groups returned to Jaffna in 1982 to find that the Tamil people rejected them because they had murdered the old well-loved politicians. They were therefore at a loose end, with no cause to fight for. The groups therefore fell back on the old political demand for a federal state, but found that there was no longer a cause for such a demand. They therefore decided to invent (or create) a cause and use terrorism as the means to attain their demands. Terrorism also permitted them to subjugate the reluctant Tamil people into supporting them.
g. They arranged with certain Tamil Nadu newspapers to spread the incidents they would create and use this as propaganda to gain the sympathy of the Tamil people.
h. The first two incidents, the murder of an off duty soldier in Jaffna town and the murder of two soldiers near a laundry were unsuccessful, as the expected reaction did not take place. The third attempt was the killing of 13 soldiers travelling to Jaffna on leave after performing routine anti illicit immigration duties. This attempt was completely successful as they had arranged, through their old smuggling contacts in Colombo, to set fire to Tamil shops when the bodies were brought to Colombo for burial. The ensuing riots in which Sinhalese and Muslim thugs joined, were filmed and photographed and sent to Tamil Nadu for publication in newspapers.
i. The Tamil Nadu journalist not only published them, but also put the material on the Newswire service, which was picked up by all international media organisations. Coming so soon after the events in Bosnia, Central America and Africa (particularly Sierra Leone), the news became an immediate sensation, particularly as video footage and photographs supported it.
j. The world governments took notice, opening their borders to Tamil refugees. Although the riots lasted only a couple of days, Tamils used the opportunity this presented to bring up their families in a First World country, and emigrated in droves. Even though few of these families had been affected by the riots, once they had given “refugee” as the reason for emigration, they had to continue with this lie until they received permanent residency.
k. Realising the value of this type of propaganda, the LTTE, which had by then become the leading group, orchestrated similar incidents to obtain more footage and photos to be used in their propaganda. These attempts included massacring 120 Buddhist pilgrims in 1985, 33 novice priests between the ages of 8 and 14 in 1987, 103 Muslims at prayer, etc. This continued throughout the entire 25 years of the insurrection. They even used photos of their own ethnic cleansing of Sinhala and Muslim villages, displaying them as Tamils killed by the security forces.
l. With the forced involvement of the Tamils in the Diasporas, the propaganda arm has now become very strong. The funds they collect have made the LTTE one of the richest terrorists organisations in the World. They use these funds to buy influence in all first world governments and in all international media organisations. They have infiltrated into, or own through bribery and blackmail, representatives of all world organisations. The propaganda is now psychologically filtered and aimed to force the Sri lanka government to cave into international pressure to grant a separate state for the LTTE.
m. Between 1983 and 1987 the LTTE became the absolute leader of the terrorist groups by killing the leaders of the other groups. They also found that the Tamil Diaspora they had created was a source of unlimited funds, which they collected by using the old “protection” rackets they had used in Jaffna as criminals. They also branched off into other lucrative criminal activities such as electronic fraud. The funds they collected enabled them to purchase weapons and ammunition, and ships to transport them, which they also used for drug running and human trafficking. The “Sea Tigers” they raised enabled them to carry out high seas piracy, hijacking merchant vessels, selling the goods and using the ships after re-naming them as their own ships.
n. In 1991 the LTTE assassinated the Indian PM, Rajiv Ghandi using a suicide bomber, causing India and Interpol to issue a warrant for the arrest of the leader of the LTTE and several sub-leaders. Because of this, the need for a separate Tamil State became even more important as such an independent State would be the only place where the LTTE leadership would be able to escape Interpol. This is why, when the peace talks were being held, the LTTE rejected all offers of a federal state, Interim Administration and devolution, as none of these would provide immunity against Interpol.
o. Since about 2000, they began to conscript youth into their ever-diminishing ranks. Later they began kidnapping children and forcing parents to give up children as young as 10 years old. By doing this, they completely alienated the ordinary Tamil people, who now hate the LTTE with a hatred that only a parent can have for someone who takes their children away from them.
p. Today, therefore, the LTTE has to have a separate mini-state for themselves, or perish. The LTTE is not fighting for a Tamil Homeland for the Tamils, as no ordinary Tamil will, of their own free will, wish to live under their autocratic and terrifying rule. The LTTE is trying their best to create a mini state as a base for their criminal activities and as a refuge for themselves.
One only has to go into any city in Sri Lanka and look around at the number of Tamil shops and boutiques, at the number of Tamils who are government employees (in 1983, percentage-wise, there were more Tamils in government and professional employment such as doctors, lawyers teachers and academics than Sinhalese) to realise that what the LTTE has been saying, what the Western media, influenced by the LTTE has been saying, is all absolutely false.
A terrible injustice has been caused to Sri Lanka by the international media by mindlessly propagating the propaganda that the LTTE has been manufacturing. It is hoped that this media will now research these points and inform the world’s public of the truth.
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