The fall and ignominious retreat of Sri Lanka’s Gotabaya Rajapaksa has enlivened one distinct possibility. Having formally resigned as Sri Lankan President, a point made via email from Singapore, those wishing to see him account for war crimes may get their wish.
There have been various efforts in train regarding a man who ruthlessly concluded his country’s civil war in an orgy of mass killing. The war itself, waged between the forces of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism and the minority Tamils seeking independence, was the rotten fruit of discrimination, exclusion and ethnocratic politics heralded by the passage of the Sinhala Only Act in 1956. That legislative instrument, implemented by Prime Minister S.W.R.D Bandaranaike, made Sinhalese the country’s official language while banishing Tamils from important positions of employment.
Gotabaya’s entry into Sri Lankan politics was a fraternal affair. His brother Mahinda, on becoming president in 2005, picked him as defence secretary. Prior to that, “Gota” worked as a computer systems administrator at Loyola School in Los Angeles, during which time he became a US citizen.
The appointment made him overseer of the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). “My job,” Gota stated in an interview posted on the Sri Lankan Defence Minister website, “was to understand the priorities, rationally organise those priorities in terms of what was really required for victory and flush out needs and requirements that had zero relevance to our objectives.”
In seeing the 26 year conflict to its conclusion in 2009, an estimate by the United Nations put the death toll of Tamil civilians at 40,000. (The number may well be as high as 70,000). The formal line taken by government forces was that the Tamils only had themselves to blame, being used as human shields by the guerrilla forces.
Such killings took place even as US President Barack Obama urged a cessation in “the indiscriminate shelling that has taken hundreds of innocent lives, including several hospitals.” Hoping for some balance, Obama also urged “the Tamil Tigers to lay down their arms and let civilians go. Their forced recruitment of civilians and their use of civilians as human shields is deplorable.”
The unabashed statement of command responsibility by the former defence secretary is also supported by the view of US Ambassador Patricia Butenis, whose frank assessment is available via a WikiLeaks cable. According to Butenis, “responsibility for many of the alleged crimes rests with the country’s senior civilian and military leadership, including President [Mahinda] Rajapaksa and his brothers.”
There is also abundant prima facie evidence that Gotabaya is responsible for the execution of a number of political leaders and their families upon surrender, was responsible for bombing civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, and insisted that the would target and kill innocent civilians, if necessary, to defeat the LTTE.
His return to public life as president took place on a populist platform denigrating his opponents for not giving “priority to national security. They were talking about ethnic reconciliation, then they were talking about human rights issues, they were talking about individual freedoms.” These remarks to Reuters assumed force in the wake of the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings by Islamist militants that caused over 250 deaths.
Over the years, Gotabaya’s resume has been weighed down with blood. His actions did not begin and end as defence minister. A May report by the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) and Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS) focused on the ex-President’s role in a number of atrocities committed in 1989. The account focuses on the role Gotabaya played as District Military Coordinating Officer of Matale District, an area that saw brutal engagements between government forces and those of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP).
Between May 1989 and January 1990, Gotabaya oversaw a rule of forced disappearances (the report accounts for 1,042 victims), torture, and killing. A number of Sri Lankan government commissions took note of over 700 forced disappearances.
His role in the disappearances was also noted by the lengthily titled Presidential Commission into Involuntary Removals or Disappearances of Persons (Central Zone) List of Persons Whose Names Transpired as Responsible for Disappearances – Central Province – Matale District. (In a list of 24 alleged perpetrators, Gotabaya pops up at 16.) The tenure was also characterised by an absence of interest in preventing the commission of such crimes or investigating them, “despite complaints being made to him directly by family members of the victims”.
Civil suits have become another avenue of redress in the absence of criminal proceedings, though these have been complicated by questions of state immunity. Ahimsa Wickrematunge, daughter of assassinated Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge, is one figure seeking damages from the man she accuses of authorising the murder of her father, former editor of the Sunday Leader newspaper, in 2009.
The civil action, filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California, alleged extra judicial killing, crimes against humanity and torture. The action was dismissed because the plaintiff “cited no authority suggesting that Defendant’s citizenship alone should override the fact that all of the allegations against him concern actions taken in an official capacity as the Sri Lankan Secretary of Defense.” In conclusion, the Court found for Gotabaya, as he was “entitled to common law foreign official immunity.” There was an absence of “subject matter jurisdiction”.
Former detective with Sri Lanka’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Nishantha Silva also argues that, as secretary of defence, Gotabaya had the means, opportunity and, in the words of his written statement for the People’s Tribunal on the Murder of Journalists, “a clear motive for killing Lasantha Wickrematunge”.
Another possibility, one as yet unexercised, is available under the War Crimes Act of 1996, which amended the Federal criminal code to enable the prosecution and punishment of US nationals for grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. Law academic Ryan Goodman, in a pertinent 2014 piece for Just Security, argues that there would be “a legal windfall for any US effort to investigate and prosecute [Gota] across international borders. His citizenship also expands US policy space – by reducing US vulnerability to accusations of meddling if we go after one of our own.”
As politicians the world over dread the spectacle of an enraged citizenry storming the residences of president and prime minister, taking dips in their pools, sitting at their desks and eating on the lawns as public commons, a number of dedicated human rights lawyers will be readying their briefs and submissions. Their mission: Get Gota.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
President Biden’s Middle East trip that was claimed to be undertaken to bolster American interest in the region has instead angered activists around the world. Referring to himself as a “non-Jewish Zionist” to bolster his image and ongoing support while in Israel and at home along with his declaring Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has done nothing to placate Palestinians. The faux pax of placing an Israeli flag on his limousine when headed on a visit to a hospital in East Jerusalem did nothing to endear him to residents in the Israeli-occupied territories. The flag was removed but not before it was photographed with images of it sent out across the globe.
Added to the mix also was his not meeting with the family of slain Al Jazeera American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh which did nothing to help convey his concerns for human rights. It was a moral failure not to do so and a political dilemma for the “non-Jewish Zionist” if he had. But the best was yet to come.
While the “non-Jewish Zionist” president was busy on his visit, the residents of Masafer Yatta area were still being subjected to forced removal from their ancestral lands. Lately, Washington has become awash in photographic portrait posters by #SaveMassaferYatta showing Palestinian residents of the area in the occupied West Bank who are now subject to forced expulsion from their homes in the aftermath of the decision against their petition to end the takeover of their land by the Israeli Supreme Court on May 4.
The powerful images taken by Jerusalem-based photographer Emily Glick of several residents have been appearing around town with each briefly telling the story of an individual and their life under occupation. Among them are Hamoud an 18-year-old shepherd who had his hand blown off when a Israeli grenade exploded after he fell down while herding his families flock in Al-Mirkez; 24-year-old Muslah a Sheppard from Megheir Al-Abeid who was attacked by settlers and then arrested while police let the settlers go free. Also included are eight-year-old Basmala, a schoolgirl from Tabban village where the entire elementary school is to be abolished, and finally 79-year-old Halimi Muhammed Yusuf Abu Aram, who lives in Jibna village in which Israel conducts military exercises.
The Masafer Yatta area comprises 7,000 acres and has 19 Palestinian villages and towns in the southern Hebron Hills of the Palestinian occupied West Bank that falls within “Area C” as defined under the Oslo Accords and as such is under direct Israeli civil and military control.
In 1981, Ariel Sharon offered the area to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for military use. In 1999, the military declared the village of Tuba an active military zone and forcibly removed its 700 residents after which they leveled the village. The residents at the time of their forced displacement petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court for the right of return to their land which the court allowed until a final decision was made. Since then, the residents of the entire area have lived in fear of a looming eviction from their homes.
The use of the Israeli Supreme Court to arbitrate such land-based disputes as seen in the highly contested Sheikh Jarrah area of East Jerusalem, when the court after decades of legal cases revoked any right to the land by longtime Palestinian residents in favor of claims made by Israeli settlers thus ending a dispute as to “rightful” ownership. It should be noted that the battle for Sheikh Jarrah is ongoing with forced evictions looming and Palestinian residents in constant fear of midnight raids by the military in removing them and occupying their former homes.
Following that usual playbook, it came as no surprise when the court decided on May 4 to reject the residents’ appeal against forced evictions thus ending the decades-long battle and allowing Israel to proceed. UN Human Rights experts condemned the decision calling for a cessation of forced evictions against Palestinians by making their demands known to both Israel and the international community.
The finality of the decision means in practical terms that over 1,200 residents of the Masafer Yatta area will be forced off their lands, their villages destroyed and the area dedicated exclusively as a military training and live firing zone. Today, the entire area is known as Firing Zone 918.
While ignoring the ongoing plight of Palestinians under occupation, Biden next hurried to Saudi Arabia where he was to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) in Riyadh. The news was abuzz with the factoid that it was the first direct flight taken by a president between Tel Aviv and Riyadh.
After a lackluster snub by MBS at the airport, the president was transported to the palace where he fist bumped MBS as the two met for the usual photo op. “Biden’s dilemma” during the visit was his concern for an increase in the oil supply along with lowering the inflated gas prices here at home. This conundrum of the need to increase oil exports versus that of addressing human rights in the Kingdom characterized their interaction.
MBS has been blamed by U.S. intelligence as having ordered the brutal murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi something the Saudis have ignored and tried to debunk by crediting rogue elements acting on their own within the Kingdom. Although in a private conversation between the two later, Biden spoke to MBS concerning the murder and in his own words was quoted as saying that “I made my view crystal clear.”
As others have pointed out, the Saudis effectively received a “Presidential pardon” by the visit while Biden publicly “ate crow” meeting with the defacto head of the Kingdom but not following through with his labeling the Saudis as a Pariah state.
(This article has previously appeared in Nuzeink.)
Phil Pasquini is a freelance journalist and photographer. His reports and photographs appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Pakistan Link and Nuze.ink. He is the author of Domes, Arches and Minarets: A History of Islamic-Inspired Buildings in America.
What Westerners call the West or Western civilization is a geopolitical space that emerged in the 16th century and expanded continuously until the 20th century. On the eve of World War I, about 90 percent of the globe was Western or Western-dominated: Europe, Russia, the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and much of Asia (with the partial exceptions of Japan and China). From then on, the West began to contract: first with the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the emergence of the Soviet bloc, and then, from mid-century onward, with the decolonization movements. Terrestrial space, and soon after, extraterrestrial space, became fields of intense disputes.
Meanwhile, what Westerners understood by the West was changing. It began as Christianity and colonialism, then changed to capitalism and imperialism, and then metamorphosed into democracy, human rights, decolonization, self-determination, and “rules-based international relations”—it was made clear that the rules would be established by the West and would only be followed when they served its interests—and finally into globalization.
By the middle of the last century, the West had shrunk so much that several newly independent countries made the decision to align themselves neither with the West nor with the bloc that had emerged as its rival, the Soviet bloc. This led to the emergence, from 1955-1961, of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). With the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1991, the West seemed to go through a time of enthusiastic expansion. It was around this time that former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev expressed his desire for Russia to join the “common home” of Europe, with the support of then-U.S. President George H. W. Bush, a desire reaffirmed by Vladimir Putin when he took power in 2000. It was a short historical period, and recent events show that the “size” of the West has since shrunk drastically. In the wake of the Ukraine war, the West decided, on its own initiative, that only those countries applying sanctions against Russia would be considered part of the pro-Western camp. These countries comprise about 21 percent of the UN member countries, which constitute only 16 percent of the world’s population.
Questions
Is contraction decline? One might think that the contraction of the West works in its favor because it allows it to focus on more realistic goals with greater intensity. A careful reading of the strategists of the hegemonic country of the West, the United States, shows, that on the contrary, without apparently realizing the flagrant contraction, they show unlimited ambition. With the same ease with which they foresee being able to reduce Russia (one of the largest nuclear power in the world) to a vassal state or bring it to ruin, they foresee neutralizing China (which is on its way to becoming the first world economy) and soon provoking a war in Taiwan, (like the one in Ukraine) to achieve that purpose. On the other hand, the history of empires shows that contraction goes hand in hand with decline, and that decline is irreversible and entails much human suffering.
At the current stage, the manifestations of weakness are running parallel to those of strength, which makes analysis very difficult. Two contrasting examples help understand this point more clearly: The United States is the largest military power in the world (even though it has not won any wars since 1945) with military bases in at least 80 countries. An extreme case of domination is its presence in Ghana where, according to agreements made in 2018, the United States uses the Accra airport without any control or inspection, U.S. soldiers do not even need a passport to enter the country, and enjoy extraterritorial immunity, meaning that if they commit any crime, no matter how serious, they cannot be tried by Ghana’s courts. On the other hand, the thousands of sanctions on Russia are, for now, doing more damage in the Western world than in the geopolitical space being defined by the West as the non-Western world. The currencies of those countries that seem to be winning the war are depreciating the most. The looming inflation and recession led JP Morgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon to say that a “hurricane” is approaching.
Is contraction a loss of internal cohesion? Contraction can mean more cohesion, and this is quite visible. The leadership of the European Union, i.e., the European Commission, has in the last 20 years been much more aligned with the U.S. than the countries that make up the EU. We saw this with the neoliberal shift and with the enthusiastic support shown by former President of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, for the invasion of Iraq, and we are seeing it now with the current commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who seems to be operating as the U.S. undersecretary of defense. The truth is that this cohesion, if it is effective in producing policies, can be disastrous in managing their consequences. Europe is a geopolitical space that since the 16th century has lived off the resources of other countries that it directly or indirectly dominates and on whom it imposes unequal exchange. None of this is, however, possible when the United States or its allies are its partners. Moreover, cohesion is made up of inconsistencies, as seen in the conflicting narratives about Russia. After all, is Russia the country with a lower GDP than many countries in Europe? Or is it a force that wants to invade Europe, and serves as a global threat that can only be stopped with the help of investments provided by the United States for arms and security to Ukraine—already around $10 billion—a distant country of which little will remain if the war continues for a long time?
Does the contraction occur for internal or external reasons? The literature on the decline and end of empires shows that, besides a few exceptional cases in which empires were destroyed by external forces—such as the Aztec and Inca empires with the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors—internal factors generally dominate in bringing about contraction, even though decline can be precipitated by external factors. It is difficult to distinguish the internal from the external, and the specific identification is always more ideological than anything else. For example, in 1964 the well-known American conservative philosopher James Burnham published a book titled Suicide of the West. According to him, liberalism, then dominant in the United States, was the ideology behind this decline. For the liberals of the time, liberalism was, on the contrary, an ideology that would enable a new, more peaceful, and just world hegemony for the West. Today, liberalism is dead in the United States (neoliberalism dominates, which is its opposite) and even the old-school conservatives have been totally overtaken by the neoconservatives. That is why former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (for many, a war criminal) upset the anti-Russia proselytes by calling for peace negotiations while talking about the Ukraine conflict during a conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos in May. Be that as it may, the Ukraine war is the great accelerator of the West’s contraction. While the West wants to use its power and influence to isolate China, a new generation of nonaligned countries is emerging. Organizations like BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Eurasian Economic Forum are, among others, the new faces of the non-Western states.
What comes next? We don’t know yet. It is as difficult to imagine the West occupying a subordinate space in the world context as it is to imagine it in an equal and peaceful relationship with other geopolitical spaces. We only know that for those leading the Western states, either of these hypotheses is either impossible or, if possible, apocalyptic. Therefore, the number of international meetings has multiplied in recent months—from the World Economic Forum meeting that took place in May in Davos to the most recent Bilderberg Meeting in June. Not surprisingly, in the latter meeting, of the 14 themes discussed, seven were directly related to the West’s rivals.
Boaventura de Sousa Santos is the emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. His most recent book is Decolonizing the University: The Challenge of Deep Cognitive Justice.
This article was produced by Globetrotter.
“With 35% loss globally since 1970, wetlands are our most threatened ecosystem, disappearing three times faster than forests. Wetlands’ services for climate mitigation, adaptation biodiversity, and human health outweigh all other terrestrial ecosystems.” (Source: Wetlands are Being Lost at Alarming Rates, Global Wetland Outlook, 2021)
Sudd is Africa’s largest freshwater wetland at roughly 3,500 square miles in an otherwise dry region of South Sudan. It’s under threat by a megaproject named Jonglei Canal that has the potential to devastate this ecological gem.
According to conservationists: “Even a partial loss of the Sudd would be an ecological disaster, desiccating the world’s second largest swamp and ending seasonal flooding of the surrounding grasslands, which comprise Africa’s largest intact area of savannah.” (Source: Will Nile Canal Project Dry Up Africa’s Largest Wetland? Grist, July 8, 2022)
Egypt has Sudd’s water in its sights, some of it or all of it, only time will tell. Its plans involve a 40-yr disrupted work-in-progress that is now moving ahead once again, diverting water from the Sudd watershed to Egypt.
Completion of a 240-mile canal will divert White Nile River flow directly to Egypt. This risks draining Sudd to levels that’ll negatively impact the ecosystem forever. But, nobody on the Egyptian side will even hint of such possibilities. The White Nile is one of two main tributaries of the Nile. It begins at Lake Victoria and flows thru Uganda and South Sudan, where it feeds water to Sudd’s remarkable pristine ecosystem, one of the world’s finest.
Wetlands are the principal feeder system for replenishment of the world’s aquifers. According to NASA one-third of the world’s largest aquifers are stressed in large measure because of loss of wetlands.
Cementing over, draining, diverting, or plowing under the world’s wetlands destroys the kidneys of the planet and a whole lot more. The path of destruction is already at critical levels.
“In just over 100 years we have managed to destroy 50 percent of the world’s wetlands… It is a startling figure.” (Source: Achim Steiner, executive director, UN Environment Programme, Hyderabad UN Conference)
“Wetlands are critical to human and planet life. Directly or indirectly, they provide almost the entire world’s freshwater. More than one billion people depend on them for a living and they are among the most biodiverse ecosystems. Up to 40% of the world’s species live and breed in wetlands, although now more than 25% of all wetlands plants and animals are at risk of extinction.” (Source: Wetlands Disappearing Three Times Faster Than Forests, United Nations Climate Change, October 2018)
One sentence from above says it all: Directly or indirectly, they (wetlands) provide almost the entire world’s freshwater. In a world riddled with unprecedented bouts of severe drought, it takes on new significance.
As for completion of the work-in-progress canal, South Sudan’s environmental ministry has different ideas than most others in its administration. The ministry will not support “completion of the canal because of the ecosystem services that Sudd provides to our nation, the region and the world.” (Source: Will a Nile Canal Project Dry Up Africa’s Largest Wetland? YaleEnvironment 360, June 28, 2022)
What Will be Lost?
Ecologists claim the magnificent Sudd is under threat of turning into desert. Sudd is home to thousands of crocodiles, hippos, elephants, zebras, and the great majority of the world’s shoebill storks. It serves as one of the world’s mightiest mammal migration pathways, including 1.3 million antelope that cross through the ecosystem’s 100s of miles of rich grasslands to Gambella, Ethiopia. Ecologists fear that much of this will be lost. (Grist, July 8th)
Furthermore, hydrologist claim the project will reduce rainfall for farms and the rainforests across South Sudan as well as in neighboring countries.
Canal Status
British colonial engineers first proposed the canal in 1904. It was 2/3rds completed in the 1980s but abandoned because of a raging civil war. Rebels kidnapped the operators of the canal. They saw the canal as water theft by Egypt, depriving Sudd’s nomadic Dinka, Nuer, and Shilluk of fisheries and seasonal flooding of pastures for livestock. A 22-year civil war ensued.
“The abandoned site of the half-completed Jonglei Canal is one of the strangest scenes in Africa. A dry excavation 250 feet wide and up to 25 feet deep, extends across near-desert east of the Sudd for 160 miles, ending at the Bucketwheel, a 2,300-ton laser-guided digging machine as tall as a five-story building. The machine was brought there in 1978 by a French construction company, and for six years its 12 giant rotating buckets steadily excavated the canal.” (Grist)
In February 2022, South Sudan’s VP for Infrastructure Taban Deng Gai became the first minister to publicly call for the canal to be completed: “For our land not to be submerged by flood, let’s allow this water to flow to those who need it in Egypt,” Ibid.
Clearly, Egypt stands to gain the most, and it’s likely the only true beneficiary of completion of the canal.
However, an incipient coalition of environmentalists, concerned members of the Sudan National Legislature, academics, and NGO officials are pushing back with an energetic “Save the Sudd” campaign. Accordingly, John Aker, the vice chancellor of the University of Juba claims: The canal “has the potential of draining and destroying the Sudd’s ecosystem, with dire consequences on the Sudd region’s biodiversity, livelihood, culture, and hydrological cycle,” Ibid.
Academic Jacob Lupai claims: “South Sudan did not fight two costly and devastating wars… just to be at the receiving end of predatory outsiders’ imposed projects and to allow its precious natural resources to be plundered,” Ibid.
Supporters of the canal project claim it will not entirely dry up Sudd, merely shrink it. But, by how much is uncertain… guesstimates run as low as 7% and up to 40% with some opponents claiming total devastation. According to conservationists, “even a partial loss of the Sudd would be an ecological disaster.” (Grist, July 8th)
Significant amounts of water evaporation from Sudd’s skies carry south via winds that consistently maintain moisture for the ecologically crucial Green Belt that spreads across most of southern South Sudan and including the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. In that regard, according to a hydrological model at Delft University of Technology and the University of Juba’s John Alec: “A shrinking Sudd will eliminate all-year rains across the region.”
Additionally, four billion tons of carbon would be released from peat if and when a significant Sudd dry out occurs.
Egypt’s completion of the Jonglei Canal puts at risk one of the world’s last remaining spectacular wetlands. The loss would be immeasurable and obviously irreplaceable, as it impacts one of the planet’s last remaining wonderlands of wildlife.
It’s truly one of a kind.
Save the Sudd!
Robert Hunziker is a writer from Los Angeles
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