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Andrew Buncombe's Asia Diary
The Independent's Asia Correspondent Andrew Buncombe is based in Delhi. His dominion ranges over India, Pakistan, Burma, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, occasionally parts of South East Asia and - or at least he is hoping - The Maldives.
Follow Andrew on Twitter: @AndrewBuncombe
Follow Andrew on Twitter: @AndrewBuncombe
Without doubt the most humiliating, shameful experience for me since coming to the sub-continent happened on the field of sporting endeavour. Back in late 2008, a friend had asked whether I was able to help make up the numbers in what immediately sounded like a D-list Bollywood movie called World Cupp (there's a thing here for double letters) that featured the Indian captain beating some baddies, winning the girl and securing the cricket world championship as well.
It was all a lot of fun and I got to spend a fun day hanging out at a cricket stadium on the outskirts of Delhi pretending to be a member of the English cricket team (which got badly beaten, of course). I also got an amazing insight into the lives of the wannabe stars who flock to Mumbai in the hope of making it big. The above image shows me in the "make-up" department. Indeed, the only down side about the day was that when I got to bat I was out on the very first ball. And not intentionally. The crew realised they had the real thing and cried "cut" the instant that I edged the ball to the slips.
I sought to put the bad memories of getting out so cheaply behind me, and assumed quite confidently that the film would never make it onto the big screen . Imagine my horror, then, when I discovered recently that World Cupp 2011 has hit the Indian cinemas. I could not bring myself to to the pictures but keen to see whether my shameful cricketing action was included in the final cut I went to the local market and bought a DVD of the movie. Rushing home I fast-forwarded to the sporting action and there, lo-and-behold, was I getting out for a duck. Now my sporting embarrassment is set in history.
The Imperial Hotel in Delhi has seen many things over the years. Perhaps most famously, its cool, white-washed colonnades witnessed much of the drama surrounding the negotiations that led to the Partition of India. At the time, James Cameron, the stylish chronicler of South Asia, would later recall, "anyone who meant anything in Indian affairs was there milling around in this great Oriental Ealing".
Even now, the hotel retains an old world charm and is popular with those who can afford it for its afternoon tea, cocktail bar and breakfast buffet. But in what may be a new experience for the hotel, it has now become the location of a search for a missing sex toy. In a message posted on an online forum used largely by ex-pats in Delhi, a man whose name I shall withhold, claims his girlfriend "forgot her dildo in the restrooms of the Imperial hotel yesterday".
"If anyone of you expats is planning to have some fun there very soon, please let us know, because we're on a trip to Khajuraho (site of a series of temples featuring erotic carvings) right now," he adds. "We don't dare to tell the hotel workers directly. We're new in India and we don't know how to deal with the culture gap even if Indians are supposed to be masters in the erotic field."
The gentleman provides further details on the missing item, saying it is the shape of a crucifix and was a gift. "It has a strong sentimental value for both of us.I know some of you guys can understand. Thanks a lot if anyone can help," he adds.
I was initially a little doubtful about whether the message was genuine but as a colleague points out, the forum is not known for rapier-like wit. Anyway, I have emailed the man who posted the message to ask if there's any news about his missing toy. However, my devotion to journalism is not sufficient to have me call the dear old Imperial.
UPDATE. It's been found. The gentleman with the missing sex toy has posted a new message that reads: "I would like to thank all the dildo lovers who warmly proposed to help us, and especially [name deleted] who first found the dildo, and then found my note on [the forum].You all have been really cool, sometimes witty, sometimes hot. It makes me think of forgetting many dildos in this crazy city for expats."
I'm sure I'm not the first person to have imagined what it must have been like for the people of Haiti, struggling without food and water or medical help for days on end. And to have imagined too, what it must then have felt to have been accused of "looting" if you went to a store or a warehouse and helped yourself to some bottles of water or a bag of rice. To be honest, I didn't need to think about it long; in such circumstances I'd have had no hesitation in doing so if I thought it would keep myself, or my family or friends alive. Would anyone? Why then this obsession with looting, this obsession in so much we've read or watched with law and order?
There's a fine piece on this topic by Rebecca Solnit, a veteran of many natural disasters, who, in an article for Tom Dispatch, suggests we ban the use of the word "looting" altogether. Her article is very critical of much of the media coverage of Haiti and of "those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I'm talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol. They still have blood on their hands from Hurricane Katrina, and they are staining themselves anew in Haiti".
Of course, in Katrina, for some people, whether you were a "looter" or a "gatherer" appeared to come down a matter of race. Who fails to remember the painfully shameful captioning of two separate photographs by the new agencies, the white couple having just "found" some food while the black person had "looted" theirs.
Indeed, the obsession with law-and-order and the hyping of reports of criminal activity led to a situation in New Orleans where volunteers from police departments and National Guard units from across the country were dispatched to the city when what it really needed was people with food and water, or at the very least a bucket and mop.
I remember one afternoon, maybe five days after Hurricane Katrina struck, standing outside the police control room in the centre of New Orleans, trying to interview some heavily-armed and scowling mercenaries from Blackwater or some such outfit, who were sitting on the steps of a bank, letting everyone see their automatic weapons and wrap-around sunglasses. It would have been comical were it not so sad. Needless to say, I didn't get much of an interview.
A colleague from the Guardian, Julian Borger, also wrote a superb eye-witness account of the failure of armed police and soldiers to help those most in need, suggesting that it appeared that "being poor and black was a contagious disease".
At the same time, I think it's important that we're honest and admit that looting does go on in the aftermath of such disasters. I don't have much time for people hauling away televisions and DVD players in shopping carts, but let's also keep in mind that such episodes are usually in the minority. (One example to the contrary was following the overthrowing of Saddam, when the US stood by and allowed a minority of Iraqis steal wholesale from government ministries and museums. Donald Rumsfeld blew it off. "Stuff happens." Indeed it does.)
But the business of race does not go easily away. One of the most chilling episodes during Katrina was when police from an overwhelmingly white suburb fired their guns above the heads of a largely black crowd that was trying to get out of the city, forcing them back. In contrast, who would have said a word against the little old lady I saw when I was driving out of New Orleans to get a flight out of Houston (the airport was still shut for normal flights)?
I was in the the city's Garden District and was driving past a Whole Foods store (an upmarket, organic supermarket) and spotted the door to the store was swinging open. I could see the store was full of fresh food that would soon go bad. A moment later the elderly, white woman came out, pushing a shopping trolley with provisions. I had to chuckle to myself, wondering whether she would have been a looter or a gatherer if she'd been snapped by a photographer.
I was discussing such issues by email with David Edwards of the always-worth-a-look Media Lens website, who had an interesting take on the recent events in the Caribbean. "I think Haiti helps reveal one of the great, hidden truths of our time - that the 'civilised' West is "still" afflicted by a deep, deep racism/cultural arrogance towards poor, brown-skinned people," he said. "The difference is that, now, we don't see them as inferior primarily because they're black but because they're dirt poor and lacking in modern technology. Our prejudice hangs on different hooks, but we still think they're 'savages', innately prone to violence, and so on."
Straight up, let me make clear that I don't think that all Indian men are perverts or sex pests, or that I or my nearest and dearest have suffered any problems of the sort during our time in the sub-continent. But every time the issue of sexual harassment in India comes up, I get bombarded with comments and postings from non-Indian women with horror stories to tell of their time in India - being stared at, groped or even worse.
In truth, while foreign women may indeed suffer harassment in India - as female visitors to every country in the world do - the reality here is that those who suffer the most, and who are forced to suffer in silence, are Indian women.
This point was made to me most recently by Kaya Eldridge, a brave young British woman who was in India completing an internship in Gujarat when a plumber employed by the charity for which she was working, tried to assault her. Those of you who followed the story will remember that the LSE graduate's trauma was made all the worse by a series of humiliating and utterly irrelevant questions that were put to her by the defence lawyer - did she smoke, did she drink, did she have male friends? At the time of the incident last year, Ms Eldridge told me: "It's an incredibly sad state of afffairs but I think it's very important that I stand up not just because what happened to me, but because not every woman is in a position to speak out."
She was referring, of course, to the uncounted thousands and thousands of women in India who have suffered from rape or sexual assault, usually at the hands of someone they know. Her point was that the majority of Indian women who are victims do not have the opportunity to go to the newspapers or make a complaint or do anything. She started a petition that was delivered to the Indian High Commission in London, urging that a 2002 law giving legal protection to women who have suffered sexual, be properly enforced.
Some things may be changing in India. Recently, the authorities introduced a trial of "women only" commuter carriages on the trains, a reflection that in a society which still refers to sexual abuse as "Eve teasing", women really do need more protection.
Another encouraging sign came last week, when a court in Ahmedabad, the city where Ms Eldridge was assaulted, sentenced her attacker to one year's hard imprisonment. The judge said that in addition to his crime, his actions had damaged the image of India. In an email, Ms Eldridge said: "I am delighted to have secured a positive verdict and to see that, despite many obstacles, justice has been delivered on this occasion.
"However, this result is only half of the battle and I still urge the legal system to ensure that the laws which are already in place to protect victims in the court room are effectively implemented to prevent a repeat of my ordeal. Unfortunately my case was not an isolated one and sexual assault remains a major global problem. I can only hope that my case can serve to highlight the fact that sexual assault can happen to anyone regardless of their character, dress or status and that the blame lays solely with those who choose to assault others."
In truth, while foreign women may indeed suffer harassment in India - as female visitors to every country in the world do - the reality here is that those who suffer the most, and who are forced to suffer in silence, are Indian women.
This point was made to me most recently by Kaya Eldridge, a brave young British woman who was in India completing an internship in Gujarat when a plumber employed by the charity for which she was working, tried to assault her. Those of you who followed the story will remember that the LSE graduate's trauma was made all the worse by a series of humiliating and utterly irrelevant questions that were put to her by the defence lawyer - did she smoke, did she drink, did she have male friends? At the time of the incident last year, Ms Eldridge told me: "It's an incredibly sad state of afffairs but I think it's very important that I stand up not just because what happened to me, but because not every woman is in a position to speak out."
She was referring, of course, to the uncounted thousands and thousands of women in India who have suffered from rape or sexual assault, usually at the hands of someone they know. Her point was that the majority of Indian women who are victims do not have the opportunity to go to the newspapers or make a complaint or do anything. She started a petition that was delivered to the Indian High Commission in London, urging that a 2002 law giving legal protection to women who have suffered sexual, be properly enforced.
Some things may be changing in India. Recently, the authorities introduced a trial of "women only" commuter carriages on the trains, a reflection that in a society which still refers to sexual abuse as "Eve teasing", women really do need more protection.
Another encouraging sign came last week, when a court in Ahmedabad, the city where Ms Eldridge was assaulted, sentenced her attacker to one year's hard imprisonment. The judge said that in addition to his crime, his actions had damaged the image of India. In an email, Ms Eldridge said: "I am delighted to have secured a positive verdict and to see that, despite many obstacles, justice has been delivered on this occasion.
"However, this result is only half of the battle and I still urge the legal system to ensure that the laws which are already in place to protect victims in the court room are effectively implemented to prevent a repeat of my ordeal. Unfortunately my case was not an isolated one and sexual assault remains a major global problem. I can only hope that my case can serve to highlight the fact that sexual assault can happen to anyone regardless of their character, dress or status and that the blame lays solely with those who choose to assault others."
Since his death last Sunday, the Indian papers have been full of analysis about the life and times of Jyoti Basu, the grandfather of Indian Communism who served a record-breaking 23 years at the helm of West Bengal, one of the country's Leftist strongholds.
Many have praised the efforts of Basu to bring about land reform in a state where famine and hunger existed in the very recent history. Others criticised him for failing to bring industry to West Bengal, leaving it trailing behind regions others in terms of employment, development and wealth creation. They reason for this, they said, was that his administration was too controlled by the labour unions. (He's a Commie, for heaven's sake. What do these people expect?)
For my shilling, one of the best of the write-ups is a piece by Sumit Mitra in the Hindustan Times (the link to the online article appears to be down) which described him as a "gentleman Communist who preferred to go with the Philistines and commit major blunders". It places Basu in the broad context of Indian political thought and suggests he was a well-intentioned man who could have been great.
Anyway, today in Kolkata, capital of West Bengal, they are sending Basu on his way with the fullest of honours. What's interesting is that he asked long ago that after his death, his body be donated for science. I am wonderfully impressed with his good intention, but at the same time cannot help but reflect that here was a 95-year-old man who died of multiple organ failure. I am, obviously, not an expert but one wonders what use his remains may be to science.
What I did find depressing, and the avowedly secularist Basu may have been ahead of me here in that he may not have cared, is that the papers have been publishing photographs of the anatomy room where the veteran leader's body is to be taken. One nasty picture shows a dirty, dingy room where three men are sloshing water over the floor in an effort to clean it up in time. The picture above, which I took from the Deccan Herald website, is the least depressing of the lot.
Bit by bit, some good news has been getting through from Haiti. I wrote recently how I was waiting and worrying to hear from a number of friends and acquaintances who live or are based in Haiti in the aftermath of the quake.
Slowly but surely, I've been receiving updates. Raymond Prospery, the country officer for Christian Aid, was the first to respond to me via Facebook. Raymond was a big help a few years ago when I was working on a story about Haitian artists. I also learned from a report in a local newspaper in Idaho that Reed Lindsay, an excellent and generous US journalist who was based in Haiti for several years, had recently moved to Washington DC, though he has been back this week reporting.
Today, I discovered from a Twitter message from Richard Morse, owner of the Hotel Oloffson, that a self-taught painter and tour guide, Milfort Bruno, who runs the Mahogany Craft Shop located outside the hotel gates, is also o.k. I am delighted they all survived, though I am also aware that so many more did not. The veteran US-based Haiti watcher and activist Kevin Pina, who is married to a Haitian woman, said he had learned that while her mother, father and siblings survived, her grandparents did not. "Our prayers are with the people of Haiti during this very difficult moment," he wrote in an email. As I wait to hear about other people I met in Haiti, I'll second that.
In truth it would be wrong to call Frantzceau Germain a friend in the real sense of the word. I met the young man in February 2006 as Haitians were readying for an election to finally select a leader. After two years of interim rule by a government effectively imposed by the US, France and Canada after the ousting of elected leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide, people were more than keen to finally have a say in their future, and on the day of voting itself they rose before dawn to head for the polling stations. It was an exciting, invigorating experience to be there.
I'd bumped into Frantzceau up the Hotel Montana, the swanky five-star hotel up in the elite neighbhourhood of Petionville, that is currently destroyed, where the press were waiting to get their credentials to allow us into the polling stations. Frantzceau, a student, asked if I needed a translator and I explained that I already had one. However, he took my details and promised to keep in touch.
Sometime later, having returned to Washington and with Rene Preval having secured the election, I received an email from the young man I'd met up in Petionville. He was asking about whether I cd help with a scholarship or some funding or just some basic gear to help him get to college. In a place as poor and desperate as Haiti, education is considered the only possible escape from the misery that is the lot of most people. Later in the year, when I returned to Haiti again, I took with me a new backpack and some pens and books which I handed over to him on the steps of the wonderfully old and creaking Oloffson Hotel, which has been used by every visitor to the country over the years, including Graham Greene, who wrote part of his comedy The Comedians while staying there. It certainly wasn't much but he seemed pleased to have it.
I'd not thought of him much until a few days ago when I got a "friend request" on Facebook. When I looked to see who it was, I saw it was Frantceau and though it must have been a good three years since I'd had any contact with him I immediately clicked 'yes'. There was no follow-up message.
So now I sit in India trying to imagine the scenes in the crowded chaotic city of Port-au-Prince and the death and destruction that has been wrought there. As I wonder about the fate of my Facebook friend I wonder too about what has happened to Milfort Bruno, a jolly, self-taught painter whose one-room shop was located opposite the gates of the Oloffson. Milfort also worked as a fixer and tour guide (he used to be listed in the Lonely Planet) and three of his bright scenes of Haitian life hang on the wall of my office. Then there are the aid-workers and translators and the hotel staff you get to know over the years. You wonder about all of them and hope against the odds that they are all right.
UPDATE: I've just seen a tweet from Richard Morse, the ebullient owner of the Oloffson, which reads: "Everyone ok at the Hotel Oloffson." Some good news, at least
I'd bumped into Frantzceau up the Hotel Montana, the swanky five-star hotel up in the elite neighbhourhood of Petionville, that is currently destroyed, where the press were waiting to get their credentials to allow us into the polling stations. Frantzceau, a student, asked if I needed a translator and I explained that I already had one. However, he took my details and promised to keep in touch.
Sometime later, having returned to Washington and with Rene Preval having secured the election, I received an email from the young man I'd met up in Petionville. He was asking about whether I cd help with a scholarship or some funding or just some basic gear to help him get to college. In a place as poor and desperate as Haiti, education is considered the only possible escape from the misery that is the lot of most people. Later in the year, when I returned to Haiti again, I took with me a new backpack and some pens and books which I handed over to him on the steps of the wonderfully old and creaking Oloffson Hotel, which has been used by every visitor to the country over the years, including Graham Greene, who wrote part of his comedy The Comedians while staying there. It certainly wasn't much but he seemed pleased to have it.
I'd not thought of him much until a few days ago when I got a "friend request" on Facebook. When I looked to see who it was, I saw it was Frantceau and though it must have been a good three years since I'd had any contact with him I immediately clicked 'yes'. There was no follow-up message.
So now I sit in India trying to imagine the scenes in the crowded chaotic city of Port-au-Prince and the death and destruction that has been wrought there. As I wonder about the fate of my Facebook friend I wonder too about what has happened to Milfort Bruno, a jolly, self-taught painter whose one-room shop was located opposite the gates of the Oloffson. Milfort also worked as a fixer and tour guide (he used to be listed in the Lonely Planet) and three of his bright scenes of Haitian life hang on the wall of my office. Then there are the aid-workers and translators and the hotel staff you get to know over the years. You wonder about all of them and hope against the odds that they are all right.
UPDATE: I've just seen a tweet from Richard Morse, the ebullient owner of the Oloffson, which reads: "Everyone ok at the Hotel Oloffson." Some good news, at least
During the long hot months of India's summer, respite is often found at the end of the day in a nice cold bottle of the local brew, the condensation wiped with eager anticipation from the bottle as you grab for a glass as the sun goes down.
Quite a lot of the Indian beer these days is more than good and at around 60 pence for a pint bottle from the off-licence, it's pretty good value. But as to variety, there is basically none. Other than the rather tasteless, American-style lagers for sale, just one brewer makes a genuine ale. [And that's an Aussie company for heaven's sake.]
So, back home in Somerset in the UK over Xmas, having long been salivating over a pint of the real thing, I took the opportunity to dash up to Bristol for a visit to a nice, newish bar sitting right in the city's docks and with a remarkable view of the splendid old steamship, the SS Great Britain. I'd become aware of the Bristol Beer Factory earlier in the year, after reading about this brewery that had opened in the site of an old cigarette factory in the city, but I'd not had a chance to visit the brewery's own bar, called the Grain Barge, a real, former barge set down on the River Avon itself.
When I finally got there, accompanied by my splendid dad, I was very taken in by the setting right in the heart of Bristol. [I was also rather impressed by the fact that the bar subscribed to The Independent, a copy of which, stamped with the words Grain Barge, was on a table for customers to read.] We tried just three of the beers. One was the No 7 traditional bitter that was ok, and another was a draught stout that frankly tasted as if they needed to change the barrel. Yet the India Pale Ale, called Sunrise and which I had really made the journey to try, was brilliant: astringent, hoppy and fresh. [I also enjoyed one of the Barge's delicious homemade pies, which continue a rather wonderful tradition in Bristol, which is also home to the sensational Pieminister pies.]
Of course, the reason behind the original name India Pale Ale, as every lover of real beer will tell you, is that these beers were brewed stronger than usual to survive the long journey out to India to quench the thirst of colonial British soldiers.
After much thought and with selfless dedication to investigative journalism, therefore, I have decided that should the makers of Sunrise, or any other British ale, wish to set forth a cargo to the sub-continent to try and fill a gaping void in the booming Indian beer market, I will allow myself to be used as a taster to see whether it makes the journey in a drinkable state. Cheers!
There's a strangely fascinating article in the current edition of Foreign Policy magazine that claims that India is currently one of the biggest stumbling blocks when it comes to international diplomacy. From arms control to trade agreements and deals on global warming, the article claims that while it is Iran, Pakistan and North Korea (and lately China) that earn the "recalcitrant" headlines, it is actually India that more often acts as a spanner in the works. The article (spotted by the always-splendid Asian Window) claims that while India usually gets a pretty good press - stories about the burgeoning economy and mushy stuff about religious tolerance and eastern mysticism - the truth is that India is a pain in the butt. It's written by the veteran journalist Barbara Crossette, a former New York Times South Asia correspondent, which alone makes it worth reading. I agreed with most of the facts that Ms Crossette brought to her argument - India certainly has resisted efforts to join the non-proliferation treaty, is has been a stubborn bargainer at trade talks and it has refused efforts to force it engage in legally-binding emissions cuts. But I cannot help but think that the author, who is writing for a magazine that could barely more represent the collective establishment think-tank mentality of Washington, is missing the obvious point. What about the behaviour of the US? Ms Crossette mentions for example, the willingness of India to go it's own on climate change but what about the approach of the US for the last eight years? I remember sitting at UN conference in Montreal in 2005 where the US negotiators stormed out simply because other countries tried to get them to talk - not to agree to a binding undertaking on anything, just to agree to talk. Are we simply to believe that because the photo-friendly Mr Obama finally agrees to a paltry undertaking on emission reductions, everyone else will suddenly fall into place.
Ms Crossette goes on to say how India refuses to sign up to a number of international agreements and treaties but what about the US and its refusal to join organisations such as the International Criminal Court, (of which India is also not a member). And how about the behaviour of the US when bodies it does belong to, such as the International Court of Justice in the Hague, rule against it and they simply decide to ignore the ruling?
After highlighting some of India's shortcomings as a democracy (though without pausing to recall the US Supreme Court decision that gifted the 2000 election to George Bush), she turns to India's behaviour abroad where it "regularly votes with human rights offenders, international scofflaws and enemies of democracy". Unlike the US and Britain, of course, that refuse to condemn Israel's illegal settlement building, have multi-billion oil deals with authoritarian states such as Saudi Arabia and prop up dictators like Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf. Like I said, I agree with many of the points the article makes, but it does not tell the whole story. Far from it. Ironically, Ms Crossette's article in entitled, The Elephant in the Room. I fear she's missed one of the elephants.
I was in Sri Lanka last week working on a couple of stories and was amazed how both the mood and the landscape had changed. Since I was last there in May in the immediate aftermath of the war, the number of road-blocks and check-points has dramatically reduced and there's a brighter mood about many of the cities.
There also appeared to be more people out and about; having confidently predicted that fewer check-points would reduce my journey time to the centre of the island, I was dismayed to find the roads chocker-full of cars and buses. More people, I was told, were travelling. Everyone I spoke to was very pleased that the war was finally over.
There's a feeling, however, that this may be something of a lull before the storm ahead of what is likely to be a bitter electoral contest next month between the sitting president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, and the former army chief, Sarath Fonseka, the man who oversaw the crushing of the rebels. At the same time, while most of the civilians held in the aftermath of the three-decade civil war are now being released and while efforts are being made to de-mine villages in the north, there's still work to be done in bringing some sort of political settlement to those areas formerly under the control of the LTTE rebels. There's lots of talk, thankfully, of development and investment in those areas in order to try and reduce the sort of inequality and hardship that may have helped the rebels' cause.
There's also an investigation going on into allegations about the conduct of government forces during the final stages of the war, when, according to UN estimates anywhere up to 10,000 civilians caught up in the war zone and unable to leave, were killed. I won't prejudge the panel's findings but I suspect most of us know what usually happens when a victorious force investigates its own actions. (See Hutton inquiry etc.)
Undeterred, a group of activists in Ireland are looking to hold their own investigation. Organised by the Irish Forum for Peace in Sri Lanka, hearings will be held under the auspices of the Permanent People's Tribunal ."The tribunal has a long history of carrying out independent investigations of human rights abuses ranging from Vietnam to Guatemala," says the group's press release.
The tribunal will comprimise of 11 prominent individuals from the global north and south with long experience in matters of human rights and justice. The hearing will take place on January 14 and 15 at Dublin's Trinity College and its findings will be released the following day. [You can check out the forum's website for more details about the hearing and the details of those who will taking part.]
Why, you might ask, is there a need for such an inquiry in Ireland? The organisers say Ireland has been chosen as the location for the hearing of the tribunal, which first gathered in Italy in 1979, "because of its historical status as a post-colonial nation, the success of the northern Ireland peace process and its traditional policy of neutrality".
As a number of people correctly pointed out to me when I was there last week, the West has certainly acted with no little hypocrisy over Sri Lanka. Having launched its own wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that resulted in the deaths of perhaps up to 1m people and having paid and pressured Pakistan to launch counter-insurgency operations that likewise resulted in large numbers of civilian casualties, the West appeared to behave differently when it came to the final stages of the conflict with the LTTE.
But just because governments may act with hypocrisy, this surely doesn't mean that the deaths of 10,000 innocent people should be conveniently forgotten. I'll be very interested to see what the tribunal in Ireland comes up with.
There also appeared to be more people out and about; having confidently predicted that fewer check-points would reduce my journey time to the centre of the island, I was dismayed to find the roads chocker-full of cars and buses. More people, I was told, were travelling. Everyone I spoke to was very pleased that the war was finally over.
There's a feeling, however, that this may be something of a lull before the storm ahead of what is likely to be a bitter electoral contest next month between the sitting president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, and the former army chief, Sarath Fonseka, the man who oversaw the crushing of the rebels. At the same time, while most of the civilians held in the aftermath of the three-decade civil war are now being released and while efforts are being made to de-mine villages in the north, there's still work to be done in bringing some sort of political settlement to those areas formerly under the control of the LTTE rebels. There's lots of talk, thankfully, of development and investment in those areas in order to try and reduce the sort of inequality and hardship that may have helped the rebels' cause.
There's also an investigation going on into allegations about the conduct of government forces during the final stages of the war, when, according to UN estimates anywhere up to 10,000 civilians caught up in the war zone and unable to leave, were killed. I won't prejudge the panel's findings but I suspect most of us know what usually happens when a victorious force investigates its own actions. (See Hutton inquiry etc.)
Undeterred, a group of activists in Ireland are looking to hold their own investigation. Organised by the Irish Forum for Peace in Sri Lanka, hearings will be held under the auspices of the Permanent People's Tribunal ."The tribunal has a long history of carrying out independent investigations of human rights abuses ranging from Vietnam to Guatemala," says the group's press release.
The tribunal will comprimise of 11 prominent individuals from the global north and south with long experience in matters of human rights and justice. The hearing will take place on January 14 and 15 at Dublin's Trinity College and its findings will be released the following day. [You can check out the forum's website for more details about the hearing and the details of those who will taking part.]
Why, you might ask, is there a need for such an inquiry in Ireland? The organisers say Ireland has been chosen as the location for the hearing of the tribunal, which first gathered in Italy in 1979, "because of its historical status as a post-colonial nation, the success of the northern Ireland peace process and its traditional policy of neutrality".
As a number of people correctly pointed out to me when I was there last week, the West has certainly acted with no little hypocrisy over Sri Lanka. Having launched its own wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that resulted in the deaths of perhaps up to 1m people and having paid and pressured Pakistan to launch counter-insurgency operations that likewise resulted in large numbers of civilian casualties, the West appeared to behave differently when it came to the final stages of the conflict with the LTTE.
But just because governments may act with hypocrisy, this surely doesn't mean that the deaths of 10,000 innocent people should be conveniently forgotten. I'll be very interested to see what the tribunal in Ireland comes up with.
Earlier this year, I wrote a story from Sri Lanka about the efforts of several senior LTTE members to surrender in the very final stages of the war and how they were shot dead - apparently while walking towards government troops and carrying a white flag. My sources were pretty good - I had spoken with the Norwegian foreign ministry which confirmed that a senior minister had acted as an intermediary as the men tried to give themselves up. I also spoke with the Sri Lankan foreign secretary, Palitha Kahona, who confirmed that he had personally been in contact with the two LTTE members - whom he had met at ceasefire talks - and advised them how to surrender.
Of course, the quality of the sources did not stop the usual flurry of comments and insults that get hurled at journalists every time they write anything about Sri Lanka, from both the Tamil and Sinhala camps. You kind of get used to it.
But it did make me smile to read over the weekend, an interview in which former army chief Sarath Fonseka, now contesting President Mahinda Rajapaksa in next month's election, has claimed that Mr Rajapaksa's brother, who serves as the defence minister, had given the order to kill all the LTTE leadership. Mr Fonseka claimed that Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, ordered that "they must all be killed" and that he rejected attempts to surrender. Mr Fonseka conveniently says that he was not involved in the decision and had been out of the country at the time.
The Sri Lankan government has hit back angrily, turning on the man who was once an ally and even threatening to bring charges against him. One thing's for sure: this coming electoral show-down between the two men who were once friends and allies is going to be very bitter and very ugly. The other certainty is that once the election is over, all this talk of Tamil rebels being shot as they sought to surrender will be conveniently forgotten. Whoever wins.
Of course, the quality of the sources did not stop the usual flurry of comments and insults that get hurled at journalists every time they write anything about Sri Lanka, from both the Tamil and Sinhala camps. You kind of get used to it.
But it did make me smile to read over the weekend, an interview in which former army chief Sarath Fonseka, now contesting President Mahinda Rajapaksa in next month's election, has claimed that Mr Rajapaksa's brother, who serves as the defence minister, had given the order to kill all the LTTE leadership. Mr Fonseka claimed that Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, ordered that "they must all be killed" and that he rejected attempts to surrender. Mr Fonseka conveniently says that he was not involved in the decision and had been out of the country at the time.
The Sri Lankan government has hit back angrily, turning on the man who was once an ally and even threatening to bring charges against him. One thing's for sure: this coming electoral show-down between the two men who were once friends and allies is going to be very bitter and very ugly. The other certainty is that once the election is over, all this talk of Tamil rebels being shot as they sought to surrender will be conveniently forgotten. Whoever wins.
I've long argued that every time you take a flight, or get on a bus or make an overnight coach journey, you should be sure to talk to the person next to you. As I discovered earlier this year in Thailand, no matter how tired or grumpy and not in the mood to chat you may be, it can often turn out the person has a remarkable story to tell.
There was no excuse, therefore, to have ignored the young Indian woman who was sitting next to me the other week on a dawn flight from Delhi to Heathrow. For the the first couple of hours, I settled down into early-morning isolation and a film, but then - after I'd taken off my headphones - she introduced herself. It transpired she was on her first ever trip to the UK and was actually travelling to Edinburgh to meet her husband - a Scottish born man of Indian Sikh origin - to whom she had been married six months earlier, after an arrangement between the two families. "I'm a little bit nervous," she confessed.
Where to start? What to tell her? I could only sympathise and say that anyone in her situation would be feeling nervous and that I was sure things would work out for her. I also told her that if they did not, she would not have to stick it out if she did not want to.
The woman was aged 35 - quite old to be getting married for the first time in India - and she had only agreed to do so because her two younger sisters were also looking to get married and custom said that that the eldest should wed first. She told me that she had worked as a beauty therapist in the Punjab but was worried that her husband - who made his living selling kilts to tourists and whose English she struggled to understand because of his strong Scottish accent - would not allow her to work. She said his family was very conservative, "even by Indian standards".
I wittered on about the beauty of Scotland, the pleasures of Edinburgh, Britain's large south Asian population and did my best to try and boost her spirits. When the plane touched down I insisted she used my cell phone to call her family in India and tell them she had arrived safely.
But as I left in the hands of a British Airways official as she made her way for the connecting flight to Scotland, I could still not get my head around what struck me as an utterly bizarre course that her life was now taking, but one which is very common for thousands of young women from this part of the world. Sometimes, for all the shared language, similar food, shared interest in movies and families and everything else, some cultural divides are never bridged. I shook her hand and wished her good luck.
There was no excuse, therefore, to have ignored the young Indian woman who was sitting next to me the other week on a dawn flight from Delhi to Heathrow. For the the first couple of hours, I settled down into early-morning isolation and a film, but then - after I'd taken off my headphones - she introduced herself. It transpired she was on her first ever trip to the UK and was actually travelling to Edinburgh to meet her husband - a Scottish born man of Indian Sikh origin - to whom she had been married six months earlier, after an arrangement between the two families. "I'm a little bit nervous," she confessed.
Where to start? What to tell her? I could only sympathise and say that anyone in her situation would be feeling nervous and that I was sure things would work out for her. I also told her that if they did not, she would not have to stick it out if she did not want to.
The woman was aged 35 - quite old to be getting married for the first time in India - and she had only agreed to do so because her two younger sisters were also looking to get married and custom said that that the eldest should wed first. She told me that she had worked as a beauty therapist in the Punjab but was worried that her husband - who made his living selling kilts to tourists and whose English she struggled to understand because of his strong Scottish accent - would not allow her to work. She said his family was very conservative, "even by Indian standards".
I wittered on about the beauty of Scotland, the pleasures of Edinburgh, Britain's large south Asian population and did my best to try and boost her spirits. When the plane touched down I insisted she used my cell phone to call her family in India and tell them she had arrived safely.
But as I left in the hands of a British Airways official as she made her way for the connecting flight to Scotland, I could still not get my head around what struck me as an utterly bizarre course that her life was now taking, but one which is very common for thousands of young women from this part of the world. Sometimes, for all the shared language, similar food, shared interest in movies and families and everything else, some cultural divides are never bridged. I shook her hand and wished her good luck.
It was at a July 4 party at the US Embassy in Delhi this summer when I met Joel Elliott, a young award-winning American journalist who had just arrived in the city. He was young and friendly and was doing his best to manage with the power-cuts and the stinking heat of the Indian summer. He told me he had decided to come to India to try his hand at freelancing and he had just upped and left his home in Georgia to come and do so. I thought he was far more courageous than myself and I was particularly liked his business card which read: "Available for assignments around the world".
Sadly I failed to keep in touch with Joel but it turns out that he quickly found his feet in Delhi, finding work with a couple of magazines and working on a series of stories. It appears all was going well until early last month when he was walking home late at night from the home of a couple of friends who lived near him in the south of the city. Encountering a group of policemen who were beating someone in the street, Joel threw himself into the fray, trying to persuade them to stop and getting hit himself. He also delivered a couple of blows before running off and the police giving chase. It did not take the police long to find him and when they did they allegedly gave him a beating he will never forget. Locked up in a police cell for more than six hours, he was refused permission to call his friends or the US embassy. His friends were eventually called and they took him to a hospital where he needed to stay for two days before he was well enough to walk out. "My flatmate took me to the hospital for treatment. I was covered in blood from head to toe from the police beating. My [trousers], which were still on me. were torn to shreds, and covered in blood. My shirt had been torn from my body," he later wrote. "The hospital staff, concerned about the gaping wound to the side of my head and blood clots in my right eye, combined with the massive bruising across the whole of my body, kept me at AIIMS Hospital for two days and one night. I received five stitches to my eyebrow."
Joel then took the decision to leave Delhi, but before he did so he filed a lawsuit against the police for $500,000. The federal information minister has announced an investigation but there's been no news on its outcome. Instead, the police have sought to put the blame on Joel, claiming he was drunk (something which has been disproved), that he was trying to steal a taxi (which is laughable) and that he had attacked an elderly person (which is equally nonsense).
Anyway, this week, Joel wrote a piece about his ordeal for the highly-respected Indian magazine Tehelka. In it, he makes the point that such brutality is commonplace and that human rights organsations have long pointed out how badly India's police force requires urgent reform. He also makes the point, that had he not been a journalist (and had he not been a white journalist at that) it's likely that no-one would have bothered to even listen to his story. I emailed Joel the other day. He is still in the US and considering his future. As I said, I thought he was a brave soul when I first met him, shrugging off the hardships and strangeness of arriving in the middle of India's summer. My first impression was clearly correct.
Just back from ten days in Pakistan and clearing out the accumulated detritus in my wallet, I came across two "loyalty cards" from a coffee shop in the capital Islamabad. One was completed, the other was half way to redeeming a free cup of coffee - a reflection of the fact that I spent a lot of downtime in Islamabad, perched on a comfortable seat, eating cake and making use of the free Wi-Fi connection. All pretty unremarkable, you might think. Except, of course, that this was Pakistan, the land of bombs and extremists and turmoil and terrorists.
But also the land of coffee shops. And why we're at it, also the land of cricket matches being played out on sun-drenched afternoons beneath the wonderful margalla hills, of plays and artistic performances, of people catching buses for interviews in distant cities, of electronics shops packed full of the latest mobile phones and gadgets, of hum-drum problems and the grey-edged ups-and-downs of daily life. This is essentially a long way of saying that any country, Pakistan included, is much, much more than just a collection of headlines, something perhaps, we too often overlook.
Pakistan is undoubtedly facing major problems from militant violence, economic uncertainty and the seemingly fragile nature of its democracy. But at the same time, it is a country of welcoming people, keen and enthusiastic to talk and engage with the few foreign visitors they receive. This was my 15th trip in two years and whenever I visit, I'm struck by the widespread recognition among the younger and educated people of the tremendous potential their country has, while at the same time not underestimating the problems.
When I return to India, I'm quizzed by Indian friends and colleagues about my experience - was it safe, was I threatened, was the country full of crazies? They find it hard to believe that I spent half my time in a pleasant cafe drinking coffee.
As you can probably imagine in these days of online interconnectivity, a journalist without their laptop is about as much use as soldier without their gun or a pastry chef without their butter - pretty much useless. So last week when I was in the sacred Indian city of Varanasi reporting on the remarkable, centuries-old death industry, it was pretty much a disaster when my laptop died on me. I'd just finished editing a piece of copy on Pakistan when a message popped up indicating that there was a crucial software error and then everything went dead. I joked, briefly, that in a city known as place where for generations people have come to die in order to obtain instant release, or passage to nirvana, it was perhaps appropriate that my computer had taken this opportunity to give up the ghost. The humour did not last long however; a quick phone call to the sympathetic but essentially helpless IT help team back in London confirmed that I was going to have to reinstall Windows from scratch and that unless I could find someway of retrieving my data I was going to lose three years worth of documents, photographs and music.
The following day was the eve of Diwali, one of the most important celebrations in the Hindu calendar and a day celebrated by Indians' huge enthusiasm for shopping. As it was, I had a day of interviews lined up for my story and it was not until early evening that I had time to set about trying to find someone to try and rescue my computer. It was at that point that I was directed to a computer and electronics store that went by the rather unlikely name of P.P Electronics and Surgical Aids. Inside the store, there was barely room to stand as people were busily buying televisions, computers and other gadgets, the belief being that Diwali is a fortuitous time to purchase items. The manager, Prashant Verma, was friendly but not very hopeful; he could fix the computer but it was going to take some time and there was no way he could even start to look at it until tomorrow afternoon. I begged, I pleaded, I explained the crisis at hand. Mr Verma looked at my sympathetically. Come back at 8pm, he said. It should take four hours. When I arrived Mr Verma seemed almost swallowed by the sea of customers. There was a group buying a television set, another buying a cable package and some others trying to decide on which laptop to buy. No-one seemed to pay with either a credit card or cash and large wads of notes kept changing hands. Mr Verma smiled and was patient with every customer; the perfect salesman. When the last of them had gone, he turned his attention to my computer. First he salvaged the data on the hard-drive, then he set about reinstalling the software. The hours passed by and Mr Verma's wife kept calling, wondering how he was getting on and when he would be coming home. I'm with the last customer now, he assured her. It was half-past midnight by the time I wandered out onto the quiet streets to flag down a bicycle rickshaw to take me back to the hotel. My computer was repaired, better-than-before, and for more than four hours of bespoke service Mr Verma had charged me 1,000 rupees, or the equivalent of just 13 pounds, before he waved me on my way. As I climbed into the rickshaw there was a spring in my step.
The following day was the eve of Diwali, one of the most important celebrations in the Hindu calendar and a day celebrated by Indians' huge enthusiasm for shopping. As it was, I had a day of interviews lined up for my story and it was not until early evening that I had time to set about trying to find someone to try and rescue my computer. It was at that point that I was directed to a computer and electronics store that went by the rather unlikely name of P.P Electronics and Surgical Aids. Inside the store, there was barely room to stand as people were busily buying televisions, computers and other gadgets, the belief being that Diwali is a fortuitous time to purchase items. The manager, Prashant Verma, was friendly but not very hopeful; he could fix the computer but it was going to take some time and there was no way he could even start to look at it until tomorrow afternoon. I begged, I pleaded, I explained the crisis at hand. Mr Verma looked at my sympathetically. Come back at 8pm, he said. It should take four hours. When I arrived Mr Verma seemed almost swallowed by the sea of customers. There was a group buying a television set, another buying a cable package and some others trying to decide on which laptop to buy. No-one seemed to pay with either a credit card or cash and large wads of notes kept changing hands. Mr Verma smiled and was patient with every customer; the perfect salesman. When the last of them had gone, he turned his attention to my computer. First he salvaged the data on the hard-drive, then he set about reinstalling the software. The hours passed by and Mr Verma's wife kept calling, wondering how he was getting on and when he would be coming home. I'm with the last customer now, he assured her. It was half-past midnight by the time I wandered out onto the quiet streets to flag down a bicycle rickshaw to take me back to the hotel. My computer was repaired, better-than-before, and for more than four hours of bespoke service Mr Verma had charged me 1,000 rupees, or the equivalent of just 13 pounds, before he waved me on my way. As I climbed into the rickshaw there was a spring in my step.
Last night we went along to the Indian premiere of the Oscar-winning documentary Smile Pinki, which highlights the work of a charity dedicated to eradicating the tragedy of cleft palates. I already knew about the movie and the work of the charity,The Smile Train, because earlier this year I'd spent a fascinating afternoon in one of the hospitals in Delhi used by the organisation to help repair the mouths of children born with the problem. It was genuinely uplifting to see the work that the doctors were doing and the impact it was having on the families.
Yet it was not until last night that I saw the film and I can say without hesitation that it is a hugely powerful piece of work. The director, Megan Mylan, was at last night's event in Delhi and she appeared to be a very decent woman who was utterly dedicated to portraying the blight that a cleft can bring to a child as well as the remarkable way in which their lives can be transformed by a simple, inexpensive operation. [In India alone, 50,000 such operations are performed by the charity every year.] What I found particularly powerful about Mylan's 39-minute film was its ability to reveal how a cleft palate is not just a physical disfiguration; children, tormented by their friends, turn inwards and become ostracised and refuse to go to school. In turn families wonder how their child will marry or find work. Can there be a sadder sight than that of a mother saying that she believed she had given birth to a monster? The incidence of clefts may not be any higher in the West than in the developing world, but here the problem rarely gets treated straight after birth, as it might in the UK or the US. Entire lives are ruined as a result.
It’s been a month since Kaya Eldridge, a British woman working with a charity in
Ms Eldridge’s case was unusual not because of what happened - there are countless similar instances of sexual assault and abuse taking place every day across India - but because the young woman decided to take a stand against her attacker. As she said herself, not every woman in this country (and elsewhere) who is the victim of abuse, has the ability to stand up and make a noise.
To that end, some friends of Ms Eldridge are today marching through
Ms Eldridge, a graduate of the LSE, was working in the city of
“People have some sort of idea that sexual assaults only happen to certain sort of women; it can happen to anyone, regardless of who you are or how many sexual partners you’ve had,” she told me at the time. “To question my character in court was not only entirely irrelevant but totally humiliating.”
The march to the Indian High Commission in Aldwych will end with the handing over of a petition to demand that a law passed in 2002 to provide protection for women who are the victims of assault, be properly enforced. The group of friends and supporters will meet at
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I read about the public telling off that
This week - amid a so-called austerity drive by the government in which ministers have been asked to cut their spending and travel only in economy class - Mr Tharoor was asked whether he too would travel "cattle class", In a tweet, he responded by saying: "Absolutely, in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows." The following day, a Congress Party spokesperson was asked about the minister's comment and he replied:“The party strongly disapproves of this expression. It may be slang or jargon but we find it unacceptable. Since thousands of Indians travel by economy class…we don’t approve of this articulation.”
Is the Congress Party really so lacking in humour? It may be, but I suspect this dressing down of Mr Tharoor may be about other things. Clearly the minister is a man not entirely unimpressed by his own abilities and perhaps some people find him a little smug. But more importantly I suspect there is a degree of jealously at work here - about the fact that Manmohan Singh made the newly elected MP a minister in a senior ministry and of the largely positive media attention that Mr Tharoor receives. [Mr Tharoor has kept his head down since this blew up but one of his staff emailed me a picture of him flying economy class to his constituency in Kerala before the austerity drive was anniunced.]
Indeed, the "austerity drive" that the government is pretending to implement to help the poor and drought-stricken of
As to the party spokesman's claim that thousands of ordinary Indians fly economy class, I suspect he misses the real point which is that for the overwhelming majority of Indians taking a flight is something they will never be able to afford to do. For those people, the only way to travel is in the dirty, over-crowded unreserved carriages of the trains with their stinking toilets. They really should only be used by cattle.
UPDATE: Last night I was on India's NDTV channel debating this topic. You can watch here:
http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/new/N
This weekend, I was in the splendid "pink city" of Jaipur to work on a forthcoming story. It so happened that I needed to try and interview someone who - on the day in question - was due to be at the Rambagh Palace hotel, a remarkable property still owned by the royal family of Jaipur but operated by the prestigious Taj Group. The morning had turned into early afternoon and the local journalist who was working with me suggested that we have lunch in the hotel's cafe. I did have second thoughts, wondering about the cost of such an enterprise, but I realised that it made little sense to leave the hotel, eat somewhere else and then return. As it was, the cheapest thing on the menu - other than a bowl of soup - was the vegetarian club sandwich featuring "cheddar and green peppers", so our group ordered three of these, a couple of bottles of water and one coffee. Ten minutes later the sandwiches arrived, accompanied by a dainty bowl of fries and it was all very nice indeed until I took a bite of the sandwich to realise that this snack - which cost 600 rupees plus 12.5 per cent tax (around nine and half pounds) - was actually made using a slice of rubbery processed cheese that is usually sold in packs of ten, each individually wrapped in plastic. Now, I have nothing against processed cheese slices. Indeed plenty of times they've been a life-saver here in India when there's little else to buy at the local store. What am against is eating processed slices when I've paid the best part of ten quid to eat a cheddar sandwich at a hotel which claims to offer "luxury and extravagance that was once the sole preserve of kings". I wondered about complaining to the waiter but decided I was going to struggle to make my point so I just paid the bill, which ended up costing the same as a double room in the very pleasant heritage hotel down the road in which I was staying [ I have, however, emailed the hotel's press department for an explanation and will update this story when they get back to me]. What made the experience more depressing is that when I returned to Delhi and clicked on the internet, I discovered that the hotel, where the cheapest room costs 18,000 rupees, or around 250 pounds, had just been voted the best in Asia by the readers of Conde Nast Traveller. I can only assume they had something else for lunch.
I don't think anyone who is concerned about free speech and transparency can be pleased about the news that Sri Lanka is planning to expel James Elder, the spokesman for the UN humanitarian group Unicef, having very publicly accused him of being a propagandist for the LTTE. When I was in Sri Lanka earlier this year, I met and spoke with Mr Elder (pictured here during a previous assignment in Darfur) on a number of occasions and he seemed utterly committed to one thing - the welfare of the hundreds of thousands of civilians caught up in the war to crush the rebels and end the decades-long civil war. To several of us journalists, it was clear that raising the plight of these people was for him far more than just a job. As with another UN spokesman, Gordon Weiss, he appeared to genuinely care deeply about what was happening to them through no fault of their own. He thought it was an outrage that civilians - men, women and children alike - should be forced to cower in sand-bunkers on a beach, without access to proper medicine or sufficient food and water while a bitter war was fought over their heads. He also raised very valid concerns about the plight of 280,000 civilians now being held in overcrowded, refugee camps, surrounded by armed guards and razor wire.
Yet Mr Elder did not shy away from criticising the rebels for their considerable part in endangering the lives of the Tamil civilians. When the war was still going on, he regularly spoke out against the well-documented practice of the LTTE using the civilians as shields and urged the rebels to allow them to leave from that final stronghold on the beach.
What has struck me as a little odd is that the charge against Mr Elder has been led by Palitha Kohona, the Sri Lankan foreign secretary. Mr Kohona is a smart, charming man who has been kind enough to grant me several interviews, both at his office and home, and on the telephone. He has always been very convincing in explaining why the government had decided it needed to finally rout the LTTE, who had used suicide-bombs against both military and civilian targets in their long and brutal battle for a Tamil state in the north of the country. He spoke of the suffering the LTTE had caused for both the Sinhala and Tamil communities. In many way, his concern about the misery endured by too many Sri Lankan civilians was no different to that of Mr Elder.
I understand that it will now be all but impossible for Mr Elder to remain in Sri Lanka. The government there wants him out and although the Unicef director, Ann Veneman, has protested in the strongest terms about his expulsion, having had his professional credibility questioned in such a waty, Mr Elder may be very disinclined to remain even if he could.
The UN has decided that the most important thing for its operation in Sri Lanka is to remain on the ground. Regardless of the conditions imposed on it by the government, it believes that being there under virtually any circumstances is better than not being there and therefore unable to help those in need. That is why earlier this year, when criticism of the UN grew inside Sri Lanka, a decision was taken at the highest levels to more carefully calibrate its public comments. In effect, a degree of self-censorship was imposed.
All of this means we have a situation in Sri Lanka where the UN and its various bodies are committed to remaining in the country but are unable to say what it really thinks about what is happening to civilians there. How in heaven's name will Mr Elder's successor be able to do his or her job in the way they wish, forever worrying about every word they utter? One things for sure - none of this benefits those Sri Lankan civilians still in desperate circumstances, the very people the UN is there to help.
