Kanwal Sibal, Dean,
Centre for International Relations and Diplomacy
Our conduct at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) at
Geneva on the US sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka on human rights
violations of the tamilian population has raised questions about the
coherence, maturity and objectivity of our policy towards our neighbour.
Our Sri Lanka policy has to be based on wider considerations than
politicking within the UPA government and exaggerated posturing for
electoral reasons by the DMK on the ethnic issue.
The anguish in Tamilnadu about the Rajapakse government’s failure to
make tangible political progress on the ethnic issue should be
recognized. The Sri Lankan government has not been able to shed the mood
of truimphalism after the decisive military victory over the LTTE; it
has gone back on its promises on devolution; an honest probe into
alleged large scale human rights violations during the last days of
military operations remains pending; the recommendations of the Lessons
Learnt and Reconciliation Commission have not been implemented.
However, to allow this anguish to govern our policy towards Sri
Lanka, to the exclusion of other factors, would be a serious mistake,
especially when demagoguery is resorted to by sections of political
opinion in Tamilnadu and the tamilian diaspora abroad. There is loose
talk of genocide despite the cessation of miltary operations four years
ago. Why is that between 2009 and now this genocide of tamilians was not
discovered? Why castigate the deplorable political failure of the
Rajapakse government as genocide?
Foreign Policy
No doubt foreign policy cannot be altogether divorced from domestic
opinion and regional sentiments therefore cannot be ignored in foreign
policy making. Foreign policy, however, operates in a context quite
different from domestic politics, the stakes are different, the
involvement and interests of third parties is a complicating factor, and
national security and geo-political factors come into play. Besides,
the weightage to give to regional sentiments as distinguished from
national sentiment has salience in decision-making.
If our foreign policy towards Sri Lanka should be based on the
sentiments of the people of Tamilnadu today, then sentiments in West
Bengal should dictate our foreign policy towards Bangladesh tomorrow,
and those in UP and Bihar should determine what we do with Nepal day
after. It would be a mistake to begin treating our relations with our
neighbours as extensions of the pulls and pressures of our domestic
politics. Our neighbours are independent, sovereign countries, which
requires that we control our domestic lobbies and prevent them from
distorting our policies in our periphery. Moreover, when the states are
today resisting strongly encroachment on their powers in a federal
system, they should also respect the prerogative of the centre to make
foreign policy.
Unlike ours, US stakes in Sri Lanka are limited. They do not need to
calculate the consequences of the initiative they take to censure Sri
Lanka at the UNHRC with as much care as we have to. They promote the
human rights dimension of their foreign policy as part of the larger
objective to universalize their values, to retain the high moral ground
in international affairs and avert attention from the human costs of
their military operations abroad. They do not take into account the
stress they put on our policy towards Sri Lanka by moving resolutions in
the UNHRC against it, forcing us to adopt a position that we would like
to leave undefined so as to retain sufficient space to deal with the
complex situation there.
Apart from this gap in managing our strategic relationship with the
US in our neighbourhood, it is galling that we have to support the
targeting of Sri Lanka by bodies like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty
International which gave us a miserable time in the 1990’s over
allegations of human rights violations by our forces in J&K,
boosting the Pakistani campaign against us on this issue.
Past
Even the US State Department was complicit in this. We opposed the
objectivity and credibility of these human rights organisations when we
were targeted; now we endorse their findings to put Sri Lanka on the
mat.
Our policy of not supporting country specific human rights
resolutions at Geneva was sound, as these resolutions are used by the
West to erode the international legitimacy of regimes considered
adversarial. We have been criticized for not taking a clear cut position
on human rights issues as behoves a democracy and a rising power called
upon to assume greater responsibility for upholding the international
order. Apart from a disinclination to play by double standards, we have
favoured dialogue over denunciation in dealing with human rights abuses
in countries. We abandoned this policy last year in voting against Sri
Lanka and did so again this year.
Resolution
This time too we began by softening the US resolution where it was
too intrusive and undercut Sri Lankan sovereignty too blatantly.
However, because of extreme DMK pressure on the government our
diplomatic strategy fell into an embarrassing disarray. In a last ditch
effort to placate the DMK we sought a toughening of the US resolution
after our previous efforts to soften it. Worse, the US rebuffed India
because it did not want the balance of the resolution disturbed for fear
of losing numbers in support. We put ourselves in a situation where the
US appeared moderate and we unprincipled and opportunistic.
We do not have to condone Sri Lanka’s failure on reconciliation and
accountability issues. But we should deal bilaterally with Sri Lanka,
and forcefully at that to contain the mounting backlash in Tamilnadu. As
a regional power we should not outsource such responsibility to others,
as this erodes our position and exposes our irresolution, adding to our
neighbourly woes. If we don’t use our power we will be seen as
powerless.
