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In response, the Sri Lankan government has launched a colossal advertising campaign against this move, under the pretext that Amnesty International's campaign may adversely affect the performance of the country's cricket players at the World Cup.
The Sri Lankan government's propaganda war regarding this campaign based on an innocent slogan calling on all Sri Lankans to "play by the rules" is reminiscent of Don Quixote tilting at windmills.
At first, it may appear ridiculous for anyone to oppose a call to play by the rules. This behavior is, after all, what everyone is expected to do at any given time. It should gladden the hearts of a government when an international chorus supports the ambition that any reasonable government should have, which is to play by the rules and to get its opponents to play by the same rules.
However, the Sri Lankan government is not pleased by this call. The concerns it raises are purely of a psychological nature as to how this call may affect the national cricket team. In the government's ardent enthusiasm for cricket, they have started a counter campaign against all Sri Lankans who play by the rules. An outsider cannot be blamed if he or she forms the opinion that the government is opposed to the idea of playing by the rules. An outsider may even believe that this is very strange.
To those who closely follow the behavior of the Sri Lankan state, however, as well as its main opponent, the LTTE, and the LTTE's own opponents in other militant groups, this strange opposition to playing by the rules may not be unusual at all.
The official ideology of several Sri Lankan governments, for example, was expressed by former Minister of Defense Ranjan Wijeratne in Parliament when referring to the government's repression in the late 1980s of its opponents, saying that "these things cannot be done according to the law." Using cricket jargon, he went on to say that the government had already destroyed the "second 11" and soon would destroy the first. His meaning was that the lower ranks of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, or People's Liberation Front -- the government's opponents at the time -- had already been "terminated" -- a euphemism for disappeared -- and that the top leadership would soon meet the same fate. True to its word, the government of the day saw to the physical extermination of the JVP's main leaders after their arrest in a summary manner.
The irony of this episode is that others, who believed in the same philosophy of not following the rules, later killed Ranjan Wijeratne himself with a massive car bomb. The ideological stance of the government, the LTTE, other militant groups, as well as the more extreme right-wing section of Sinhala opinion makers, is that this "match" should be won by terminating players rather than by winning the game by playing according to the rules within the framework of democracy and the rule of law. A former president, J. R. Jayawardene, said, in fact, that this was a "killing match."
The call for a democratic solution and a return to the rule of law are today considered subversive ideas to all parties to the conflict. All attempts to raise issues relating to human rights, and even the rules of the Geneva Convention, are considered detrimental to the fighters of all sides who are encouraged to fight it out to a bloody conclusion. The government is merely echoing this general opposition to playing by the rules, as it believes such a policy is self-defeating. After all, the slogan is "fight poison with poison."
The Sri Lankan cricket team has endeared itself to the whole world by its charming sportsmanship. They know to play by the rules, and they have also proved that they can still win when playing by the rules. Their experience has been positive, providing sufficient reason to develop a healthy mentality toward good sportsmanship.
However, unfortunately in the field of politics in recent decades, the Sri Lankan mind has become deranged. It is mortally scared of playing by the rules and does not even hide its opposition, even to avoid international embarrassment. The plea is for the world to understand that Sri Lanka cannot afford to play by the rules. It is this deeply entrenched position that the government is expressing to the international community by its unrestrained attacks on the call to play by the rules.
The international community, instead of being irritated by such a message from the government, should see it as a revelation of the depth of the problems Sri Lanka is facing. It should fathom this mentality which considers that a rational and decent solution to the multiple crises confronting the country does not exist. This mentality itself is one of the major obstructions to a wholesome understanding of the problems as well as to finding rational solutions.
Human rights organizations have characterized the situation in Sri Lanka as an exceptional collapse of the rule of law. Unless the international community positively and strongly supports the people of the country, who are the only ones who seem to want to return to normalcy, and to re-establish the normal framework for playing by the rules, which is the framework of democracy and the rule of law, conditions are likely to get worse. It is not enough for the international community to call on all Sri Lankans to play by the rules; it must positively assist the country and its people to make that possible.
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(Basil Fernando is director of the Asian Human Rights Commission based in Hong Kong. He is a Sri Lankan lawyer who has also been a senior U.N. human rights officer in Cambodia. He has published several books and written extensively on human rights issues in Asia.)
