Asia’s hierarchies of humiliation
Nonetheless, it is hard to remain quiet when former Minister of External Affairs and surely one of our most eagerly ambitious politicians, GL Peiris expounds with great gusto on the ill-wisdom of the Enforced Disappearances Bill. Listed for debate this week, the Bill was postponed by a wavering Government caught between the rock of its own swashbuckling commitments and the hard place of ultra-nationalistic sentiment before which it now wails, much like a petulant child.
This predicament is, of course, due in large part to its own failure in not engaging in a national effort to soberly explain to the people in this country why this legislation is needed in the first place. Enforced disappearances do not have sole application to the North or to citizens of Tamil ethnicity. On the contrary, the South was the primary target of this tactic of state terror in the eighties. The Sinhala South therefore does not need to be taught as to why such a law is needed or why the State must legislate to ensure accountability to prevent future occurrences.
But this sensible rationale is overridden by sound and fury signifying precisely nothing. On the one hand, the draft law is advocated as a palliative for the people of the North. On the other hand, we have politicians of the ilk of GL Peris explaining that it will prosecute the Southern ‘patriots.’ The contesting dynamic is firmly entrenched.
Wringing of hands to be expected
This bifurcation between the North and the South is unwise in the extreme. It is akin to claiming that Sri Lanka’s Right to Information (RTI) law is meant for the South and has little application to the North, as idiotically put forward by some politicians representing the Northern constituency a while ago.This has, of course,been disproved by the practical use of the law since it came into force.
Regardless, the effort to enact a law on Enforced Disappearances for Sri Lanka should have been led by a local multi-ethnic and multi-religious constituency. Instead the perception was more that it was a Colombo led effort with external donor-funded support. At each and every turn, this is what destabilizes each effort to genuinely improve the lot of citizens.
It is the same bogey that has clung to the constitutional reform process. Inevitably nationalistic demons raise their heads and rail while the majority of ordinary Sri Lankans remained uninterested or uninvolved. So the procrastination midst the wringing of hands that we see on the postponement of the Enforced Disappearances Bill is entirely to be expected.
Engaging in reprehensible objections
But let us revert to the interview in the Daily Mirror a few days ago where the erstwhile law professor, from whom many once learnt the law with the intent to honour the ideals of justice, expounded on the ill-wis- dom of the Bill.To someone unacquainted with the disagreeable hypocrisy of our politicians, it would seem that the Bill posed untold risks to Sri Lanka and exposed the country to the wrath of insidious influences hell-bent on tarnishing its name.
The truth, of course, is far less dramatic. Certainly there is neither the time nor the inclination to refute all the reprehensible objections in this interview. Suffice it to be said that the Bill comes as a response of sustained advocacy against a most heinous crime of this century. The tactic of enforced disappearances had been used as a deliberate mechanism to frighten and intimidate dissenters, political activists, journalists and ordinary citizens by all Governments for decades. The need for such legislation is without a doubt
However, one aspect in particular in this interview merits a response, given its singularly disingenuousreasoning. This is in regard to the doctrine of command responsibility in the Bill. This is responded to with horror by the former Minister, calling the clause ‘incredibly wide.’
Concept no stranger to our law
This is, of course, a palpable misrepresentation. A core element of this offence is that a commander must unlawfully disregard and fail to discharge duties to control the acts of subordinates by permitting them to commit war crimes. This thinking is not unfamiliar to our law.
Indeed, constitutional jurisprudence by enlightened judges in the mid nineteen nineties held superior officers responsible on the basis of vicarious liability when they failed to act as subordinates committed torture of detainees. Sri Lanka’s Convention Against Torture (CAT) Act in force for more than a decade embodies this very rationale.
True, in situations of conflict, the judicial response has been more tempered in holding those in command responsible. Even so, judges have used the crime of omission, historically very much a part of our penal law, to hold superior officers accountable during the second southern insurrection, for instance. Judicial opinion may be divided on the issue but to react with such feigned horror to the very idea is absurd.
Not even the minimum is possible
From one perspective, the scenario unfolding before us is ironic. In bringing such laws before Parliament, probably the intention was to placate those calling for law reform with the consolation that nothing much would happen anyway. After all, the CAT Act has utterly failed to deter torture despite being one of our better drafted laws. The perennial failure of justice is not because of the inadequacy of law but because of politicised investigations and prosecutions. Which,as must be said, this Government has done nothing to address,
But due to its chronically chaotic character, it appears that the Government has been checkmated even in this minimum effort by the so-called joint opposition now smelling blood in the water and baying for its revenge.
For that, it has only itself and its equally ill-advised allies to blame.
PHILADELPHIA – Indian and Chinese troops have been locked in a standoff in Doka La – where the borders of Bhutan, China and India meet – for almost a month now, the longest such impasse between the two armies since 1962. In a not-so-subtle reference to that last conflict, in which India suffered a disastrous defeat, the Ministry of National Defence spokesperson Colonel Wu Qian has warned India to “learn from historical lessons.” But the lessons of history have a peculiar tendency to adapt to the perspective of those citing them.
The current Chinese leadership sees in the 1962 conflict the price an uppity neighbour had to pay for not acceding to its territorial demands. But, for India, that conflict was a humiliation that has rankled the country for more than a half-century. The reminder of it is therefore likely to have the opposite effect than Wu anticipated.
In international relations, to be humiliated means more than to be embarrassed. It amounts to the public degradation of another actor, a denial of its bid for status, and the establishment of a clear hierarchy. Wars provide the opportunity for humiliation in very stark ways, because defeat on the battlefield tends to bring not just ridicule and derision, but also clear losses, particularly of territory.
If any country should understand the impact that such humiliations can have, it is China. In fact, as Wu was relaying his message to India, Chinese President Xi Jinping was asserting, at the celebration of the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China, that the move had ended the “humiliation and sorrow” inflicted by Britain when it took over the city in 1842.
This reflects the Chinese Communist Party’s broader use of China’s “century of humiliation,” which allegedly ended only when the CCP established the People’s Republic in 1949, to fuel a resurgent nationalism. During that period, China’s self-image as East Asia’s preeminent power was shattered by a series of defeats, which were particularly painful when inflicted by the upstart Japan.
Despite this acute awareness of the enduring impact of its own humiliations, China often fails to recognise how its own past actions might have spurred similar feelings in others. Its 1962 defeat of India was the culmination of a decade-long competition for leadership of the newly independent countries that had emerged from decolonisation. It therefore amounted to a devastating blow to India’s aspirations to be the undisputed leader of the Non-Aligned Movement.
India is far from the only country that has been humiliated at the hands of China. In Vietnam, the phrase “1,000 Years of Chinese Domination” has as much resonance as “100 Years of Foreign Humiliation” has in China.
But China is not the only country to have been humiliated and humiliated others in turn. While India was humiliated by China in 1962, it also inflicted what its neighbour Pakistan remembers as a humiliating defeat nine years later. Since independence in 1947, Pakistan had vied to establish itself as India’s equal in South Asia, joining alliances led by the United States or cosying up to China to demonstrate its strategic relevance. The 1971 Indo-Pakistani War, which led to the independence of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), crushed those hopes.
Yet Pakistan, too, remains oblivious to the humiliating impact of its own actions: its nearly four-decade-long history of interference in Afghanistan to secure “strategic depth” will leave Afghanistan traumatised for years to come, in a way that Russia-inflicted losses did not. The same is true of all the aforementioned humiliations: they are particularly painful because an Asian neighbour, not a distant power, inflicted them.
Such humiliations, as we have seen with China, have a long-lasting impact. Indeed, they can create an all-consuming desire for vengeance that overwhelms more sober foreign-policy motivations. That is why, for example, Pakistan’s army is prepared to undermine all other institutions in the country it is sworn to defend, in the name of wounding India.
With nationalism on the rise across Asia, leaders have strong incentives to craft a version of history that advances their cause, and few historical memories are as effective for this purpose as those of traumatic humiliation. China has mastered this art, but it can be seen elsewhere, too, including in India. The key is to create a hierarchy of humiliations, according to which those inflicted on one’s own country are regarded as vitally important, and those inflicted on others are diminished, remembered only to reaffirm the status hierarchy.
Yet, as the ongoing dispute in Doka La makes clear, such an approach can create serious risks. After World War I, when Europe failed to address adequately its legacy of humiliation, the results were catastrophic. After World War II, however, Europe rose to the challenge, setting the stage for unprecedented regional cooperation. One hopes that Asia takes a similar tack – before simmering anger over historical humiliations boils over.
(The writer is the director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania.)
Courtesy: Project Syndicate, 2017. www.project-syndicate.org