An onslaught (of)/(on) human rights

essay response to a lecture by G.H. Peiris, professor emeritus of geography at the University of Peradeniya

When Prof. Peiris first began his lecture, he seemed to be overtly, unncessarily cautious in warning us that his lecture was not pro-West. He explained that his topic had been originally chosen as a joke; one that he had hoped would get him out of doing this lecture in the first place. He had, in fact, retired from lecturing a few years ago because he was getting older, becoming hard of hearing and beginning to lose the strength of his voice. But his cleverness only earned him a second's thought from Padma, before she smiled and agreed on the topic. Anyway, he hoped we would take this lecture to be only one man's perspective, and perhaps give us something new to chew on. At this point, I almost raised my hand to encourage him that we were, indeed, open-minded and forward-thinking individuals who could handle a critique of the actions of our country. We're not, after all, the ones who directly make decision on foreign policy for the United States, and we are certainly mature individuals who can approach a topic objectively. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, these reassurances went unsaid as he continued with his lecture.

And I say fortunately because my reassurances would have been nothing but blithe and naive. As Peiris went on to explain the detrimental effects of the unsolicited "human rights" interventions by the West, and how it was contributing to the denigration of Sri Lanka in the global community, I noticed a slow but perceptible shift in the room's atmosphere. A lecture that most had assumed they would probably check out of five minutes into turned out to be raising some hackles. As Peiris criticized the actions of the UN Secretary General, the contents of the Darusman Report, as well as "statistics" reported in mainstream Western media, I could see people shifting in their chairs as well as sidelong glances being tossed left and right. But this was not before I had caught myself instantly discarding some of his criticisms. How could the Darusman Report, a report ordered by the UNSG and completed by a panel of "experts," be wrong? How could they have grossly inaccurate statistics about the civilian death toll during Eelam War IV? Impossible, I caught myself thinking.

But then one girl asked Peiris what Channel 4's motivation would be to broadcast anti-Sri Lankan government propaganda, and I immediately realized something: not matter how infallible we believe our institutions to be, they are ultimately made up of people. It's a husband who's kid just got expelled from school who decided to run that broadcast; it's a young woman who's sister just got diagnosed with cancer who nixed that article from running on the front page. As many safeguards and rules and regulations as there are in place, there are just as many people who can override them. Having been in a position where I've had the power to make decisions about policies that affect thousands of people, I've begun to understand this. While people, I believe, are able to make decisions with integrity, they are just as equally able to make a decision based on personal reasons.

Whose world, again?

That's how I've begun to understand the things that go wrong in this world, and that's how I was able to give Peiris' viewpoint a chance. It's entirely possible that the Sri Lankan government, given the circumstances, did do as good of a job as they could have with 300,00 refugees from the North arriving overnight. It's also entirely possible that people were subjected to more suffering and brutalities by the government, and that their actions in dealing with the refugees constituted gross misconduct and human rights violations. What I've learned is that I don't know. What I've also learned is that no matter how impenetrable you think your defense against bias influencing your ability to be open-minded is, you're probably overestimating yourself. What I hope I did was take Peiris' lecture and carefully file away this new knowledge. Perhaps there is nothing I can do with it yet; no paper I can write, no action I can take. But if anything, I've accepted it as a valid perspective with the realization that no matter how hard I may find it sometimes to identify myself as a Westerner (and so eager to claim my Japanese heritage at these times), I am still an American, raised in America with American values instilled in me from the start. And I can say that now, perhaps for the first time, with real pride in my voice and without a hint of irony or criticism, nor a cringe in my eyes. Now... what exactly it means to be an American with such values, I've yet to discover or at least articulate.