We reproduce below a reply received from the Webmaster (who has refused identify himself) relating to the correspondence which we have published earlier, which does not answer any of the questions posed earlier by the Asian Human Rights Commission and Mr. Fernando himself. Mr. Fernando has therefore responded to this reply as follows.
The email response from the webmaster (as received)
Dear Sir
You have asked:
“I am particularly interested to know whether you are making this
publication on behalf of any government agency or any other clandestine agency”.
We do not regard governments as “clandestine agencies”.
I can speak only as the web master. We are a few volunteers (sometimes, students) working in different countries via the web. The only organization that I know
of which deals with us here is the Royal Mounted Police of Canada (RCMP) as they
have told us that they find our material very useful, in dealing with problems in the
Diaspora and in maintaining law and order. We exchange our material freely with them.
But we get no funding from them, or any one else.
We are trying to deal with your requests in good faith, and as soon as we get all our feed back.
For other matters, I submit this letter and your letter to Dr. Dharma-wardana.
Thanks
Webmaster..
Mr. Basil Fernando’s response:
To the webmaster and Dr. Chandre Dharma-wardana
Thank you for your reply to the email I forwarded to you from Mr. Basil Fernando. Mr. Fernando now replies as follows:
I have received your reply to my letter sent through Mr. John Sloan.
In my letter I raised several serious issues to which you have not replied.
You have claimed in your publication that it was based on references from the internet. In my letter I have challenged that and referred to 844,000 references to my name found on Google alone which do not have any reference to any of the issues you have published. In the letter written by Mr. Wong Kai Shing the executive director of the Asian Human Rights Commission all the issues in which you have falsified have been enumerated. This goes to the very root of any kind of veracity attached to your publication as based on any research. I stated, “The statements made are deliberated fabricated and could have only been created by the imagination of some persons and not on the basis of any publications. The publication is therefore not at error but done with the deliberate attempt to cause damage to my reputation and to harm me in other ways.”
This brings us to the heart of the matter. My claim is that you have a malicious publication created by someone, either you or Dr. Chandre Dharma-wardana or some anonymous person/s that you refer to as the Colombo editor or Asian editors. You have not replied to this aspect of my letter. Am I to take that you admit that you are unable to reveal any source on which you have made such defamatory statements?
In your reply you claim that you are trying to deal with this in good faith. How do you deal with ‘good faith’ about a maliciously produced and published statement without any basis on fact? To make it easy may I ask you what are the internet sources in which you found the following statements:
a. That the students used the nickname “Waththala Oora” or Waththala Joseph”. (Waththala Oora means Waththala ‘Pig’). Referring to a human being as a pig anywhere and particularly in the Sri Lankan context is a reference of the utmost contempt. Let me know which internet source has used it or is it the creation of Dr. Dharme-wardana who is referred to in Wikipedia as the one time vice chancellor of Vidyodaya University? And what was the purpose of using this completely fabricated nickname? How do you demonstrate a link to the LTTE by using this fabricated derogatory title?
b. That I worked for “NGOs in Vietnam and Cambodia. Here he was a link to the South-Vietnamese Catholics who were the main supporters of the US backed regime which collapsed.” What is the internet source of this? I can confidently assert that there is no such source! Instead there are a large number of references which contradict this statement if anyone were to peruse the internet. Why then was this fabricated statement created and for what purpose? How do you create an internet link to the LTTE through this statement even if it were to be true? Can you explain in whose silly mind this nonsensical false reference was generated? Why did this person go to the extent of creating such nonsense?
c. “Basil Fernando set up in a private NGO in Hong Kong in 1994, named “Asian Human Rights Commission” (AHRC). Its funding sources are kept veiled”. What is the internet source of this? The internet would have given many other references as to who originated the Asian Human Rights Commission. Why were those actual references ignored and a false story created? Does this not belie your claims about your methodology?
d. “A considerable part of the funds of the AHRC come from Catholic organisations”. Who fabricated this story? Is it to revive the anti Christian sentiments and to build an association to those sentiments? And again, how do you create a link to the LTTE by such claims? Is it that the LTTE was a Catholic organisation? Why is this kind of nonsensical statement being made?
e. “The board of directors contains prominent Catholic activists from South Korea, the Philippines, Hong Kong and India.” Again, what is your internet source in this statement? How do you link the LTTE to that alleged statement? What was this need to revive an anti Catholic sentiment? Is that the purpose of your publication? Does your publication have some kind of an anti Christian bias? If so, why?
f. “A number of highly placed Catholic prelates who are members of the Trans-national Eelam are alleged to have connections with these individuals”. Now that is a statement that you, as webmaster and Dr. Dharma-wardana should take responsibility for and you cannot pass the buck to the Colombo editor. Can you reveal who is linked to whom? I challenge you to name them. Tell the linkages when, where and how. Will you at least admit that this is one of your total fabrications? Why did you have to make such a fabrication? How do you justify this?
g. “Basil Fernando is also alleged to have links with Paskaralingam”. What is your internet reference for this? I challenge you to reveal even a single link I have ever had with this person called Paskaralingam? Where, when and how? You cannot answer that because there was no such connection of any sort, even single meeting, conversation or anything of the sort. You deliberately created this because you have to show some kind of a link of me with the LTTE. And you can create it only by way of fiction. How do you deny that is a malicious statement? Who would have wanted to make such a statement, to create it by a figment of the imagination if he would have had no motive to do so?
h. The only correct web reference that you make is regarding a statement published in a Sinhala.net net regarding an urgent appeal which related to certain allegations regarding a Buddhist monk. The AHRC urgent appeals have published urgent appeals regarding human rights allegations from many countries by various persons. Some are state officers, some are even clergymen belonging to various religions. For example urgent appeals were also made regarding certain actions of the pope himself which violated the rights of some persons. How do you establish a link to the LTTE through the publication of that urgent appeal?
i. “His recent invectives against the Sri Lankan government have been channeled through the e-journal: Sri Lanka Guardian”. Is it an act of terrorism to criticise the Sri Lankan government? Is your website engaged in protecting the Sri Lankan government from criticism? I have consistently criticised the constitution of 1978 as the root cause of the most difficult problems faced in Sri Lanka in recent decades. That criticism has been consistent from 1978 itself. The creation of the executive presidential system giving powers that no head of state in a democracy has was the beginning of the collapse of the rule of law system in Sri Lanka. The rule of law cannot survive when the ruler is above the law. This is the very basic premise on which all modern democracies are based. You enjoy the benefits of living in Canada because Canada has a functioning rule of law system. The basic criticism I have made which you will see in all the internet publications that are available under my name is that Sri Lanka has lost the rule of law system and this has become the main problem for the people of Sri Lanka. Our country has seen large numbers of forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, ongoing torture every day at police stations because of the loss of the basic protection of the rule of law system. That is a criticism against all the governments regardless of whether they were UNP, SLFP or otherwise. Is it the fact of criticising the wrongs of a government that you use as a criterion in your website to name as an LTTE sympathiser? If that is your criterion then state it so clearly in your website.
Now I have made very clear to you that every sentence you have made in the statement you have published against me is false, created out of someone’s imagination and not from any credible or reliable source and that they are malicious.
How do you reply to my claims?
Basil Fernando
Director Policy & Programmes
Asian Human Rights Commission
For further information on this issue please refer to our earlier statements and open letters:
SRI LANKA: AHRC tells the Canada-based Sri Lankan intellectual to stop distribution of false and defamatory material and a death list at: http://www.humanrights.asia/news/ahrc-news/AHRC-OLT-001-2011 and SRI LANKA: Dr. Chandre Dharma-Wardana admits to the publication of false and defamatory material and a death list at http://www.ahrchk.net/statements/mainfile.php/2010statements/3019/
Further information may be found at http://www.humanrights.asia/
