A Press Release from the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC)
SRI LANKA: A further false report from the ‘Peace Secretariat’
We call upon all those who have received the aforementioned statement by Professor Rajiva Wijesinha of the Secretariat for Co-ordinating the Peace Process under the title Further Generalizations from the Asian Human Rights Commission to treat it as a completely false report. In this statement this gentleman attributes to the AHRC a report that it has never made. We also wish to caution the readers about any statement that emanates from this gentleman as the accuracy of such statements is seriously flawed.
We reproduce below the letter we have written to Prof Wijesinhe demanding he withdraw with apologies the false statement that he has made.
August 5, 2008
Professor Rajiva Wijesinha
The Secretary General
Secretariat for Co-ordinating the Peace Process
Block 5, BMICH,
Bauddhaloka Mawatha,
Colombo 07,
Sri Lanka
Fax No. 2681310/16/23
E-mail: info@scopp.gov.lk
Dear Professor Wijesinha,
Re: Further Generalizations from the Asian Human Rights Commission
We are writing to you as secretary of the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process to demand that you unconditionally withdraw with apologies the statement made and published by you: Further Generalizations from the Asian Human Rights Commission. In this statement you repeatedly accuse us of making a report which we have not made. In your normal fashion you accuse us of blanket generalizations and extrapolations which are quite extraordinary in their fraudulence, and a whole lot of nonsensical statements, in a report that the AHRC never published. All the accusations are creations of your own imagination.
Being a former professor of English we believe that you are capable of reading and understanding what you read. Perhaps when you look at things from a politically biased and crooked mind, you may lose even that capacity. You have written this statement on behalf of the Sri Lankan government. It is natural to believe that the Sri Lankan government employs persons who can read and write and who would at least be accurate in identifying the documents that the government wants to repudiate. It does not do credit to the Sri Lankan government to allow its propaganda agents to attribute statements to organisations which are in no way responsible for the alleged reports.
We are reluctant to believe that this is not a deliberate distortion. Prof Wijesinhe is obsessed with the AHRC because we have challenged him on his own credentials as a onetime liberal, supporting one of the most corrupt regimes to ever rule Sri Lanka. At least on one occasion I have written personally to Prof. Wijesinhe saying that he is a liar on the basis of something he wrote against me personally, which was a complete fabrication. This letter is available at: http://www.basilfernando.net/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=334&cid=1
That Prof Wijesinhe would write something like this is no surprise to us. But that somebody who called himself the Secretary-General of the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process, and who represents the state of Sri Lanka, could misuse his position for such careless and personal attacks based on his own personal animosities, is perhaps also a reflection of the regime he serves.
That Sri Lankans are fated to be served by this type of civil servant is no surprise as the 17th Amendment to the Constitution which was designed to select persons to responsible posts on the basis of merit has been abandoned by the present regime. Prof. Wijesinhe has had to create various excuses to justify this act of abandoning the Sri Lanka Constitution despite of having written lengthily in the past on liberal democracy.
Thank you.
Yours sincerely,
Basil Fernando
Executive Director
Asian Human Rights Commission
