Miliband’s self-righteous moralising

March 12, 2013, 8:43 pm

Former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has, in an article published in the UK Guardian newspaper on Monday, urged the British government to back the call for shifting the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in protest against Sri Lanka’s accountability issues.

Having won the war, the Sri Lankan government is still busy re-enacting old battles and has reneged on many of its promises. Had it got its act together on the human rights front after the war, international opprobrium would not have been heaped on it in this manner. However, the question is whether Miliband has any moral right to call for punitive action against Sri Lanka.

This is what The Guardian Diplomatic Editor Julian Borger said on Dec. 1, 2010, quoting a diplomatic cable exposed by Wikileaks, about David Miliband’s visit to this country in 2009, in an article titled, Wikileaks cables: David Miliband focused on Sri Lankan war ‘to win votes’: "The diplomatic campaign by former foreign secretary David Miliband to champion aid and human rights during the Sri Lankan humanitarian crisis last year was largely driven by domestic political calculations, according to a Foreign Office official." The Guardian reproduced the relevant section of the leaked cable: "He [Miliband] said that with UK elections on the horizon and many Tamils living in Labour constituencies with slim majorities, the government is paying particular attention to Sri Lanka, with Miliband recently remarking to Waite that he was spending 60% of his time at the moment on Sri Lanka." So much for Miliband’s altruism and concerns about human rights! He is playing politics with the Sri Lankan issue.

Miliband says in his article: "Sri Lanka is not being victimised or picked on. UN conventions are the civilising product of the wars – and unstopped slaughters – of the 20th century. They are a universal badge of humanity. Our government should be standing up for them." Intriguingly, he has not asked the British government to abide by the UN conventions he extols so much. One is reminded of what respected international civil servant and former Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Nobel Laureate, Mohamed ElBaradei said in his book, The Age of Deception, Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times (Bloomsbury, 2011), about Britain’s war crimes in Iraq: "The harshest reality of the Iraq War and its extended aftermath––an aspect that has been disturbingly minimised in Western media reports––is the Iraqi civilian loss of life. Estimates have ranged as high as eight hundred thousand Iraqi deaths during the first three years of the war. This does not count the millions maimed or wounded, or the millions displaced from their homes and stripped of their livelihoods." As we pointed out in these columns in May 2011, ElBaradei pulls no punches when he denounces sheer brutal force the coalition unleashed against Iraq: ‘The United States and its allies [including the UK] promoted an ethos of violence and cultural division that harkened back to an earlier era of human history." Why is Miliband, who defends the ‘badge of humanity’ mum on these blatant war crimes his country is responsible for? If the Commonwealth is to go by his argument against Sri Lanka and shift the Colombo Summit, then the UK has no moral right to host CHOGM ever again given its involvement in killing hundreds of thousands of people.

ElBaradei poses this question: "Should the United Nations request an opinion from the International Court of Justice as to the legality of the Iraq War? If the answer is that the war was in fact illegal––and moreover, if consideration is given to the massive civilian casualties incurred––should not the International Criminal Court investigate whether this constitutes a ‘war crime’ and determine who is accountable? Should Iraq request reparations at the International Court of Justice, or another forum, for the damages incurred during a war launched in violation of international law and on the basis of falsehoods?" It will be interesting to know what Miliband has got to say to this.

However, we cannot but agree with Miliband on his call for shifting CHOGM albeit for a different reason. CHOGM in our book is an utter waste of time and resources. It is only a talk show which serves no one’s purpose save those of the rulers of the host nation and Britain, which makes use of the Commonwealth to further its neocolonialist interests and engage in self-righteous moralizing with its former victims as a captive audience.