Mango
Pic of injured children from AI web site
Web Editor: This presentation isolates and recuperates a selected thread of discussion within postings on the Sri Lankan situation in 2009 provided by Jim Macdonald of Amnesty International, USA, in the official AI web site in September 2009. I requested “Mango” to extract his series of engagements with Macdonald on this site, excluding other entries and other cross-talk (some quite virulent). The reasons for this step are clarified in a separate post. Michael Roberts.
Pic of Tamil people escaping from the LTTE’s last redoubt to western shores of Nandikadal lagoon
Summary: Amnesty International has been a vociferous and consistent critic human rights abuses committed by ‘both sides’ during Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE. Yet opinions expressed by its ‘country specialist’, Jim McDonald in 2009 shows that AI’s real thinking correlated deeply with the ‘Righteous’ mindset. His beliefs can be summarised as follows:
– Sri Lanka didn’t try anything other than a military solution to end the conflict.
– Sri Lanka disregarded risks to civilians in the war zone.
– The government never sought a political solution
– Demands for autonomy were never met by the government
– The government didn’t try to ‘undercut’ the LTTE’s support base
– Refused to provide evidence that AI had not received funding from EU official bodies.
Jim McDonald is the Country Specialist for Sri Lanka at Amnesty International USA.
Notes to reading this document: comments and replies are in chronological order as they appeared on the AI USA blog. When I have quoted from Jim’s writing in my own replies, I have used the phrase [Jim says] or similar. Typos and other errors have been left as originally written. The most ‘interesting’ admissions and/or statements made by Jim McDonald have been highlighted in bold and blue text. SEE “Sri Lanka: Time for action by the UN” http://tinyurl.com/36rqtg5 as well as http://tinyurl.com/36rqtg5 and http://tinyurl.com/3s534vr and http://tinyurl.com/yhcrg5m.
Note from MANGO: “some temporal oddities are seen on this particular blog posting. I was being censored by AI, hence the double and repeat posts. All times and dates are visible on the originalALblog post.”
Mango says
September 15th, 2009 at 8:01 am
Will AI indemnify Sri Lanka if IDPs are sent back to their original homes in mine-uncleared areas? Perhaps AI could create a chart listing compensation for loss of life and limb due to mine injuries. How about $500 for a leg? Or is that too expensive? What is AI doing about returning Sri Lankans previously ‘ethnically cleansed’ out of their homes by the LTTE, who are still languishing in miserable IDP camps? Remember them?
Or is AI still going through the grieving process at the total annihilation of its favourite terror group, the LTTE?
One pedantic point: GOSL will argue this isn’t ‘arbitrary’ detention, but necessary to weed out the remaining hard-core LTTE cadres, who are amongst the refugees. There may be other hard-core cadres in the rest of the country, but major combat occured in the North East, so obviously, they’ll be in amongst this group of IDPs. So AI’s logic is faulty. No real suprise there.
Jim McDonald Says: September 15th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
In response to Mango’s comments, I would say: Continue reading →
It takes an Organizing Committee Chairman like Mohan Chandramohan, the successful businessman, entrepreneur and philanthropist, to make a fundraiser, not only classy and enjoyable, but to raise large sums of money for a good cause.
