Yesterday I was reading this bit about how the Sri Lankan army mercilessly ploughed through civilians to get the LTTE. And how the Chinese government tacitly supported them in exchange for letting them build a port in Sri Lanka. I complained to a friend on how the Chinese seem willing to deal with tyrants and despotic governments when it suits their needs. The hypocrisy of that statement was apparent to me as soon as I uttered it. Whereas I like this country I live in and all the freedoms it affords me, I realize these don’t come cheap. They come through equally nefarious deals with doubly despotic regimes around the world. At the cost of freedoms of many others. The Chinese are no different.
I then shifted my anger to the Sri Lankans and wondered how they could kill so many of their own, Tamil and Sinhala, to weed out the vermin that were the LTTE. But then I have never been as vocal about my government blatantly killing off my own countrymen, Sikh and Hindu and Muslim, in the 80’s to end the insurgency in Punjab. Why is my government now lecturing the Sri Lankans about human rights? Why am I lecturing them?
Analysts have given the SL government credit for introducing a savage and effective brand of counterinsurgency. Maybe they need a lesson in Indian history. Been there, killed many.
A lot of uncomfortable thoughts are floating in my head. We seem to espouse the virtues of democracy and free speech at every given opportunity. Yet we are more than willing to compromise with our values when we see the slightest threat to our interests. Maybe that is the trick to being a democracy or “free society”.
Hypocrisy. By the people, for the people …
At least the Chinese aren’t pretending.
Good interview although I sometimes felt that they were competing for foreign street cred. Need to read Robert Kaplan’s books, since they’re all based in geographical regions of interest.