Oh dear, Rohini Hensman has returned but reason has not returned to Rohini Hensman. I really do not have the time or inclination to deal with her near-hysterical ranting, but I must respond to her direct reference to me. In The Island of Tuesday February 12th, she writes:

"Similarly, Louise Arbour's repeated offers to set up a UN human rights monitoring mission in Sri Lanka have been rejected by the president and UN ambassador Dayan Jayatilleka. Again, their purpose is to allow the armed forces and their commanders the freedom to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity with impunity, but an inevitable consequence is that LTTE too is able to get away with mass murder."

Now Ms Hensman may well argue that the result of our refusal to permit a UN human rights Monitoring Mission will be the ghastly scenario that she sets out, but she has no right, evidence or reasoned argument to impute "purpose" or motive to that stand ( as in " again, their purpose is to allow…).

I could for example assert that the purpose of Ms Hensman’s diatribes is to prevent the military defeat of the LTTE at the hands of the Sri Lankan state, facilitate Western intervention in Sri Lanka and set up the kind of society which prevailed in colonial Ceylon during which ethnic, religious and socioeconomic minorities ruled over the majority, but I shan’t say that because I have no evidence or reason to do so. Instead I shall content myself by saying that this could be the upshot of the course of action that Ms Hensman advocates.

Contrary to the fantasies of this expatriate daughter of long-time expatriates, Louise Arbour and a UN human rights monitoring mission cannot prevent the LTTE from getting away with mass murder. Only the men and guns of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces can and will.