My friend Kalana Senaratne and I were discussing the current balance of power in the world the other day. We were trying to figure out the source of anxiety among certain sections of the international community. The current vitriol that some morally compromised British parliamentarians as well as sections of the British media have showered on Sri Lanka, we decided, was not just about a concern for Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka.

In this day and age it is not difficult to trace back claim and assess veracity by checking out the author of ‘fact’. But still, they said that over 20,000 people were killed in a matter of two weeks during the last days of the LTTE. No substantiation whatsoever! So much for journalistic ethics! Now they say that 16,000 people have been spirited out of welfare centres. In three weeks. That’s roughly 800 people disappearing every day. And guess what, there is one person covering all such facilities diligently checking who comes in and who goes out, taking down notes and making a head count. Next they’ll say that Sri Lanka arm-twisted 29 countries to vote on her Resolution at the Human Rights Council, threatening to cut off aid or scuttle preferential trade agreements, I suppose. One word comes to mind: crap!

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navaneetham Pillay wants unfettered access for humanitarian workers into Sri Lanka and into facilities for IDPs. For starters, if there is such a thing called ‘fettered access’, then there was a time when we did grant this ‘access’ to all kinds of UN organizations, INGOs, peace-makers, peace-brokers and other Good Samaritans. We know what they did. They functioned as a supply line to the world’s most ruthless terrorist outfit. Heck, some people even chose to remain *with* the LTTE when other NGOs and INGOs fled into the safety of Government-controlled areas. Throw in the fact that some of these ‘ladies’ and ‘gentlemen’ happened to be downright liars quite adept at the timeless art of misrepresentation, embellishment and what not, and no one can blame Sri Lanka for being more than a little wary of ‘unfettered’ things.

Interestingly an aspect of the ‘unfetteredness’ that these people are adamant about is freedom to move in and around these facilities in their luxury 4-wheel drive vehicles. Not one or two, mind you; each outfit wants 10 vehicles to be tagged ‘Unfettered’. There are over 50 such organizations currently working in the IDP camps. That’s ‘freedom of access’ to approximately 250 vehicles (assuming that the staff operates in two shifts) at any given time. During dry weather this would transform these camps into dust bowls; during rainy weather into paddy fields. How this improves the conditions of the IDPs, I have no idea. We must remember also that ‘unfettering’ would see the number of INGOs and personnel increasing at least 10 fold.

It is simple, I was told. The members of the international community currently operating in Sri Lanka and those who would love to come here are supposed to be of fragile disposition. The poor dears are not exactly barefoot doctors. They can’t park their vehicles outside and walk a little in the hot sun. They can’t, like the ICRC, choose the option of a 3-wheeler even.

So what’s their problem? What really bites their bottoms so much that they have to leave their home countries (which are by no means Gardens of Eden) and come here to Sri Lanka only to gripe about being fettered? I believe they are the internationally displaced, those citizens of has-been nations that no longer have the economic or political clout to make their rhetoric sway the family of nations. They are not happy in London. They probably suffer some hang-ups regarding complicity in the horrendously violent colonial project. They, perhaps, want to compensate ‘in their own little way’. Some gumption isn’t it, to assume that we need them here or that without them we will all starve and die?

The problem of the internationally displaced person desperately weeping for an ‘unfettered’ license is but a reflection of the fact that today there are internationally displaced nations. My friend Rasika says that one could substitute ‘misplaced’ for ‘displaced’. True, true. The thing is that the world map somehow underwent a bit of crumpling over the past twenty years or so. Did you hear by the way that General Motors in the USA is to be ‘nationalized’? Could anyone have imagined such a thing 10 years ago? What has happened is that the centre of gravity has shifted. The USA is no longer taken seriously and therefore Miliband’s rants provoke nothing more than a grin, in the manner of an indulgent adult when a teenager acts the know-all.

The former world powers have been internationally displaced. Today they don’t know whether they are coming or going and therefore try to find refuge in being a resurgent colonial. They can’t really thumb their noses at China, Russia or India. Not even Iran or Venezuela. They tried it against ‘lowly’ Iraq and Afghanistan and got whipped like errant schoolboys caught playing truant. Sri Lanka is certainly not China or Russia, not even Iran or Venezuela, so perhaps they thought ‘fair game’ in terms of getting an ego-massage. What happened though? The entire European Union had to run with their collective tail between their legs, notwithstanding Pillai’s partiality to their cause.

Now they don’t have a place to go. So they rant and rave about ‘unfettered access’, ‘impartial and independent investigation’ about what happened in Sri Lanka, quite forgetting what they did to Sri Lanka for centuries, how they aggravated the situation in Sri Lanka by whitewashing terrorism and of course what they did to half the countries in the world and still do to them, spilling blood, orphaning in the millions and causing disease, hunger and displacement.

Today the grandfathers of displacement have been themselves displaced. I feel sorry for them. They need some nourishment, especially of the moral kind. They need help to get by. They need help to get off their moral high horse for their limbs and minds have got stiffened thanks to centuries of comfort acquired by brigandry. They cannot be resettled in their traditional homelands of plunder, rape, pillage and genocide; they have to be rehabilitated first. And I believe the people of Sri Lanka would be more than willing to give them unfettered access to Sri Lanka for such rehabilitation.

They would do well, these internationally displaced, to heed the words that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon uttered a short while ago: "Whenever and wherever there are credible allegations of violations of humanitarian law, there should be a proper investigation."

Ban Ki-moon is basically saying ‘there should be a proper investigation of the USA-UK led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, about treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, about an air attack in Bola-Boluk, Afghanistan and how it so happened that over a million people were displaced in the unsuccessful search for Osama bin Laden. And of course ‘weapons of mass destruction’. Ban Ki-moon wants *that *story investigated as well. Hats off to you chief! Maybe that kind of process would actually help heal a world that has been brutalized time and again by European hordes. Otherwise, I am afraid there will not be any reconciliation. Yes, that’s Pillai’s argument, not mine.

In the meantime, don’t shed any tears over the IDPs in Sri Lanka. They have problems but one thing is clear, they cannot be helped by other IDPs (the international kinds).