Harvard training cannot make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. Rajiva Wijesinha ready to debate Bruce Fein, in DELHI, COLOMBO, WASHINGTON, OR ATLANTA

Rajiva Wijesinha ready to debate “Gotabhaya-Sarath Genocide” issue with Bruce Fein:

Harvard training cannot make a silk purse from a sow's ear.Wijesinha ready to
debate Bruce Fein, in DELHI, COLOMBO, WASHINGTON, OR ATLANTA.

(War of word continues, without the Model indictment for a "MOCK TRIAL" not being ready for a month. Such debates does not help the poor Tamils who are suffering the blatant human rights violations perpetrated by the State. However, there is a legal difference of such violations from GENOCIDE. No body cares about what King Duttugemunu did or not do, and what is allegedly written in the Mahavamsa, Koran, Bhavat Geeta, Buddhist books, or the Bible.The veracity of the history has been questioned by many academics and scholars, but what "legally" matters is the decision of United States Attorney General Eric Holder, the US attorney in Washington, New York or Los Angeles, with whom attorney Bruce Fein decides to communicate, which he has been reluctant for over a year. He had come up with 1001 excuses to his only client Tamils For Justice for months. The new secretary of State is certain to keep her distance from both the debaters for obvious reasons.

His claim that he is counsel, and not the attorney, and he has any attorney-client
agreement is more than a dubious claim, and of dubious distinction. The debate if it does ever occur with the Professor of English from the Sabragamuwa University would be at least interesting and funny.
But what does that prove?

If the debate is held in Washington, there is no doubt that the Department of Justice or the State Department would even bother to send any representatives as observers.
The US attorney (Representing the FEDS would definitely not attend. However, the 2 FBI agents who are investigating the Tamils in New York and Maryland are definitely bound to attend).

The connection between Bruce Fein, Tamil Net, the interviewer, and Tamils Against Genocide would be published by Tamils for Justice.

We would provide Tamils Against Genocide, Tamil Net, and Bruce Fein to explain themselves, before we provide the "Truth and Nothing but the Truth"

Tamils Against Genocide"

Prof.Rajiva Wijesinha, Sri Lanka’s peace secretariat secretary – general and secretary to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights , has announced his willingness to engage in public debate with US lawyer Bruce Fein over the “Genocide” issue .

Bruce Fein in his capacity as counsel for the US based “Tamils against genocide” group has prepared a 400 + page model indictment against US citizen and Sri Lankan defence secretary Gotabhaya and US Green card holder cum Sri Lankan army commander Sarath Fonseka for genocide in violation of section 1091 of the US criminal code.

Prof. Wijesinha wrote some critical comments of the envisaged action in a signed article in the peace secretariat website.

Following this ,Bruce Fein in a letter challenged Prof Wijesinha or any other Sri Lankan official for a debate on his model indictment “any time” or at “any venue”.

Responding to this, Prof. Wijesinha has in another signed article asked Bruce Fein to send him a copy of the model indictment first and that he would be “delighted to debate its contents ” with him as well as various other points made by Fein to substantiate his case.

We reproduce below the articles written by both Bruce Fein and Rajiva Wijesinha in this regard:

BRUCE FEIN:

“ I have prepared an approximately 400+ page model indictment against United States citizen and Sri Lankan Defense Minister Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and United States green card holder and Sri Lankan Lt. General Sarath Fonseka for genocide in violation of the Section 1091 of the United States criminal code. The United States law applies irrespective of the location of the genocide or the nationality of the genocide defendant. The model indictment is scheduled for publication and presentation to the United States Congress, the Department of Justice, and the Department of State in less than two weeks. The crime of genocide under United States law exposes the genocide defendant to the death penalty.

The model indictment elaborates a genocide narrative in the following manner. The politically and numerically dominant Sinhalese Buddhists have embraced and celebrated a culture of genocide against non-Sinhalese Buddhists since at least Sri Lankan independence in 1948. The genocide culture was informed by the Mahavamsa, the teachings of Dharmapala, and contemporary dogmas of Buddhist monks. Their common idiom is that Sri Lanka is an island for Sinhalese Buddhists only; and, that all others are intruders who must be either exterminated, expelled, or reduced to vassalage because of their ethnicity or religion. Thus, the Mahavamsa pays homage to King Duttugemenu for massacring Tamils who are described as sub-human.

The genocide indictment summons three types of evidence to establish guilt based on incidents since November 2005: approximately 3,000 incidents of extrajudicial murders or disappearances; approximately 1,000 incidents of causing serious bodily injury; and, approximately 2,000 incidents of creating conditions of life intended to cause the physical destruction of Tamils that affected 1 million, for example, starvation, deprivation of medicine, never-ending displacements that engendered permanent feelings of physical, economic, and psychological insecurity.

On December 15, 2008, Professor Rajiva Wijesinha, Secretary General, Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process, an echo chamber instrumentality of the Government of Sri Lanka, sallied forth on his website (www.peaceinsrilanka.org) with an awesome arsenal of irrelevancies and non sequiturs to confute my model genocide indictment. The Professor’s sophistry builds on the casuistry taught to every first year law student: If the law is against you, argue the facts; if the facts are against you, argue the law; and, if the law and the facts are against you, confuse the issue. Accordingly, Professor Wijesinha’s delivers an indictment against the LTTE as a purported defense to the Rajapaksa-Fonseka genocides. The genocide prosecution sought against Sudanese President Omar Bashir has rejected such a defense theory to a charge of genocide. In addressing the model genocide indictment I have prepared, this is what Professor Wijesinha adduces to persuade the reader to return a verdict of not guilty: not a single word or fact.

Indeed, the Professor never denies the Rajapaksa-Fonseka genocides. He simply bloviates: “Fein may see himself as an expert in pressing the right buttons, but [Tamils Against Genocide] should rethink squandering its funds on such characters.”

I challenge Professor Wijesinha or any official in the Government of Sri Lanka to debate me over the model genocide indictment at any time and in any venue of his or their choosing, including Colombo. I promise to arrive armed only with the truth; but my opponent may choose to come protected by the Sri Lankan Army and Pillaiyan. I am eager for a reply to my debate challenge. Silence will speak volumes of guilt.

Bruce Fein
Counsel for Tamils Against Genocide

RAJIVA WIJESINHA:

Bruce Fein has it seems used his contacts on TamilNet to challenge me for a debate over what he terms his model genocide indictment. A couple of days ago this indictment had been announced on TamilNet in an interview with Mr Fein, which prompted a response from me that drew attention to Mr Fein’s moral confusion.

I have now been sent yet another article from TamilNet which suggests that Mr Fein’s confusion was deliberate. He declares that part of what he claims is ‘the casuistry taught to every first year law student’ is the principle ‘if the law and the facts are against you, confuse the issue.’

I’m afraid that I went to a very different type of school to Mr Fein’s, and was not taught such casuistry. However, if Mr Fein believes that, at any rate in the circles in which he moves, casuistry is obligatory for lawyers, then clearly any moral criticism of his latest effusions will be like water off a duck’s back.

However, I would have thought that, since Mr Fein was educated at Harvard, he would have been taught - assuming indeed that Harvard encouraged casuistry, which I would not want to accept without confirmation from less biased sources - that he was taught to be careful even in casuistry. Sadly that capacity now seems to elude him. He seems to think that my article was designed ‘to persuade the reader to return a verdict of not guilty’, obviously not concerned with the fact that I have not yet seen the indictment and cannot therefore take issue with what purports to be its substance.If Mr Fein were to send me a copy of the indictment, I would be delighted to debate its content with him, as well as the various points he makes in trying to substantiate his case.

I am not sure why his ‘challenge’ is issued through TamilNet, but I will certainly respond positively to an invitation sent to the Peace Secretariat, the website of which he has evidently consulted. He can fax an invitation to the address given there, suggesting a venue of his choice, though if he prefers the United States I hope he or his backers will finance my travel. Otherwise perhaps an academic centre in Delhi would be appropriate, or the Maldives if he enjoys warmth. Certainly I would prefer not to travel West until spring (unless a place like the Carter Centre in Atlanta could be relied upon for reasonable weather), but he would doubtless prefer the debate to take place earlier.

Meanwhile I should perhaps point out a few other instances which suggest either that his little grey cells are in decline, or else that he has such contempt for his audience that he thinks they will not understand the extravagant nature of his casuistry. In his latest attack, entitled ‘Professorial Nonsense on Stilts’, he spends even more space than before on declaring that there is a culture of genocide that dates back to the Mahavamsa, the ancient chronicle of Sri Lankan history. He asserts that ‘the Mahavamsa pays homage to King Duttugemenu for massacring Tamils who are described as sub-human’, which is a strange statement since Dutugemunu is specifically described as ordering homage to the Tamil King he overcame, King Elara, who is described as a just king. Incidentally I should note that, when I was Chairman of the Academic Affairs Board of the National Institute of Education, the history syllabus was amended to specifically mention the need for all students to learn about Elara as one of the great kings of Anuradhapura.

Whilst it is likely that such assertions spring from ignorance and myopia, his sleight of hand regarding Madeleine Albright is more sinister. Having referred to the New York-based Genocide Prevention Project that included Sri Lanka as a ‘red alert’ country, he says that ‘the Obama administration was handed a policy report on genocide with specific recommendations from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. This is likely to bring Sri Lanka's genocide into U.S. focus.’ The implication, though there is not actual falsehood, is that the Albright report referred to Sri Lanka. This is not the case, but of course Fein believes his case will be strengthened by introducing Ms Albright’s name.

Finally, he claims that I have delivered ‘an indictment against the LTTE as a purported defense to the Rajapaksa-Fonseka genocides’ and that ‘The genocide prosecution sought against Sudanese President Omar Bashir has rejected such a defense theory to a charge of genocide’. This is obviously an attempt, like his misleading invocation of Ms Albright on his side, to use a name that might sound a ‘red alert’ to his chosen audience so as to denigrate his own chosen victims.

What he fails to mention is that what he considers my ‘indictment against the LTTE’ was that of Human Rights Watch. I cited them to show that his attempt to use them to denigrate the Sri Lankan government was singularly crass since, the day after the Fein 400+ page excursus, which he sought to shore up by invoking HRW in addition to Ms Albright, HRW delivered a forceful indictment of the LTTE. Mr Fein’s latest diatribe fails to register this fact. I will not suggest that this obfuscation is his attempt to defend the LTTE from the HRW indictment, because that would be stooping to his level. But his inability to escape from the culture of obfuscation that has now taken him over is a sad reminder of how even Harvard training cannot make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.

Prof Rajiva Wijesinha
Secretary General
Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process

Posted by transCurrents on December 18, 2008 01:50