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The Pope's Last Lap
by Gwynne DyerThe story may be apocryphal, but as Karol Wojtyla celebrates his 20th anniversary as pope it sums up the tone of his whole reign. 'As a bishop I feel forced to make you aware that there are many problems concerning the question of celibacy and the shortage of priests,' began the Spanish cardinal. 'And as Pope, I feel forced to dismiss you,' replied John Paul II.
The first Polish pope will not mark the anniversary of his election to the papacy in 1978 in any way except for a mass in St. Peter's next Sunday, but it has been a defining two decades for the Catholic Church. What remains to be seen is whether his strategy was right. The billion Catholics who are obliged to accept his judgements in 'matters of faith and morals' are the world's largest religious sect - so large that even the word 'sect' sounds out of place in this context.
Catholics are over half of the world's Christians, outnumber the world's Hindus or Buddhists, and are equal in number to all Muslims of every persuasion. But when Wojtyla became Pope, he found the Catholic Church in the throes of profound change. Under the preceding popes, the Vatican had finally ended its fierce opposition to all things 'modern'. The rejection of the doctrine of human rights as the illegitimate spawn of the anti- religious French Revolution, the ultra-conservative immobilism that led the papacy to keep silent even about Hitler, all that had finally been thrown overboard, and the Church was coming to terms with democracy, freedom of speech, and religious pluralism.
Wojtyla had no quarrel with that. He trained secretly as a priest while working in a chemicals plant in Nazi-occupied Poland, and cut his teeth in the struggle against the Communist regime that was imposed on his country after 1945. In political matters, he is thoroughly modern, and has made equally cogent ethical critiques of totalitarianism and of unbridled global capitalism.
Indeed, some give John Paul II much of the credit for the greatest democratic transformation of our time, the fall of European Communism. 'Everything that happened in Eastern Europe would have been impossible without the presence of this Pope,' wrote Mikhail Gorbachev - and even if that overstates the case, his role was certainly quite large. But what concerned Wojtyla more than mere politics was the erosion of core Catholic beliefs and practices.
Mass education, urbanisation, mass media, free speech and democracy - all the things that follow on industrialisation - have been undermining the hold of religion on people's minds in the West for several generations, and now the same phenomena are occurring worldwide. Relatively few people reject religion utterly, but most people's belief becomes diffuse and conditional, and their practical connections with organised religion wither away. In Western Europe, this is more or less an accomplished fact, with ten percent of the population or less actively practicing any religion. But what particularly worried Wojtyla (as it does non-Christian religious leaders) was the likelihood that global industrialisation and global media would spread this phenomenon worldwide.
Non-Christian religious leaders publicly insist that this is only a European phenomenon, but they secretly fear that it may just have happened to Christianity first. Given an equally long exposure to the same influences, why should urban Muslims or Hindus be more immune than European Christians? After all, the latter were equally devout up to the end of the last century. Even more to the point, from the Vatican's point of view: why should non-European Catholics be more immune?
This is John Paul II's highest concern, because the centre of gravity of Catholicism long ago moved out of Europe. It now resides firmly in the Third World: in Latin America (90 percent of the population), in Africa (25-30 percent), and in Asia (less than 5 percent). This is where the future of Catholicism lies, and it is for this non-European Catholic world that the pope has designed his long-term strategy. He is open-minded, even 'progressive' on social and political issues, but utterly inflexible on questions of religious doctrine: no to contraception, no to divorce, no to married priests, no to women priests.
It's a more sophisticated approach than the fundamentalism that other religions have fallen prey to, for it does not reject modernity wholesale. It does involve quite autocratic behaviour, but then the cosmos is not, in Christian doctrine, a democracy. The point of all this, one suspects, is not merely to enforce Karol Wojtyla's personal values on the Church. It is also to put the whole question of core religious doctrine off limits to rational debate, because such debates will lead to differences of opinion, and probably a diversity of practice, and almost certainly a rise in doubt - especially in the Third World. While not precisely writing Europe off (and certainly not Eastern Europe), John Paul II has accepted that his approach will outrage the liberal sentiments of many European and North American Catholics.
If it keeps the Church strong and undivided in the Third World, he reckons, it's a good bargain. And he could be right. Right or wrong, the Catholic Church is committed to this strategy not just for his remaining lifetime (which may not be very long), but for the foreseeable future. Over the past twenty years, he has chosen 90 percent of the cardinals who will choose his successor: the policy will not change after his death. Will the strategy work in the long run? Will one in six human beings still be a Catholic in twenty years' time? Probably not - for only about half of the nominal Catholics in the world are fully observant even now.
Maybe no strategy can save religions from the modern transformation into a devout core surrounded by a much larger number of half-believers and disbelievers. But at least it is a coherent strategy, and a good deal less pernicious than some.
Dubious fronts of the LTTE
By a Special CorrespondentThe agony that Sri Lanka has endured over the last fifteen years has seen vultures of different hues feeding on our misery. The arms smugglers, the politicians, the bureaucrats and technocrats (of the previous government) fattened themselves on the misery of our people. Woe betide them: for they will see their nemesis sooner than later, (wherever they may seek refuge)
And then there were (and are) the seemingly innocuous 'NGO's' both local and foreign who, in the guise of helping the country on the road to reconciliation and peace actually sought (and still seek) to support the dismemberment of our country. Behind some of them are the several 'eminences grises (to render eminence grise into the plural) of foreign secret services and other manipulators (the local jerks do not realise that )
Those who were fooled by the organisation called International Alert included some very 'honourable and highly intelligent' men 'of great character' and undeniably incorruptible. They were given first class air tickets and super-star hotel rooms in Crete, Ireland and Manila. These much-beloved people included general Kalkat, Mr. Dick-Shit (one time 'Viceroy' for India in Sri Lanka: remember that arrogant posture over TV from the ebony throne on the occasion of the tragic Indo-Sri Lanka accord). Others who joined the soup-train included Mr. Sarath Amunugama, the hossanna singing Mr. Bradman Weerakoon, Harry Gunathilake, (we wonder why ) Mr. Mahinda Samarasinghe (ha - ha!) and several others: all seekers of peace.
Let us go back to this organisation International Alert, the nature of which is now even 'prathyaksha' to the Norwegrean authorities on whom light has now dawned but who yet refer to the Sinhala as 'enemies'.
IA's start in the 1980's was with the Sri Lankan problem IA's 'origins is in the conflict within Sri Lanka between Sinhalese and Tamils' as one of IA's publications put it. It was also an origin very much from a non neutral point of view to make 'widely known', 'the present condition of the Tamil people and their genuine demands'. Its stated aims was to support the Tamil cause. As part of this endeavour it also published a fictitious map showing nearly fifty per cent of the Island as main Tamil areas including the central highlands and parts of the South including Hambantota. This was not only propagating the traditional homelands fiction but carrying it to a conclusion beyond the creators of this separatist fiction. One of IA's documents also mentions that its general objectives included alerting on 'mass killings and genocide'. The same document mentions that in Sri Lanka, it is making a 'major effort' on several fronts including 'UN interventions'.
There was no doubt of IA's intentions: its acceptance of a skewed version of Sri Lanka events, a fictitious Sri Lanka history and its advocacy of intervention in the country's internal affairs. These facts, and specially its acknowledged partiality in the Sri Lankan conflict, when put besides the serious charges made against IA by the elected government of Sierra Leone of siding with rebels in diamond smuggling and coup-making, take an ominous tone for all Sri Lankans including our government.
Rupasinghe had in his journal Jana Vegaya firmly taken the view that the Tamil separatists were racists working closely with South Indian groups to subvert Sri Lanka, very much the opposite view of IA. Why then was this charge of conviction and stance ?
In the course of the newspaper debate one Honeywell of IA said that International Alert rejected the Sierra Leone coup (after it took place). But the deposed President of Sierra Leone did not accept IA's word because six months later, he was on American TV accusing IA of involvement in the coup.
Furthermore, the evaluation report by the Norwegian Christiansen organisation pointed out that ' IA has been subject to serious allegations in Sierra Leone which the organisation itself has celebrated as its main achievement (page 1 ) .... IA's neutrality and transparency was widely questioned by the Freetown (Sierra Leone) authorities, international organisation and other governments ... Many in the international community (believed) that IA was working as an adviser (to the rebels), not a neutral facilitator, in the peace process. A's interventions, in particular its continued lobbying of senior politicians and international civil servants despite the Trustees (of IA) decision to become 'non-operational', served to create confusion (and thus suspicion) regarding IA's intentions'. (p 61 )
So IA's credibility, transparency, reputation and effectiveness were all in strong doubt as document by their donors own agents at the end of 1997. But IA had their warning already in 1996 in a British Parliament report .
This report said 'International Alert was, in a sense, the odd man out, being the only NGO amongst governmental regional organisations. Their presence at the talks was controversial for many reasons. International Alert had made the first contact with the (rebel group) RUF and had been successful in persuading Foday Sankoh to release foreign hostages, which raised suspicion that they were not entirely neutral. This concern was fuelled by the fact that International Alert is not seen to be entirely transparent in its actions. This sentiment was expressed.... by members of the government delegation, the press, many NGOs and the public.' (The Conflict in Sierra Leone September 1996, Parliamentary Human Rights Group p 30)
It will be interesting if IA publishes how much they have spent in Sri Lanka, on what activities and on whom. If IA believes in transparency, they should circulate particularly among the parliamentarians and others whom they sponsored, copies of the reports of their donors and of the UK Parliament. The IA may also make public all faxes and the substance of telephone calls to and from IA and its Director in the week immediately proceeding and immediately following the Sierra Leone coup. The British foreign office probably already has this information.
In connection with all the foregoing it is pertinent to refer to the denial by Mr. Ajit Rupasinghe of the National Peace Council, that he participated in a Tiger Event in Geneva.
The following paragraph appeared in the Tiger newspaper 'HOT SPRING' along with a large picture with banners, in an article calling for recognition of the LTTE as a ' liberation organization'! This page also has Tiger flag in the picture.
"Thousands of Tamils joined the march and rally arranged by the Swiss Federation of Tamil Associations in Geneva on 11th August. The procession which began at the main railway station in Geneva ended at the UN building. Rev. Daniel Thiyagarajah from the Vanni, Ms. Karen Parker, Human Rights lawyer from the US, Mr. Ajit Rupasinghe of the National Peace Council, Colombo, Mr. James Karan, President of the International Federation of Tamils, Ms. Eliza Mann of the Tamil Centre for Human Rights, UK and LTTE representative in Switzerland, Nadarajah Muralitharan were the speakers. The rally ended with a liberation song sung in chorus by the thousands of participants at the rally.
This is direct proof of Ajit Rupasinghe and the National Peace Council associating themselves directly with the Tigers and some of their front organisations. This type of association is now banned. The Sri Lanka civil authorities and the armed forces as well as the US and Indian authorities who have declared the LTTE as a terrorist organisation should immediately investigate the NPC to find out if those contacts are continuing and what the past contacts have been.
Also, Ajit Rupasinghe, Jehan Perera and all those who stand for dismemberment of Sri Lanka, talk of self determination. Their questions on self determination should be addressed to the UN, whose former Secretary General Mr. Boutros Boutros Ghali said:
"Sub national, ethnic or tribal factors cannot expect to undermine the political unit in which they exist, while claiming the privileges of a Sovereign nation state it is a generator of ethnic cleansing, racism and crimes against humanity'.
The writer must also refer here to the Tiger front newspaper (edited by Vasantharajah) Tamil Guardian's issue of May 23. This is almost exclusively devoted to denigrating the offensive against the LTTE butchers and glorifying their victories. Its front page is devoted to an exclusive interview with the racist Prabakaran and an article extolling Tiger war efforts. And its back page is devoted to pictures of the Tigers at war. One has a specially macabre picture of Prabakaran posing with a suicide bomber. The paper has also a one page long letter to President Chandrika Kumaratunga by Vasantharajah telling her among others that 'the LTTE is the leadership of the Tigers'. The thrust of this intensely pro-Tiger article is to call for third party intervention in Sri Lanka which the government rejects. As an example of support for the article's ideas if says, 'the National Peace Council, held a well-attended convention recently brandishing the slogan don't wage War on our behalf, adding that this was a sign of the 'Sinhalese' wanting their leaders meaning Chandrika Kumaratunga to 'a just settlement with the LTTE'.
Vasantharajah spells out that this 'just settlement' as a result of external intervention would result in a 'plebistice' in the North-East where 'over 98% would vote for total independence'. Near 100% plebistices which international intervention would bring together with separation reminds one immediately of the rigged 'elections' of dictatorships, well in keeping with Tigers practice of eliminating all dissent. In a similar vein, the paper editorialises on 'Harnessing Sinhala support for peace talks' where it says that the 'LTTE's popularity has skyrocketed'. Interestingly it carries a prominent article by Ajit Rupasinghe, who apart from his National Peace Council affiliations is also identified as the Secretary of the Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist). The article ridicules the current government's defence efforts allegedly quoting two military persons Harry Gonatilleke and Lucky Algama.
Now, the gazette notice (1998 Jan 27) banning the Tigers although less stronger than the equivalent Indian ban has some very tight strictures. It says that the provision of the ban 'shall also apply to every other organisation and to everybody or group of persons engaged in activities substantially similar to those carried on by the Tigers', that is to Tiger fronts. Among the offences listed are 'making, printing, distribution or publication of any writing' by or on behalf or are Tigers. This authorises the minister to investigate any organization or person fronting for the Tigers and forfeit their property.
There is ample evidence to indicate that the Tamil Guardian is a front of the Tigers and that Ajit Rupasinghe is a contributor to this front's organ. This is enough prima facie evidence for Ajit Rupasinghe, his National Peace Council and his political party of which he is secretary to be immediately investigated.
