How To Be a Failure – Book Festival Defies Human Rights Censors.

If there was a Darwin Award for ‘human rights’ activists, this year’s front-runners would be Antony Loewenstein and his backers Reporters sans frontiers and JDF. They promoted the boycott of the Galle Literary Festival, (the only international literary festival in Sri Lanka) on the grounds that since there were problems with free speech in a post-war environment, the best way to improve the situation would be through a boycott, thus preventing free speech.

These geniuses presumably hadn’t realized that the BBC World Service would host a panel discussion called “After Shock: The Lingering Legacy of Civil War” with Sri Lankan human rights activists Sunila Abeysekera, Anjali Watson and a genuine, award-winning novelist Chimamanda Adichie.

“…even more fundamental than the right of free expression is the right to think.” Norm Chomsky

The lively, thoughtful debate is now available on-line and also here as a download. The panellists and audience members survived the experience.

RSF chief Gilles Lordet admitted that a boycott was “never a constructive solution” (really tell it to ‘The Man’, Gilles). It takes a special kind of genius to alienate the very people whom they claim to support, but then what else can you expect from these useful idiots including these well-known experts on Sri Lanka: Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Ken Loach and of course ‘best-selling author’ and Fluffer for Eelam, Antony Loewenstein.

At the Istanbul Conference on Freedom of Speech in 2010, the great sage Chomsky said: “…even more fundamental than the right of free expression is the right to think.” Clearly, not much sign of ‘thinking’ when opining on Sri Lanka.