Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/untrip1may8srilanka052209.html
COLOMBO AIRPORT, May 22 -- As UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Colombo, he delivered prepared remarks to a crowd assembled at midnight. Soldiers with machine guns lined a rain-drenched red carpet. Inside a VIP terminal, Mr. Ban signed a guest book the message of which was pre-written. Flanked by Sri Lanka's foreign minister and UN envoy Vijay Nambiar, before a jostling crowd of photographing media including Inner City Press, Ban recited from his speech.
At the last minute, a line was removed from his remarks: "A great many Sri Lankans are understandably joyous that a long conflict is over." This was distributed to the Press accompanying Mr. Ban and his officials on the UN plane, and then crossed out in ball point pen. What to make of the deletion?
Left in, however, was the line "I hope my visit today can help begin a process of national recovery, renewal and reconciliation for all Sri Lankans." One wag on the plane joked, "No, Mister Nambiar has started that process."
No questions were taken after the foreign minister spoke. The Press was hustled out to a waiting mini-bus and sped out of the airport, into the darkness of a neighborhood full of textile plants.
Ban's schedule for Saturday begins at 8 am with a meeting with the Sri Lankan foreign minister. From there, the group will be taken, seriatim, to a hospital, then to the Manik Farms camp for internally displaced people. The visit, Inner City Press is told, will be to Zones Two and Four.
The UN's top humanitarian John Holmes told the Press that Zone One, the first built, has semi-permanent houses with roofs of tin or some local equivalent. The plane-wag asked, what are they hiding in Zone Three? Much more seriously, there is talk of a post mortem of a woman who died in the camps, reportedly of starvation.
Then Ban and the Press will be taken for a fly-over of the conflict zone. Somehow from these heights, Ban's chief of staff Vijay Nambiar was able to conclusively determine that no more civilians remain in the Zone.
Ban's day, and trip to Sri Lanka, will end with a private dinner in Kandy with President Mahinda Rajapaksa, followed it is said by a press availability. Then Ban will fly onward to Copenhagen. Can these 24 hours "begin a process of national recovery, renewal and reconciliation for all Sri Lankans"? Watch this site.And see, www.innercitypress.com/untrip1may8srilanka052209.html
