Abduction saga of Swiss embassy employee

• When Ms. Francis declined to divulge information, she was threatened and sexually molested, she claimed

The story line of the alleged abduction of a local staffer of the Swiss embassy in Colombo is fast degenerating into a tragicomedy with a bad plot. Everyone, even the Swiss who went to town with the high profile abduction claim, agrees some facts do not add. Those who have a bit more nuanced understanding of the local context could well have spotted red flags long before.  

Barely a week after Gotabaya Rajapaksa was sworn in as President, the Swiss embassy complained to the Foreign Ministry that a local female staffer who was an aide to its immigration officer had been abducted on November 25. She was ‘detained against her will in the street, forced to get into a car, seriously threatened at length by unidentified men and forced in order to disclose embassy-related information,’ it said. The victim, now identified in court documents filed by the CID as Garnier Banister Francis had claimed she was blindfolded during her ordeal and was asked information about how chief inspector Adrian Nishantha Silva, former Officer-In-Charge of the Organized Crimes Investigation Division of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) was granted political asylum in Switzerland and the local accomplices who aided him. Chief Inspector Silva, who investigated several high profile killings and abductions that took place during the previous Mahinda Rajapaksa administration, secretly left for Switzerland after the election and reportedly took with him copies of sensitive information related to investigations that were under his purview. When Ms. Francis declined to divulge information, she was threatened and sexually molested, she claimed.  
Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to Germany and Switzerland Karunasena Hettiarachcchi was summoned by the foreign office in Bern twice since the incident, first to raise concerns and demand an investigation, later to ask for ‘purported evidence’ that Colombo said runs against the events described by the embassy.   

That was after the Foreign Ministry in Colombo stated that a CID investigation into the incident has revealed that sequence of events and timeline of the incident as presented by the  Swiss mission ‘did not in any way correspond with the actual movements of the alleged victim on that date.” It said its findings are based on witness interviews and technical evidence, including Uber records, CCTV footage, telephone records and the GPS data.  

It added that the victim needs to be interviewed by the CID and given that she had claimed she had sustained injuries during the alleged abduction, she should also be examined by a Judicial Medical Officer in Sri Lanka.

Whereas the Swiss embassy requested permission to airlift the local staffer and her family by an air ambulance without going through the immigration process. She and her family are living in the embassy premises. The Swiss officials had repeatedly claimed, she is still unfit for questioning due to her poor health. Intriguingly enough, it is not clear whether she had received medical attention for her purported injuries though she has reportedly been inspected via video conferencing by a medical professional from Switzerland.  
Last week, Colombo Chief Magistrate Chandra Jayaratna issued an order preventing international travel of Ms. Francis and also ordered her to give a statement to the CID before December 9.  

On Sunday evening (8), a day before the deadline, Ms. Francis arrived in the CID accompanied by the embassy officials. What she revealed in her statement or her health condition (she was medically examined by a JMO) is not known. Those will be revealed in the CID submission to the court. While her statement might help, the story line so far raises more questions than clarifying any. There are several reasons as to why.   

 First is the common sense: Granted that the former regime of the Rajapaksas was tainted by allegations of abductions, extra-judicial killings and abuse of power. However, the governments, even the most murderous ones, behave in a fairly rational manner when conducting its business. Who on the earth would want to abduct of all people, an embassy staffer of a foreign embassy, barely a week after coming to power and by doing so, to play into old prejudices that had haunted its previous tenure?  

 That would also mean handing a propaganda coup for all its detractors who have warned of a return of white vans. That is also while Gotabaya Rajapaksa having swept the Sinhala electorate is reinventing himself as the President for all Sri Lankans. The alleged abduction was supposed to have taken place on the eve of his maiden official visit to New Delhi. Unless the seventh Executive President has a serious fetish for self-harm, this simply does not add up. This is not necessarily a guarantee that this momentary restraint would last longer, though one would hope that the government would not squander its newly acquired goodwill. Still, there is a method in the madness. This is not the time.   

Instead, what if someone acted, rather prematurely, to cash on the Rajapaksas’ past reputation, and old prejudices associated with President Gotabaya? That is a much more rational choice. At times, the whole process of asylum-seeking treads into murky waters of imaginary and concocted tales of victim-hood. Ruses such as Self-Infliction By Proxy (SIBP) of injuries to support torture claims happened to be a common practice. Recently, the British Court has rejected asylum applications on the grounds of SIBP. When the Swiss are so liberally peddling asylum visas to the perceived victims of the new government, why not play the victim? The new government is blaming on ‘subtle moves’ ostensibly by diaspora groups to undermine it internationally-Though, the primary motive of bogus asylum claims is personal, rather than being part of any loftier international campaign.   

There is another reason that inadvertently blurs the line between facts and fiction: The Western foreign missions in this country suffer from a ‘confirmation bias’ when processing information. In other words, you search for and interpret information that only confirms your already existing cognitive bias. That is a common behaviour pattern in news consumption.  
 However, by doing so, you overlook a large reservoir of competing and opposing narratives that do not necessarily fit into your ideological, political, ethnic, cultural preferences. Newspapers and especially the electronic media, both at home and abroad flourish by clearly understanding what their readers/ audience want and positioning their coverage to suit their collective cognitive bias. 

The cognitive bias of the Good Samaritans of the Western missions are reinforced through an incestuous small circle of Colombo-based liberal literati and NGO captains, most of whom suffer from a not-so-subtle anti- Sinhalese Buddhist bias. A journalist estimates that the entire crowd is not more than 1600 folks. That is a lot of people if you invite for a cocktail party or the national day event. But, if it is your window to Sri Lanka, you are living in a bubble.   

That is one reason why embassy communique sent to their head offices or statements by UN Human Rights Chief sounds like right off from the Tiger-fronted advocacy project of Yasmin Zooka. The average Western diplomat is reading too much of that propaganda, partly because that is what they look for and that is also what their head offices want to hear. Also, that is what their local analysts, taking a leaf from the media industry, dish out to their expat bosses. Effectively, this incestuous circle keeps going on in an unending cycle of ego-boost and self-gratification.  

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