The Sri Lankan government is having trouble stomaching the allegations of the Human Rights Watch — a NY based watchdog — who released a 134-page report detailing specific human rights abuses in the country.

So, in piecemeal fashion, they’ve released statements and articles that attempt to deconstruct and debunk a few specific accusations, in hopes of diminishing the whole. They’ve picked at one-sided testimonials by journalists that they believe were included to tarnish their president’s image. And they’re quick to raise a clamor over line-items that “misrepresent” the intentions of internal regulating bodies.

But, as much of the international press is quick to point out, these minor points of contention should not diminish the argument made by the 1,100 people who had been mysteriously abducted and the nearly half million people who have been displaced over the last 18 months.

Even in these numbers, the Sri Lankan governing body is critical, and feeling the undue burden of international hypocrisy. Those should be numbers that gauge our success. We’re talking about terrorists here — of course we’re driving them from their homes. By any means necessary, right? The LTTE is older than the Taliban, and look at the terror they’ve brought to our island and its simple culture? With Uncle Sam across the Indian Ocean, isn’t this exactly what you’re asking the rest of the world to do?

Now, while I don’t quite agree with the mentality, I can understand where they’re coming from.

But I think they’re missing one key distinction: The Human Rights Watch isn’t an arm of some anti-Sri Lankan, pro-LTTE hypocritical Western government. Just as HRW is demanding the UN look into Sri Lanka’s abuses, it is goading Uncle Sam into closing Guantanamo and calling for Spain to treat its immigrants like humnas.

The Human Rights Watch message is this: While each of the world’s governments are constantly defining and redefining their own view of the terrorists — LTTE, Taliban, Al-Qaida, IRA, or any other enemy minority — HRW stays blind to the verbiage. In the HRW’s global guerrilla effort, the only terrorists are the powerful terrorizing the powerless and voiceless.

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