LTTE flag being unfurled by a supporter in Grenada when Sri Lanka took on Australia during the recent World Cup.
The recent campaign by Amnesty International against human-rights abuses in Sri Lanka has created quite a hullabaloo. Using as a springboard the English idiom 'It's not cricket' (meaning not on the level), Amnesty used the occasion of the Cricket World Cup to mount an international campaign called 'Play by the Rules'. The programme involved sending cricket balls to Australia, the Bahamas, Bermuda, India, Nepal and the UK, inviting concerned individuals to sign them in support of sending independent monitors to Sri Lanka to oversee human-rights issues. The signed balls are to be delivered to representatives of the Colombo government and the LTTE.
Amnesty International (AI) personnel are modern missionaries: secular, rational, well-intentioned and firmly attached to the problematic notion of the autonomous individual as a principle of universal applicability. In a world bedevilled by atrocities committed by powerful and weak states and militants alike, such an organisation is much needed. But this does not preclude questions about AI's missionary excesses – for instance, the organisation's vague use of the word child in its campaign against child soldiers to refer to those as old as 16.
In its missionary zeal, Amnesty chose to use cricket as an engine of pressure on both the government and the LTTE. AI may have been inspired by the example of FIFA, the international football agency, which innovatively campaigned against racism in sport during the 2006 World Cup football matches. But there are important differences between FIFA's actions and those of Amnesty International, in terms of both context and response. FIFA followed a policy of uniformity and universality. It did not name names, nor single out culprit governments. It was also acting within its own realm and field of jurisdiction.