First published in Midweek Review, The Island, on Wednesday 18th February 2009
The following is not a reply to any article or articles that appeared in this paper or elsewhere about the subject discussed. It is meant to represent my personal response as a Sri Lankan citizen to what I see as partisan reactions of certain members of the ‘international community’ and their local/native representatives who are alien to our way of thinking about the matter; these biased attitudes are evident in the local as well as foreign media.
A loud chorus of such spurious slogans and warnings as ‘amnesty’, ‘reconciliation’, ‘danger of triumphalism’, ‘need to address the grievances of the Tamil people’, etc., can be heard these days from certain brazen LTTE supporters, especially in the NGO fraternity.These dealers in charity of the NGO cartel are still trying to throw the few remaining terrorists a lifeline in order that they might live to resume their terrorism in the future so that there will be enough victims to justify the continuation of their business of raking in dollars among the international gullible in the name of charity. (The numerous genuine voluntary relief organizations sharing the same name are excluded from this general condemnation.)
If these elements talked about the need to treat the defeated LTTE members including their leaders in a humane way no one would object to that; but humanitarian concerns about the civilian population should have engaged their attention even before this. However, few of these spoke about them except when civilian concerns coincided with those of the terrorists. What is objectionable today is that foreign and local LTTE sympathizers try to pretend that the terrorists and the Tamil people are identical.
However, it is quite certain that no sensible authority, least of all the government under the wise and able leadership of President Mahinda Rajapakse, will fail to see through their false façade, and to treat their unsolicited advice with the cautious cynicism it deserves.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that the leaders of the present administration who are achieving a decisive military victory over terrorism amidst various constraints and restraints (the resistance offered by the local and international backers of the terrorists being not the least of these) will be equal to the task of managing the aftermath of the current successful humanitarian operations. They are sensitive to the yearning of the common people of this country for an early end to the terrorist problem followed by political and economic stability. The end of the LTTE terrorism must see the beginning of an era of economic prosperity and social well-being for the whole country.
We, the ordinary citizens of Sri Lanka, know better than any of our international mentors and their local mercenaries, what should be done now. As a democracy we are free to elect our rulers who will decide on a suitable plan of reconstruction and restoration for the North and the East. Already, vast development programmes have been launched in the East, and its civil administration as an integral part of the Sri Lankan state restored. Even though the liberation of the North from the terrorists cannot be said to have been completed yet, a reversal of the fortunes of the terrorists is not likely. Reconstruction and development work has already been initiated in the North with the instant repair of damaged roads and bridges, and the building of houses for the fugitive Tamil civilians fleeing LTTE captivity.
In Mr. Rajapakse we have a leader who has great empathy with the common people, and thinks like one of them. People of my generation, to which Mr. Rajapakse himself belongs, generally share a higher level of literacy than our parents as a result of the rapid expansion of state sponsored free education in the post- independence years under successive governments, and are sufficiently well educated and well informed to participate actively in a modern democracy by exploiting its various political institutions.
In addition to a general awareness of our democratic rights and responsibilities, we possess common cultural traditions that uphold altruistic, humane values.
The successful humanitarian campaign launched by the present administration under Mr. Rajapakse to liberate the people of the North and the East from mindless terror is about to end. The government’s resounding success at the Northwestern and Central Provincial Councils elections, that effectively became a virtual national referendum on its policy of following military victory with immediate tangible economic development of the liberated areas in dealing with the terrorist problem, is testimony to the people’s trust in the current stewardship of the President.
Though the LTTE and its Western dupes have always represented Mr. Rajapakse as a war monger, the truth is that he, like all his predecessors, gave the Tigers every possible opportunity to negotiate with the government, short of giving in to their usual stratagem of agreeing to peace talks only in order to gain a breather to recoup and rearm, and continue their terror campaign with renewed vigour. When Mr. Rajapakse seemed to initially dillydally with the military option (which probably was a part of his deliberate strategy), the Tiger leader in his imbecility put it down to his weakness.
The Tigers’ closure of the Maavil Aru sluice-gate (Mahaveli Amuna) which destroyed thousands of acres of lush paddy, thereby depriving the peasant population of the area of their age-old livelihood and, even of their drinking water was perhaps meant to provoke a military response from the government in the face of human misery; they must have thought that this would lead to a final showdown in which they hoped to defeat the armed forces, and establish their Eelam. But for them fate decided otherwise. They were well and truly beaten in the East, and then got holed up in the North.
The present ignominious lot of the erstwhile Sun God is to cower in a bunker to save his wretched life, surrounded by a human shield that he himself commandeered consisting of men, women and children, reluctantly relying on the strict policy of the country’s defence forces that they would not mount an attack on him if it could lead to indiscriminate civilian casualties.
Mr. Rajapakse left the doors open for negotiations even though the Tigers were being soundly beaten and confined to an ever shrinking piece of landlocked territory with no escape route, until he decided to ban the terrorist organization in Sri Lanka at the eleventh hour recently. The present predicament of the Tigers is of their own making; they forced the government’s hand.
All along we, the ordinary people, knew that the Tigers had to be defeated militarily if we were not ready to concede their demand for a separate state, which they consider non-negotiable, and that the LTTE never talked peace with the government in good faith. However, it was also clear to us that the government was not free to deal with the terrorists in the only way it would yield results because of outside meddling occasioned by our economic vulnerability. Misinformed by the Tamil diaspora and the NGOs largely controlled by the terrorists (who were mainly responsible for their coming into being) the Western governments, media, and other organizations discouraged the Sri Lankan government from resorting to the obvious solution. As a result, the country has had to pay a heavy price over a period of some thirty years in terms of human suffering and material loss.
The misplaced compassion and ill informed concerns shown by the international community and certain other elements , by their biased meddling in our internal affairs at this juncture, could similarly scuttle the Sri Lankan government’s genuine efforts to restore normalcy to our terrorism ravaged country.
The government has successfully called the LTTE’s bluff. This is something that the foreign and local friends of the terrorists cannot digest. The humane treatment of the terrorists themselves by the Sri Lankan government is only now being internationally acknowledged. The fact that the terrorists have been sustaining themselves on the food and medical supplies provided by the government for the civilians in the areas illegally held by the LTTE came to light only when they were forced to flee abandoning their posts in the face of the army onslaught. (The government agencies had sent more supplies than actually needed for the civilians because the government officers working in those areas were forced to furnish inflated civilian numbers at the behest of the LTTE, which wanted to create buffer stocks for their own use during their military campaign against the very government that fed them.)
The callous disregard of the Tigers even for the basic survival needs of the people they claim to protect is evident in the fact that they used rice-filled bags stolen from government stores to fortify their bunkers in the jungle while innocent Tamil civilians were left to starve. It is now being revealed that under the LTTE the Tamil civilians trapped in the areas they occupied have been living a life of abject misery. They shoot and kill Tamil civilians who try to escape to the government controlled areas. Children were forcibly removed from their parents under conscription orders by the LTTE; adults were used as forced labour in making earth bunds, trenches, moats, and bunkers. The Tigers have used the money they had collected from their supporters abroad and ostensible charities for smuggling in arms shipments, building clandestine airstrips in the thick jungle, and luxury bungalows for their leaders to live in clover. There is no sign of any new civilian housing having been built to be seen. Thousands of valuable trees have been felled to construct bunkers and training camps for the LTTE. Rails and electricity posts stripped from public utilities have been used for making military installations.
All these and other crimes of the LTTE are being exposed by our young journalists reporting from the battle front. I wish the diaspora Tamils, held to ransom by the Tamil terror activists abroad, had a chance to visit the North and see firsthand what the LTTE have done with the money they were forced to contribute for the separatist cause!
If this stark contrast between the humanity of the government of Sri Lanka and the inhumanity of the Tigers fails to convince our international mentors and ‘aid’ donors, the humane way the Sri Lankan armed forces have conducted their military operations against the LTTE over the past two and a half years may be referred to for further proof of that humanity. In spite of the fact that the terrorists launch their attacks from among the civilians, the army has always desisted from retaliatory fire. The terrorists have attacked the army from temples, churches, and hospitals No such building has been damaged by any deliberate retaliatory army fire. What the army usually does is to clean, and restore places of worship damaged and desecrated by the terrorists.
The implementation of the zero-civilian-casualty policy urged by the Sri Lankan President contrasts sharply with what is reportedly happening in Iraq and Afghanistan where the Americans are fighting their so-called anti-terror war. But since the thousands of civilian casualties caused in those places should perhaps be excused as mere collateral damage such a comparison may not be acceptable to our western advisors. Yet if the Sri Lankan armed forces did what the Israeli army did in indiscriminately targeting the Hamas militants mingled with civilians (ignoring the thousands of civilian fatalities), they could have finished off the Tigers overnight. We, as a nation, are averse to wanton killing like that.
Appointing biased individuals as special envoys (as the British wanted to do), or trying to impose their own ill conceived solutions on us (as the so-called Tokyo co-chairs did when they reportedly called upon the LTTE to accept the amnesty offered by the government and lay down arms, when in reality no such offer had been made by the Sri Lankan government) is not the best way to help the country at this critical moment. If they want to help us, let them do so by giving us substantial material help. At the same time it would be best if they allowed the Sri Lankans themselves to evolve their own solutions to their problems.
Rohana R. Wasala
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