“We have great confidence that the
determined path we have traversed so far
will result in a sustainable peace to our
country and people….It is my firm belief
that when our nation crosses the threshold
to victory it is the responsibility of us
all to be united in safeguarding the future
of our country.”
That was the key thought in President
Mahinda Rajapaksa’s New Year Message to the
Nation. Coincident and concurrent to this
message being issued, the Sri Lanka Army
announced the capture of Paranthan, the
strategically important junction that is
only a few km away from Kilinochchi, the
northern town that until recently was hailed
by most foreign media as and INGOs as the
“capital” of the “de facto” state of Tamil
Eelam – the now unrealizable dream of
Velupillai Prabhakaran, the LTTE, the TNA
and their supporters both in Sri Lanka and
abroad.
The news of the capture of Paranthan, about
which reports were trickling in from the
battleground for several days ahead, has
brought the country beyond the threshold of
victory against the separatist terror of the
LTTE. No doubt there will be many more
battles ahead, with the need to regain
control of Elephant Pass and Muhamalai,
moving on to the final hosing out of the
LTTE from the Vanni jungles. This is the
time when, as the President emphasized in
his message that, the responsibility is on
all to be united in safeguarding the future
of the country.
The dawn of 2009 is also the beginning of
the “Year of Heroic Victory” as New Year has
been designated to honour the great
commitment and sacrifices made by the
Security Forces to rid the country of
terrorism, make it safe for democracy and
ensure the equal treatment of all people to
whom Sri Lanka is home. It is significant
that the final capture of Paranthan took
place far away in the Vanni, as many in
Colombo and other urban centres were
ushering in the New Year with singing,
dancing and the deafening burst of
firecrackers. It is urban society’s lack of
sync with the rest of the country that as
the New Year was ushered in to the singing
of “Auld Lang Syne” and merriment, there was
hardly any Em Cee, DJ or compere to remind
the revelers that the very ability to carry
on with the dance is largely due to the
sacrifices that were being made even at that
hour by the troops who were fighting the
most ruthless terrorists known in modern
times; which was most distant from the
thought of the revelers, too.
The mood and thinking of those enjoying the
creature comforts of urban life, are
fashioned by those who hardly feel the pain
and loss of the fight against terror, as the
bulk of the troops are drawn from the rural
areas, where there is little fuss being made
over the price of petrol or the increasing
cost of imported goodies. However distant
from the sacrifices of the fight against
terror this mood may be, the troops are now
engaged in a sustained battle, which is
disproving the urban and western-oriented
punditry of three decades that the LTTE is
an invincible force. They are moving ahead,
capturing one important tiger location after
another, showing in every way that they are
doing justice by the President’s decision to
designate 2009 as the “Year of Heroic
Victory”; bringing to the people of the
North the Dawn of a New Spring of Democracy,
Freedom and Development, and to the entire
country the freedom from terror.
Heart to heart
As the troops moved further into areas once
held by the LTTE, although provided with
food and all essentials by the Government in
Colombo, the President made a significant
move in his message to the "Future Minds of
Jaffna" exhibition, also known as the Jaffna
Educational and Industrial Exhibition 2008,
organized by the Sri Lanka Army in Jaffna,
which had drawn more 200,000 visitors
despite the hardships of travel in
peninsula.
President Rajapaksa demonstrate his respect
an regard for the Tamil language, as a
language of the Sri Lankan people, when, in
last September, he was the first Head of
State from any country, India with Tamil
Nadu included, to speak in Tamil at the
United Nations General Assembly. Last week
he went further in showing the importance he
attaches to the Tamil language, by making
the first ever address by a Sri Lankan Head
of State to the Tamil people in their own
language.
The words he spoke were not those of
conquest, or of majoritarian dominance, but
of reconciliation and understanding. He
spoke of the days of unity among the
different communities that the people still
yearn for; recalled the camaraderie of
travel to Jaffna in the former Yal Devi, and
the success of Tamil traders in Colombo as
much as that of Sinhala bakers and
restaurateurs from Matara in Jaffna. He did
not forget the industrious nature of the
Tamil people, and also reminded us all that
the first call for freedom from British
colonial rule came from a student leader in
Jaffna – Handy Perimpanayagam- and also that
Tamil leaders such as Sir Ponnambalam
Ramanaden knew well the machinations of the
British as they sought to divide the people
for the benefit of colonial rule, and the
important role such leaders played in the
struggle for freedom.
With this heart to heart approach towards
the people of the North, President Rajapaksa
is making it clear that all the talk of his
being a hawk in politics is part of a
deliberately distorted image that has been
built up by sections of the media, from the
time of the last Presidential election;
carefully to this day nurtured by some NGOs
and other organizations of “civil society”,
as we’ll as some religious leaders who, like
most of today’s western leaders today, in
the face of the current Israeli massacre of
the Palestinians in the Gaza strip, fail to
see the difference between the armed threat
of terrorism of the LTTE and the troops of a
sovereign state that fights for freedom and
democracy.
As the victory over the forces of terror
draws nearer, President Rajapaksa is making
every move possible to show the Tamil
people, and the world, that he is firm in
his belief in Sri Lanka being a country
where its several communities, with their
different faiths and languages can and must
live in freedom and equality. His message,
spoken entirely in Tamil, was a good blow at
the chauvinists in Tamil Nadu who are
repeating the calculated canard of the LTTE
– TNA - DKM axis about Mahinda Rajapaksa
being the prisoner of Sinhala chauvinism and
a proponent of majoritarian dominance in the
affairs of Sri Lanka. His decision to speak
more often in Tamil, the importance being
given to Tamil knowledge in the public
service, and the new importance being given
to the teaching of English too, shows a
level of pragmatism in inter-communal
relations that has hitherto not been seen in
any other national leader. These indicate
major changes in political thinking and
important attitudinal changes in dealing
with issues of community, ethnicity,
language and religion in the months ahead.
They seek to eliminate the fears that the
defeat of Prabhakaran and the LTTE, would
only lead to the dominance of he Sinhala
majority; which is a genuine fear among many
Tamils, including those who strongly oppose
the policies of the LTTE.
Welcome confluence
As the troops keep moving ahead pushing the
tiger cadres into an increasingly confined
area within the two districts of Kilinochchi
and Mullaitivu, there are other developments
too that are propitious for the success in
the battle to eradicate terror from Sri
Lanka. The pro-tiger voices in Tamil Nadu,
including that of the ageing DMK leader
Karunanidhi, who is now busy passing over
the reigns of his chauvinist party to his
son Stalin, have been muted after the terror
attack of Mumbai. The anger shown by the
Indian public at the apparent kid-glove
handling of terrorism, until the shock of
Mumbai woke the whole nation to the danger
that terrorism posed, has made it impossible
for the voices in Tamil Nadu that supported
the LTTE to be outspoken anymore. Indian
Prime Minister Manmohan Sigh has on more
than one occasion echoed the words of
President Rajapaksa that there are no good
terrorists or bad terrorists, and that all
terrorists are bad and require being treated
as the enemies of society.
India’s new determination to fight
terrorism, which can be a major blow to the
LTTE’s expectations of prolonged India-based
terrorist activity once they are defeated in
Sri Lanka, have been struck a major blow by
the new anti-terrorist legislation that was
brought into force earlier this week.
They are the National Investigative Agency
(NIA) Bill and Unlawful Activities
(Prevention) Amendment Bill, which have now
obtained the assent of the Indian President
Pratibah Patil. Orders constituting the NIA
have already been issued, with a Multi
Agency Centre (MAC) being set up in the
Intelligence Bureau (IB) as the nodal agency
for intelligence in a bid to strengthen
intelligence set-up across the country.
Indian Home Minister Chidambaram has said
the MAC is already operational 24X7, and
that its subsidiaries would also be set up
in every state capital as a part of the
drive to check terror strikes. Other steps
aimed at beefing up security cover, include
the creation of NSG hubs at key centres and
a Coastal Command.
These laws which show the new determination
of India to fight terror, point to a major
threat to the LTTE’s plans that are not
unknown to use secret bases in India for
continued terrorist activity against Sri
Lanka. Intelligence sources both in India
and Sri Lanka see the boasts of the LTTE’s
so-called IGP and spokesman Nadesan about
how the LTTE will continue to fight after it
is thrown out of Kilinochchi, as not only
being empty rhetoric to boost the morale of
weakened tiger cadres, but signs of a more
sinister plan to move their activities
across the Palk Strait as the situation
becomes too hot for survival in Sri Lanka.
However, it is now evident that such plans,
even if drawn up with the help of terrorist
organizations in India that the LTTE is
known to have had more than cursory contact
with, will not be easily put into operation
as it may once have been possible, with the
new anti-terror laws in place in India; and
the new watch out for terror that is taking
place throughout the entire subcontinent.
Another significant development that one saw
in India last week was the result of the
elections to the Assembly in Jammu &
Kashmir. The over 60 per cent turn out, the
largest in a J&K state election ever; and
such a poll talking place in the face of a
call for a boycott of the election by the
main separatist party is seen as a
significant response of the voters of J & K
against separatism. It is evident that the
day-to-day issues of economic hardship and
problems of livelihood would have played a
major role both in the large turnout and the
related spurning of the boycott call. The
Indian establishment will have to read the
results very carefully to judge the real
mood of the people. However, there is clear
evidence that the forces of separatism in J
& K have suffered a major blow, which can be
used to resolve the long standing issues in
the State, if both India and Pakistan can
act with sagacity and have their ears to the
ground, as the people express their
disenchantment with the separatist call.
This is also a good pointer to Sri Lanka
where, as we have already seen in the East,
the rhetoric of separation is not one that
can last forever, once the people begin to
see the disadvantages in it as compared to
the advantages of more inclusive politics.
This will be seen even stronger in Sri
Lanka, with the suffering the Tamil people
have had to undergo during three decades of
armed oppression by the LTTE. These include
incursions into the families of the Tamil
people, the snatching away of children to
carry arms, the training of women to be
suicide killers, as well as the continued
extortion being carried out to serve the
needs of well fed LTTE cadres. All of which
are made worse by the bondage they are now
being held in, as the human buffer against
the advances of the liberating forces of Sri
Lanka.
Massacre in Gaza
It was only a few months ago when the
Russian troops moved into Georgia after the
Georgian incursion into South Osettia and
Abkhazia, that western countries were
shouting themselves hoarse about the
Russians action being disproportionate to
the actual military realities in the
Georgian dispute. Today, there is only
subdued talk of the lack of proportion in
the massive Israeli attacks that are being
carried out against the Palestinians in the
Gaza strip, compared to the threat posed by
Palestinian rockets aimed at Israel from the
Gaza. Israel and the West, the US and the
European Union included, that refused to
recognize the democratic election of Hamas
to administer the Palestinian territory,
engineered the split between the West Bank
and Gaza, and have been complicit in trying
to strike a deal between the West Bank and
Israel, ignoring the very existence of Gaza.
The present conflict is the deadliest since
Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank in
the Six Day War of 1967. As reported in
Alernet.org, that gives the views of the
Israeli attacks not fully reflected in
Western media, reports: “Israel has targeted
Hamas, but the vast majority of the
casualties from its attacks have been
civilian police officers, government
workers, and other civilians. The
Palestinian death toll currently [Thursday
01] stands at nearly 400 while more than
2000 have sustained injuries. The figure is
expected to increase as Israel’s bombardment
continues. Since [last] Monday morning,
Israel’s navy has commenced bombing Gaza
from the coast. Compounding the suffering is
the fact that medical and other humanitarian
supplies are in a dire state thanks to
Israel’s three-year-old blockade of the
territory. Half the population of Gaza, even
before this most recent attack, was living
below the poverty line.
So far, rockets fired from Gaza have killed
four Israelis and injured several others; so
much for the proportionate aspect of what is
essentially the Israeli massacre of the
Palestinians in the Gaza.
Sri Lanka has always been a strong supporter
of the Palestinian people’s right to have
their own sovereign state and is supportive
of the many UN Resolutions that have sought
to make this a reality, but have been
treated with contempt by Israel, and its
western backers, especially the US and the
UK.
What is of direct interest to this column,
apart from the suffering of the Palestinians
in the Gaza, is shameful silence of the
great champions of Human Rights who keep
screaming at the slightest rumour of
so-called human rights abuses in Sri Lanka,
that are unable to utter a single word of
condemnation against what the whole world
sees as the most disproportionate attack on
a people seeking the security of their own
sovereign state. The UN Security Council and
other bodies pass wordy but useless
resolutions, but no one condemns Israel, and
the suffering of the Palestinians goes on,
and Israel scoffs at any suggestion of a
ceasefire. The international Human Rights
lobby stands exposed in all their humbug and
hypocrisy as they take glee in pummeling
small countries such as Sri Lanka for
alleged rights abuses, and abrogating the
farce of a ceasefire, while not having the
courage or even see the need to condemn the
outrage to humanity that Israel practices in
the Gaza today. (Courtesy – Daily News =-
January 03, 2009).
(What is expressed here is the strictly
personal opinion of the writer)
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