“Addressing the grievances of the moderate Tamils honestly and sincerely will automatically cause the destruction of the extremist LTTE. On the other hand, uncompromising political resistance, offensive military action and indifference to human rights by the government will only lead the Tamil extremists to expand exponentially and distance ourselves from the goodwill of the international community.”_____________________
(May 28, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Dear Mr. President, you certainly missed a very thought provoking lecture; "The best case scenario for Sri Lanka" by Prof. William Grassie which hit at the very nerve centre of our national problem. Please take time off to read it. You have the opportunity of a lifetime laid out at your feet to go down in history as one of the greatest leaders of the 21st century.
Do not let the sycophants surrounding you deny you of this opportunity. The chances of being remembered as the President who courageously confronted and decimated the LTTE will all be totally lost if in the process the economy and social fabric of the nation falls apart.
However, if you act as an enlightened leader of a divided and poverty stricken country who prevented it from sliding towards self destruction through a politically negotiated settlement and reversing social and economic conditions to become the most prosperous nation in the world, you will be remembered for all time.
This is no pipe dream - considering our size, strategic location, human potential and the prospective financial and technological support including latent goodwill available from our allies in the developed world.
In the final analysis, it is economic prosperity that all our citizens seek whether they are Sinhalese, Tamils or Muslims which also happens to be the essential glue that will unite all communities.
It is only through consensus, compromise and reconciliation that we can achieve peace and prosperity, as these are the only true universal values, which uphold the very concept of peace.
Addressing the grievances of the moderate Tamils honestly and sincerely will automatically cause the destruction of the extremist LTTE. On the other hand, uncompromising political resistance, offensive military action and indifference to human rights by the government will only lead the Tamil extremists to expand exponentially and distance ourselves from the goodwill of the international community.
This will ultimately result in your government committing genocide as the only recourse available to eradicate the extremists who will inevitably expand rapidly within the Tamil polity.
The destruction, deprivation, pain and hurt of war will, day by day, make it harder for you and your enemy to find the path of consensus and compromise in resolving the ethnic issue.
Please rekindle the fires of 'unity in adversity' between your party and the opposition on this issue alone to create a stable foundation to weaken the extremist Sinhalese forces who are now virtually holding your government to ransom and taking centre stage in the process of destroying the economy by seeking a military solution to the ethnic conflict which is ultimately to their political advantage and definitely not yours.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
Grassie is someone from the US who came here on a Fullbright ostensibly to teach religious studies at Peradeniya U . He is in the long line of arrogant, opinionated Westerners with a lot of self-importance who come here on very large scholarships and tell Sri Lankans what to do. You accept their words as the gospel because of your pathetic need to be deferential to the relatively pigment lacking westerners as part of your colonial hangup.
There is nothing Sri Lankans don't know about the conflict by living, suffering and surviving through it that Grassie or a short term expat "Expert" can tell anyone here. He needs to go back and focus on the horrible Black white relationships in the USA and try to get them to do something about the worsening race relations . |He should tell the US Governments to make amends and atone for the sins against colored folks including state sponsored massacres, lynchings condoned by racist State governments in t he South which were covered up for too long with not even an apology or anyone ever been tried let alone be convicted of ethnic cleansing acts in the early 1920s-30s in a lot of southern states in the US. Lynchings of Americans happend with impunity until the 1960s(Dear Author please read Without sanctuary)
It is the fascist thug VP who needs to stop his fraticidal approach to the Tamil issue. IF he drops the claim for EElam this will end. Unlike Grassie and others who I suspect live in segregated areas we live and breathe and suffer together in COlombo and will always do so and always protect the right of tamils to live in Sinhala areas. It is the racist fascist Tamil Tigers who dont want anyone other than tamils in their so called bogus "homeland". Its a damned shame someone has to quote a short term expat butting in outside the realms of his scholarship assignment and outside the parameters of his obligations and outside his terms of his short term visa to become an expert on Sri Lanka. You should go check his credentials to see if he is a world class scholar with a significant research stream or whether he is one more of those who want to make use of the generosity of the tax payers in the US to become a preacher. HE should go to Iraq. And if he is the fellow who joked about the President's son and MIA being married, then he should tell Bush to send Barbara his daughter to get married to Ahminejad's daughter to seek peace before his President launches another false war and kill tens of thousands like they did in the Iraq.
Bottom line is this. Tamils are 12pct minority. Any demand made on dubious historical claims that encompass 45% of the landmass and 60% of the coast line for a racially exclusive homeland will be laughed out of town in any selfrespecting western democracy. Sinhalese, Tamils, Moslems and other must have an inalienable right to live, prosper and survive without fear or favour in any corned of the island. Hence it is not possible when you have a fascist racist organization insisting the opposite. What will happen if we the Sinhalese demand a Sinhala eelam? 54% of Tamils live with us and must live with us and should live with us because they too have an inalienable right to live. If there is any appeal to be made, it should be to VP before it is too late. His actions cause misery for the already impoverished, chronically underdeveloped tamil regions of the North and East. It is only tamil racists who are allowed to get away about "sinhalization" by the media; heaven forbid if A sinhalese person talks about the "tamilization or the moselmization of sinhala homelands" he will be accused of being a racists. We cannot have double standards. Tigers hold the key to prolonging the misery of our Tamil people or ending it. Simple facts that a Metaxnexus convulted intellectual religio-analysis cannot provide. practical pragmatic, rational logical decision making is what is needed. Not some discussion based on 16th century philsophers or some flowing prose from somebody with a doctorate in religion which really is not the kind of field that adds much to the GDP of a nation. economics, how to make money, how to develop the resources of a nation are the topics we need to discuss. We can all wait for nirvana later.
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