In Sri Lanka there are no Second Class citizens

There is an inferiority complex of not being equal to the Majority.

by Charles.S.Perera

(September 24, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The terrorism is like a disease. It eats into a nation like a disease that grows into the body through nerves, vessels and arteries. If early action to eliminate one or the other is not taken, the whole system will soon be affected, and then to get rid of it a systematic unceasing effort has to be made with all available resources until the whole system is cleansed of the cause that lead to one or the other.

We see how terrorism affected the Americans, and they are still not finished with it. When they seem to have ended it at one end, it begin, at another end. When they thought they seemed to have finished with it in Iraq, it seems to have got revitalised in Afghanistan spreading it further into Pakistan.

In Sri Lanka we have the same problem with terrorism, though the Americans and the so called International Community think otherwise. They think, that our terrorism is some how less important, like a tooth ache of a giant, and that of a small Lilliputian. But, they cannot imagine that the pain is the same though the sizes are different. Some how, you cannot put it into the heads of the Americans, the so called International Community, or their spokes persons including Ban-Ki Moon's UN, that they should look at the "world terrorism", which they have sworn to fight wherever it is, without relation to size and proportion. They should have the intelligence to understand that it is only a small spark, that may make an all consuming fire.

They think that in our fight against terrorism there is violation of human rights, while their fight against terrorism is clean, like injecting a medical fluid into a vein, it goes through the vein leaving the muscles and bones around the vein intact. Therefore, in their narrow wisdom, they suggest introducing Missions into conflict areas to watch that our bombs meant for terrorists camps, do not by mistake get elsewhere to violate the human rights of the non-combatants.

But their bombs in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now in Pakistan, even if they violate the human rights of men, women, and children there, no body can complain, because their bombs being giant bombs, they do giant of damage and no body could keep watching where they fall.

That is how the world is made one set of rules to the giants, and another set of rules to the Lilliputians. However , we the small Lilliputians have a marvellous army, naval and air forces. Our Air Force can, with precautions taken by the pilots, and the accompanying soldiers, target the bombs from the air , and the artillery from the ground into accurate targets without causing damage to the Civilians.

This claim of the Sri Lankan Security is not false bravado, because neither the enemy nor the civilians who had escaped from terrorist areas subjected to almost daily military attacks have complained of death of civilian from these bombardments.

We get very upset and shoot our verbal guns when a Westerner makes unreasonable evaluation of our actions, and hail a Westerner even if he were to make a remark bordering doubt such as, "…….. many in Sri Lanka are talking about victory, possibly by the end of the year". He is hailed as a sort of a Nostradamus. It happened with the first of six expected reports of the Senior reporter of the National Post, Steward Bell appeared in the internet. A prominent Sri Lankan journalist writing to Asian Tribune reproduced the whole of Stewart's first report in his article. And Lanka Web published three of Bell's articles at one go. That is the stuff of what we are made.
But Stewart Bell a senior reporter of the National Post, who had been sent to Jaffna to see for himself and report what is happening there, does not report what he sees and what people in place say, but merely reports what people he interviewed in Colombo, most of them pro-terrorist individuals have said. Of course, he paints a sad picture of a territory which is being cleared of the terrorists, by the Sri Lanka Government. Nevertheless, he has not been able to un-cover real complaints of violation of human rights by the army. Other than what his interlocutors had said.

What Stewart Bell reports is what one would call hearsay evidence, he does not make eyewitness accounts which would be more a clear unfolding of events in a war torn town. His fist report was titled Sri Lanka –"An Island of Blood", quoting Amita Pratap, and his second report is titled "Inside Sri Lanka: There is no freedom in Jaffna. City is an open prison where fear, bloodshed reign"- burrowed from Gajen Ponnambalam, Member of Parliament from the terrorist proxy party TNA.

The captions do seem that the reports are not meant to be quite objective, but perhaps an effort to implant in the mind of a Canadian and a reader from the Tamil diaspora that they are after all justified in supporting the terrorist cause. He quotes extensively from Jehan Perera-and we know what he writes about. Stewart Bell may while he is at it quote Kumar Rupasinghe, Thisaranee Gunasekara, Mano Ghanesan, or Kumar David.

Then where would his reports from the war front in Jaffna come from ? We will have to wait and see .

Stewart Bell says that " One prominent Tamil man scoffs at the positive image painted by the General. He says the Tamils of Jaffna are treated like second-class citizens….." Not only some Tamils in combat areas say that the Tamils of Jaffna are treated like second-class citizens and live in constant fear of the security forces, even the Tamils living in cosy comfort in Canada, also say the same thing of their being second class citizens in Sri Lanka. This is one of the political viruses from which the Tamils have been made to suffer since G.G.Ponnambalam, and Chelvanayagam asked for equal rights –fifty fifty.

The Tamils have not been made to suffer because the Sinhala Majority governments made them second class citizens. But this is a mental suffering they have taken on their own-an inferiority complex of not being equal to the Sinhala majority. The Tamils are a minority by the fact of their being less in numbers to the Sinhala, otherwise they have no other distinction of being second class. That is a mental attitude they have to change by trying to be full fledged citizen of Sri Lanka with a patriotism not second to the Sinhala.

Nothing in the world can change the difference in numbers of population of the different communities. But what can change is being a son of mother Lanka with the same ardour, as the majority to develop this country and make it OURS.

We often suffer from expecting the fulfilment of certain ideologies. But in that attempt we have to foresee a means to make that ideology a realisable hope. Prabhakaran had taken arms and became a terrorist to reach it, though it is apparent to those around that his is an unattainable ideal, he blinded by the ferocity of his hatred towards the Sinhala majority, still thinks it is attainable by terrorising the Sinhala majority into defeat.

The Sinhala Majority does not think of themselves in terms of being a majority, but only as another Community that makes up the Nation of Sri Lanka. They offer the Tamils their hands of warmth and friendship. Please accept them with the same warmth and friendship with which they proffer their hands. - Sri Lanka Guardian