Critical choice Sri Lanka cannot shun anymore

By Renuka Sharma and Satchi Sithananthan

(February 01, Colombo & Frankfurt, Sri Lanka Guardian) What is needed immediately in Sri Lanka is for a crack United Nations Force to arrive in Wanni to ensure that the thousands held hostage by the LTTE are freed without the Sri Lankan Forces engaged in any operation at this moment of time. The priority here is to save the people held hostage and a UN Force can help them to arrive to a safe zone away from the grip of the Tigers. The United Nations must demand safe passage under the supervision of the UN Force; equally an assurance from the Sri Lankan Armed Forces that the hostages are not harmed or molested in any form.

President Mahinda Rajapakse is well advised to seek such a help without any hesitation. If there are forces in his government against such an idea or even in the Sri Lanka Armed Forces, let them be damned. President Rajapakse must rise above all these racial restraints and communal constraints that have plagued governments after governments for half a century and brought the country down to its knees. What has Sinhala Only done to Sri Lanka?

The shocking reality is that lives of 300,000 people are perched on the brink of an unbelievable human disaster held hostage by two forces, the LTTE who keep them as human shields and the Sri Lanka Armed Forces that are threatening to wipe out Tiger terrorism that may at this stage cost the loss of thousands of civilian lives.

The fact that not all the people held hostage are from this particular locality somewhere in the Mullaitivu District indicates that the LTTE has marched them, beginning from Kilinochchi as they abandoned town and village after town and village when the Sri Lanka Armed Forces marched into their Wanni stronghold.

It is evident from some reports that have been coming in, the Tigers were getting the help of some local leaders under their firm control and direction to ensure the people left their own towns and villages, persuaded to do so more by threats and the possibilities of being massacred, and as a result they marched with the Tiger cadres as human shields leaving ghost habitations behind them.

One such report indicated that people moved from Murugandy to Kilinochchi and then further interior to Visuvamadu and later to Suthanthirapuram. Why did these people move in such a direction? Were they advised by any others who are ordered by the LTTE to undertake such an exercise? The order generally seems to have been for the people to go deeper into jungle terrains. The point of interest here is that this request to move is very much in line with how the LTTE was moving along and there is hardly any doubt that the civilians were being coaxed into such an action.

Evidently the LTTE is hoping that there would be a worldwide demand to halt the movement of the Sri Lankan Army in order to give a respite to the thousands it is holding as hostage. Demands from various international organizations including the United Nations that the LTTE frees the hostages have gone on deaf ears since it will amount to a virtual run over of the LTTE by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces in consequence.

The LTTE has done this before especially the October 1995 force-march of the people of Jaffna District to the Wanni and the firing of guns and grenades from amidst civilian population against the armed forces. These began with the assassinations and attacks the Tigers carried out during their earlier years exposing the civilians to attacks by the police and armed services forces. This is their modus operandi for survival.

The Tamil cause needs no LTTE advocacy. The whole world is aware that the LTTE was a child of Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism and the majority community was guilty of violating the fundamental rights of the minority Tamils. If the Sinhala majority continues to hold firm to its racist and religious bigotry, the cause of the Tamils may be advocated in the future by forces, that could be more powerful and these may arise from across the Palk Straits supported by a powerful Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora worldwide.

In fact, it could even become a major problem for India which may have to be handled in such a way that Sri Lanka will have no alternative but to accept that the North and East Sri Lanka as traditional Tamil habitations therefore there has to be either a proper federal solution to the ethnic problem or an inevitable separate state that India may very well prefer to annex as its own territory at a later date. After all the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak are in Borneo and are not physically adjoined.

The Government of Sri Lanka has to look far ahead and ensure that a solution to the ethnic crisis is for all times and this country becomes a role model state of peaceful coexistence of its diverse communities. This is a critical choice for the country that cannot be shunned anymore.
ENDS-Sri Lanka Guardian