Paranoid SCOPP castigates Andrew Dismore MP

By Rajasingham Jayadevan

(March 11, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Official Website of the Sri Lankan Government’s Secretariat for Co-ordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP) has become a body that is involved in revengeful negative campaign to condemn anyone making critical comments about Sri Lanka. The SCOPP which works under the theme of ‘Peace Sri Lanka’ has jettisoned its mission of peace building and is currently engaged in a vitriolic campaign against persons and organizations critical of the government agenda on the war in the north of Sri Lanka.

SCOPPS officials mandate confirms:

Vision : To act as the cutting edge of the Government of Sri Lanka to consolidate and strengthen the peace process on behalf of all Sri Lankan citizens, whilst promoting a negotiated settlement to the current conflict.

Mission : To develop confidence in the peace process and its potential benefits for all Sri Lankan citizens, whilst building up an institution that is equitable and acts in the national interest of all our people, and is accepted as such.

Whilst peace process is being coffined and buried in the war front in the north, the SCOPP is struggling to cope without a new mandate and is engaged in the propaganda activities to strengthen the Defense and the Foreign Ministries of Sri Lanka.

In its latest hard hitting and insinuating statement SCOPP has castigated the British parliamentarian Andrew Dismore MP for writing about Sri Lanka in ‘The Guardian’. As a constituent of Andrew Dismore MP for Hendon constituency and as a Tamil concerned for the welfare of my brethrens in Sri Lanka, I am compelled to respond to some of the issues taken to task by the SCOPP.

The SCOPP in its opening sentence reflects its anger towards Andrew Dismore MP by stating that he is a ‘Labour Member of Parliament for an obscure suburb in Northwest London’. For SCOPP’s information, I am neither living nor Andrew Dismore MP representing an obscure suburb constituency somewhere in London. The constituency I live in and represented by Andrew Dismore MP positively reflects the cosmopolitan character of London embracing freedom of speech, mutual respect, democratic empowerment, socio-political-economic wellbeing, anti-bullying etc of its constituents.

Without knowing the composition of his constituency, ridiculing it as an ‘obscure suburb’ is clearly a sentiment expressed in anger and frustration. Area-wise Hendon is a fairly large constituency which constitutes prominent places like an historical air force museum and the leading police training school. I invite the Head of SCOPP Prof Rajiva Wijesinghe to visit the constituency when he comes to London next time. I shall be pleased to drive him around, if he wishes to have a first hand experience of the constituency to come out of his obscurity as I am no stranger to him.

I have known Andrew Dismore MP since 1996 and have my high regard and respect for his principled stand on the crisis facing Sri Lanka. He abhors terrorism in all forms and does not shy away from criticizing state repression against its citizens. Very seldom one comes across persons in this day and age to assert the principle of ‘right of self determination’ of the people and Andrew is someone who upholds this principle as a moral authority, without any fear on behalf of the suffering minorities in Sri Lanka.

In its response, SCOPP attempts to sit on moral high ground by accusing the LTTE of not permitting the people to leave the fighting zone. By deliberately suppressing the reality that both LTTE and the government forces have become a burden for the innocent civilians the SCOPP singularly blames the LTTE. The LTTE of course is culpable of deplorable acts of human rights violations and the government too is not an angel and is heavily engaged in a terror campaign against its own people by using heavy weapons in an arbitrary manner. This is whilst the media and the international agencies are heftily muzzled and a culture of violence let loose against those attempting to reveal the truth about the war effort.

SCOPP castigates: ‘the LTTE has long trampled on the rights of the Tamil community’ in an insincere manner without understanding even those Tamil opposing the LTTE will state the rights of the Tamil people were systematically and meticulously stampeded by the successive governments since independence in 1948. This had given birth to the brutal LTTE which has caused further harm and distress to the Tamil people. LTTE has become a bogie story for the government to sideline any effort to resolve the conflict politically and failures of Sri Lankan governments are now conveniently and effectively passed on to the LTTE in the systematic process to further marginalize the Tamils.

The SCOPP statement appears to take a simplistic approach by only blaming the LTTE for the murders of the Tamil people. If the successive governments had judiciously dealt with the state violence against the Tamil people since 1958, the genocidal magnitude of the government efforts against the Tamils would not have taken place. The LTTE too would not have been on this earth. The Tamil militancy did not start with the LTTE. It has its roots with the youth wing of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), the leading Tamil democratic party in the 1970’s and early 1980’s. The terror campaign by the state against the TULF made the youngsters feel that they can only achieve their political rights by an armed struggle.

If the government of early 1970’s had not introduced the standardization policy to curtail the entry of Tamils to the state universities in a racially provocative manner, youngsters of my age would not have taken arms to fight the government. Further when the police went on the shooting spree to disturb the peaceful ITC (International Tamil Conference) public meeting in Jaffna in the early 1970’s it deepened the frustration of the Tamil youth. If the government had acted sincerely and dealt with the callous murders of the innocent Tamils and provided justice to the victims at that time, we would not have experienced the impunity the politicians, the government forces and the secret services are overwhelmingly enjoying at present.

The SCOPP reflects its anger on Andrew Dismore MP for raising the issue of using cluster bombs by the government forces. The cluster bomb is something that is debated since the Jayasekuru operations of the government forces to take control of Jaffna peninsula in 1996. The government has not permitted any unconstrained sources to visit the war zones to independently repudiate this claim and wants everyone to swallow and digest its defense ministry news on the conduct of the war.

Even if cluster bombs are not used, there is ample evidence the army is using modern multi-barrel guns on civilian targets which are equally lethal and has the multi effect like the cluster bombs. The multi barrel guns are not like target missiles and they are fired arbitrarily into the LTTE controlled area where civilians are also becoming victims. These multi barrel guns of course will have the devastating effect on the civilian population and it is used by the so-called responsible government against its own citizens who have nowhere to turn except to face death and destruction in the arbitrary firing by the forces.

It is sad to note an organization that should co-ordinate the work on peace in Sri Lanka is indulging in issues contrary to its mission. Even if peace efforts are sidelined by the government’s war effort, the SCOPP can play a laudatory role by bringing peace between the government and the opposition parties to put together a bipartisan agreement to bring durable peace in the country. It can also strengthen the hands of the All Party Representative Committee currently dealing with the political proposals to resolve the conflict through constitutional means without aligning with the bullish and war mongering Defense and the Foreign Ministries. -Sri Lanka Guardian