Shameless foxes

By Nalin de Silva

(March 18, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Liam Fox was in Colombo recently and it is not certain whether he has gone back to his homeland. He was one of the many diplomats, especially western, who had visited the country recently. These diplomats are good Samaritans and are concerned with the so called trapped people in Mulativu. It is not difficult to come to the conclusion that they wanted the government to declare a ceasefire or even a temporary stop to the operations that the armed forces are engaged in, to liberate the Tamils from the yoke of the LTTE and to safeguard the unitary state. If anybody including Liam Fox had forgotten that the armed forces were engaged in operations to protect the unitary state, let us reassure him/her that the armed forces did not sacrifice lives in order to defeat the LTTE only. Everybody except perhaps the western and Indian diplomats knew that the unitary state could not be protected without first defeating the LTTE.

It is true that a few thousands, may be fifty thousand people, are "trapped" in Mulativu. Some of them may be used as a human shield and some others may be LTTE sympathisers. Whether they are part of a human shield or sympathisers of the LTTE the government should try to get them to safer places. However, it has to be emphasised that it is not the duty of the government to protect their lives at ANY cost. The government has engaged the armed forces not to protect the lives of the so called trapped people but to defeat the LTTE and protect the unitary state. In the process, if the government could protect the lives of the "trapped people" then it could be considered as a huge bonus, but for some reason or other if they were to lose their lives then the LTTE, the western powers that sponsored the LTTE and its leader Prabhakaran, the Indians, RAW, Chelvanayakam, the father of separatist politics in Sri Lanka, GG Ponnambalam who formulated the fifty- fifty policy, Ponnambalam Ramanathan and Arunachalam the founders of Tamil racism in Sri Lanka, the Tamil diaspora, and not the government should be blamed. If Ponnamnalam Ramanathan and others had refrained from engaging in anti Sinhala politics with the connivance of the British governors there would not have been a Prabhakaran and consequently no "trapped people".

When a plane is hijacked the relevant governments are interested in punishing the hijacker more than in freeing the passengers. If the prime motive of the governments is freeing the passengers then all that the governments have to do is to give in to the demands laid down by the hijackers and to see that the passengers are freed. In the case of Sepala Ekanayake the lone hijacker from Sri Lanka the government did not agree to bring down his son from Italy to Sri Lanka, and risked the lives of the passengers in order to arrest and punish Sepala Ekanayake. Fortunately Sepala Ekanayaka had no explosives to blow the plane and the passengers, and later laws were introduced with retrospective effect to punish him. Prabhakaran is demanding a separate state and not a son, and there is no reason as to why the government should agree to declare a ceasefire to free the so called trapped persons. The ball is in Prabhakaran’s court and the western and Indian diplomats should have applied pressure on Prabhakaran to allow the "trapped people" to leave Mulativu without any damage being done. Instead of doing that until last week they tried to apply pressure on the government to talk to Prabhakaran.

There were some people who said that the "trapped people" could not be "liberated" and that there was no alternative but to have negotiations with the murderer. If one thinks the western and Indian diplomats, Shanies and others who write to the national press sometimes hiding behind pseudo names are concerned of the so called trapped people, then one is mistaken. If they were concerned of the "trapped people" they should have applied pressure on Prabhakaran to free them long time ago. If they had no access to Prabhakaran then they could have used the Tamil diaspora who together with the western countries and India supported and maintained the LTTE. If they could not do that either for some reason or other then they could have written to the national press. No, these shameless people who are interested only in the LTTE and Prabhakaran and who do not want to give the Sinhala Buddhist culture its predominant position in the country have now turned towards the "trapped people" and try to use them to save the LTTE and its fascist leader.

It appears that the government has stood up to pressure applied by the western powers through Fox and others to have negotiations with the LTTE or to declare a ceasefire so that the "trapped people" could be rescued. Thus Fox had to cunningly make a statement to the effect that the downfall of the LTTE is imminent. The others who came to Sri Lanka "on the invitation" of the government had no alternative but to declare that the government was treating the Tamils who had come to the "liberated areas" well and looking after them without giving any room for complaints.

Having realised that the government would not move an inch in their direction, these shameless people (foxes) who had been advocating peace talks with the LTTE for decades have now changed the tune and would say that the LTTE was not for negotiations and that Prabhakaran was having a personal feud. This is nothing but British hypocrisy of the worst order and they are trying to kill two birds with one stone. Fox while trying to dissociate from the LTTE, Prabhakaran would now want the government to implement a devolution scheme as in UK or in India. These foxes until now had been advocating negotiations with the LTTE while supplying arms to them through the diplomatic channels using Norway and other Scandinavian countries so that an Eelam could be established at least in the Northern and the Eastern Provinces. From the amount of arms and equipment such as submarines and air planes that have been supplied by the western countries to the LTTE it is clear that they were thinking of a greater Eelam in the whole island and subsequently an Eelam in Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu if possible. The west has support in Tamil Nadu as well, in the form of new evangelists working there and it is these people who instigate the Tamil Nadu Tamils against the Sinhala Buddhists in Sri Lanka. The Tamil racism has no base in Hindu culture after Chelvanayakam and the whole movement is controlled by western Christian modernity. The appointment of one Ms. Pillai to some human rights commission has given an opportunity to the united nations to lie officially.

Does the government have to take these people seriously? They are failed diplomats who had supported and sponsored the LTTE, and all their so called advice to have negotiations, declare ceasefires have proved to be unsuccessful to say the least. These people came here at the last moment to try their tricks and use the "trapped people" to force the government to declare a ceasefire or to negotiate with the LTTE. Having failed at that they must be now thinking of ways and means of implementing their pet solutions in respect of the so called ethnic problem. They have now shamelessly joined the others and welcome the victory of the armed forces as they have no other choice, but they have not changed their minds and they will try to push the government into a position of accepting their federal solution using the IMF loan that the government expects. However it has to be reminded that their solutions have failed so far and are bound to fail in the future as well, as they do not present the problem correctly. Also it has to be remembered that the armed forces engaged in operations not only to defeat the LTTE but to protect the unitary state as well.

-Sri Lanka Guardian