(April 12, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) There is a price to pay for naiveté. The West, for the most part, played the sucker to perfection. They were victims of an age old error: ‘the world must love a rebel, as long as the rebel is rebelling in some other country’. One could add, ‘never mind if that rebel is actually a terrorist using the vocabulary of rebellion’. And today, in London, Oslo and other unhappy places, the monster is out, demanding, demanding and demanding.
No, it is not Tamil nationalism that’s taken the streets of these unhappy cities. It is the extrapolations fed by the LTTE and supplemented by essential nutrients by naïve politicians in these places that have found expression as protests, hunger strikes, arson, extortion and other criminal activity.
There is no doubt concern for fellow-Tamils trapped in the no-fire zone. On the other hand there is something utterly unforgivable in these protests, for they refuse point blank to acknowledge the critical role played by the LTTE in putting these civilians in the predicament they find themselves in today. There is also no comment whatsoever on the horror stories related by those who were lucky enough to flee the tyrant (in reduced circumstances), those IDPs who were shot at by their would-be-liberators. No word either from the thousands of Tamils who live in Colombo and other areas out of the so-called ‘traditional homelands’. Nothing of the fact that such people cannot exist if the state was intent on ‘genocide’ as claimed.
This is not to say that all Tamils in Sri Lanka are free of worry, of course, but it is one thing to feel apprehensive about the state of affairs and quite another to engage in genocide-speak. ‘Not warranted’ and ‘overboard’ are the unwritten, unspoken sentiments of the Tamils in Colombo who are less prone to being swayed by rhetoric, I am willing to wager.
Only themselves to blame
But Colombo is of course far away from Oslo. Or London. Or Geneva. In those cities the realities are different. They have for a long time been lax in screening refugee applications. They have allowed the LTTE to put down deep roots in their societies. They chose to confuse terrorist with rebel/liberator. They chose to look the other way when the LTTE held the Tamil Diaspora to ransom in as many ways as were possible. They played electoral politics. In short, they have only themselves to blame for the predicament they find themselves in today. To quote a well-known Sinhala saying, they’ve willingly embraced a snake and now they are complaining of being bitten!
There are those who believe that Tamil agitation in the West is taking the conflict to another dimension, that it is giving the LTTE an ‘after-life’. Now, admitting the risks of engaging in conjecture, I would say, that is a misplaced concern. The reason why the Tamil Diaspora became articulate in the first place has less to do with July ‘83, I believe, than in there being space to reasonably believe that the LTTE could win this thing.
Hoodwinked the world
It is natural for a ‘ground reality’, however temporary and however much smaller in image than in reality, to provoke all kinds of extrapolations. The LTTE hoodwinked the world, including several presidents, many NGOs and INGOs, many ‘academics’, and even key figures in the UN, into believing its version of the Sri Lankan reality. Now the truth is out and it is not pleasant for anyone to acknowledge that they swallowed a lie and that for twenty, thirty years it remained undigested in their psyches.
It is good to be innocent, to believe what one’s told, to entertain the notion that fairies exist. We all go through that stage and I suppose countries and cities go through it too. There’s a price that people pay when they allow childhood to extend beyond what’s sensible. There is a price for naiveté. And the only sensible thing to do is to grow up. It’s better late than never. Norway has not exactly been sleeping, but it appears to have been drugged. The UK too, going by what idiots like David Miliband are saying. Now it is time to wake up, and as they say, smell the coffee.
It’s not a nice smell out there in the streets is it David? Is it, Mr Solheim? The problem is, much of that garbage is of your own making. Over here, we will sort out our problem (which, by the way, we could have sorted out much earlier if you people hadn’t decided to poke fingers here and there). You better hope and pray that when the ground reality over here is describable here as ‘Post-LTTE’, the balloon you helped inflate in your cities will have the gas let out. Naturally. Anyway, good luck! May peace be with you! As for innocence, the time for that is over, brother. Really.
Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance journalist who edits the monthly magazine ‘Spectrum’. He can be contacted at malinsene@gmail.com.
EXCELLENT PIECE OF WRITING, THERE IS A SAYING, 'WHAT YOU SOW IS WHAT YOU REAP'. I FEEL VERY SORRY FOR THESE COUNTYRIES AND THEIR IGNORANT LEADERS. THEY STILL DO NOT KNOW WHAT A BIGGER MESS THEY HAVE CREATED IN THEIR COUNTRIES. LET THEM CLEAN UP THEIR MESS. ONCE WE WIPE OUT THESE TIGER TERRORISTS, THE WEST CAN ACCOMMODATE ALL THE BEATEN AND FALLEN TERRORISTS/THEIR HEROS AND EVEN GIVE THEM THE MUCH AWAITED EELAM IN THEIR COUNTRIES. WHO CARES?
MILIBAND SOUNDS LIKE A JOKER. AS YOU HAVE CORRECTLY SAID, AS LONG AS TERRORISM IS OUTSIDE THEIR SOIL THEY ARE CALLED FREEDOM FIGHTERS AND THE MOMEMNT THEY ARE EFFECTED ALL OTHER COUNTRIES ARE BLAMED FOR NOT DOING ENOUGH. ISN'T THIS HYPOCRISY.
NOEL
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