Govt. giving conflicting messages to the international community

“The will the successive governments had to raise funds was not there to invest in the development of the socio-educational-economic structures for the betterment of the country.”
______________________

By Rajasingham Jayadevan

(August 04. London, Sri Lanka Guardian) According to the BBC, the Sri Lanka Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse has stated ‘Sri Lanka needs massive international financial assistance to help tens of thousands of Tamils displaced by conflict’. A country that always has been resourceful to suppress the political demands of the minorities since independence and in particular spent trillions of sums from its national budgets for its military campaign against the LTTE is now holding its begging bowl to the international community for funding for its post conflict work. It is non other than an opportunistic cheap interest free charitable financing claimed at the fitting moment.

Without engaging in cost saving exercises by scaling down its jumbo military machinery, the jumbo ministries and dealing with the endemic corruption post victory over the LTTE, the government is appealing to the international community for funds to further fuel the culture of mismanagement and opportunistic exploitation of the victims of the war, which in the first place was brought upon by the conduct of the successive governments.

The will the successive governments had to raise funds was not there to invest in the development of the socio-educational-economic structures for the betterment of the country. Since the lethal standardisation scheme was introduced to curtail the entry of Tamils to the Universities in the early 1970’s which fuelled the Tamil violence, the successive governments have spent colossal sums to deal with the consequences of its distasteful anti-Tamil decisions. If there was wishful thinking and the determination like they had for military funding, to build universities and collages without introducing the racist standardisation policy, today Sri Lanka would have surpassed Singapore as an icon nation in Asia.

The government that expect non interference of western governments and the INGO’s in its affairs recently, is demeaning itself asking for funds on humanitarian grounds.

In another development the government has announced that ‘National Framework Proposal on the Reintegration of Ex-combatants into Civilian Life in Sri Lanka’ in being developed by the Disaster Management and Human Rights. This news comes at the time when restricted and constrained media in Sri Lanka reported that hundreds of former LTTE members have been tortured and systematically murdered by the government death squads in Colombo. Since the publication of the sketchy revelation about the murders, the government is maintaining determined silence and this massacre is reported at the 26th anniversary of the state sponsored black July 83 slaughter of Tamil prisoners.

Is LTTE’s elderly poet Puthuvai Rathinathurai murdered in the prison?

Further inquiries of the latest murders of LTTE men reveals that the government may have violated the Geneva Convention and would have committed war crimes by not enlisting the victim’s names with the ICRC and not following the standards defined in the international convention it has subscribed to. According to information even feeble elderly LTTE members have been tortured and murdered by the government death squads recently.

-Sri Lanka Guardian