And the way forward to solve the vexed ethnic issue for good

This is in reply to the UTHR(J) Special Report No: 34 --Let Them Speak: Truth about Sri Lanka's Victims of War.

"For the peace and stability and unity and prosperity of Sri Lanka you have to choose whether you are either ‘Up or Down’, the light ‘On’ or ‘Off’, or the outcome ‘One or Zero’. The ball is in your court rather the toggle switch is in your hand! The next thing is I talk about people and issues if the hat fits, wear it."

Written by Day

Only the dead have seen the end of the War - Plato

(December 19, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The reports says “What these survivors’ stories make clear is that for both parties, the key to military dominance lay not in brilliant strategies, but in an utter disregard for the lives of civilians and combatants alike, driven by their leaders’ single-minded pursuit of personal power”.

If it is what UTH(J) has to say, then the following true story will provide as to what, in fact, a brilliance strategy in fog of war or in the heat of battle or on the spur of the moment is!

As a young British officer, William Slim, later Field Marshal the Viscount Sir William Joseph Slim of Burma, provided "Military Aid to Civil Power (MACP)" in India during ethnic clashes between Hindus and Muslims. On one occasion, police attempted to restore order in the face of mob violence, but they were in danger of being overwhelmed and killed. Slim made the decision to warn the surging mobs, both Hindu and Muslim, that his troops would fire if the disorder continued. When his warning was ignored, Slim ordered four members of his platoon to fire, two into the Hindu mob and two into the Muslim crowd. Had the violence continued, the police would most likely have perished, along with many civilians as well.

But Slim’s soldiers killed five civilians and wounded several others. In his charming memoir, Unofficial History, Slim reflected on the incident and its likely aftermath.

The soldier always knows that everything he does on such an occasion will be scrutinized by two classes of critics—by the Government which employs him and by the enemies of that Government. As far as the Government is concerned, he is a little Admiral Jellicoe and this his tiny Battle of Jutland. He has to make a vital decision on incomplete information in a matter of seconds, and afterwards the experts can sit down at leisure, with all the facts before them, and argue about what he might, could, or should have done. Lucky the soldier if, as in Jellicoe’s case, the tactical experts decide after twenty years of profound consideration that what he did in three minutes was right. As for enemies of the Government, it does not much matter what he has done. They will twist, misinterpret, falsify, or invent any fact as evidence that he is an inhuman monster wallowing in innocent blood.

What would your brilliant strategy be when a bug bites you when you are sitting in Jaffna in a cane chair? Get so mad and walk in to the kitchen and boil a full kettle of water and then pour boiling water on the chair to take care of the problem once and for all? If your answer is NO, you are pathetically in denial saying ‘I am non-violent, peace-loving. I do not kill even an ant!’ You’re the biggest hypocrite in Jaffna, or Sri Lanka. The extraordinary situations require extraordinary measures! Do not you remember? Pearl habour, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Dresden, the Mi Lai, the Hajabla? And THE MASSACRE OF INNOCENT DEVOTEES AT SRI MAHA BODIYA, ANURADAPURA and THE MASSACRE OF SURRENDERED POLICEMEN, BATTICOLO, SRI LANKA!

The following is the reason why a Sri Lankan soldier fought; “These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value -Thomas Paine-American Crisis-1780”

What majority of Tamils want is an unjustifiable governance, control and sole ownership of a country, like in Rwanda, Serbia and Palestinian territories. You try insidiously, wish subconsciously to reduce innocent Sinhalese, the majority in Sri Lanka, ever since, to the level of Tutsis, If one really thinks that there is no difference in the ulterior motive behind ruthless violence and ethnic cleansing of LTTE and the Rwandan Genocide in 1994 that resulted in mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda’s Tutsis and Hutu political moderates by the Hutu dominated government under the Hutu Power, an ideology that asserted that the Tutsi intended to enslave Hutus and thus must be resisted at all costs he is highly mistaken. Next to Serbia, what is the ethnic disposition in Serbia? What sort of land mass is Serbs are asking for? Sounds familiar? Like, the two thirds of fertile land with Economic Exclusion zone for a minority of 11-14 in an island in the Indian Ocean, the ‘Transnational Government’ is demanding. Do we need to discuss here the plight of Palestinians and how they lost their country? I do not think so, as it is an insult to one’s intelligence.

The very reason Sri Lankan Security Forces went all out to secure the island, though there were collateral damage, is to prevent a very cataclysmic or a pyrrhic war in future. That was why it was conducted now to avoid a Rwandan massacre down the road, about 100,000 people a day for 100 days! Think of a glass half full rather than as half empty!

The problem in Sri Lanka is that a vast majority of people are selfish and do not live and let live. Most of them are not self-confident though they have received the university education and have degrees. So they do not behave like professionals and fail in their duty to educate masses as to how to earn righteously and live a fun filled peaceful life. So they do politics and seek the support of humbug politicians to live large and amass wealth through rogue means. The elite use the divide and rule as it is very effective, so that they can live comfortably. But everywhere on the island a Silva is crying for a Bala’s blood, a Krishna is waiting to kill a Kusum.

The University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) UTHR (J) seem to me nothing but a bunch of Monday morning quarterbacks. They tell what could and should have been done, so many months after the dust settled, and there is no tiger threat lurking around. Tell me why almost every one of you behaved at the behest of LTTE? If you condemn violence now, why you did not condone universal franchise then? In Sri Lanka a government is elected in secret ballot. If you have the guts to voice your opinion now why you did not have the audacity or temerity, the personal or moral courage to vote in the last presidential election? If the main parties, UNP and UFPA, JVP, were a bunch of rouges and hopeless politicos, and in fact they are, why you bright people did not contest as a party and get all the Tamil votes and show to the South especially, that there is a new movement, a new hope, let us intellectuals get together to create a better Sri Lanka, not a Drealam, for every Sri Lankan? Now you talk big loud mouth but then when Tigers told you not to vote, you intellectuals did not step out of your homes. There is no difference between IUSF bunch of rascals I have seen in action, leading from the behind leaving innocent undergraduates get baton-charged and charged by mounted police and UTHR(J). In the early eighties, during a demonstration led by one rascal named Adams against the Education White Paper a female engineering undergraduate, terrified of the galloping horses, jumped off the parapet wall on to craggy rocks breaking her tibia and shin bone at Galle face when mounted police charged. It was what we call in the military ‘a compound fracture’. She was relegated to the next batch. She was left for her own devices! Then the university closures, killing Vice Chancellors followed. By the time she graduated she was so old and her hopes for a better marriage dashed.

Though periodic reports of this nature are released with ostensible purpose to expose and highlight the 'wrong or questionable' techniques, tactics and procedures (TTPs) implemented by the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and the Sri Lankan Security Forces (SLSF) in vanquishing LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) for good but its real goal is to make SL a pariah state in the world or to project SL as a country with neither law nor order. The LTTE was lucky to have an army commander in Sri Lanka whose nick name is not the ‘Big Daddy’ (or last name is Amin). The Big Daddy, instead of ordering the cremation of Prabakaran and his top rung he would have kept their dead bodies in deep freezers, for possible future cryonic experiments, not to revive those killers but to find out how the megalomaniac psychopathic killers’ brains work!

The Dreelam people need to be aware that it was better for the LTTE to be shot and die a quick death in Kilali (or Nanthikadal) Jaffna ratherthan bleeding for hours to death being hacked with machetes in Kilgali, Rwanda!

The University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) UTHR (J), now, enjoy freedom to an unprecedented level since the LTTE is RIP, while P, here, stands for Peace or Piece, to flay the GOSL and SLSF to its heart’s content. Though these reports take the form of Human Rights concerns but their hidden agenda or ulterior motive is to settle some scores by other means for routing the LTTE for good, who promised a Dreelam for them! The Drealam Tamils and their cohorts can sleep only well when Sri Lanka is an outcast in the world community.

Let me analyze the report for the wider world. The timing of release of these reports is also very interesting. They released # 32 just before the UN Human Rights Commission looking in to possible atrocities, now this one in the run up to a presidential election. The UTHR (J) is enjoying to the fullest the same freedom that the media and activists in Iraq and elsewhere found when dictators, megalomaniacs and psychopathic killers were killed or forced to live in rat holes or exile.

For the UTHR (J), the SLSF ensured the LTTE pistol gangs were no more so that they could type on a computer keyboard freely without worrying about the tigers/podiyans lurking or on the prowl outside the windows of their rooms. For UTHR (J), the SLSF ensured that they could criticize LTTE to the hilt as they know there would be no more LTTE to take revenge, like ‘Tall Sri’ of Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO) found out on his knees! For UTHR (J), they need to apportion blame on the Tigers, too, to make the Reports appear impartial or objective. It is apt to remember the poem written by Charles Michael Province, "It is the Soldier, not the reporter Who has given us freedom of the press."

Let me tell you, now, my Rules of Engagement (ROE) and the Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF); the situation in Sri Lanka on the ethnic issue is a ‘binary’ one. It is that simple. It is no Rocket Science! You are either a peace loving Tamil willing to live in concord with majority Sinhalese or a dishonest Tamil conspiring to kill and maim as many as Sinhalese and the genuine Tamils to create a separate state called the Dreelam.

For the peace and stability and unity and prosperity of Sri Lanka you have to choose whether you are either ‘Up or Down’, the light ‘On’ or ‘Off’, or the outcome ‘One or Zero’. The ball is in your court rather the toggle switch is in your hand! The next thing is I talk about people and issues if the hat fits, wear it.

The writers of these reports are at great pains to highlight mainly the Tamil civilian death toll, and pillory the GOSL for not giving diplomacy a chance or opting for brilliant strategies. The writers are disappointed and disgusted with SLSF for not restraining themselves in the final stages of offensive operations, though the Reports praises some acts of kindness by soldiers, and that has to be told lest the intelligent world would not believe a UTHR(J) report as there are eye-witness accounts to say and photographic evidence to show some soldiers sacrificed their lives by being overcautious to avoid civilian casualties and by not being trigger-happy.

The UTHR (J) say that their reports are factually correct and they obtained materials for the report from reliable sources, well informed sources, eye-witnesses they have in the government, military, and IDP population. For me, while a single untimely death is a death too many, tens of thousands deaths are not acceptable at all. But I would tell you the UTHR (J) this, without fear or favor, those tens of thousands of deaths (leave alone the deaths due to anti-Tamil riots) resulted/occurred because of your utter selfishness and shamelessness. Here is the justification for holding you solely responsible. Your holier-than-thou attitude shown in compiling reports like this and your implying that your background is squeaky clean or lily-white have failed and will fail to answer following; if you use well placed people, reliable sources, eye-witnesses to compile these so-called 'true' reports so when have you used those 'sources' you have or had at your disposal to tip off SLSF or GOSL when the artillery pieces were being drawn right in front of your houses to emplace to unleash barrages? Why did not you tip off armed forces so that Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) could destroy the LTTE targets in pin-point bombing, (I do not think any civilians died, anyway, on board film footage shows Zero Civilian Casualty (ZCC) when the SLAF bombed arty pieces they themselves located by using UAVs)? You know the LTTE artillery barrages do kill soldiers/civilians and the counter-barrages kill LTTE/civilians. Next one, how many times have your 'well placed and reliable sources' tipped off the SLSF when the sea tigers were moving men and war-like material or maneuvering and patrolling so that Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) or SLAF could take out those targets without harming a single civilian? How many 'innocent Tamil civilians' were killed when SLN sank the floating warehouses or SLAF destroyed ships/craft? None! That is why it is called ZCC policy. You decided to keep ‘mum’ when your reliable sources and overseas Tamil contacts 'would' have known very well when the most lethal cargo (arty rounds, mortars, missiles etc) was purchased, loaded onto ships and set sail until latest technology, but not your 'contacts or reliable sources’ helped the intelligence community track it, Lady Luck smiled on SLN and the ship appeared on the cross-wires of SLN’s Chinese 81 mm recoilless guns and Oerlikon guns. Now you see your selfishness. Your attitude basically was, ‘let the lethal cargo be unloaded at Mullaitive beach, next to the Farah-III, by the podians and then kill hundreds of SL soldiers, naval ratings, airmen, Civil Defense Corps (CDC) personnel, civilians etc using the lethal cargo just unloaded so that Prabakaran and his murderous cabal, Tamil National Alliance (TNA), could create the 'DREELAM' for us!’ Every time scores of soldiers personnel were killed the resolve of remaining soldiers did not wane but get hardened, they were not daunted nor filled with trepidation, then they went ahead to deal with terrorists whether they were conscripts, regulars, reserve or what have you as terrorists, as Wanni conscripts did not carry boards, on front and back, to say 'I am a forced conscript, please, have mercy on me!'

With regards to the five students' deaths in Trincomalee, I really understand a parent's pain, anguish and frustrations at loss of a loved one but at the same time it is the incumbent and absolute duty of parents to keep a close eye on their children's activities, not only within earshot and eyeshot but out of sight and earshot too. As parents we innocuously believe and hope our children are in the right place at the right time, doing what is right. Unfortunately, sometimes, that is not so. Let me give some examples, especially, as members of the UHTR (J) you would have witnessed or your relatives and friends seen, on a daily basis, how many school going 'couples' play truant, have a tryst, or make a love shack in the screw-pine bushes along the beach next to Kinross Club in Wellawatte, or in the balcony of Savoy Cinema, Wellawatte, during 10:30am or 2:30pm shows. Truly speaking, those children should have been either in school or tuition class! How many times have we seen in the media or heard 2, 3, or 4 schoolboys were drowned when they scooted out of school and went for a sea or river bath or to have some fun at a waterfall. What is the prevalence of Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) among school children and what is the level of drug use and pot smoking among school children? None of the parents of those children would like to believe that their son or daughter would do or was capable of doing something like that until Police showed up at their doorstep with the dead body, the medical officers called the principals, or the law enforcement prosecuted them. Until such time, or even after, we as parents try to be smug, to be the proverbial ostrich, and portray our children as saints but sometimes those children in question have more self respect than the parents themselves and own up with a contrition. Have not you heard about the school children that went to take the 'Five Classes' discoursed by the People’s Liberation Front (JVP)? Their alibi was they were doing 'Group Studies' for A Levels or went for a ‘sleep over'! When their bodies turned up partly burnt at road side the parents could not believe their eyes and cried 'foul play'! Who was fooling who? You are very particular about taking to task and in seeking an international case/inquiry for the five Trincomalee students, then where has been your same alacrity for the 25 students of Embilipitiya Maha Vidyalaya? Therefore what is the guarantee that those five students in question were innocent and in the wrong place at the wrong time, or something else is the reason for their deaths? But I would say this, truth is stranger than fiction! And also extraordinary situations in a country need extraordinary measures!


How about this, the members of UTHR (J) and their reliable sources, contacts and witnesses would have ‘seen’ the development work carried out by International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) in Wanni. They would have ‘seen’ the high-rise buildings, the office complexes, housing units and other infrastructure development with the equipment worth billions or the billions of dollars, and euros brought in to the country by the INGOs. But when SLSF rolled in they saw no development work, not a semblance of such development projects. Not the GOSL but INGOs forced 'arrested development’ on Wanni people!' The INGOs roamed around freely in gas guzzling Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV). The SUVs are so earth-unfriendly and have been set on fire in their hundreds in dealership parking lots by Earth Liberation Front (ELF) in the USA! The photographic evidence show the members of INGOs are having a very cushy time in SL by wining and dining, and the charges that some staffers of INGOs fornicated with some white-skin loving English speaking Sri Lankan activists whose libido, they say, is very high, cannot be ruled out. The sexual exploitation of poor, gullible village damsels of Wanni also cannot be ruled out as the alleged pictures of those scenes are doing rounds on Internet. I want to save time here but I recommend you to read the book ‘Imperial Life in the Emerald City' by Rajive Chandrasekaran. The book is about INGOs, State Department officials, reporters, and contractors in Iraq. You will come to know that a good majority of INGOs’ staff are nothing but a bunch of rascals, failed and lost souls, trying to make hay while sun shines and have a good time at others’ misery and expense! You will see what sort of qualifications, academic or otherwise, they possess. You will be appalled! When the heavy equipment and machinery were being misused to construct earth bunds to stall the forward march of SLSF why your sources, contacts and eye witnesses failed to tip off SLAF so that they could take them out? If the SLAF destroyed them then and there IDPs would not have followed LTTE to the No Fire Zone (NFZ) as they would have lost faith in the LTTE's degraded capabilities and abilities in defending them. Then there would not have been thousands of deaths in Mullaitive. The word that does rounds is that the only achievement by INGOs in Sri Lanka is to teach Wanni women to boil water to prevent water-borne diseases! What do the INGOs think of Sri Lankans, a country with almost 100% literacy rate? Long before Westerners used iodine tablets to purify water Wanni women used the edge of their 'voile sari' to filter algae, silt, foreign particles etc., while pouring water into vessels! They boiled water too before consumed. Why did not you raise awareness and tell the world, loudly and clearly, when Wanni people were being 'taken for a ride', literally, in the INGOs’ SUVs and some of the INGO staffers were providing the know-how and material support to LTTE for blocking, delaying, slowing the SLSF’s onward march?


Your hearts are bleeding so profusely for the imperiled IDPs and the thousands of people perished in Eelam War (EW) IV. But can you give us a breakdown as to how many LTTE in mufti or uniform, conscripts, school children and innocent people perished? I have seen the photos, published by none other than Tamil Net, the unofficial media organ of LTTE, of women in long gowns doing weapons drills with mock rifles, school children being put through squad drills and armed men in uniform and mufti firing their weapons. They can be seen on tanks, suicide craft, and vessels. How much awareness did you create, or else, did you educate those housewives when they were undergoing mock weapon training of the grave implications. In fact, they were, simply, asking for trouble and were legitimate targets for a military in war. For you, the UTHR (J), they were augmenting the so-called ‘fighting formations of LTTE’ to create a Dreelam for you! Do you wish me to believe just because those women were dead in their house clothing that they were innocent? I would tell you this that neither Dahnu, Nalini, nor Suba were in tiger fatigues when they blasted Rajive Gandhi to smithereens nor were all the male and female suicide bombers that died in action in Colombo or elsewhere. So by your definition those suicide bombers were ‘innocent’ Tamils. Luckily, they were killed not by the Security Forces but by the ‘blast force’! But you cry blue murder when the law enforcement agencies roll up suspicious Tamils across Sri Lanka. Considering the number of suicide operations, given the scale of them, there is always probable cause. There is a requirement for the taking precautions or looking at everyone with equal care, media and/or human rights activists not withstanding! The law enforcement agencies owe it to the Nation in maintaining law and order and peace and stability. Prevention is better than cure!

To be continued ……

-Sri Lanka Guardian