And the way forward to solve the vexed ethnic issue for good - Part Two

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

Written by Day
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(December 20, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) You feel so sad for the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) , the slain terrorists and the dead (in reality and deep in your heart, you actions speaks louder than words, you only feel for the dead Wanni people and terrorists, not for the dead soldiers and civilians in the South). There has not been nor be a war where refugees are not made. From World Wars to Swat Valley that has been the reality. You have failed to take solid action to save them from peril but have only written 'critiques'. You will like to hear this. How many times, when or where did you provide 'actionable intelligence' when LTTE had super bunkers constructed and camouflaged among the poor Wanni Tamils living in the daub and wattle houses thatched with Palmyra then putting those innocent Tamils at an enormous risk in case of an aerial action by SLAF?

It is a disgrace for a 'liberation movement' to resort to despicable camouflage and concealment methods. Though obnoxious we could accept it to a certain degree as LTTE were terrorists who did not care for the life of fauna or flora, men or women, and old or young. But on your part it was morally reprehensible, most heinous, and ignominious for not alerting or tipping off SLSF of those air-conditioned super bunkers or making a stand against for imperiling the innocent Wanni Tamils. The Tamil Net and LTTE never thought when they showed the ‘selected’ pictures, for propaganda purpose and to whip up anti Sri Lanka sentiments in the other parts of the world, of the damaged daub and wattle houses due to SLAF bombing the targets they themselves acquired, that their lies will ever come to light. The gullible international media swallowed those lies lock, stock and barrel and sent dispatches to Western news outlets to feed lies, intentionally or unintentionally, in to the minds of unsuspecting readers and viewers thus making them treat the GOSL and SLSF with disgust and contempt, until such time the SLSF rolled on to the LTTE super bunkers and brought them to light. This is why I hold UTHR (J) singularly, more than anybody else or organization, responsible for the Wanni Tamils’ pathetic ordeal. You were fully aware that the GOSL, as India, was only interested in liquidating the top LTTE leadership as they knew very well that there would be a domino effect once top leadership was gone. The GOSL understood that the only way to defeat the scourge of terrorism was by targeted killings (HR lawyers, professors, and activists and free media people, please, be advised when any government in the world resorts to targeted killings, it is for a reason and that there will not be inquiries held as it is a waste of time and valuable resources. Why should a legitimate government hold inquires when the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre or the skyjackers of Lufthansa Flight LH181, Boeing 737 Charlie Echo l did not hold an inquiry before killing the Israeli athletes or holding the innocent passengers hostage respectively? Why should the GOSL hold inquires on Prabakaran’s or his top lieutenants deaths when the International Court or any other legal or human rights body have not held inquiries on the deaths of Mahathaya of LTTE, Pathmanaba of EPRLF, Tall Sri of TELO, who were Tamils, and list goes on, at the hand of Prabakaran and LTTE? If the French Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE) could do it by sinking the Rainbow Warrior, in a mission codenamed Opération Satanique in the port of Auckland , New Zealand in January, 1985 or the British Special Air Service (SAS) could execute a mission code-named 'Operation Flavius' to kill a Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) cell in Gibraltar on 5 March 1988, crossing international boundaries and on other sovereign nations’ soil, why is it not good for the 3rd Special Forces Squadron of Sri Lanka Army to do the same in Oddusudan or Mannar, bringing justice to Shankar of Tiger Air Force (TAF) fame and Charles of Central Bank fame? Do you hear me some Foreign Secretaries? Sauce for the goose should be the sauce for the gander! That is what late Lt Col Lalith Jayasinghe and the members of his unit were asked to do. They did it well. A nation needs to thank and remember them eternally. That is what the highly trained, brave and selfless unsung heroes of 3rd SF Squadron were trained and utilized for. The SLSF posses neither armed Predators nor Apache Long Bows to be employed in precision targeted eliminations but we have some bald but not bold pilots, like the one who brought justice to Brigadier SP Selvam and his retinue. Now you are telling me that it was wrong to kill S P Selvam as he was a political leader. I modify the saying 'go and tell it to the Chinese to read ‘Go and tell the ‘No(r)Dicks’ since I would not like to slight Chinese as they have been a benign and sincere friend of GOSL for decades! If not for the unwavering and steadfast Chinese friendship, the Dreelam has already become an Eelam. Here is the kicker; nobody in SL has seen the SP Selvam’s military commission promulgated in a GOSL gazette notification. But both the LTTE and Tamil Net said that he was Brig Selvam. Then I am sorry to say he was a legitimate military target. So were ex-PC Nadesan of Sri Lanka Police Department (SLPD) and the I Gona Police (IGP) of LTTE and all other so called political leaders who wore tiger fatigues from time to time. In short, had your reliable sources and contacts tipped off of those top leaders, super bunkers, the movements of LTTE hierarchy to and fro from those bunkers, and their attendance at functions be they the ‘Maha Veer’ remembrances or the funerals of Shanker, Charles, or Gangai Amaran then LTTE would not have been able to take a human shield with them to the No Fire Zone (NFZ) and there would not have been the thousands of deaths, you like to talk about, in Mullaitive. The SLAF Fighter and Helicopter Squadron Commanders would have ensured ZCC to the best of their abilities the way they ensured only Brig SP Selvam and his top lieutenants were pulverized to pieces! Unfortunately, even if bombs would go astray a little bit due to weather effect and kill a dozen or so innocent civilians, would not it be a thousand times better to save a few thousand deaths you wanted save from peril by giving diplomacy a chance in Mullaitive? You all are academics, do the math! It is apt to remember that, especially with regard to the Drealam Tamils, a Western diplomat is there, basically, to lie to for his/her country and promote his country’s vested interests, not to cultivate Dreelam Tamil friends. But he/she will pretend to hear and work for you for monetary gains or some Tamil flesh and sensual pleasure. Your shameless failure in your civic duty to inform about terrorists, their movements, their safe houses, the locations of their camps, and equipments and duly inform the Wanni people the perilous path they were being take on resulted in tens of thousands untimely and unnecessary deaths. You cannot blame the present day political establishment or culture in Sri Lanka for that, though it is filled with corruption and afflicted with all the ills present in this world, nor the Sinhala people. Since the 1983 Black July they ensured that anti-Tamil riots are not going to happen and a thing of the past. You must give the credit to GOSL, SLSF and people in the South when and where, then and there, the credit is due.

Here is a good one. Say, there was threat to your lives in Wanni therefore you did not tip off the locations of the bases, men, equipment, and/or the clandestine activities of LTTE to SLSF how and why your reliable sources and contacts failed to tip off of the LTTE sleeper cells, safe houses, suicide cadres and their movement etc in Colombo and its suburbs? Do you wish Sri Lankans and outsiders to believe you did not witness, overhear, get a glimpse of, nor smell the rat rather 'tiger' of the destruction and the carnage to take place or being planned or executed by those sleeper cells and suicide cadres? If answer is no, you all are a bunch of liars. You do not have so called reliable sources or contacts anywhere, leave alone in the government, in the military, or in the Tamil community but a bunch of rascals, the likes of the infamous 'Curveball' who fooled and took the most powerful nation on earth for a ride of a life time to an unending, unnecessary, wasteful war in Iraq for some fast cash from intelligence slush funds. They fed/feed you with cock and bull stories and lies. You could see the speck in the GOSL's or SLSF's eye but did not see the tanks, suicide craft, super bunkers, swimming pools, air strips, camps, TAF aircraft, or LTTE excavating the earth bunds. Shame on you!

Do not try to find fault with SLSF for killing in combat or while on duty. They are meant to kill as many as possible in national defense. That is their chosen and noble profession. That is what they do best and are required to by the nation and her tax payers. They do not join SLSF to die for his or her country but to kill to all the enemies, foreign and domestic (yes, the domestic enemies may include the bogus humbug Human Rights (HR) lawyers, activists, journalists maintained and sustained with the bankrolled money from the Dreealam people, to safe guard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation and survive on the battle field to live to fight another day! That is their legacy task and it is no different than any other noble profession. Plato believed that as long as sinful humanity, in this case the Dreelam people, survives on this earth, some person (KP), group (TNA), groups (BTF, WTO, TRO etc) will resort to war (again) to get what they want (the Dreelam). Such people must be opposed (stopped by force!). The Nation can be proud that the SLSF were/are/will be firm, fair and inexorable in war! What are doctors supposed and expected to do? Take care of the patients in the letter and spirit of the Socrates Oath! What are universities lecturers supposed and expected to do? Educate the undergraduates to the best of their abilities! A grateful nation should and must always stand by and support her valiant Security Forces for allowing her citizens to sleep well at night as they are on the watch. While in uniform and on duty soldiers are well disciplined, very professional fighting and killing machines, off-duty, 99.9% of them are law-abiding good citizens. I will be the first to acknowledge that there are rascals, humbugs and criminals in uniform. I have trained with, served along and stood up against them. They used to ask me when I was on leave why I was hanging around the headquarters instead of going home. They were nervous as they knew how much misery I had brought to them and their families! Unfortunately their misery was in their own making. They put themselves in that situation and circumstance. You hear about them from time to time in the media, see them in the dock of the court houses, shackled in the Black Maria, or locked up in a cell. Unfortunately some have not been caught yet but the time will catch up with them. Is an honorable military proud of them? No, not at all! Is a proud nation want to shield them? Negative! Are you happy with them? I do not think so! Those rascals come in every hue and color, from every race and ethnicity, officer and other ranks, and every nook and corner. Contrary to the popular belief among the Dreelam people that SL soldiers are murderers, robbers, and rapists there would have been the likes of helicopter pilot, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson and his crew who stood up against his own country's troops committing Mai Lai massacre, who positioned his helicopter so as to shoot his own country's troops if they did not stop the massacre, in the SLSF too. Those conscientious soldiers might have prevented the massacres in EW IV too, we might never know as they are true soldiers and silent professionals, not the media propped up bogus warrior top brass we see or hear in the print or electronic media. They are the very best Sri Lanka has to offer and any nation very proud to have. In the WO Thompson's case, those three U.S. servicemen who made an effort to halt the massacre and protect the wounded were denounced by U.S. Congressmen, received hate mail, death threats and mutilated animals on their doorsteps. Only 30 years after the event were their efforts honored. Those unsung heroes of the SLSF, who might have prevented atrocities or massacres of innocent Tamil people, like WO Thompson and his crew did, might be treated the same way WO Thompson and his crew were treated. That is the saddest part. You can use your reliable sources and contacts to find out about some of those great soldiers! For starters, though late Lt Col L Jayasighe carried out targeted killings, when on leave, he was humble, down to earth and selfless enough to give a ride to the poor Tamils who lived on the estate where his father worked in his official army vehicle. The other example is I have personally witnessed a sister whose brother was on guard duty with an SLR, bringing the food, sanitary towels and toiletries for her female friends who were housed with the other displaced Tamil civilians in the disused Rathmalana Airport hangers while the 1983 Black July riots were raging

All this time I highlighted your culpability and responsibility. You may be wondering what my actions have been to write like this. To name a few, as a young officer I stood up for what was right and stood against my peers and superiors, to include top brass, when they did not do what was expected of them by the nation and her tax payers. I was one-man army against ragging in the university from which your suicide bombers to-be cum engineering undergraduates came from. I filed an investigative report as a subaltern against a rascal holding a rank equivalent to brigadier who allegedly removed the electronic equipment for his personal use without any authority, that were being used to provide a vital and essential service to the Northern Tamil people. I saved the returning refugees, after the 1987 Indo-Lanka accord, from violence, ill-treatment, harassment and being robbed at the hands of our own troops, at a very personal risk to my own life. I did it on principle, without regard to my life, well-being, or career in the military. When one is in uniform he is a man of all faiths and ethnicities. He does it for the Flag. He does not ill-treat anyone based on race, color, age, gender, national origin, religion, or mental or physical disability as long as they are not engaged in unlawful activities against the nation or an elected government. But he is willing and stands ready to do bad things to bad people! He will discharge his duties with diligence under the rubric of Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). Now you may be saying 'we told you so! The Sinhalese military is full of rapists, murderers, and robbers! You all are highly mistaken! I will tell you otherwise. I will tell you how a Tamil officer who robbed Tamil fishermen of their catch while Muslim Commanding Officer, who never touched a red cent belonged to others, were fast a sleep after being on the Watch! They were/are black sheep in the military; I call them; civilians in uniform. They were neither Officers nor Gentlemen! I would tell you that they were/are a very minority among great officers and soldiers in SLSF. Every military in the world have rogue elements in their ranks. The great militaries purge them when caught. In Sri Lanka’s case, though, we are angry at them, the Drealam Tamils would love them and like to see them in the SLSF in a higher percentage, if not for them the LTTE would not have been able to clear all the deadly cargo from the Jaya Container Terminal (JCT) or the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) all the way up to Wanni jungles. Not all the warlike material and lethal cargo were brought in by sea and unloaded on the Mullaitive beach by the Soosai and Sons! All the rascals in the tri-services and police facilitated it, in complicity and collusion with the LTTE, for sex, money, or personal gain, from Customs inspections to lorry permits to transport through the road blocks up to the end-user that was LTTE!

Having said all the things I have said so far I am the first persons to accept that there are genuine grievances felt by Tamil people. But who, on earth, does not have grievances, worries, disappointments, frustrations and experienced discrimination. The so called grievances and denial of rights do not rise to a level to demand for self rule by creating a separate state called the Dreelam, through senseless violence, consisting of two thirds of the fertile land and rich sea resources of a unitary and sovereign state for 12.6% Tamil people. Let's talk about language. The grievance that there are no enough Tamil speaking Sinhala civil servants in the North have caused difficulties in day to day activities in the North and East is the result of systematic and planned purge of the Sinhalese and not allowing them to buy land and settle in the North and East. If Sinhalese were allowed to stay and procreate then their children would have learnt Tamil and married into Tamil families. It would have ensured that Tamil speaking Sinhalese manned the government offices. But when you knife do death an SSP who was rugby international or kill a Sinhalese doctor who was willing to serve the Tamils, Sinhalese would not dare to go to the North and East to serve on hardship tours. The ultimate result is, instead of the two peoples living in concord, the polarization and clash of civilizations of in your own making. In your quest for a Dreelam, you made it happen. Then, please, do not come up with words like Sinhalese nationalism, supremacy, chauvinism, racism etc. I know it is difficult to talk to each other if you do not speak each other's language. That is why we learn the each other’s language, use the 'sign' language or a link/common language, draw pictures, seek the help of interpreter, or simply keep the mouth shut. I do not think when Tamils go to Middle East for employment Arabs talk to them in Tamil. So then why do not they go ahead and start a violent movement for the Tamil speaking rights? I am sure those Arabs will not only chop off their heads and limbs but genitals too! When Tamils immigrate to Germany, France, Norway and Canada, I do not think natives speak to them in Tamil. Tamils will have to learn Deutsch, French, Norwegian, or English/French respectively. Go ahead and try to create a separate state for Tamil speaking people in those countries, what the Dreelam people will get is deportation orders, free plane tickets and some frequent flyer miles back to Sri Lanka. Those governments will ask the dreaded Terrorism Investigations Department (TID) to take good care of them! If an expatriate or a Sri Lankan working overseas is willing to grovel and bend for dollars, euros, or dinars and talk to them in their native languages why you want to create a separate state by violent means for 12.6% for not having enough Sinhalese government servants in the North and East. If you think there is discrimination only for Tamil students in varsity entrance then you are a hypocrite! Are the cut-off scores equal for all the districts in the island? Negative! Then is it not discrimination when measured by your own yard stick? Yes! So should Galle district resort to create a separate entity through violence? I do not think so!

Here is the real kicker; 74% Sinhalese bear the tax burden to give free education and medicine for 12.6% of Tamils. The Sinhalese can call it total injustice on Sinhalese. Are you willing to accept discrimination at work, on the street, on a bus or train etc, for dollars, Euros and dinars overseas? Yes, sir! Just after 9/11 when hate crimes were prevalent and the hooligans on the prowl did not distinguish Afghans from Indian Sikhs as males from both communities wear turbans. They attacked both communities! Most recently Sri Lankan students in Australia were attacked in a case of mistaken identity. They were seeking out Indian students! But unfortunately both Indians and Sri Lankans look alike. Tamils and Sinhalese are in the same boat when overseas. Both get same ill-treatment, harassment and name calling. But we are willing to suck it up and drive on because dollars, Euros, or dinars we earn or the freedom we enjoy, but we are not going to create a separate state by violent means. Some want a Dreelam in Sri Lanka for the subjective or perceived discrimination. There are millions of legal and illegal immigrants in the US, and some millions out of those millions cannot speak English but they go about their daily lives without demanding their language be spoken at the government offices or by the public officials. They start with 'sign' language then use broken English, next children are born and the off springs go to school and learn good English and translate for their parents! An immigrant who cannot speak English can even join the military. What does the military do; (s)he is shipped to the Language School for English language training and they, then, go on to become very good soldiers and model citizens. There are no suicide bombers attacking the government machinery or the innocent citizens on the US streets. There is neither bloodshed nor demonstrations clamoring for a separate state. Unfortunately, if there is to be a crazy movement in the offing asking for separate state on language issues then there is 1 Brigade Combat Team from the 3rd Infantry Division, Homeland Defense Brigade, to take care of it with least possible delay. Truly speaking, an immigrant community in the US could ask for a separate estate based on ethnic identity as the US is a nation of immigrants but Americans are very patriotic people and not that foolish, leave alone resorting to, to even think of a separate state. We all know of the selfish, short-sighted politicians who brought on the ‘Sinhala Only' policy, (Shame on them!) that not only devastated the country but set it back by decades and caused almost all the vexed ethnic issues we have today. That was in the infamous past. After the 1983 July anti-Tamil riots, successive governments learnt the lesson and started teaching Tamil in schools. One has to really appreciate that. A government in the Third World can do only so much, after all, having had to spend for free education and medicine! If one thinks he or she is discriminated against in Sri Lanka they can go overseas to live and/or earn wages and remit some foreign exchange to kith and kin back in Sri Lanka in gratitude for the free education and medicine they received. You will appreciate what Sri Lanka has to offer when you have to spend about 28,000 dollars for a Sinusitis operation at Duke University Hospital in USA. Do not let the Dreelam people force you to wear the suicide vest and blow yourself and others out of your anger resulting from the perceived or subjective discrimination. This will not ameliorate the conditions but aggravate the things.

I do not think Tamils can have a Drealam on their own. Reality will be such and it could be, Tamils will have a Drealam controlled by India and a south controlled by China. One thing is for sure the Drealam will be another poverty ridden T’nadu and the south would be another Chengdu or another Hong Kong, as the two peoples did not want to live in unity and perfect harmony like ebony and ivory on the keyboard of my piano. It is up to the genuine Tamil academics to show the moral courage and break rank with Rudrakumaran and the LTTE remnants and seek an amicable settlement. The bona fide academics might get shafted or be given the short shrift by Tamil Net but it is really worth trying.

It is apt to mention that the promising or lasting results cannot be achieved overnight. The decades old mistrust is so high that a Sinhala person calling a Tamil ‘ para demala’ (bloody Tamil) in anger or a Tamil calling a Sinhalese person ‘a son of bitch’, out of anger too, or a Sinhalese mob attacking an estate Tamil line or Tamils pelting a busload of Sinhalese with stones is a possibility for a foreseeable future. It is up to the right thinking people not to condone such acts but isolate those humbugs by weaning the political patronage or shunning the underworld politicians and hooligans. Let saner counsel prevail at all times when there is a physical confrontation between a Tamil and Sinhalese. Let the policeman on the scene diffuse the situation with least possible delay and contain it without allowing spilling over, and then the much awaited peace and harmony will dawn on Sri Lanka

Last but not least, you can do enormous good, not with the reports that generate more heat than light, but finding ways and means to retrieve billions of dollars, euros, guilders that were stashed away in Swiss bank accounts or may be in the Cayman Islands banks, we know it for sure but who knows where, by Prabakaran and the LTTE top rung, that are now going to be simply owned by those lucky banks as the account holders are no more, thanks to SLSF! The prestigious Jane’s Defense Weekly’s estimate is a staggering yearly collection of 300 millions of dollars. Given the collection from 1983, and if a conservative percentage of, about, 50% is used for calculations a whooping 3900 millions of dollars should be in the foreign banks unclaimed that can well be used to develop the North and the East. Why the hard earned foreign exchange, forked out of fear or given in complicity and collusion by Tamils all over the world to LTTE, is given free to those lucky banks as a treasure trough from Tamils. Give it a try get the monies back, and Good Luck!

It is apt to finish this article with following as the present situation in Sri Lanka bears striking resemblance to that described by German writer Sebastian Haffner, who was in Berlin in 1933 after the Reichstag fire (Germany's 9/11):

"What was missing is what in animals is called ‘breeding.' This is a solid inner kernel that cannot be shaken by external pressures, something noble and steely, a reserve of pride, principle, and dignity to be drawn on in the hour of trial. It is missing in Germans. "As a nation they are without backbone. That was shown in March 1933. At the moment of truth, when other nations rise spontaneously to the occasion, the Germans collectively and limply collapsed, yielded to a nervous breakdown, and became a nightmare to the rest of the world." ("Defying Hitler," p. 135)

-Sri Lanka Guardian