We Will Win! We Will Win!
And they will be crushed and suppressed - GoSL
11 February 2008
Apart from ignoring these high ideals,
does the sight of a landscape littered with charcoal and twisted street lamps,
with shells of houses as empty as ransacked tombs, landmarks disappeared under
shifting dunes of rubble, tomb cities consisting of walls pitted by artillery
shells, the remains of a world covered with gray ash become an acceptable sight?
What does this litany of the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) signify? Not just an
an occupying army with with nothing to do but occupy. It indicates an occupying
army with a determination to dominate and suppress the rights of those
controlled through that occupation. This desire to dominate and suppress is the
very opposite of the winners of World War II. True, they had a desire to re-fire
a demand for democracy, but here in Sri Lanka the reverse is true. The objective
is to control and dominate the losers and ensure that the future hopes of the
defeated to exist as equals are knocked out of them.
How do the major western powers - gripped by the fear of what they regard as
Muslinm Terrorism - view this ambition by the GoSL? Another terrorist group
knocked out of power? Most of them other, than those who have played a major
role to seek a solution, will be convinced that this is so. Do the rights of
Tamils supposedly supported by Terrorists have any right to respect? Their
blocked view would be, thank God, that Tamil desires for rights, causing a civil
war, are ended.
Does that mean these powers assume that deprivation of equal rights to
education, land ownership, fishing rights, business capacity and every ability
to survive as anything other than powerless Sinhalese dependents matter? The
short-sighted would say Sri Lanka and its wretched problems are too
insignificant for them to worry about. Is that what these dreams of the spread
of democracy throughout the Universe stand for?
Apart from ignoring these high ideals, does the sight of a landscape littered
with charcoal and twisted street lamps, with shells of houses as empty as
ransacked tombs, landmarks disappeared under shifting dunes of rubble, tomb
cities consisting of walls pitted by artillery shells, the remains of a world
covered with gray ash become an acceptable sight? Or do the world powers now
spend millions to refurbish this lifeless maze into a livable haze for bloodless
people destined to be lost souls in a lost world?
Can anything the west do help the Tamils emerge from their darkness? It will be
like drinking the water off the roadside. Their I.C. fight to upstream the
tragedy against this rocky undercurrent will give every foothold the struggle
takes on, an urgency which is too severe to overcome. It will be like trying to
clear a devastating flood with a lone water bucket.
The only fact that keeps humans alive is hope, and often the only way to sustain
that hope against powerful oppression is an abhorrent act. The irritation of
suppression bursts from bust to bloom, which is exactly what has occurred,
causing the island's irreconcilable problems. The one-time beautiful tree has
been infected by invisible insects that made its trunk lose its magnificence.
Any victory will turn the island into a kettle that will scald its rulers and
supporters the moment they touch it. One cannot call a tree without roots or
bark or leaves a tree. So. too, one cannot consider a land a nation when it is
infected by rabid insects.
Regard for a sleeping tiger does not make it a contented one. The fuse within it
is ever ready to flare up again. One cannot turn one's back to them as if they
are adoring apprentices.
Nothing is bleaker than to ignore the past. The Sinhalese will never realize
this, but the International Community should have the objectivity and ability to
do so.
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