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TAMIL EELAM STRUGGLE FOR
FREEDOM
Sri Lanka's state terror: the local
and international dimensions
E.T. Agnosticus, 17 January 2006
The last few weeks have seen a vicious terror campaign
by the Sri Lankan state in Jaffna. Almost every day,
innocent Tamil people are being abducted, raped,
tortured, and killed by Sri Lanka's intelligence
operatives.
The international community's silence and reluctance to
pressure the Sri Lankan state in the face of such vicious
terror is deafening. Immoral and unjust though it is, the
silence is not surprising, for such immorality and
injustice permeate international relations across the
globe.
Despite comical protestations of innocence by the
country's armed forces and the president, let there be no
doubt that this terror has been unleashed with the full
knowledge of the Sri Lankan government, with the
President and the military commander fully complicit in
the terror.
The recent expose by the Sunday Leader of
the naked intimidation of the paper's editor by the
country's President, Mahinda Rajapakse comes as no
surprise to Tamils. We have always known that the seat of
power in Sri Lanka has been occupied by thuggish leaders
who unleash terror against innocent civilians while
clothed in the robes of compassionate Buddhism.
The former President, Chandrika Kumaratunga, was exposed
by the Sunday Leader as having known about her family's connections to
the murder of Tamil leader and Human Rights Lawyer
Mr. Kumar Ponnambalam. Little surprise, given that her
father, Mr. S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, the Prime Minister in
the 1950's used his thugs to attack Tamil MPs protesting
outside parliament peacefully against denial of Tamil
rights in Colombo, and when they walked into
parliament, his words were, "honorable wounds of
war."
Yet she remained the darling of the international
community. Take the Hindu editorial page, for instance.
Displaying the immorality and the turpitude of its
editors, the paper continued to extol the virtues of Ms.
Kumaratunga, totally ignoring her complicity in the
murder or the brutal terror unleashed by the
State in the North and East and the cries of the
Tamil people faced with such implacable state terror. The
paper's continued silence, in the face of the current butchering of innocent Tamils by
Sri Lanka's bestial soldiers, makes it inevitable that
Tamils will show their revulsion at this paper and its
editors. Reasoning Tamils the world over should attack
and expose the viciousness of the Hindu and its editors
in every legal way possible and at every opportunity.
I take my hats off to Sachi Srikantha for
exposing Mr. Ram as the blind goat, but I want our
people to do more to expose this whorehouse of Mount
Road.
The fact is that the Sri Lana government has no
credibility, starting right at the top, with the
executive president himself. So how can foreign
diplomats naively accept such a thuggish president's
denials about the state's terror, while pressuring
the Liberation Tigers and saying the latter lacks
credibility? Is the international community suggesting,
with sheer disconnect from reality, that the inexorable
terror of such a thuggish state can be faced by sitting
and meditating like the Dalai Lama?
It is true that the LTTE has indulged in excesses, in
particular in its harsh treatment of its critics.
Privately, I have myself been somewhat critical of the
movement at times for various reasons. But every time I
begin to question the actions of the LTTE, the state's
terror apparatus comes out to show the true nature of the
inexorable terror the Tamil people face. Shortly after I
started tentatively to question the LTTE's actions in the
Jayadevan affair, Sri Lanka intelligence operatives
murdered TamilNet editor Taraki (D.
Sivaram) in Colombo.
Let me make one thing clear: for Tamils interested
in their people's welfare, the apparatus of the state
terror in Sri Lanka is so vicious, so inexorable that
we can never seriously question the LTTE . There are
times Tamils will need to question the LTTE for the
sake of the people. But now is not the time for
questions like that, when our people are faced with the
unrelenting terror of the state.
What is needed now is the total dismantling of the
state's terror apparatus. The international community has
shown that it doesn't have the will, despite having the
capacity, to help the suffering Tamil people in
dismantling this terror apparatus of the state. Indeed,
the U.S. ambassador in Sri Lanka, Mr. Jeffrey Lunstead,
suggests in his speech that his country is
more intent on strengthening the terror apparatus of the
state than seeking justice and protection for the
long-suffering Tamil people.
Sri Lanka is a terror state; no matter how
'democratically' its thuggish leaders are elected, a
terror state is a terror state; there is no escaping
this fact.
Mr. Raveen Satkurunathan of Canada says on
Asiantribune.com that Sri Lanka may well descend into a
Rwanda. That is a distinct possibility that the U.S. and
UN should consider. So should Canada--after all Canada's
own Lt.-Gen. (Ret.) Roméo Dallaire was force
commander of the United Nations protection force in
Rwanda and has recently published the book, "Shake Hands
With the Devil - The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda."
Acclaimed as a hero in Canada, Gen. Dallaire has been
harshly critical of the failure of the US to stop the
genocide of the Tutsis by the government of the Hutus. US
policy makers would do well to listen to Gen. Dallaire
and think of the consequences of arming and aiding the
genocidal state of Sri Lanka.
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