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Significant Other

March 13, 2007 at 10:10 am · Categories: English, Human Rights, Peace and Conflict | by indi

I read the Daily News cause it’s in the office in the morning. The headline is generally ‘EVERYTHING IS FINE’, but there are some new additions. Lately the paper and Mahinda have been going on and on about a ‘plot to discredit the government’ and a media ‘conspiracy’ to demoralize the armed forces. On the front page of yesterdays paper there’s a hysterical Bandula Jayasekera piece called ‘Go tell it to the LTTE’ accusing everyone who speaks up about human rights and disappearances of supporting the LTTE for money. How one gets paid for this I don’t know, but war hysteria is leading to a short-sighted ‘with us or against us’ mentality that slanders many moderate citizens and the stated positions of GoSL to boot.

It is actually possible to report and speak out about disappearances, abductions and human rights abuses without supporting the LTTE. Crazy, I know. It’s what Mahinda did during the Premadasa years, to similar abuse. When a top police official like Victor Perera admits that rogue forces are complicit in abductions, I think it’s worth speaking out about.

It is also possible to be against war and still love Sri Lanka. In fact, the government hasn’t abrogated the CFA, so they are technically against war. In fact, all official statements repeatedly state that they are looking for a negotiated settlement. That is why it’s so absurd to demonize people that support the official government policy.

Finally, they make the absurd statement that anyone opposing the war is in it for ‘money, money, money’. Like an ethnic slur, you can toss an accusation like that out but it just looks nonsensical to people that don’t already agree with you. The people I know making money are arms dealers, people in defense procurement, people involved with Mihin Air or the Hambantota Port, or otherwise in the good graces of the government. No one on the fringes protesting about the war is getting ‘money’ from the LTTE or phantom foreign forces. There is no personal money in peace, though it is better for society.

Standing for a negotiated, peaceful settlement is not treason. It is, in fact, a principled and defensible stand as a patriotic Sri Lankan. It is the official stance of our government. It is supported by the international community. It is spoken by our President, though he practices something different. The people who have the courage to say and practice peace are not traitors and they are not by any stretch LTTE. They are Sri Lankan, like you.

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Wicky said,

March 13, 2007 @ 11:01 am

The original article, Monday, 12 March 2007:

Go tell it to the LTTE

They scream and scream. They talk of white vans, they talk of disappearances, and they talk of abductions. They talk of human rights only when they donât have privileges. There is a pattern, a very clear pattern.

There is a campaign and there is a lot of money too to put in to that campaign. Re-alignment of forces. Enemies have become darlings. It is not difficult to find out why. Power, greed and it says it all.

A âmediaâ man and an outfit which once organised a media conference to the LTTEâs Manirasakulam camp are also screaming. But, they were silent when the Army captured the camp. Why? May be they are sad that the LTTE lost and they lost their flow of funds.

How brutal could they be to organise a media conference on behalf of the LTTE? They and others who scream live in comforts. Do they care for the men and women who battle for the Motherland? Do they care for the wounded?

Do they care for those widows and the ones that are missing? NO. Because they are paid for messing up things and life in Sri Lanka.

On Saturday, the President, Commander in Chief spoke. The Defence Secretary spoke, the three Commanders spoke.

Described by Political Analyst and Senior Lecturer Dayan Jayatilleke as the best team Sri Lanka got in many years, they spoke from the heart, they spoke from experience and they spoke with love for the country. OUR Country.

The President said: âI was born here. I live here. I will die here and my ashes will become a part of Mother Earth here.â That is the wish of many Sri Lankans. Not the ones who scream for a few dollars more and try to ridicule the valiant Forces.

The Commanders explained how they fight in the land, seas and the skies. Because itâs the land, seas and the skies of Lanka. Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa spoke of the high morale of the Forces.

We ask the people who are trying to demoralise the Forces, WHY? WHY? Or do you like to see more of them demoralised and killed for you to earn a bit more dollars?

Those who love Mother Lanka are no fools.

They can see clearly the ones who are hurting this land, the ones who are dying to sell this land. They donât need a microscope to see them. They question why they are silent in the face of LTTE atrocities?

They question how few people could carry out propaganda for the LTTE for money, money and more money.

Yes. They say! âGo tell it to the LTTEâ

Bandula JAYASEKARA

amitha said,

March 13, 2007 @ 11:13 am

I don’t see you protesting about child recruitment and LTTE atrocities, why is that?

Ponna said,

March 13, 2007 @ 2:31 pm

Amitha, may be not here, Indi’s pretty clear as to where he stands with regards to the LTTE:

“Um, donât even get me started on the LTTE. The LTTE has an internationally known record of kidnapping, disappearances, assassinations, and child abductions. A lot of whatâs going on in Colombo may be Karuna related which is a spin-off of â¦ the LTTE.

Furthermore, they are accountable to no one. Whatâs commendable is Victor Perera is admitting a problem, and perhaps doing something about it. The LTTE denies any problems, and continue with their thuggish ways. Iâve never argued that GoSL is a good government, but I believe that it has far more institutional capacity to change than the LTTE. Furthermore, in comparison the the LTTE, GoSL is a bunch of saints, where people can actually protest abductions and publish media reports like this. So no, I donât think Iâll move to Eelam, because the only place the LTTE leads people is into poverty, destitution, and death.”

Taken from http://www.indi.ca/2007/03/abductions-and-reconstructions/

indi said,

March 13, 2007 @ 6:41 pm

I do try to piss off everyone equally. Of course the LTTE has a terrible human rights record. This isn’t about lowering ourself to their level. It’s about maintaining our dignity and openness as Sri Lankans, a Sri Lanka that Tamil people would want to be a part of.

Ponna said,

March 13, 2007 @ 11:09 pm

“That is why itâs so absurd to demonize people that support the official government policy.”

You mean don’t support right?

Che said,

March 13, 2007 @ 11:56 pm

The other basic difference is that the government is (notionally) the legally constituted representative of a democratic and sovereign State under the international Rule of Law; whereas the LTTE is a non-State actor that is a listed terrorist organisation in several countries. Accordngly, the State is accountable to higher standards of behaviour than the LTTE.

The great irony about those who are quick to raise hackles about criticism of the government’s increasingly unacceptable conduct viz-a-viz democracy, human rights and the Rule of Law, on the basis that critics are silent re the LTTE, is that their position in effect equates the government with the LTTE rather more than the alleged peaceniks (who don’t )!!

Indeed, politically and ideologically, those now in charge of the Sri Lankan State are much too like the LTTE for their own comfort.

This is a fundamental contradiction that would be amusing for its banal paranoia, if not for the chilling consequences they now threaten against those defined as against the State. In short, like many other school yard bullies placed in charge of governments elsewhere, intellectual deficiency and ineptitude with rationality are bridged through recourse to brawn and violence.

Vaporub said,

March 14, 2007 @ 9:58 am

Che, well said and true, but the danger here is that the general public are buying into the simplistic arguments paraded by those in power. Having a high literacy I fear does not make us intelligent - else, why would we have voted in this government in the first place?!

Vaporub said,

March 14, 2007 @ 10:02 am

Sorry, also meant to say that the Daily News could be called State subsidised toilet paper, but it’s also so full of excrement in the form of conspiracy theories, allegations, wild imaginings of MPs and blatant propaganda that I fear it’s use is limited even in this respect.

Best left alone to join the cesspool of misguided intentions this government, and leviathan Cabinet, and its policies are based on. Indi, why the hell are you even picking it up mate?

JustMal said,

March 15, 2007 @ 6:03 am

The official government policy substantially differs from the real policies of Mahinda Chinthana. People who voted for this government do not want negotiations or powersharing with the LTTE.

I don’t think it’s solely up to the Sinhalese to develop “a Sri Lanka that Tamil people would want to be a part of”. As both John Howard and Tony Blair would say, the minorities should either assimilate or go back to where they came from.

The “with us or against us” rhetoric and the malignation of foreign funded peaceniks works well with the government’s real agenda, which is to militarily defeat the tigers. It’s the same as how the Bush administration and the American Right treats the leftista in the US. The government aims to polarise the people to the extent that the peaceniks and federalists would no longer be able to be safe among the increasingly hostile and aggressive society, and therefore would be weak and vulnerable.

The government’s job is to crush the tigers, not to keep the moral high ground for good PR, at the expense of losing the war, in order to satisfy people like Indrajit. Morality could not be determined in a contextual vacuum, and what this government is doing is exactly what any other country would do in a simlar situation, and that, in my opinion, makes it moral and righteous.

The critics, as Che says, are not just “silent in re: LTTE”. Many of them are closet LTTE sympathisers, some turn out to be (the three “journalists” associated with FMM for example) terrorists themselves and many others inadvertently (or otherwise) provide material support for terrorist activities (UNHCR, Medicins du Monde etc). Ideologically, there isn’t much difference between what they think and what the LTTE says in regard to power devolution, interim administration, human rights violations by the government, justification of terrorism, demonisation of Sinhalese-Buddhists etc. That’s why, from the government’s perspective, these bigotted “critics” need to be exposed, vilified, and thus silenced.

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