In the midst of state terror, oppression and fear; persons in Sri Lanka (SL) appear to be hearing a voice from the very chamber of their soul. This “cry for freedom from fear” is sure to ignite a huge fire that will envelope the entire citizenry for the better.

Mahinda Rajapakse and his acolytes are hell bent in creating more fear throughout the island, especially in the North East (NE), under the presumptive status of patriotism, which is no patriotism at all.

Hitler, Stalin and Mao also created utmost fear amongst their citizens. They were directly responsible for killing 30 million people. Hitler might have destroyed the world if he had had the means. Mad leaders of sovereign countries have always been a threat to humanity, and often they used the same stategy.

It would not be wrong to say that “mad leaders” ruled SL since 1956. Fear phobia amongst the Sinhalese against the Tamils was started by SWRD Bandaranayake in 1956 and pursued faithfully by JR Jeyawardene with more vigour in subsequent years. This turned out to be a competitive political game by the two major political parties, the UNP and the SLFP, to come to power. To this day this ugly competition exists.

Sinhalese are falsely told and utterly fooled by both political parties that granting of a federal state to the Tamils of NE would be harmful to the security and stability of the Sinhalese in the South, though, it would have united the country and produced peace and enormous progress.

This falsified fear for federalism has resulted in the denial of the legitimate right of Tamils in the NE to rule themselves, for as many as 60 years. It caused an armed resistance movement to emerge in the NE. Bloody war, murder, disappearance and massive displacement of Tamil civilians followed it.

The attendant uncertainty, instability and the genocide of Tamils in SL could have been spared if the fear for federalism was never created in the first instance. The desperate demand of the people of NE for survival through the creation of an independent sovereign state of Tamil Eelam could have been averted.

Terrorism arouses audiences around the world. But state terror, though should have been treated with more severity of punishment, received stone silence from the west., till Robert Mugabe declared victory recently in presidential election in Zimbabwe employing state terror. It would be logical to infer that Mahinda and his ilk may not be allowed to be comfortable with state terror for long with this new awareness by the west and the new cry for freedom from fear from the citizens.

Baudrillard (Cool Memories)