SINHALA VOICE said,

September 25, 2009 @ 12:05 pm

“Sacrificing essential liberty for temporary safety in Sri Lanka ”

OK WHEN YOU WRITE “TEMPORARY SAFETY ” [Edited out]
PPL CAN UNDERSTAND YOUR INTENTION N WHO WOULD BE BEHIND YOU!

SO CALLED LIBERATORS ARE NO MORE!!!!!!
ARMY BEING EXPANDED TO FACE FUTURE “LIBERATION STRUGGLES”
SO SAFETY IS NOT TEMPORARY!
[Do you understand?]

Observer said,

September 25, 2009 @ 1:37 pm

You know, for some of us, this where we want to be. Because there is no full frontal war. It’s really what people want isn’t it? Sure some of you want a liberal utopia (which doesn;t exist). But if this what the majority wants, don’t you have to respect democracy?

You know if all of this is true, the government will topple very easily. No man can rule without the people’s support. So rest easy all of you. With this sort of doom and gloom your wishes will come true soon. If MR is doing all these shnanigans without people’s support then he truly is GOD! which he is not.. haha

And for the rest of you. Please visit Sri Lanka and then judge for your self. Not 2nd hand propaganda.

Bakaero said,

September 25, 2009 @ 9:51 pm

I do agree with the writer of the above article and also with Heshan. I am a Sinhalease and love my country but do not approve all the things that our leaders have done in post-independent Sri Lanka. I also agree that Sri Lanka is not a matured democracy and does not provide equal opportunities for the pursuit of happiness, liberty and justice for all its citizens. If you say you are in a democracy, is it OK to kill suspects without due process. Just forget about the recently concluded war think about 1971 and 1988-1989 period. How many young people were killed during that period? Even after so many years justice must be done to their families. Rebellions must be dealt with according to the existing legal framework. We have sacrificed our liberties for the well being of the politicians. That is the plain truth.

Off the Cuff said,

September 25, 2009 @ 10:19 pm

Concerned Citizen states
Furthermore, over quarter of a million Tamils are continuing to be held by the state against their will in IDP camps as suspect terrorists until proved innocent through stringent government screening procedures implemented at a measured pace which appears insidious.
Unquote

The first question that crossed my mind was whether you were exposed to the bombing spree of the LTTE or whether you escaped that period by living abroad.

Only a fool would say that ALL IDPs are suspected terrorist as they are NOT but some terrorists are hiding amongst the civilians. The same civilians who were forced to provide cover to the terrorists on pain of death or amputation of limbs.

Again, only a fool would say that there are no terrorists hiding amongst the civilians as several thousand have been caught, including some leaders from within the camps. KP bragged about the existence of several thousand Terror Cadres before he was caught.

You further state that
The GOSL’s greatest loss of credibility is on account of their blatant denial and refusal to inquire into allegations of war crimes and human rights abuses in the course of fighting the war against terrorism. Appeals to the government by the United Nations, USA and the EU to inquire into such allegations in order to clear any misconceptions which threaten the government’s integrity are contemptuously resisted based on artfully misconstrued reasoning that they are an affront to the independence and sovereignty of the nation.
Unquote

I would suggest that you LISTEN to what transpired in the special sessions of the UNHRC. You could watch the proceedings at http://www.un.org/webcast or on you tube at the following link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1IanNK1uwM&feature=channel_page

Rather than, as you put it, “blatant denial and refusal to inquire into allegations” which of course is far from the truth, what Sri Lanka did was to requested that such inquiries commence with the war’s that preceded Her conflict.

France’s killing of a millions in Indo China, Algeria, Mehedi Ben Burka’s disappearance from Paris, UK’s and Ireland’s Londonderry massacres (Though it was mentioned, the request left out the incendiary carpet bombing of Dresden).

If that is acceded, the Iraq war with Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo would follow. Any bets that fair play would triumph and the request for Independent Inquiries by SL would be headed?

What transpired at UNHRC sessions will make any patriotic Sri Lankan proud of the country and proud of the Sri Lankans who so eloquently defended her reputation.

You have also mentioned about the Govts alleged “face saving counter allegations of an international conspiracy, backed by the Tamil Diaspora”. Is it your position that the Tamil Diaspora does not bank roll a tarring campaign against SL?

The LTTE still has financial muscle. It had a $300 million income in the past and would probably have a large income even now (probably at lower level). The LTTE is known to have bribed US Congressman and what they thought were US State Dept officials (FBI). The Diaspora is part and parcel of it, as it bank rolled the LTTE. As such bribing some western journalist would be a simple matter for them. How else could you explain the palpably false stories carried by the London Times and the Guardians infamous video?

A very good example is the story they cooked up after being flown over the NFZ along with Ban Ki Moon by the SL Govt itself. In that story their so called Independent Defense Experts have stated that bombardment with Air Burst and Ground impact mortars cause “INTENSE HEAT” that can burn down trees to “STUMPS”.

The pictures they carried had “UNBURNT” tents and undamaged vegetation. The “INTENSE” heat could not even burn plastic or cloth let alone live trees. The burnt tree stumps were no where to be seen. So much for truthful reporting.

What could be the incentive for cooking up such blatant lies? Who was the beneficiary?

Heshan said,

September 25, 2009 @ 10:53 pm

*when flag-waving, minority-bashing and foreign conspiracy theories are the norm

Migara said,

September 26, 2009 @ 6:21 am

over quarter of a million Tamils are continuing to be held by the state against their will in IDP camps as suspect terrorists until proved innocent through stringent government screening procedures implemented at a measured pace which appears insidious.

So, you want all the IDPs to be release to the mine-laden territories? What is your other options? Your half truths are worse than lies.

Society is rapidly losing its trust in the regime on account of the mere lip service paid by them towards achieving a post war durable and just peace.

The elections however is proving contrary. More than 65% of people voted for the regime, and the number keeps increasing. It looks like your comment is more than in hope, because majority of people of SL has rejected your views.

Atheist said,

September 26, 2009 @ 7:08 am

Smoulderingjin:

I’ve noticed that you’ve suddenly started to call that little island full of human rights “violations” as “our nation” now! Well, Well, as Tony Soprano would say, “Beaudiful”! It looks like you and your peace crew are doubly working hard to make “our nation” the epitome of democracy. Go on, work hard to teach “our nation” how to be decent, honest and truthful. Yes, it’s too bad that “our nation” doesn’t have people like you who are born with the moral courage to speak out against atrocities committed in the name of land, ethnicity and language.

Please let us know who you have elected to investigate the crimes perpetrated by the despots in “our nation”. Surly, it must be driving you up the wall knowing that “our nation” doesn’t acknowledge all the “good works “being carried out by the peace crew. Too bad, “our nation” has no idea how hard people like you – with your nine to five jobs – sacrifice your time and hard earned money to bring peace to “our nation”.

Every day – punching in, punching out and paying your dues to The Man. Thank you for giving up all the perks in life in order to help “our nation”! If this compliment was made to Tony Soprano, he would take it in his humble way, and tell us to “fuhgeddaboudit”.

smoulderingjin said,

September 26, 2009 @ 2:34 pm

@ Atheist – you must never make wild guesses in the dark as to the identity of a pseudonym. Chances are that you will very rarely be right!

@ Heshan –

I agree with you about the validity of some elections as per Al Gore and Bush. Nevertheless, even if the current government was elected by dubous means – and admittedly the vote included the jvp one – the situation we see now is that post-war the government is seen as worthy of the vote. Doesn’t this make it a “democracy” whether it functions as such or not?

That is a genuine question as it is something I am trying to understand. It would be an interesting discussion to have – the question of “what constitutes a democracy – is it the vote of the majority or the behaviour of the government concerned?”

I am not sure about the North and East – it could be that they have always been under martial law given that they may have anyway lived under that kind of “martial law” governance of the LTTE”. Not that either should be present in a democracy! The difference of course was that the LTTE never presented themselves as a democracy, while the GOSL does.

However, your point that there is no democratic government in the North and East that is represented is a fair one, as is the comment that “If the military decides someone will die, then someone dies”. Although again this holds true for the rule of the LTTE as well.

I am not so sure about what you say about the status quo though. I do hope you are right in your rephrasing of the statement as that would give us some hope! As for people electing the same government, is perhaps an indication of the general apathy and indifference because it “is not happening to me”. This is what prompted Martin Niemöller to write these words which I think were quote by Lasantha W in his obituary editorial:

“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

As you know it refers to the inactivity of the intellectuals of Germany in responding to the rise to power by the Nazi regime and the way they systematically destroyed their chosen target groups.

E.N.Gland said,

September 26, 2009 @ 3:58 pm

From the above article, ” Sacrificing essential liberty for temporary safety in Sri Lanka” it is quite evident that the author is voicing his disapproval of the GOSL clearing Sri Lanka of Tamil terrorism. Some of the comments are also from LTTE sympathisers who who are taking pains to publicize that they are Sinhela.

Living in a so called democracy, I can assure you that the new laws being enacted in the West is not Democratic at all. “Democracy” is a convenient word coined by the powerful western nations to beat the underdeveloped countries.
What ever Sri Lanka does will never be Democratic” in the eyes of the G8 Nations.

FORGET ABOUT DEMOCRACY, LETS LIVE THE WAY SRI LANKANS HAVE LIVED FOR MANY THOUSANDS OF YEARS

doomed to repeat it said,

September 26, 2009 @ 11:11 pm

Heshan brings up some very interesting points on the nature of democracy. It really does depend upon your definition, doesn’t it? At it’s most basic, it means rule by the will of the majority.

But even in the earliest of the modern democracies, that of the Unites States, there was concern over what Thomas Jefferson (I think it was him) called “the tyranny of the majority.” This led directly to the Bill of Rights, which no majority is allowed to abrogate. Rights can be added, but they can not be taken away.

In addition in the US, they tried to avoid this majoritarian problem by having a system of checks and balances and a division of powers. An example is how law is dealt with there; both houses of Congress must approve it, and the President sign it, for it to come in force. If someone, even a minority, believes it to be unConstitutional, it is challenged and the Supreme Court, which is independent of both Congress and President, examines it. In theory it sounds great; in practice it’s had it’s ups and downs, but overall it seems to me that it works better than any other current system. Of course all this is based on the assumption that all political parties (and the military!) actually respect and follow the Constitution.

Perhaps that’s the problem with Sri Lankan democracy; it’s a winner take all system. The party that controls Parliament is by definition the party that holds the executive. And the executive has control over the law enforcement apparatus; in the West they are independent from the executive and seen as politically neutral. In the US, it’s possible that the different parties each control a House and/or that they are different from the party of the President. When this happens, all sides are forced to sit and compromise and negotiate to actually get anything done. And although this doesn’t seem to be happening right now in the US with it’s health care issue, ultimately that’s what will happen once all the screaming is over.

In the West the judiciary is independent of the executive and is respected by all sides; here it’s ignored almost completely. Again, as the our executive has control over law enforcement, the judiciary can do little to enforce it’s decisions. In the US if an official commits a crime or defies the courts (Nixon comes to mind), the law enforcement apparatus will arrest him at the request of the judiciary; such a thing would never happen here. OK, Nixon wasn’t exactly arrested, but the courts, aided by Congress, did bring about his downfall. You get the idea.

Additionally, and this is an important point, is the fact that the US has a relatively weak central government. When I was there, I was amazed at how much real power the states have. And my American friends, when they come visit, are astounded at how powerful our central government is. We have a fear of strong provincial powers having a centrifugal effect; they fear the consolidation of power. An interesting difference in perspective, don’t you think?

I don’t know why this is, although I suspect that part of it is their frontier do-it-yourself mentality, as opposed to our traditional dependence of Great Men doing things for us. I’m sure there have been many books written about this; all I know is that for the vast majority of Americans, landing a government job is not a goal in life!

I’m not saying the American political structure is perfect and should be imitated wholesale; it has many flaws and hasn’t always lived up to it’s ideals. However, it has functioned for over 200 years without violent change of government (meaning coups or revolutions), it has slowly (and painfully) expanded the rights and privileges of citizenship to now encompass almost everyone equally, and has weathered some pretty tough storms such as civil war, economic collapse, rule by oligarchy, presidential assassination, etc. and yet has still remained not just intact, but highly functional. That’s a pretty good record, if you look at the history of the world. Maybe Sri Lanka can learn something from this.

Personally, I don’t favor living under the whim of kings, as was suggested by E.N.Gland above. Some kings have been good, others very bad. You never know what you’re going to get until they are in power. And the only way to remove a bad king is through violence of one sort or another. I prefer to have some degree of control, or at least influence, over the people who make decisions about me and my life. In a democracy you have the possibility of seeing what a candidate is like before they take power, and the opportunity to say “yes please” or “no thank you.” You can also vote them out of power in the next election; with a king you have to wait until he kicks the bucket.

Just a nit-picky point, Heshan, and only because I’m a history freak. In Athens the electorate was given only to male Athenian-born citizens of a certain rank. No women, no foreigners, no foreign-born Athenians, no poor people. Perhaps only 10% of the total population could participate politically. So while Athens had the first democracy as we understand it, it was no democratic heaven. But what is important is that the IDEA of democracy started there, and inspired people throughout history, even if it was imperfectly implemented at the time. Oh and the Roman “Republic” wasn’t that much of an improvement either. But that’s a different topic.

Atheist said,

September 27, 2009 @ 5:19 am

Smolderingjin,

I am sorry to disappoint you, but your pseudonym does not in any way intrigue me enough to want to get to know your “true” identity. Please understand that my mentioning of Tony Soprano was not in any way made to imply you are a thug. Perhaps you have taken yourself a tad too seriously in thinking that people are interested in uncovering the great mystery of “Smolderingjin”.

You may be a man or woman from Malaysia, Singapore, Tamil Nadu or Sri-Lanka – I don’t give a damn. Your sudden concern for “our nation”, however, surprises me to no end. We, as readers, can identify those writers who are empathetic to the people of Sri-Lanka based on their balanced arguments.

One more thing, planting Susan Goon as a straw man was a bad idea; it only goes to show that you and the crew have a lot of deep seated hatred toward the community Susan Goon is supposedly parodying. It seems like Sandun Ratnapriya, Iddamalgoda etc… have now been added as side-support for your favourite Goon.

Wilkie Collins would never have been interested in any “jin” that smoulders!

Shamed Lankan said,

September 28, 2009 @ 5:04 am

@Observer: “I have seen the placards equating him to Hitler on DC streets during the current health care protests. Doesn’t mean he’s a Nazi now does it? Same deal here yo, just because you want to equate our president and his regime to the Nazis, doesn’t mean anything other than the fact that you’re a crazy person.”
You got a point. The huge difference is that in the United States, the people can say whatever they like about their elected leaders and not have to worry about reprisals from the government, unlike in Sri Lanka, where the Rajapakses will either unleash their goons on their critics or trump up some charges on which to arrest the critics. The Rajapakses govern by a simple rule: Criticize us and you will pay for it. That is NOT democracy under any stretch of the imagination.

Observer said,

September 29, 2009 @ 5:07 pm

Shamed Lankan,

No in Sri Lanka LAW prohibits you from inhibiting racial division, hatred and provoking. Which I think is FAIR ENOUGH! It is there purely to stop another black July. It should be an integral legislative mechanism in any multi ethnic, multi cultural country. Just because you’re a journalist you have no right to insight racial hatred!

About freedom of expression, I will just hold this blog as a very simple example. In countries like China, Iran this will be filtered outside the country! So give Sri Lanka some credit! We only filtered Tamilnet (maybe Pr0n too but not a big concern for me ) which belonged to the enemy propaganda arm. C’mon that’s fair!

Also all international media have a presence in Sri Lanka other than Channel 4 which is their own fault. You need to have some manners at least. So Shamed Lankan everything you said was BS! SPIN! and propaganda to put it in plain terms.

Shamed Lankan, can you tell an unashamed lankan like my self if there were any peaceful protests outside previously LTTE held territory where the protestors were suppressed this year? Using state force? I can’t recall. I maybe wrong. So tell me.

I still think you’re crazy if you want to equate the current administration to Nazis when there’s nothing even remotely similar but do so because the administration opposes your views and are unable to deal with a democratic endorsement spitefully. Just like they attack Obama.

Also it is fair to ask not to criticize the armed forces during a war. Even Bush administration requested that sort of cooperation from media and most of the media like CNN, FOX played by it. They were all gloating when “shock and awe” descended like a block buster movie. Not a single news channel covered for the Iraqi side when the first precision air strikes were on its way. Oh how easily we forget.