CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

RESPONSE TO THE EDITOR DAILY NEWS

Ramanie de Zoysa

To the editor daily news
Sir/madam,

Your editorial dated 15 July 2006 captioned “LTTE obliged to release seized policeman” refers.

I beg to differ with your views regarding the matter of ‘humanitarian’ VIP treatment showered by President Rajapakse on the ailing LTTE spokesman Dayanidi.

I would remind you as well as the readers of the golden adage that “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. We Sri Lankans as a nation have been down this path before. We have shown tolerance, compassion and goodwill to the LTTE before with disastrous results. We facilitated specialist medical emergency treatment for Kittu, Anton Balasingham, Soosaai, a senior woman cadre called Kuweni and a host of other LTTE barbarians over the last several decades. These compassionate acts have merely been acts of casting pearls before swine for LTTE swine have returned to base after gaining good health to resume killing and maiming our kith and kin by their thousands.

On the very day Dayanidi alias Daya Master traveled in comfort on the backs of our heroic defense personnel and transferred to the skill and care at Apollo hospital your own newspaper reported that LTTE attacked our troops on a route clearing patrol in Vakaneri area in the East. This attack has apparently killed at least 12 of our army personnel and injured at least five. According to your own news the SLMM have seen 12 bodies of Army personnel while five injured soldiers have been admitted to the Polonnaruwa hospital". On the same day your paper also reported that the LTTE opened fire at a Navy sentry point near the Muttur Naval detachment in Sampoor killing one sailor and injuring one.

These reported facts alone contradict your very own editorial inference that “there is no doubt that the kindness bestowed on Daya Master by the President would help to a degree in defusing current tensions”. Do you feel any diffusion of tension or hostility originating from the terror outfit LTTE? No one else does!

You also make the comment that “the President has proved that the way of the State is not the way of the terrorist. The State has no choice but to adhere to civilized norms and values.” Are the ways of other five star civilized states such as Great Britain, United States, Europe, Japan or even India show that they extend the VIP treatment to terrorists who are sick or wounded? These countries operate a shoot to kill policy against their terrorists, whether sick or hale and hearty. Sri Lanka should not mistake this ‘overkill’ in compassion to be the Rule of Law. Rule of Law dictates that a government takes the necessary steps at all times to safeguard the civilian and defense personnel lives- that dictates the apprehension of criminal elements into state custody at the first instance to safeguard civilian life and public property. The Rule of Law therefore dictates that the Sri Lankan Government immediately places Daya Master under arrest; his medical care should be provided while in custody, in a prison medical facility.

Your expressed hopes that “the LTTE would see these developments in the correct light” and that “the LTTE would grasp these essential truths and bring to bear more civilized restraint on its conduct” remain misplaced confidences indeed. I see no dawning realizations or defining moments in either the LTTE’s propaganda machinery or in their continued brazen terrorist acts.

President Rajapakse was elected by the masses to carry out his major promise to the Nation; to defeat the enemy and wipe out terrorism from our land for good. He was not chosen for the ultimate Mantle of the Nation to act out misguided false dogma by prolonging the lives of the most vicious killers of the enemy camp to the detriment of our soldier’s lives. Again we as a nation have traversed this path many times earlier and have failed. All the National leaders right down to Mr Rajapakse’s predecessor, Mrs Kumaratunga made this same mistake once elected as the supreme commander of the Nation and paid the price which was defeat and humiliation. President Rajapakse should revise this history and remind himself of his role and responsibilities in order to avert the repetition of more of the same. No amount of justifying of the delinquent acts of the government by state-run newspapers will ever be a match for the truth and the public opinion.

It is also a crying shame that the Sri Lankan Government did not think it important at least to demand the release of the police officer attached to the National Child Protection Authority who according to your own editorial “is suffering silently in an LTTE terror cell”. You ask “why cannot the LTTE release this police officer in response to the consideration shown by the State to Daya Master?” After thirty years of dealing with this monstrosity is it still so difficult to understand that the LTTE is not capable of civilized reciprocities? The LTTE will only understand playing hard ball and any gains the country needs to secure must be achieved by playing their game! We must not kid ourselves thinking that the LTTE “would release the policeman in a gesture of goodwill and help pave the way for a resumption of the negotiatory process”. It is certainly no secret for world at large that the LTTE are NOT interested in a ‘negotiatory process’ which it only uses to re-group and re-arm itself. Your very touching appeal regarding the need for LTTE to consider the tremendous suffering of the NCPA policeman’s family will go unheeded by the uncouth guerilla gang which understands only the language of death and destruction

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