CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

Minna Thaheer, has not told the whole truth to Derek Poole.

By Charles Perera

“Tamil Tiger rebels gunned down four farmers in the eastern town of Serunuwara late on Friday29 June,2007”

It was an intellectual discussion between Derek Poole from North Ireland who is involved in peace building work for 25 years……Poole has been developing many local bridge building-programmes designed to help communities, political and paramilitary leaders , to explore the common goal of peace and reconciliation , and alternative ways of building peace, and Minna Thaheer. But what purpose does this discussion serve with regard to terrorism in Sri Lanka ? What happened in North Ireland 15 years ago and what is happening in the north and east of Sri Lanka today are poles apart.

Intellectuals of all sorts and colour take great interest in discussing the terrorist problem of Sri Lanka as an intellectual exercise rather than a search for a solution to end terrorism in Sri Lanka. The discussion between Poole and Minna Thaheer, looses its validity moment Poole tries to
draw comparisons with what happened in Ireland and what is happening in Sri Lanka. No two problems, or conflict situations are the same, one has to realise that before beginning to discuss the problem in search of reconciliation and peace building..

Through out the discussion the parallels Poole is trying to draw with Sri Lanka, are far from being relevant to the situation in Sri Lanka, be it the experience of Pinochet and Chile, Germany’s resentment and shame of the Victor’s justice, absence of forgiveness and reconciliation in the Middle East, in Israel and Palestine. There are in his thoughts noble sentiments but as far as terrorism in Sri Lanka is concerned there have to be different sort of sentiments.

What Poole had not been told is that terrorists in Sri Lanka led by a criminal of the worst sort is that they have no sentiments. Poole discusses the problem as if the Government is the offender. For instance Poole says, “The peace lovers of this country immensely praise and congratulate the most magnanimous gesture of the Sri Lankan Govt when it took the responsibility and expressed its regret for ousting Tamils from the North and East lodging in Colombo. It must be stated that peace workers in NGOs, INGOS, humanitarian, multilateral and development sectors are not habitual, chronic critics of the government; but they are also willing to seize opportunities such as these to commend it, in its attempts towards peace, and give a shoulder of support to those in office, in their efforts to transform the current violent phase into one of a de-escalation of violence leading to reconciliation. To say ’sorry,’ it only takes a pluck of conscience. It is a fundamental of any relationship that unless one admits that he or she has made a mistake, there is no future to that relationship.”

That is the difference in the conflict in Sri Lanka, the Government is willing to say sorry, but will the terrorist leader Prabhakaran ever say sorry ? There was no positive peace in Sri Lanka after signing the CFA.

The CFA should have been respected by both sides the terrorists and the Government, but while the Government adhered to it, the terrorists went on a rampage of killing, under the cover of CFA. These facts seem to be unknown to Poole therefore Poole’s discussion on the subject remains an intellectual exercise to compare all conflicts as basically the same. But he realises his error and corrects it by saying, “……..there is no blueprint in any model for replication. For instance the South African TRC model will not work in Northern Ireland, as the two cases are very different.”

Poole speaks of confidence building measures and reconciliation , but he had not been told by Thaheer that what is in north and east is blind terrorism merely to carve out an Eelam from a Unitary State. Poole goes on to talk of retributive justice and restorative justice, adding that restorative justice gives the victims a greater voice in the criminal justice and allows the victims to receive an explanation and more meaningful reparations from the offenders…” could the victims of terrorism in Sri Lanka expect this type of reparation from the offending terrorists ? The terrorists in Sri Lanka who terrorises the people, and commits offences against them, have set up their own courts and police, and thus the victims are denied access to justice to make “the offenders accountable…..”

That is the situation Mr. Derek Poole, and in your discussion with Minna Thaheer, for some reason or other you have not been told the whole truth by Minna your interlocutor.

And in conclusion this Minna Thaheer asks: “Can Sri Lankans say that we have attempted all kinds of non-violent ways to bring about change, (talked about meaningful decentralising of power, to begin with), true to the religions that we belong to? Can we say that force has been resorted to as a very very last resort and call for a reversing of the violent path dramatically?

Is it NOT worth answering her ?

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