CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

Sri Lanka's crisis: Fact and fiction

Janaka Perera

. International moral crusaders never seem to be tired of preaching their cockeyed perception of what is right and wrong to countries such as ours.

On Dec. 5, Sri Lanka categorically rejected the UNESCO's charge that the bombing of the LTTE propaganda radio, Voice of Tigers as a violation of media freedom. JVP Parliamentarian called the UNESCO Chief Koichiro Matsura's condemnation of the bombing as interference in this country's internal affairs

Matsura's condemnation came hard on the heels of the absurd statement of 'Collective Hypocrisy without Borders' - commonly known as Reporters without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontiers) – criticizing the Sri Lanka Air Force bombing raid.

UNESCO Director-General Matsura is either ignorant of Sri Lanka's laws (and for that matter many other States too) on operating broadcasting stations or he pretends to be so. He should realize that no radio or television station can operate in this country without a valid license. If such a 'license' had been given by the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration it has no validity since the LTTE does not recognize the authority of the Sri Lankan State

The Voice of Tigers is not only an illegal radio broadcasting station but also the propaganda arm of a rogue state that has absolutely no legal right to exist in any part of this island. It is a tyrannical regime that not tolerates no dissent and is hell bent on bisecting the country. The LTTE administration has no legitimate right to exist let alone operate a propaganda arm.

Matsura had the nerve to say "Regardless of the content of the broadcasts aired by the Voice of Tigers, there can be no excuse for military strikes on civilian media. Such action contravenes the Geneva Convention which requires the military to treat media workers as civilians."

Whether the personnel working there were civilians or military they were neither journalists nor innocent people but fanatics serving the cause of armed separatist terrorism in Sri Lanka. We wish to ask Director General Matsura, the RSF and Sri Lanka's so-called Free Media Movement whether it is wrong to for the Sri Lankan State to bomb an illegal propaganda outfit operating within its own territory and serving the cause of separatist terrorism?. If such action is a violation of media freedom and human rights then it was even worse for the Western Allies to bomb Hitler's Nazi Propaganda Ministry under Dr. Josef Gobbels in Berlin in World War II because Germany was after all a sovereign State – no matter who was in power.

We wonder the Matsuras, Reporters without Borders and the FMM are from another planet because their lopsided logic amazes us.

We wish to remind these clowns that Germany , a democratic state, has banned all Nazi publications, broadcasting channels and display of Nazi symbols. No one in his right mind has called it a violation of media freedom. And what is the difference between the LTTE media policy and that of the Nazis? Unlike in that country, the Sri Lankan Government has no way of using police methods or issuing court orders to force the VOT to shut down. The only alternative was to bomb the place.

This recalls the observation of Israeli Intellectual Boaz Ganor at the height of the second Lebanon War in July last year. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, he emphasized the need for a clear definition of right and wrong in insurgent and counter-insurgent fighting to strengthen the hand of states in dealing with guerilla groups.

To him the problem is that the rules of war - whether the Hague Convention of 1907 that regulates the conduct of battle or the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 that protects civilians caught in a war situation - were not crafted to deal with present-day insurgents who endanger civilians as a pillar of their strategy.

Whether or not we agree with Israel 's current Middle-East policy his argument is very valid for terrorist-infested countries like Sri Lanka .

Says Ganor: "This isn't a two-sided game but a three-sided one. There are us, the enemy and international norms. Right now, states are weaker in fighting insurgents because they are limited by international norms. If we can change these norms even slightly to recognize what insurgents are doing [to civilians] and to give guidelines for dealing with it," then international norms will hinder insurgents as well. The world is moving in the direction of more and more guerilla and insurgent fighting bringing more of the world's countries to understand something must be done."

He noted that the world is losing patience with "those hypocrites who have a double policy of double meanings."

It sounds as if he is talking about Sri Lanka when he says "Faced with the overwhelming power of the modern military machine, inferior forces seeking to secure political gains through force have resorted to a strategy that, far from protecting civilians, uses them as force multipliers. In the process, these guerilla fighters have broken the rules of the game, and have forced standing militaries, usually belonging to democratic states and therefore subject to the vicissitudes of public opinion back home, to bend their own rules to deal with the threat."

The problem with Sri Lanka has been that she been on and off caving into foreign pressure right from the start of this conflict. Our policy on the LTTE was never consistent but constantly changed under every government in the name of peace and negotiations.

In this context we should perhaps strongly adopt Malaysia 's stance.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar has warned foreign governments not to interfere in Malaysia's domestic affairs as the country braces for a new wave of activism that began with two separate demonstrations last month involving ethnic Indians and the Opposition.
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"This is Malaysia. We'll deal with our problems according to our laws. Other countries should be mindful of our rights," Mr Syed Hamid said this week.
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"If there is anything that we are dissatisfied with, there are avenues within our system to deal with it. Malaysians don't want foreign interference," he said.
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American academics of Political Science have had a good grasp about the conflict here as early as the early 70's way prior to the Tigers. Then in the 80's it took a different twist. Since the emergence of the separatist Tamil Diaspora the issue was further exploited among US lawmakers and their impressions reinforced by the liberal body of US Political Scientists.

Until the Indo-Lanka Accord was signed the Jayawardene Government's policy was to fight against the LTTE in both the North and the East. After the President Premadasa assumed power he was duped into giving arms to the Tigers to drive away the Indian troops. As soon as they left the Tigers were back in the saddle and continued with their killing spree.

President Wijetunga's policy was to focus on liberating the East from the LTTE.

Then President Kumaratunga initiated a short-live peace treaty, which the Tigers never intended to honour. When fighting resumed Kumaratunga pulled out most troops from the East and sent them to the North where they were successful in re-capturing Jaffna .

As Brigadier (Rtd.) Hiran Halangoda once noted all these different policies under successive governments were like taking a well trained dog out of the kennel putting the animal back into the kennel and again repeating the process. When Ranil Wickrermesinghe. Became Prime Minister he put the dog back into the kennel. Now the dog is out again.

The term dog here is never meant insult the Security Forces but to illustrate a point as Brig. Halangoda did.

But in the case of Prabhakaran there has been no such confusion. He has been in power right through the beginning of the conflict to this day and his policy has been consistent vis-à-vis the Sri Lankan Government and the military.

From Prabhakaran's view point this is a war between two countries – Sri Lanka and the so-called Tamil Eelam, which is a rogue state set up in the sovereign territory of Sri Lanka. And this is tantamount to nothing but an armed invasion of our island. Since the Tamil Nadu racists failed in their separatist campaign India 40 years ago, they (Karunanidhi, Vaiko, Nedumaran, etc.) are now trying to use the Tigers for carving a separate Tamil State out of Sri Lanka. And once it is established it can be extended to Tamil Nadu for the formation of a greater Tamil Eelam that can challenge the Indian Union.

This is in a way reminiscent of Sudeten German Nazi Leader Konrad Heinlein seeking Hitler's support to carve Sudetenland (as part of the Third Reich) out of the former Czechoslovakia . And Hitler did just that by invading Czechoslovakia. And the joker Neville Chamberlain (then British Prime Minister) by signing the infamous 1938 Munich Pact (like Ranil's ceasefire of 2002) allowed the Nazi dictator to seize Sudetenland in the name of 'world peace'. This is also similar to what assorted 'peaceniks' are trying to do in Sri Lanka today. Fortunately for us however Tamil Nadu is not an independent State. So things are not that easy for our "Sudeten Nazis" of the LTTE.

Like the Tamil separatists, the Sudeten Germans too used the so-called right to self-determination argument in 1938 to justify their loyalty to Nazi Germany and not to the Czechoslovak State of which they were citizens.

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