Treat Terrorism as Terrorism.

S Akurugoda

The statement issued by the prelates of the three nikayas requesting the nation to forget their narrow party differences and petty gains and to give their unstinted support to the President, the Government, Defence Secretary, police and tri-forces to solve our national problem is timely. It also said: "President Mahinda Rajapakse and his government is doing its utmost to solve the national crisis to bring in peace where all communities and religious groups could co-exist harmoniously and this attempt should be wrested in order to open doors for the development and good governance of the country."

As the prelates have quite rightly pointed out, some parties are attempting to capitalize on this opportunity to gain political mileage favourable to the terrorist outfit and this cannot be accepted by right thinking people.

Ironically, the request has come at a time when the UNP and its leader Ranil, powerful foreign interests, pro-LTTE INGOs including their paid agents in various bogus media and human rights movements are in full swing to attack the President, the Government, Defence Secretary, police and the security forces who are trying to get rid of the mess created by Chandrika-Ranil combination.

In an another news item appeared in media, Mahanayaka Thera of the Asgiriya Chapter has quite correctly said that there is no ethnic issue in Sri Lanka but there is a problem due to one terrorist group claiming part of the country . The prelate also said the majority of people in the county live in harmony, no matter what community or religion they belong to.

Apparently President Rajapakse has made a similar statement when he met the Sri Lankan Community in Italy, a week ago.

Although there are several articles and books written by eminent scholars on the subject of Tamil Tiger terrorism in Sri Lanka verifying what the Mahanayaka thera of the Asgiriya Chapter has simply expressed, the thera's statement is an eye opener to the so called pundits who are attempting to mislead the country and the world community at large by way of finding a political solution base on 'racial basis' to a problem which is apparently non existing.

We as the ordinary citizens of this country have witnessed several solution packages presented with a view to end the so-called ethnic conflict during the last 3 decades and none of those solutions were able to end the LTTE bloodshed due to the simple reason expressed above.

The UNP government once made constitutional changes by making both Sinhala and Tamil as official languages and creating provincial councils. The proposals to abolish the provincial councils said to have been made by the SLFP in their political solution to APRC appears to be a move in the right direction.

The treacherous CFA prepared by Eric Solheim and signed by Prabhakaran and Ranil could also be considered as an attempted 'political solution' since the agreement illegally demarcated areas of LTTE control and almost paved the way for separatism.

Thanks to the patriotic forces of the country, the disastrous PTOMS, a ploy set by the same Norwegian as a 'political solution 'to obtain funds directly from the international donors and to pave the automatic way for its recognition as a separate entity by the so-called international community and the lending agencies was foiled, otherwise the country would have already been partitioned by now.

There is no society or country in the world without some sort of conflicts based on tribal, caste, religious, colour etc. It is political and other third party interests who turn those identities into forces that mobilises violence to achieve their sinister motives. Many who advocate political solution based on racial basis have forgotten the fact that more than 60% of the Tamil population live among Sinhalese today. Tamils, Muslims, Hindus, Christians etc live peacefully among Sinhalese Buddhist, educate their children; carry on their profession and business as usual similar or better than those countries who attempted to teach us coexistence. Instead of blindly copying what the other countries have and what the other countries wanted us to have as solutions which are far away from the realities, the country must build on the good sense and existing peaceful coexistence of the ordinary people.

Unfortunately what is happening today is that powerful foreign countries and institutions and their paid agents, whose interests lie elsewhere, are stressing for a political solution to encircle the President and to get him to establish a federal system base on racial grounds in order to aggravate the situation.

Whatever the outcome of political solutions under the present context, the LTTE terrorism is bound to continue until terrorism is treated the way it should be treated.