"Enough is Enough"
OPEN LETTER to
Mr. Gotabhaya Rajapaksa
Asoka Weerasinghe Ottawa,
Canada
January 3, 2008
OPEN LETTER to
Mr. Gotabhaya Rajapaksa
Defence Secretary
Government of Sri Lanka
Colombo, Sri Lanka
Sir:
The word that is going around is that“Enough is Enough.
It is now clear to everyone that all these terrorist activities are
being planned and executed by the LTTE Tamil Tiger terrorists living
in lodges in Colombo. Therefore, the Sri Lanka Government should take
immediate actions to inspect all these lodges and arrest suspected personnel.”
Last June when 301 Tamils of a population of 125,036 Tamils in Colombo
were removed from lodgings and bussed North, as it had been suspected
for months that these lodgings were cocoons for Tamil Tiger bomber-assassins,
there was a big hue and cry by Human Rights advocates, local and foreign,
saying that it was ‘ethnic cleansing’. They obviously did
not have an inkling of what ‘ethnic cleansing’ was all about.
Perhaps they may want to be honest with themselves and revisit incidents
of ‘ethnic cleansing’ around the world before labeling the
Sri Lankan government’s alleged act of ‘ethnic cleansing’
with the 301 Tamils sent north.
Here is what ‘ethnic cleansing’ is all about, and not the
301 Tamils bussed north which the bleeding-hearts Human Rights activists
would like us to believe.
In 1990 when the Tamil Tigers wanted 100,000 Muslims in the North of
Sri Lanka to get out within 24 hours, leaving their belongings and treasured
valuables at the nearest mosque, that was a text book example of ‘ethnic
cleansing’ /par excellance./ Prabhakaran made Idi Amin look like
an angel as Amin had a heart to give the Asians in Uganda three months
to leave the country and not 24 hours, the deadline being November 9^th
, 1972. And that was “ethnic cleansing”. When in August 1977,
the 400 Sinhalese undergraduates and lecturers were stoned and chased
out from the Jaffna campus and the peninsula itself, that was ‘ethnic
cleansing’. I hope these bleeding-heart human rights activists
now got a real understanding of what ‘ethnic cleansing’ is
all about.
With that pressure from busy-bodies of Human Rights groups, Sir, your
government let loose the 301 Tamils and they took a bee-line back to
the Colombo lodgings, terrorists and all.
But what is painful is that these lodgings have been recognized to
be the spawning grounds for the likes of, Minister Douglas Devananda’s
attempted suicide bomber who killed herself and one other and injured
two others critically. Then the Nugegoda market place bombing which
killed 19 and injured 37, and now the Slave Island bombing which has
killed four and injured 28.
So these bleeding-heart human rights advocates won the day with a shot
in the arm, when the Supreme Court brought down an interim order in
response to a petition filed by the Centre for Policy to stop removing
these Tamils from suspected bomb making lodgings. But, then, there hasn’t
been one single voice of reason screaming that there have been human
rights violations by the Tamil Tigers abusing the right to life by snuffing
out the breaths of the unfortunate innocent victims who were killed
by these terrorists assassins by detonating their planted bombs. The
question that goes begging is who has the democratic rights –is
it the Tamil Tiger terrorists who are allowed to go about killing with
impunity or is it the innocent civilians who have a right to life, and
are killed by these Tamil terrorists for no reason at all? That is indeed
the million dollar question.
Another question that needs to be answered is, was the rounding up
of Colombo’s transient lodgers who were all Tamils from the North,
to be checked out by the law enforcing authorities a fair price to pay,
because some among them would, very likely go out and plant a bomb to
kill scores of innocent civilians. Is the government abdicating its
responsibility to guard the right to life of its subjects by giving
into these bleeding-heart human rights activists with knee-jerk reactions?
But what is needed here is to keep the eye on the ball. The fact is
that Sri Lanka is at war, and we’ve got to make sure that we do
not harbour Tamil Tigers, mousing-up with tripping wires, detonators,
exploding chemicals, gunny bags filled with millions of lead pellets
and suicide body packs, and later for them to go out and plant the assembled
bombs to kill hundreds of people.
If there was one suicide bomber among the 301 Tamils bussed back to
the north only to be kept away from Colombo, then it would have been
a substantial winning for the government even though having been lambasted
by Human Rights critics, as the Devananda, Nugegoda and Slave Island
bombings would have never happened. At that point Sri Lanka could have
told these bleeding-heart human rights activists, to go fly a kite as
the government believes that safeguarding the right to life of her subjects
overrides sending back the Tamils to where they came for the security
of her peoples.
Let them know that protecting human rights is no monopoly of theirs
as it also happens to be Sri Lanka’s business, and that is protecting
the right to life of those that the Tamil Tigers want to snuff out.
Especially when Prabhakaran expects his Tamil Tiger Colombo lodgers
sent on a mission to plant a bomb on a busy street in Colombo by hook
or by crook and detonate it.
Sir, your Government does have a choice. If you all are not allowed
by Human Rights activists to sieve out these assassins from the private
lodgings as one would use a pest controller to get rid of vermin, then
for God’s sake have these underground bomb assembling lodgings
closed for good. Remember, the government has a role to play in this
feud. To keep Law and Order as well as guarding the right to life of
its citizens, and the latter would certainly override removing the transient
Tamils from these suspicious lodgings. There is no reason to hesitate.
Just, do it.
Asoka Weerasinghe
Ottawa, Canada
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