CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

Response to the Hindu Editorial – Jan 10th 2008

Shenali Waduge

Everyone has a right to opinion but it permeates those reaching out to a substantial audience to get one’s facts correct. The Hindu Editor has subtly concluded that India awaits a far-sighted initiative from the Sri Lankan President with an agreeable to all devolution package that would ensure the unitary status of Sri Lanka. If India expects the Sri Lankan President to be far-sighted we reiterate India’s lack of it & the feigned attempt to cover its own role in bringing Sri Lanka to its present predicament.

Perhaps the Hindu Editor & the Indian public should look back in time & answer whether it was “far-sightedness” that triggered India’s need to flaunt its domain of South Asian politics using the LTTE as bait against a sovereign nation? The desire to become Sri Lanka’s Emperor over the Palk Straits was undeniably evident in the policies adopted by successive Indian Governments initiated by Mrs. Indira Gandhi. Both Mrs. Gandhi & her son Rajiv are guilty of providing open training to the LTTE & leaving Sri Lanka with little or no choice but to seek India’s help of course with plenty of tags – no expansion to the Voice of America facility in Sri Lanka, no foreign naval vessels to dock in Trincomalee harbor that would be prejudicial to India’s interest. India’s interest in Sri Lanka has been so great that through all of its peace missions India has ensured it would remain a deciding factor, all the time taunting the Sri Lankan leaders to accept what India feels is right & all the while dilly-dallying with the issue to suit its convenience on home soil.

India’s policy towards Sri Lanka has always been governed to suit its internal needs vis a vis the effect of its vote assured State of Tamil Nadu. India’s step-brotherly approach has really worsened any solution the Sri Lankan state could have achieved for the Sri Lankan Government had no choice but to silently heed the Indian Governments stance each time any efforts had seen the light of day. Perhaps India would like to recall how it reacted negatively to Japan’s role in Sri Lanka in 2003 & clearly told the Japanese envoy that Japan’s dealings with Sri Lanka should be restricted to financial aid & nothing more?

The short term & long term policies for Sri Lanka by India is what has left Sri Lanka with no option but to steer towards a military solution. The Indian Foreign Ministry was quick to to say that there is “no military solution” to the issue following the abrogation of the Cease Fire Agreement, but what Monitoring Mission can ever be proud of when statistics reveal the uselessness of a document that is supposed to mean “Ceasefire” when the LTTE has broken it more times than we can number.

Why was a ‘military strategy” adopted upon Kashimir? None of us consent to a military solution but when a terrorist movement is being fed by those with vested interest against a sovereign nation, it cannot sit idle & rely on an agreement that is confined to a pretty piece of paper & a team of monitors that can but showcase the violations only & who have no power for remedial action. How many years should such an agreement continue until perhaps the violations reach a Guinness record book level? With the advances by the military we have seen the LTTE’s strength diminishing.

To have the cake & eat it is the best way in which one can describe India’s role in Sri Lanka. It neither wants Sri Lanka to enter to a period of peace & neither does it want the war to reach ugly heights either. India is perfectly satisfied in viewing a country torn by conflict that would ensure its own dominance within the region as well as use its manpower in sectors & areas that would serve only the benefit of India in time to come.

The editor has also commented on the East of Sri Lanka that was recently liberated of LTTE rule & wherein polls are likely to be held as well quoting from UN estimates that there are 220,000 in transitional camps. It is likely that the Editor was not aware that Mr. Kälin – the Secretary-General’s Representative on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) & visited Sri Lanka & had noted that the majority of these 220,000 people who had fled their homes between April 2006 & March 2007 were now beginning to regain their former lives.

We question the moral grounds that India has to preach on a peace for Sri Lanka when the actual strife was first cradled upon their very land. While Sri Lanka cannot deny the scope of India in view of its size & strength one thing that the entire population of Sri Lanka can feel unanimous about is that none of us would want our country to be annexed to India on the pretext that Sri Lanka poses a security threat to the secularism of India. The round-about manner in which India has been functioning through the period of strife leads us to perhaps think that India may be toying with such an idea.

We sincerely hope not & hope that the bullying tactics of India’s policies towards Sri Lanka change. LTTE remains a terrorist movement banned by the superpowers, its leader Prabakaran is wanted for the murder of India’s Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on Indian soil. Terrorism today has to be viewed realistically. Countries cannot harbour terrorism & hope to be free of its ill-effects sooner or later. Pakistan & India are perfect examples, is it not of policies that have back-fired.

Shenali Waduge

The Hindu. [Editorial]. 01/10/2008.

Over the past year, with the rout of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the Eastern Province and the serious losses inflicted by an increasingly aggressive Sri Lankan army and air force in the North, the military balance in Sri Lanka has shifted significantly in favour of the state. The Tigers have lost territory, ships carrying arms, and a large number of fighters. They have scored some terrorist hits in the South, including a dramatic ground-and-air attack on the An uradhapura air base and the assassination of the Minister for Nation Building in the vicinity of Colombo. But the military offensive is on and relentless. According to the Army Commander, Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka, the LTTE has been “weakened…by 50 per cent or more” and is left with merely 3,000 trained fighting cadres. The head of the LTTE’s political wing, Suppiah Thamilselvan, has been eliminated; and there has been official talk of taking out Velupillai Prabakaran, who reportedly had a narrow escape in November 2007 when an air force bomb penetrated a bunker in a suburb of Kilinochchi. By then the LTTE, which had outscored the Sri Lankan government nine to one (3086 to 345) in monitored ceasefire violations up to November 30, 2006, had declared the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) “defunct.”

Under these circumstances, the question on the minds of Sri Lanka watchers was not whether but when the CFA, brokered by Norway in February 2002, would be formally ended. Nevertheless, the decision of the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration to withdraw from the CFA has met with uniformly negative responses from the international community — which is clear, as the Indian official response puts it, that “there is no military solution to the issue.” The widely shared concern is that the ending of the ceasefire will trigger an escalation of hostilities — with the armed forces launching a major offensive in the Wanni and the Tigers resorting to guerrilla warfare and terrorist strikes in the South — and take a fresh toll of civilian lives and welfare. U.N. estimates in the East put the number of people who have fled their homes and are in transitional camps at 220,000. There are no reliable estimates of the displaced in the North. The immediate critical task before the Sri Lankan government is to put in place an effective mechanism to protect and provide relief to hundreds of thousands of people caught in a humanitarian crisis of growing intensity. The other and more arduous challenge is to come up with a substantive devolution package that can lead to what the Indian official statement flags as “a settlement of political, constitutional and other issues within the framework of a united Sri Lanka, with which all communities in Sri Lanka are comfortable.” India and the world await such a far-sighted initiative from the Sri Lankan President in the New Year.

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