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Surreptitious support to LTTE terrorismLt Col. Anil Amarasekera,Dear Mr. Jehan Perera,
You are indeed fortunate that the Constitution of this country through Article 14(1) (a) has entitled you to the freedom of speech and expression including publication and I see you exploiting this entitlement to the maximum to tarnish the image of your own country. While you do so through the National Peace Council your anti national friends do so through the Free Media Movement, the Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Berghof Foundation, International Alert, and International Centre for Ethnic Studies etc, etc with impunity.
In your letter to me you say that you do not accept many of my observations and allegations. To cut a long story short what then are the observations and allegations of mine that you accept? If you are not working surreptitiously and admit that you write and speak in public, do you do so to support the LTTE point of view with your tit for tat opinion? Conflict resolution and the need to find a negotiated political settlement that you speak of are indeed very attractive words that can be used to hoodwink people regarding your true intentions. In this context do you think it is prudent for you to pet a mad dog with intentions of administering medicine to cure it?
You say it is the prime responsibility of the government to protect all its citizens by maintaining law and order. Then you write about this tit for tat action of the LTTE, when the government uses the necessary force to destroy the LTTE, which is main culprit responsible for this state of affairs in our country. As far as you are concerned hypocrisy must be having no limits. Taking the mad dog scenario into consideration, it is also the duty of a government to protect all its citizens from mad dogs. How are they expected to do so without eradicating dogs that have gone mad?
You do not have to point out to me the need to protect innocent civilians when fighting against the LTTE. This has been and will continue to be one of the most important priorities for military commanders in this country. The security Forces in this country have in fact been a shining example in this regard to the rest of the world by liberating areas under enemy control with the least amount of collateral damage. Your reference to the US Supreme Court is irrelevant, because our Security Forces are far more disciplined in the field than the American Security Forces, even though you may refuse to accept this fact.
Education as Jawaharlal Nehru once said is not merely getting a university degree. While you were busy obtaining a degree abroad, I was busy in the Army gaining experience in eradicating not one but two JVP insurrections and in fighting against LTTE terrorists. I educated three of my children in this country and they are well employed and I too saw no reason to send them abroad for education. While you were working based at the Sarvodaya Movement headquarters in Moratuwa, I was moving from one LTTE threatened or attacked village to another in the Weli Oya, Padaviya, Kebithigollewa and Horowupotana areas with the Sarvodaya District coordinator Mr. Manel Kulatunga, providing assistance to these innocent people to alleviate their poverty and suffering. Together with Sarvodaya assistance I was able to help over one hundred such villages, often spending the night in a dilapidated hut of a villager. The value of the projects implemented by me in thirty such villages alone is recorded by Mr. Manel Kulatunga, a Sarvodaya District coordinator at Rs.9,108,010/=
I have seen the destruction and the suffering caused by the LTTE to a degree that would be hard for you to even imagine. I have been personally targeted by the LTTE on more than one occasion and have narrowly escaped being one of their victims on many other occasions. Therefore, I do not believe that mad dogs can ever be cured and would not venture to pet them like you do, even if vested interests do come forward to reward me handsomely. If I am unable to convince you of the futility of such an effort, there is little use in further correspondence and therefore I would leave you to your own fate, which the people of this country will decide sooner than later.
Yours faithfully, Anil Amarasekera. From: Jehan Perera [mailto:jehanpc@xxxx]
Dear Lt Col. Anil Amarasekera, Thank you for your letter. Many have written to me critically. My answer is to you, as you are a soldier who has risked his life for the country, and continues to live and work in it, which I respect. But even so I do not accept many of your observations and allegations. I do not work surreptitiously as you have mentioned. On the contrary, what I write and speak is public. Neither do I support nor do I believe in the division of Sri Lanka or the LTTE’s use of terrorism to achieve political or any other objective. I have always and consistently condemned acts of terror. I have also consistently advocated the need for political reform and a negotiated political settlement as the primary elements of conflict resolution, as in many other countries. Today there are acts of terrorism, extrajudicial killings, abductions and mass displacement of citizens in the course of the conflict in our country. I believe that the primary function of a state is to protect all its citizens by maintaining law and order, and ensuring that this is so even in fighting the war against the LTTE. The US Supreme Court has recently ruled that the US government could not deprive any person, even those arrested in the course of its war against terror, from knowing the charges against them. The US Supreme Court said, Liberty and Security can be reconciled; and in our legal system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The majority in the Supreme Court took this decision despite a minority of judges opposing it on the grounds that the US was at war with radical Islamists. Like you, though in a different manner, I love my country. That is why, upon graduating from Harvard University in the United States, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and with a Juris Doctor degree in Law, I returned to Sri Lanka to live and work in my country. This was in 1987. I did not choose to spend my youth and working years abroad, either to earn a living or to educate my children, but returned home. My first place of employment, where I spent 8 years, was the Sarvodaya Movement, where I worked for a volunteer's allowance, and with the poorest of our people in the legal aid unit. Since then, for the past 12 years, I have worked with the National Peace Council which works to promote a civic consciousness that is supportive of a negotiated political settlement that is within the framework of a united Sri Lanka. In particular, through my work at Sarvodaya, and in the Sinhala villages, I learnt that the social values the Sinhala Buddhist culture gives pride of place to are altruism, non-violence, non-hatred and sharing. I want the society in which I live, and in which we all live, to live by higher values, and we need to live by what we hope to achieve. It is on this basis that I work for a peaceful and negotiated political solution to Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict that has the assent of the people, and leads to the disarmament of all armed groups, including the LTTE. Yours sincerely, Jehan Perera
12th June 2008. Mr. Jehan Perera,
SURREPTITIOUS SUPPORT TO LTTE TERRORISM
From the articles you write I can only conclude that you have been employed by vested interests to surreptitiously support LTTE terrorism. Therefore, I am now convinced that the National Peace Council of which you are the Executive Director is being heavily funded by foreign sources to destroy the unity and territorial integrity and the Sinhala Buddhist heritage of my nation that has been protected and preserved thus far by my ancestors, with their blood, sweat, tears and toil and sometimes even by sacrificing their very life and limb. The Security Forces are continuing this great tradition, while people such as you are trying to demoralize them by spreading false information to mislead the people of this country and the international community. Therefore, it would be more appropriate to rename your organization as the National Piece Council, because the true intention of your organization is nothing but to divide this country and to destroy its unitary nature, which has existed for over 2500 years.
As a former Officer Commanding Troops of the Sri Lanka Army, I am well aware that the Army has never deliberately attacked civilians at any point of time. We have in fact gone beyond the call of duty to help people in liberated area to get back to their normal way of life and to live in peace sans any fear. A good example of this commitment is exhibited in Vakarai, where over fourteen thousand families which amounts to all those who were internally displaced, being resettled in their former habitat in less than three months after liberating the area from the LTTE. These people are now engaged in perusing their agricultural way of life in a peaceful environment.
Your allegation that the targeting of innocent civilians by the LTTE in the south is a tit for tat reaction of the LTTE is totally false and is exactly what the LTTE wants the people of this country and the international community to believe. Their true intention from a military point of view is very clear. The pressure is mounting and it would be only a matter of time before all their strong holds in the Mullattivue jungles are destroyed by the Security Forces and the north too is liberated from LTTE tyranny, just as much as the east was. For their very survival the LTTE has to relieve this pressure that is increasing daily, with the Security Forces tightening the cordon in the area where they are besieged. By attacking innocent civilians the LTTE is hoping that a substantial amount of Security Forces personnel will be withdrawn for internal security duties in the south. That would in turn provide the LTTE with some respite to hold on to the usurped territory.
Therefore please be informed that you can fool some of the people all the time, all the people some of the time, but not all the people all the time. The day you are exposed will be the day that the people of this country will pass judgment on you and you would be pronounced as nothing else but as a traitor and you must be well aware of the punishment that is meted out to traitors. That day is not very far away according to my reckoning. You can however be thankful that the Sinhala Laws that were practiced in the Kandyan Kingdom are no longer in practice, for had it been so, you would have received the best punishment in the world that you truly deserve.
Lt Col. Anil Amarasekera.
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