CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

Lying through the teeth

Sisira Pereira, Panadura

The Catholic Church of Sri Lanka has vociferously vindicated the LTTE from downright local and international opprobrium.

They claim in a public statement that the Madu Statue was not removed further into the LTTE-held area due to any LTTE pressure. They also claim that since the new place of housing for the holy statue was selected because the majority of Mannar Catholics live in that area.

Having read the statemnt, I was thinking to myself, "do we look stupid or what?"

Why didn't Bishop Rayappu Joeseph and the rest of the Bishops did not consult the Sri Lankan Government and its security forces before deciding on the removal of the statue?

Or did Bishop Rayappu not inform his superiors of his move?

As the Catholic Church's statement implies, if the statue was not removed in a haste fearing its security, then it must have been a calculated move by the Bishop. If so, didn't Bishop Rayappu Joeseph had enough time and conviction to consult his superiors before making the move, if he was entertaining an iota of idea to make a safe passage with the holy statue to the government-controlled area?

Or did he actually not have enough time? And if he hadn't, why didn't he?

Was the State security forces threatening him to destroy the Madu shrine and the statue? Who was he afraid of? If the statement by the Bishop collective is to be believed, it is evident that the Bishop was under threat form some quarter, otherwise there wouldn't have been any necessity to remove the Madu statue in the first place. But since the statement says the LTTE was not to be blamed, it sure implies the whole threat must have been from the State security forces.

How fascinating!

On the other hand, if Bishop Rayappu Joeseph had actually informed his superiors before removing the holy statue, why didn't the Bishop collective go for the alternative to consult the Government? Were they thinking that the State security forces were not capable of facilitating the safe, temporary transfer of the holy statue to a government controlled area? If they were not under any pressure from the LTTE, as they claim, they could have easily asked for the help of the government to facilitate the removal.

Yet It didn't happen.

And yet, the Bishops claim that they were not pressured by the LTTE to remove the holy statue into the LTTE-held territory!

Then, why did Bishop Rayappu chose to clandestinely whisk the holy statue into the enemy territory and then make it public? Did the Bishop deduce that the statue is more at risk from the Sri Lankan security forces, who have pledged and kept strictly to their word not to attack the holy premises from the very outset, while the LTTE was blatantly violating the sanctity of the Madu shrine premises all the time?

Or else, had it been a ?one-man' show by Bisho Rayappu and a subsequent clandestine effort by the Catolic Churh to cover up the reality and safeguard some ulterior motives of Bishop Rayappu?

Most importantly, why does Bishop Rayappu say that the statue was removed to Thevanpiddi because the majority of Mannar Catholics live there? Is he asserting that the Holy Statue does not belong to the rest of the Catholics who lives in thousands in areas in the liberated areas in the South?

Who do they think the public are? Punnakku eating gullible lot? Oh please.

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