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by Hemantha Warnakulasuriya

The reason for the fall of the mighty Soviet empire could not be attributed to any economic estrangement as we had earlier thought but due to the invention of the communication satellite, it is now known.

Even the propaganda carried out by the KGB and other State organs could not counter the incisive satellite signals emanating from the stratosphere that beamed into the TV sets of the ordinary people of the world. The KGB and the Secret Service propaganda that had the capitalists hell-bent on exploiting the ordinary man and only affording the rich man the scope to grow and grow, was now known to be without foundation.

TV channels portrayed the ordinary people of the capitalist world in affluent condition that was never known to exist in the vast reaches of the Soviet Union. The mighty Soviet state fell like a pack of cards. So did its satellite states. So potent was the message brought into the drawing rooms of the ordinary people. Information and knowledge could not be blackened out from the inquisitive minded people.

For a matter of twenty years we have been reading the propaganda carried out against the north and the east. The independent media published stories that appealed to the herd instincts of the Southerners. The gullible unintelligent people of the proletariat swallowed every single news item that portrayed the Tamils as being predatory enemies of the Sinhalese. What happened in the North could not be seen nor heard and we in the South were living in the hope that Sapumal Kumaraya would be born and that he would ride to Jaffna on a mythological unicorn and vanquish the Tamils and the LTTE and so liberate Mother Lanka.

Similarly people in the North had now electricity to watch TV beamed from the South. Every now and then they heard stories of despair and ruination in the areas they lived in. The barbarous Sinhala soldier was killing their parents, maiming their children and raping their wives and daughters. They had no way to find out the truth or falsity of these assertions. They had the general idea that the average Sinhalese were a race only intent on flattening Jaffna and possibly committing genocide. The distrust brought about by such propaganda caused a wide chasm to appear between the two races and a separate state was the only solution.

Commended

Against this background everyone involved in the peace process must be commended for what they have achieved, in the last two years. Prabhakaran is not a super-human. He is human with all known human frailties. He is like any other leader anywhere else in the world. He made it a point to deliver a yearly oration to his 'subjects' on the present crisis.

At times I feel he is no different from the leaders of the South. In this regard President Premadasa castigated the upper classes for conducting weddings in five-star hotels. He refused to attend them. He was quite comfortable attending a wedding of a poor supporter. Although he portrayed the idea that he was against ostentation, his birthday was celebrated in carnival style, called it the Gam Udawa. There may be many plus points in this celebration such as the development of the village. But this nevertheless coincided with his birthday. Instead of the birthday bash at the five star hotel he had the Gam Udawas.

When President Jayawardene got a 4/5th majority of seats in Parliament he introduced a new constitution and became the first Executive President of the country. Then he had the notion of continuing Sri Lanka's ancient monarchy and may have wanted to crown himself as the next king of Sri Lanka.

As the first Executive President of the country he proudly proclaimed that the only thing he could not do was to change a man into a woman, Then he shifted the capital from Colombo to Kotte and called it Sri Jayawardana Pura but changed the spelling of Sri Jayawardana Pura to read like his name and changed the last three syllables to read as ENE.

Similarly Prabhakaran calls himself Mahaweera and declare the 25th of November Mahaweera day. He has expected almost 800,000 people to attend the ceremonies to coincide with his birthday. The figure of 800,000 people assembling at various points in the North and East may have been an exaggeration, but instead of 800,000 he could not even muster 80,000 people to listen to the much awaited birthday oration. It is said that only about 20,000 people assembled to listen to him. It was also reported that he had ordered an inquiry against the organizers for such a poor show. In fact, it is said there was a bigger crowd in Jaffna to listen to the musical group that had gone there from the South a few months back.

Rupavahini

At the same time every newspaper reported the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation telecast of the Mahaweera Day speech of Prabhakaran and the up-linking of the images to a satellite was thoroughly condemned.

The link-up was later denied by the Corporation, However, it is nonetheless to be commended for the coverage it has made in highlighting the lives of the people over there and the various impediments they confront. It was due to the good offices of the Rupavahini Corporation that Prabhakaran was able to speak to the entire world. In the meantime Hudson Samarasinghe the present Chairman of Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation had decided to broadcast Voice of Tiger broadcasts after the SLBC news bulletin.

Though this had not earned the wrath of the media in the South those who believe that no one ought to talk to the Tigers, have strangely kept silent. The decision to broadcast the speech of Prabhakaran and to telecast it to the South, I personally believe, is a commendable decision.

In the past 20 years during the war we lived in a world of our own without any personal knowledge of what was happening in Jaffna. We had to depend on government propaganda bulletins emanating from Army Headquarters describing victory after victory in connection with the ongoing war.

In an era where information technology had developed so fast we have been as a nation, oblivious to the great strides information technology has brought about in the lives of the ordinary people. As much as we were in the dark in trying to understand the problems of the North from the eyes of the government spokespersons, the people in the North and Eastern provinces were worse off affected as they were, by the lack of information and the abundance of misinformation.

The LTTE also issued bulletins, pamphlets and other propaganda material to appease their people and also to counter the propaganda in the South. Revelations of startling victories by the LTTE brigades made the Tamil people to live in hope and the propaganda carried out against the people of the South and the Sinhala soldier was so well done that more and more young people joined the cadres of the LTTE. Each time a bomb fell on Jaffna killing, maiming and destroying their dwellings and properties, the Tamil people found their only saviour, able to separate them from Sinhala barbaric hordes, was the LTTE.

Folly

But now gradually people in the North and South seemed to realize their folly in being led by propaganda. Even the poor response to the Mahaweera celebrations is an example of what is happening to a section of the population who have been terrorized by the war. Even the leader of the TULF Mr Anandasangari was able to stand erect without being supine and state that the LTTE is no longer the spokesman of the Tamil people as a whole. Mr. Anandasangari as the leader of the TULF, is thoroughly opposed to the Tamils having the notion that the LTTE is their sole representative.

It must be remembered that on the 13th of July, 1989 some cadres of the LTTE shot and killed their leaders, Mr. A. Amirthalingam and Mr. V. Yogeswaram while critically wounding Mr. M. Sivasittamparam and Mr. Anandasangari.

Recently Mrs. Amirthalingam, widow of the slain TULF leader castigated some members of the TULF for striving to bring her late husband's party under the jackboot of the Tiger rebel outfit. Questioning the bona fides of any assertions being made by leaders in a democratic process is a vital function in any democracy.

With the peace talks, the resultant ceasefire, the opening of the A9 highway the restoration of electricity has made the people in Jaffna realize that Sinhala people seem to be enjoying a much higher living standards, freedom of expression and a vibrant democratic processes than they do themselves..

STONE 'N' STRING

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