Time to think positively on reactivating peace effort

VIOLENCE: The timely visit of President Mahinda Rajapaksa to the massacre site at Kebitigollewa not only consoled the families of 64 innocent civilians including children and women who were killed in the claymore explosion but also eased the tension in the country as the Head of State was making the directives from Kebitigollewa to strengthen the security to prevent any backlash.

There were incidents in the past in the North and East, similar to the tragedy that struck Kebitigollewa. But the Heads of State of those periods did not care to visit the scenes to take control of the situation.

Kebitigollewa, the hamlet which is situated closer to Anuradhapura, would have observed the last Poson Full Moon day along with other villages around Anuradhapura and Mihintale.

Thousands of villagers, most of them peasants, make pilgrimages on Poson Full Moon day to Anuradhapura and Mihintale rock. The places are historically and spiritually significant to the Buddhists in the country.

It was an year ago one afternoon on a Poson day while I was returning from Jaffna, at a village closer to Anuradhapura some men, women and children stood in the middle of the road and stopped the vehicle we were travelling in.

When the vehicle was stopped all of them surrounded it and pleaded with us to get down and have some refreshment.

Looking at the innocent faces of those little children I and my wife got down from the vehicle and went with them into a small hut which was a `dan sala' where we were served hot `beli mal' drink with jaggery.

So it was painful to see the innocent faces which were very much similar to those which stopped me and my wife near Anuradhapura a year ago lying lifeless at the morgues of Anuradhapura and the Kebitigollewa hospitals, following the claymore explosions of last week.

Kebitigollewe incident was the second horror to occur after the pressure mine explosion which killed around seven civilians a month ago in Wilpattu sanctuary, another place closer to Anuradhapura.

It was not only in Wilpattu and kebitigollewe in the Anuradhapura region even in Allaipitty, Jaffna and in Vankalai, Mannar the innocent civilians were brutally massacred and forced to leave the areas they lived in recent weeks.

With the spiral of violence gradually emerging after three years, the civilians in the North and East fear whether they are heading back to the situation in the eighties and nineties where they made underground bunkers and took cover.

It was in the latter part of 2002, after signing the CFA, a Jaffna born engineer domiciled in the United Kingdom returned to the peninsula and went around there extensively to see the horrible changes that had occurred due to the two decades of war.

At the end of his visit to Jaffna before departing to UK, the engineer said to some of his friends in lighter vein that instead of reviving the railway system in the North it would be easier to set up tube trains linking the underground bunkers which were dug in the compound of every house in the peninsula.

But now with the hopes of reconstructing the North and East and building peace in the country are fading away, the sentry points and check points are coming up rapidly in the country including North and East at large in recent weeks, forecasting the dangers of another war in the corner.

The arrests of LTTE `frogmen' in Pamunugama along with the capture of their boats and the sophisticated sea mines they possessed clearly indicated the LTTE's intentions of going for big targets and posing threats to the country's economy.

Since the CFA came into effect in 2002, there were no big clashes between the Armed Forces and the LTTE apart from the claymore mine explosions on the land areas in the North and East.

However the confrontations beginning from latter part of last year in the seas between the sea Tiger and the naval vessels in the seas of Trincomalee, Mullaitivu and Mannar thwarted the CFA with the loss of many lives from the Navy and the LTTE sides.

So with fresh attempts by the Norwegian facilitators on the revival of the CFA, the Government and the LTTE have responded positively to the questions put forward by the facilitators on the functions and the safety of the SLMM in the future.

Therefore instead of engaging in verbal shelling and fisticuffs it is wise to think how the moves could be made from the assurances given by the Government and the LTTE in stabilising the CFA and making the SLMM functions more effective in the future.