Tigers thrive on the thirst of the suffering

WATER: When elsewhere in the world so-called precision bombing at identified enemy targets is causing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, with children and the aged being killed in what is admitted by all except the perpetrators - Israel- as being entirely disproportionate to its casus belli, the Sri Lankan Air Force attacks identified targets with minimum casualties to end a major humanitarian crisis.

The issue here is water; that treasured resource of nature essential for all life. By cutting off the source of water for more than 15,000 families wholly dependant on rain fed water by blocking the vital Mavil Aru sluice, the LTTE has created a situation which no government can countenance.

At stake here is the livelihood of thousands who have been deprived of all supplies of water for drinking, washing, and the grinding toil of agriculture.

The search and struggle for water is the constant worry of the people in the dry zone. That is why the very foundations of Sri Lankan civilization have centered on the storage and distribution of water; and the mammoth feats of hydraulic engineering of the past that remain in the service of the people to this day.

This is also why the leaders of Sri Lanka from the pre-independence to date have invested so much in providing water to the people of all communities in the dry zone.

To deny a people of their source of water is to deprive them of life itself. The LTTE consider this as one more means of pursuing its policy of ethnic cleaning, by driving out the Sinhalese and Muslims from areas served by this irrigation facility in the East.

Some Tamils will also be driven away, but that is nothing to their proclaimed liberators of the LTTE, because ordinary Tamils are as expendable to them as Tamil intellectuals who dare criticize its policies.

From aliens to sacred rays

We are living in more than interesting times. Some sections of the media are hot on the trail of alleged extra-terrestrial visitors and landings of flying saucers from Horana to Thanamalvila.

Elsewhere, particularly in and around Colombo, thousands of people abandon whatever work they may be doing and rush to Buddhist temples to see the new phenomenon of "Budu Res" or the rays of the Buddha, reportedly seen in these places, and apparently holding people in awe and disbelief, as well as religious devotion and a sense of being in the presence of supernatural forces.

From aliens to sacred rays it is a startling dazzle, possibly of auto-suggestion or calculated suspension of belief in the real, which seems to have captured a whole swath of our people, at a time when a much more gripping event is taking place with the struggle for water being transformed into a battle for it.

While excitement goes on in where life is largely undisturbed by the cruel machinations of the LTTE, there is a battle going on between the forces of the State and those of separatist terror, to keep in the hands of the people to whom it belongs, and away from the tiger, their inalienable right to the precious water that nature has given them, not in abundance but in modest proportions.

If the LTTE used, and still uses, claymore mines with total disregard of the toll it they take in terms of human life and limb, it is even more calculatingly callous in its disregard for the agony it causes people by depriving them of water - nature's resource that is necessary for survival.

Many voices of the Tiger

It is in the midst of this agonizing struggle to restore water to the people, with as little loss human life as possible, that one finds the many voices of the tiger being heard, all reading from the same hymn sheet of appeasement of the LTTE.

When the eyes and ears of the people were on the effort to enable the civilian irrigation engineers to reopen the Mavil Aru sluice, with the help of the armed forces, some private radio and TV stations, thought it best to provide voice cuts of LTTE cadres, boasting how they had repulsed advances by the armed forces towards the vital sluice gate.

These broadcasts treated with contempt the struggle being waged to restore life-giving water to people deprived of it.

These broadcasters had lost touch of the national interest, in the face of a humanitarian disaster caused by LTTE's pursuit of terror.

They wouldn't be bothered to know that no radio or TV station in Israel would have given an opportunity to an agent of Hezbollah to be heard over the airwaves in Israel, in the mist of the current conflict in Lebanon.

They also would not care to know that for many years the democratic governments of the UK did not permit the voices of IRA leaders to be heard on radio or TV in the UK.

That was banned by law. It does not need any law, regulation, guideline or directive for radio and TV stations in a country to realize what is of the real national interest, at a time when a struggle is being waged against a ruthless enemy that has gripping jugular of innocent people, by depriving them of water.

There were others too ready to be heard on behalf of the tigers and not the suffering people seeking an assured supply of water.

An LTTE spokesman had earlier said the decision to close the sluice gate at Mawil Aru was a deliberate act taken in the face of the EU's ban on the LTTE. But, there were other voices, from supposedly peaceful quarters, with different reasons to justify the LTTE's move at Mawil Aru. The National Peace Council in a statement issued on the situation said thus:

"The LTTE have sought to justify their actions as being in accord with what the peace loving Tamil people living in the areas of their control want.

Their position has been that the government should build a water scheme in the neighbouring LTTE-controlled area, which the previous government had promised. They have also argued that the government should not block the flow of cement, steel and other building materials into the areas that they control where tsunami reconstruction is also taking place.

The government has claimed a humanitarian justification for its military offensive against LTTE positions. The LTTE's decision to block the water and the government decision to proceed with air bombardment even while the international monitors of the SLMM were negotiating with the LTTE cannot be condoned.

From a humanitarian perspective it would have been preferable if the government had negotiated with the LTTE regarding the re-opening of the water lock..."

The twist is so cunning, yet glaring. They take the most unrealistic humanitarian stance, when humanity itself is under threat.

While stating that both the LTTE's blocking off of the water and the governments proceeding with air strikes at that time cannot be condoned, it very carefully puts the blame of the government for the LTTE's blockage of the sluice gate, referring to the government not building a water scheme in a nearby LTTE controlled area, the curtailing of cement, steel and other building materials to LTTE held areas and also interestingly, the impact on tsunami restoration.

While negotiations are always better than confrontations, the call for it by such voices does not give the impression of any peaceful intent.

The sole purpose of such calls is to appease the LTTE more and more, as had been done earlier, to the hurrahs of such councils.

It is necessary to review the credentials of peace activists who fail to grasp the crying shame of those using water as a tool of terror. Their true interests cannot lie with the people suffering from this stranglehold on their water supply.