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The LTTE air raid should not have come as a shock as the Government
was aware of the LTTE’s clandestine air base in Vanni with a couple of
light aircraft.
The shock is how did these two light aircraft manage to fly from the
Vanni to Katunayake unhindered and without being detected.
People may be in a quandary. If we do not have the right air defence
system to detect low lying aircraft, it is time to put it right at any
cost.
Over the past one year, our Air Force performance of targeting the
LTTE bases has been tremendous. Given the right equipment to the forces,
tackling the LTTE will not be a difficult task.
Our Forces should be 100 per cent alert at all times to deal with a
brutal terrorist outfit like the LTTE and any complacency will be an
added bonus to LTTE.
Thanks to the CFA and its Norwegian facilitator, the LTTE managed to
develop its air power albeit in a low scale. It will also be interesting
to investigate as to who supplied all these essential parts to assemble
the two light aircrafts either overtly or covertly.
It appears that we haven’t learnt a lesson of their first ground
attack on the Katunayake Airport. We have never been pro-active.
Measures are put in right places only after the damage is done.
Had we taken necessary defensive measures, this attack could have
been avoided. This air raid is a signal to the gullible International
Community (IC) who always says to negotiate with the LTTE. The LTTE is
not a saint as they believe.
Will the IC’s Western block with Japan and India still want the
Government to negotiate with this powerful terrorist conglomerate with
air and sea power although they are losing the ground battles? It’s time
that we stopped heeding to the International Community with their
standard hackneyed statement “We expect both the LTTE and Government to
stop violence and come to the negotiating table” .
If the International Community makes this statement again, Government
should ask them to leave and get on with the war to crush the LTTE
conclusively.
This is also signal to the IC that similar event like 9/11 could be
repeated in Sri Lanka.
On the LTTE side, they were losing grounds both morally and
financially from the Tamil diaspora. When the Katunayake airport was
attacked, dollars came pouring into the war chest of the LTTE from the
Tamil diaspora.
The last Sunday’s air raid on the Air Force base may be an attempt (i).
to show the Government that they are still left with fire power to
challenge the Government and (ii) to boost the losing morale of the
Tamil diaspora to raise funds to continue with their terrorist acts
against the Government of Sri Lanka.
The time has come to show no mercy to the LTTE until they are
crushed. There will not be any assistance coming from the IC in kind but
merely words which is worthless.
So let’s not depend on the Westerners of the International Community
and for that matter India or Japan, but look for assistance from
countries like China, Pakistan and Russia to crush the LTTE once and for
all.
MALIN ABEYATUNGE –
Australia - via email
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An overly excited TNA MP was interviewed in London on BBC’s Asia
Today news at 10.15 pm on January 4 by Misha Pillai on the air attacks
in East Sri Lanka on ‘identified military (LTTE) targets’.
The MP said the attacks had only hit Tamil civilians and not LTTE
targets, to which Ms. Pillai said that the Government says the LTTE uses
civilians as human shields.
The MP then threw in his ace which he had carried all the way to Dick
Wittington’s London where the MP was sure he would find if not strike
propaganda gold in the BBC studios.
He dismissed the contention that civilians in the vicinity of air
attacks could be considered as shields because he said, unlike
confrontation on the ground, the bombs came in from sky.
Therefore those in the path of such attacks could not actually
provide cover (to the LTTE) and thus could not be considered human
shields!
The MP had confused himself but astounded and bewildered his
listeners about what a ‘shield’ meant to him. He probably took it
literally for the real thing which was used in medieval times to deflect
arrow, spear, pike and sword thrusts.
He probably did not realise that even arrows were fired in to the air
as well as directly and shields were used both in the vertical and
horizontal positions to avoid injury.
But even in those times true and real warriors did not hide amongst
or behind women, old men and children especially if they were supposed
to be liberating them!
Fortunately for the Tamils then, neither the LTTE nor TNA were
around. The MP could however only keep bleating that the victims of air
bombings were civilians. Exeunt a mystified Misha Pillai.
This MP’s version (propaganda counter strategy? ) was corroborated by
Mr. Sambanthan the TNA leader in a newspaper interview (January 6) who
when asked about the use of civilians as human shields by the LTTE
airily dismissed the proposition by simply saying that he ‘did not want
to get involved in military strategies of any side’.
His considered opinion appeared to be that using ‘human shields’ is a
strategy therefore he did not want to get ‘involved’ in it even though
those ‘shields’ being humans were being killed.
He further elaborated that he does not see any justification in this
human shield theory.
In other words the deaths of humans being used as shields doesn’t
bother him as it is just a ‘theory’ that does not merit ‘justification’.
He having written off the deaths of those being used as ‘human
shields’ being without ‘merit’ had the temerity then to say ‘the
security of the civilians has not been of any concern to the
government’.
The TNA MP in London unwittingly confirmed and conceded that Tamil
civilians were being used as human shields by the LTTE against ground
mounted attacks, thus even justifying their use in that role,
(martyrs?).
He however had deluded himself that if the same humans were present
in the same area when an air attack took place they could not be
considered as ‘human shields’. What are they then? Just human sacrifices
to the sun god?
This MP must also believes that when the artillery guns and mortars
are fired, the shells fly in a horizontal trajectory to qualify for
excusable ‘direct confrontation’.
He should know that shells fired from such weapons go up in to the
air above 10,000 ft before they come down. On to the LTTE and not
civilians. The SLAF unloads their ordnance on the LTTE targets, often
sadly covered by Tamil human shields, at lesser heights. So where does
his theory lead to?
He should read ‘Broken Palmyrah’ for a reality check on the LTTE’s
historical and facile use of non combatants and not only children and
women to preserve itself.
The BBC should be congratulated for giving Sri Lanka’s mentally
disturbed time on air from time to time to show the world why Sri
Lanka’s problem has not been resolved, far less understood for so long.
After all those who cannot even condemn the use, deaths and maiming
of Tamil children in combat will never be able to understand the evil of
self proclaimed ‘liberators’ using Tamils as shields. After all, the TNA
does not represent the Tamils, only their oppressors.
LALIN FERNANDO -
via email
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A certain English daily carried prominently on the front page of its
issue of March 14, a picture of a police officer trying to enforce the
law on an errant bus driver who had committed a traffic offence.
The caption of the picture read ‘Law keeper turns lawbreaker’ (may be
because the bus remained parked on the middle of the road).
The note accompanying the photograph states in addition ‘this traffic
policeman writes out that dreaded spot fine, while adding to the problem
doing his job in the middle of a busy street’.
The fact that the driver who after being caught for a traffic offence
had the stubbornness to park the bus on the middle of the road till the
officer served him the ‘ticket’ is depicted to be the fault of the
Police Officer. What a country we are living in?
Any average citizen knows what a menace the majority of bus drivers
are today. A large number of fatal and near fatal accidents occur on our
roads snuffing out precious lives and are reported almost daily in the
newspapers.
The worst of these offenders are the private bus drivers and the
three-wheel drivers who believe that only they should have the right of
way on our public roads along which they could race regardless of
traffic signals, pedestrian crossings and other road users.
While road accidents are increasing by leaps and bounds a handful of
duty-conscious police officers under trying conditions are trying to
check them.
P. L. PIERIS -
BORALESGAMUWA |
