A commendable gesture

The appeal by Prime Minter Ratnasiri Wickramanayaka to the LTTE cadres trapped in the East to lay down their arms and surrender should be viewed in a positive light notwithstanding the reservations in the minds of many.

Now that the LTTE has been routed in the East the Government would do well to speed up the development process in the Province and for this to succeed it is important that all irritants be removed.

Hence the Premier’s invitation to the LTTEers to share in the development process while at the same time continuing with the Government’s military thrust to flush out pockets of Tiger resistance.

This invitation will no doubt be hailed as a magnanimous gesture by the pacifists while others would want the Government not to provide any respite to an outfit that has caused so much bloodshed and misery in the country. The Government we are sure will weigh the pros and cons of the issue.

In this regard, one is reminded of the grand show of surrendering weapons made by the LTTE during the time of the Indo-Lanka accord.

Judging by huge volumes of arms surrendered including heavy weapons there were those who genuinely believed that the outfit had at last renounced the path of violence. How wrong this notion proved to be was demonstrated in subsequent events.

The Government cannot be faulted for offering an amnesty to a rebel outfit. Such a gesture was seen during the 1971 insurgency when the then Government offered an amnesty to the JVP rebels fighting the State to lay down their arms and surrender with a promise of rehabilitation.

How successful that programme was could be gauged by the fact that many who underwent rehabilitation later joined mainstream politics and even entered Parliament as MPs. Besides in almost all trouble spots in the World today we read of Government leaders offering similar amnesties to rebel outfits to mend their ways.

Of course the JVP insurrection cannot be compared to the LTTE’s violent separatist campaign. The latter is fighting for a separate state posing a threat to the country’s sovereignty unlike the JVP which only sought to topple a Government.

One has to take into account the number of conscripts in the LTTE ranks, including child soldiers, who may want to make a bolt for it if there is guarantee of security and a secure life. In fact, there have been many a case of LTTE cadres seeking the protection of the Security Forces. Some of them have been reunited with their families.

It is these elements that needs to be convinced of the Government’s genuine desire to provide them with a new beginning. The surrender should be followed by genuine attempts to heal their battle scars. The Government should spell out a proper a programme of action that would be both safe and attractive to them.

Any such programme should include counselling and ways of banishing the suspicions that marked relations between the two communities leading to the present conflict. This should be followed by a programme to ensure their economic emancipation and eventual absorption into society as equal partners.

The amnesty offer of course should not detract from the Government’s current campaign to rid the menace of LTTE terrorism which it has so far carried out with resounding success belying the charges made against it.

No less a personage than the Mahanayake of Malwatte the other day made a statement debunking the logic by the opposition of a Government complicity with the LTTE.

The Venerable Mahanayake asked whether the Government could secure such frequent military victories if it indeed had compromised itself to the outfit.

What is well known is that the Government has invited the LTTE to the negotiating table. It is the LTTE which walked away from all previous peace talks and began the cycle of violence.

But the door is still open for the group to mend its ways. Perhaps the amnesty offer will also spur the LTTE leadership to assess the viability of their goal and enter the negotiations process.