On My Watch

LTTE challenged by the world it wooed

Lucien RAJAKARUNANAYAKE

The 61st Anniversary of Independence was celebrated with a grandeur deserving of the occasion. The Security Forces were the pride of the moment, with the sacrifice they have made to make this the most important commemoration of Freedom Day since the instruments of a limited freedom were obtained on February 4, 1948.

If President Mahinda Rajapaksa paid a fitting tribute to the troops who contributed so much to consolidate the nation’s freedom, with their determined fight against separatist terror, he also reminded the nation of the new opportunities and challenges that came with the elimination of terror.

“Today, we are a nation that has defeated a powerful enemy that stood before us. An enemy that we were told was invincible... Our heroic forces have given us the opportunity today to celebrate the anniversary of our Independence in a country freed, after many years, from the dark shadow of terrorism....

PROPER GRASP

We should be ready to properly grasp and not waste the opportunity that history has presented to us after 61 years of freedom from colonial rule, to once again raise our country to the dignity it deserves,” was the essence of the President’s message that day.

He reminded the country of the continuing success in the fight to eradicate terrorism, carried out in two and a half years, not only against the LTTE and its savagery that has marked the past 30 years, but also in the face of so many challenges by forces that would rather have seen this country divided or continually bleeding for purposes far removed from the humanitarian veil shrouding them.

He also spoke of the compelling need to face the new battle for social justice, without which the freedom and sovereignty of the people would have no meaning.

As the denouement of the long drawn out fight against terrorism approached, with the LTTE cornered in a small patch of its one-time stronghold of Mullaitivu, one saw the international forces take new positions in dealing realities in Sri Lanka.

FOREIGN MEDIA

Close to the fall of Kilinochchi - the much vaunted ‘de facto capital’ of the LTTE, as the foreign media so lovingly described it, the United States said it did not advocate talks with the LTTE which Washington (or those who lie for it in Colombo), suddenly realized was an organization named and banned in the USA as an international terrorist organization.

It took the later fall of Elephant Pass, and the imminent fall of the last outpost of terror at Mullaitivu, for the Tokyo Co-Chairs (TCC) to act with an acceptance of reality.

It must have been grovelling to the Norwegians who sat with them, and for Germany too - in the EU - trying to hide its burdens of the holocaust and the pain of division into East and West, preaching to us of human rights and the need to wear kid gloves in dealing with the worst terror the world has seen.

Yet the TCC did have the courage, and hopefully the conviction, to tell the LTTE it was time to lay down arms, give up violence, accept the Government’s offer of amnesty to those who did so, and seek a political solution based on the principles of democracy.

The statement by the TCC was the final vindication of the decision taken by President Rajapaksa in August 2006, after the LTTE’s throttling of the people’s lifeline for water at Mavil Aru, to take the battle right into the heartland of terror and eradicate it from the country.

POSITION CORRECTNESS

It proved the correctness of the position taken up by Sri Lanka that realized the intransigence of the LTTE, and President Rajapaksa’s firm refusal to negotiate with them until they lay down arms and accept democracy.

For those who wage wars in countries far away from home to spread democracy in the world, this is a lesson as to how it can be saved in one’s own land when under threat by ruthless terror.

With the security forces moving ahead, undaunted by the plants in the Fourth Estate by ‘Aid Agencies’, INGOs and NGOs in tow with the LTTE’s propaganda machine, who fear the loss of their foothold in Sri Lanka, the new realities are causes for obvious concern. Those who once urged negotiations with terror have moved fast to call on the tigers to lay down arms.

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

The TCC is followed by the European Parliament and the UN can do little else, especially when it is compelled to apologize to Sri Lanka over its comments, based on Amnesty International (no doubt without verification), on allegations of the use of cluster bombs in attacking a hospital in the North.

But he tigers have some friends left too - apparently powerful - with arms stretched across the Atlantic in a special relation that forgets Guantanamo and Afghanistan, to castigate Sri Lanka over the humanitarian situation in the north.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband have thought it fit to heighten focus on the plight of civilians caught in the fighting in the north, completely ignoring the statement of the TCC - of which both the USA and UK are members, the latter through he EU - in its call for the LTTE to lay down arms.

The LTTE can take satisfaction from such double speak, but in reality it is now fighting the world it once wooed and almost won.