Needed, a diplomatic offensive

As during the height of the war against the LTTE, attempts to blacken the image of the country and its Armed Forces by various international bodies are continuing apace.

Time was when our governments had to wage war on two fronts, one on home soil and the other to clear its name against various allegations to do with human rights, by western interests hell bent on scuttling the war effort.

A bleak picture vis-a-vis human rights was painted internationally with a view to halt economic aid and military assistance to the country all with the intention of bailing out the LTTE when in a tight spot.

The failure by our overseas missions to counter such propaganda effectively also did not help. It was left to President Mahinda Rajapaksa to summon our diplomats and read the riot act.

But it appears that insidious moves are still at play to paint the administration in a poor light by the same actors once again perhaps to salvage the Tigers from their current predicament.

If it was unsubstantiated claims such as the killing of non combatants, bombing of civilian targets etc. before, now it the maltreatment of these very civilians who are fleeing the grip of the LTTE and seeking safety with the armed forces - who according to the Western media were the villains, bringing hell on the civilians.

The London Times on Friday carried a piece on the unfolding developments headlined: ‘Barbed wire villages raise fears of refugee concentration camps’. Written by its South Asia Correspondent the opening paragraph of the article states: “Sri Lanka was yesterday accused of planning concentration camps to hold 200,000 ethnic Tamil refugees from its northern conflict zone for up to three years.”

The whole purpose of the article was show that the fleeing villagers were being held as prisoners within barbed wire fencing. The author of the article was also careful to quote elements hostile to the Sri Lankan Government. One of them British Labour MP Robert Evens was quoted as having said, “These are not Welfare camps, they are prisoner of war cum concentration camps.”

Human Rights Watch called them detention Centres. Amnesty goes one better and accuse the army of taking these civilians hostage.

What people like Evans, a known Tiger sympathizer and who is beholden to the substantial Tamil community of his borough to get elected, should know is that Sri Lankan Security Forces would have completed the war by now if only it did not have to contend with the civilian population kept as a human shield by the LTTE.

What makes him think that the Army will spare these innocent civilians now only make them inmates of a concentration camp when they have escaped the danger and sought refuge with the soldiers.

What kind of logic is that? And the civilians come on their own volition without being herded forcibly into Gas chambers. Ironically the Times in a subsequent editorial goes onto dwell Britain’s record vis-a-vis concentration camps. It says: “The concentration camps set up by Lord Kitcherner to intern Boer women and children were officially intended to shelter civilians while the British forces conducted a scorched earth policy to deprive Boer combatants of food and shelter. In fact, they were places of brutality hardship and death. More than 26,000 people died in some 50 makeshift camps across South Africa.”

As stated by SCOP chief Prof Rajiva Wijesinhe in an apt response to the article, far from engaging in the British or German practise of starvation and death the Sri Lankan Government is feeding and sheltering these people, proving health facilities and seeing to their education and all aspect of their welfare.

It appears that this unrelenting campaign against the Government is not going end with the Western Media sharpening their daggers even in the face of the utmost care and precautions taken to follow a zero casualty policy in this final phase of the war.

The sheer distortion of the humanitarian situation in the Vanni by BBC and even Al-jazeera bears out this fact.

In the coming days this campaign is bound to intensify with a view to try and halt the final military offensive to flush out the terrorists. This would be the ideal time for the Government carry out an extensive diplomatic offensive to bring the true situation of the civilians held hostage by the LTTE to the world’s attention and the Government’s humanitarian mission to rescue these hapless beings from three decades of tyranny.

No doubt the President is aware of the crucial stage in which the nation is now poised. True, the war has reached that stage where there can be only one outcome. However there are sinister forces who will want to spoil the sweet victory that is within our grasp by painting a distorted picture to the unfolding human drama.

No room should be left to turn the tide against the gains achieved through the blood sacrifice of our heroic soldiers.