British parliamentarian on an overdose of imagination
Andrew Dismore, Labour Member of Parliament for an obscure suburb in
Northwest London, sounds as though he has been sniffing something. In an
article described rather hopefully as ‘comment’ on the Guardian website
today, he does a very good job of repeating LTTE propaganda, while
completely failing to note what are accepted by the United Nations and
other international agencies as the essential facts of the Sri Lankan
conflict.
The only point Dismore gets right is that the Sri Lankan Government
is currently in the middle of fighting, but this is a war against a
banned terrorist organisation, not the Tamil people. While the LTTE did
at one time represent the aspirations of sections of the Tamil
community, that was long ago. Today, Tamils are desperate to get away to
the safety of Government controlled areas, and the LTTE is shooting them
in the back.
Andrew Dismore |
This cannot be dismissed as the crazed efforts of a group fighting
for its survival either, although that would be bad enough. The LTTE has
long trampled on the rights of the Tamil community, and they have
responded by withdrawing support. Tamils have been killed in large
numbers by the LTTE, particularly those who have attempted to take on
leadership roles. Members of rival groups, who joined mainstream
politics in preference to continuing their violent struggle against the
state, have fared the worst, but they have certainly not been alone. The
LTTE has killed prominent civil society activists, the Deputy Secretary
General of the Peace Secretariat and the Foreign Minister, to name but a
few of the Tamil people who have been cut down so far.
Atrocities
Of course the fact that the LTTE is a fascist organisation doesn’t
justify anything other than what the Sri Lankan Government is doing,
which is attempting to put a stop to its atrocities. Terrorists cannot
be allowed to control territory, not only as a matter of very obvious
principle in a democratic country, but also because it enables them to
manufacture suicide jackets, construct planes, submarines and so on, and
brainwash the poor children they regularly abduct without fear of
interruption.
In his altered state, Dismore tries to make people think that the Sri
Lankan government is up to something rather less worthy, throwing around
a lot of claims that basically originate from the LTTE. He talks of
cluster bombs and white phosphorus, both trendy buzzwords after the
exploits of the United States and Israel in their far less careful
struggles against terrorism, despite there being absolutely no evidence
of their use in Sri Lanka. Believing unsubstantiated claims put about by
the LTTE at a time when it is on the brink of collapse is obviously not
sensible, and his position as a representative of the British people
demands greater concern for the truth.
Amnesty International fell into this trap earlier. It was responsible
for the propagation of the notion that cluster bombs had been used by
the Sri Lankan Forces, quoting United Nations officials as saying that
they had been dropped on a hospital. But the United Nations later said
that its people had been mistaken in identifying the weapons used, with
local representatives having described by telephone the noises they had
heard outside, and expatriate staff in Colombo wrongly interpreting
their description.
False claims
Andrew Dismore may be forgiven for not knowing this to be a false
claim, because Amnesty International didn’t bother to withdraw its
statement. Indeed, this failure to issue corrections is a serious
problem for the Sri Lankan government, because United Nations officials
have also admitted that firing they initially claimed might have come
from either side was almost certainly done by terrorists.
Most ridiculous is Dismore’s assertion that independent observers
would call the Sri Lankan Government campaign against the LTTE genocide.
The LTTE has been spreading this claim around as liberally as
possible, presumably in the hope that people, at least those who don’t
know that most Tamils live in Government controlled areas and that
Colombo is a Tamil majority city, will believe that there could be no
smoke without fire.
Dismore ought to explain who the independent observers are, because
even the strongest critics of the Sri Lankan Government have explicitly
stated that there is no genocide in Sri Lanka. Human Rights Watch made
such a statement last week.
Obviously innocent people are dying. The Sri Lankan Government
considers even a single civilian death to be one too many, and it has
given instructions to the Security Forces to do everything possible to
avoid mistakes in targeting.
Indeed, we have even been monitoring accusations of casualties made
by websites connected to the LTTE such as TamilNet, and found that there
have been very few instances.
Since we made these discoveries public, of course, TamilNet has
increased its accusations considerably, and the figure Andrew Dismore
gives for civilian deaths since the beginning of the year coincides with
its latest claims.
That the Security Forces are being incredibly careful is however
obvious, given the rather slow progress they have been making in
recovering the last few square kilometres of territory.
The LTTE is responsible for the majority of civilian deaths. The
United Nations has confirmed that the LTTE has been firing on people
trying to escape to Government controlled areas, as well as despatching
suicide bombers to explode themselves among those who succeed as they
make their way to Government welfare centres.
It has also said that at least some of the shelling that has killed
civilians definitely originated with the LTTE, while establishing which
side was guilty in other cases, according to the United Nations, has not
been possible.
Dismore makes it clear that his mind really has fogged over when he
suggests that the Sri Lankan Government has left people without food.
Given the efforts made to get supplies into LTTE controlled areas, first
by road and now also by ship, which have occupied Government officials
day and night for the last six months, this is appalling ignorance.
Dismore even claims that the Sri Lankan government has prevented the
United Nations agencies from helping people, although most of the work
done by Government officials has been coordinated with the World Food
Programme, with the International Committee of the Red Cross negotiating
safe passage from LTTE bosses.
Propaganda
If this British parliamentarian isn’t suffering from an overdose of
imagination, today’s article can only be a ploy to win votes from the
Tamil diaspora in Northwest London.
Sri Lankans who left the country many years ago are sadly out of
touch with the situation here, and they are constantly bombarded with
LTTE propaganda. Andrew Dismore’s obvious desire to pander to their
misconceptions is understandable in a politician, but he must draw the
line at embracing a terrorist agenda.
Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP)
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