Falsehoods and Illogicalities
It is those who fire on escaping civilians who should
be told to cease / pause / stop such firing:
Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha
Language, Truth and Logic was the title of a seminal work by the
philosopher A.J. Ayer, who in effect popularized empiricism in the
English speaking world. Empiricism, to put it simply, is the school of
thought which requires concrete evidence for the positions people take
up.
Sadly, terrorism now seems to have effectively destroyed reliance on
evidence, insofar as the pronouncements of people on the Sri Lankan
situation go. Language and truth and logic seem to have been the
principal victims, apart from human beings, of the strange fascination
terror has for people who should know better.
Take the simple word ‘ceasefire’, which should mean the cessation of
fire. Very clearly, despite a Ceasefire Agreement in 2002, the LTTE did
not cease fire.
Not only did they continue to import weapons and conscript people -
which it could be argued did not mean they were actually firing, albeit
such actions were also specifically forbidden by the CFA - they actually
fired freely, first on Tamils opposed to them, hundreds of whom were
killed from 2002 on, and then on the Forces.
The number of Servicemen killed in terrorist attacks between December
2005 (a month after President Rajapaksa took office) and April 2006 was
in the hundreds, leading the Scandinavian Monitoring Mission to
question, unequivocally referring to the LTTE, whether there was a
Ceasefire still in existence.
After April, violations were even more blatant, with the suicide
attack on the Army Commander and then the twin pronged attack on Mutur
and Muhumalai in August (before which the LTTE, repudiating the other
purpose of the CFA, namely negotiations, had refused despite being
transported to Oslo to participate in talks - perhaps because, contrary
to their demand, the Norwegians had insisted that the question of child
soldiers could be placed on the agenda).
After that the Forces retaliated, but the Government kept requesting
the LTTE to return to negotiations, and were summarily rebuffed, the
last obvious instance of this being the response to the Norwegian
Ambassador who went up to Kilinochchi in August 2007, and was told that
negotiations could not be even considered until the Government had
withdrawn to the 2006 positions (not the 2002 positions, since the LTTE
had in fact crept into much territory in the intervening years, and
built airfields, and thought that by 2006 these were irreversible
gains).
So when in 2008, the Government abrogated the Ceasefire Agreement, it
was the Agreement it abrogated, not the cessation of fire, which had in
effect ceased in December 2005, or even earlier if you count the attacks
on Tamils and the murder of Tamil speaking Army officers. And it is
despite all this that we still have calls for a Ceasefire, most notably
from the British, who one thinks would have a better understanding of
the English language than most.
When this absurdity is pointed out to those who have to explain away
the general pronouncements of British politicians, they claim that what
is meant is a ceasefire to allow the civilians now held by the LTTE to
get away. If that is what is meant, one wonders why it cannot be said,
with the now more common phrase ‘humanitarian pause’ being used instead.
The simple answer is that British politicians are catering not to the
Sri Lankan people but to their constituents in Britain, and they have to
say what those people want to hear. They may assume that the Sri Lankans
will understand that what they really mean is a brief pause in the
firing to allow the people to escape, but catch them saying that.
As the influential local councillor Iddaikader made clear to his
followers in Harrow, some MPs might lose their seats if British Tamils
changed their minds about whom they would vote for. Being careful about
such matters is natural to politicians, but the British
characteristically have the gift of sounding sanctimonious even about
simple electoral considerations.
So we have constant references to a Ceasefire, with the purpose of
this Ceasefire sometimes being mentioned, sometimes not. Others
meanwhile have realized that that effort will be fruitless, until the
LTTE can be guaranteed to understand better what the word means, and
therefore they talk of a humanitarian pause, which they say could not be
used by the LTTE to restore its strength, the way they did so
successfully during previous Ceasefire Agreements.
The trouble is that the LTTE is much sharper than all these idealists
or gullible fools or insidious villains, whichever they are, and will
use any pause in the offensive to strategic advantage.
After all they almost retook Mullaitivu the last time the Government
let up to encourage civilians to cross over, and indeed when a safe zone
was declared they promptly took advantage of that to move their heavy
weaponry into the midst of civilians and fire from there.
What the world should be doing is to ask the LTTE to pause firing for
the civilians to get away. Asking the Forces to pause is like asking a
man who would not dream of doing anything of the sort to stop beating
his wife.
And calling on both sides for this purpose is a calculated insult,
since the Forces have never fired on those seeking refuge.
But logic too flies out of the window, along with language and truth,
when people want to make political points. Instead of a simple
unequivocal demand to the LTTE to let our people go, those who still
seek political or other advantage from the situation will continue to
pervert language and let the LTTE make people suffer.
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