Double talk of the West who failed to nip Tiger terror in the bud

Prabhakaran’s terror machine got fortified with funding, lethal weaponry and media-savvy skills from the West to destabilize Sri Lanka for decades. Strangely, some Western diplomats rushed with warnings when Sri Lankan was about to quell the LTTE.

They are now lecturing us about what the post-LTTE era should be like. The West could have stopped the Tigers in their tracks early on, but they failed. Now they are behaving as if Sri Lanka committed a grotesque violation. The double standards of the western powers are appalling.

Having ignored Prabhakaran’s stunning growth towards a terrorist menace, the West now pontificates about threats to civilians. Where were these self-proclaimed terror fighters when millions of dollars flowed in from the West to the Tiger coffers— when they broke all legal barriers in the West? They had proscribed the LTTE as terrorists but the arms procurement went on unabated, the media blitz suffocated the Western capitals and the fund raising by organizations like the Tamils for peace thrived.

In the US, the FBI tracked down the activities of the Tigers-their bank transactions and arms deals. They called them the most ruthless terrorists in the world. But the Tiger Diaspora crept through many legal loop holes and continued to fatten Prabhakaran’s bank account. How else could they sent over 300 million dollars every year from Canada to either Switzerland or Bangkok and then to a mysterious bank account undetected by anyone so far. Worse still, the same champions of civil liberties in the West never uttered a word when Prabhakaran ran amok destroying life and property. The LTTE leaders were turning children into cannon fodder while sending their children to schools abroad. Finally, the LTTE started killing the very people to whom they promised a separate Eelam-the words “human shield” entered our vocabulary as the LTTE demonstrated their unlimited propensity to kill people. Where were the Western leaders then?

The last batch of civilians reaching to safety. Picture by Rukmal Gamage

The West ignored the deafening protests that arose after their invasion of Iraq and the ensuing civilian deaths. Beginning in 2002, and continuing after the invasion in 2003, protests against the Iraq War were held in many cities worldwide, often coordinated to occur simultaneously around the world. The New York Times writer Patrick Tyler commented on February 15th, 2003 after the biggest series of demonstrations against the war stating that there were two superpowers on the planet, the United States and the worldwide public opinion. The West was oblivious to the cry of “shame.”

Deceitful agenda

There is a manifestly deceitful agenda taking shape. Foreign Ministers of the UK, USA and France had done their utmost to foist a ceasefire on Sri Lanka. Now they are screaming “do as we tell you to do and ignore what we did in Iraq.”

Meanwhile, there is continuous aerial bombing going on for weeks killing civilians in Pakistan. Same fate accrued to the hapless civilians in Baghdad under Bush’s ill-adviced invasion of Iraq now descents on the Pakistani civilians.

No probes had been called for the murdering of over a million civilians of Iraq. Over 4,700,000 people had been displaced in that during the last six years. There is a debate now waging inside the USA about the torturing methods legalized by Bush and Cheney. The inhuman treatment of prisoners in Baghdad is a historical shame.

The acts described above and executed with no compunction is a slur on all norms of civilized conduct. The perpetrators of such acts are now trying to teach morals to countries with thousands of years of rich cultural history. Sri Lanka can boast of a proud heritage built in accordance with precepts enshrined in religious tenets inherently more humane than those preached by the likes of Miliband and Clinton.

Killing fields of Iraq

We have never heard of calls for investigations into those crimes against humanity committed by the West. None will ever be held. Human rights watch elites were silent as lambs when slaughter and torture took place in the killing fields of Iraq. No one protested about unrestricted access or the opening up of closure of the razor wired detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. Even the Obama decision to close that camp is now called a stupid act by some in the USA. The Sri Lankan Government has taken all steps humanly possible to deal with a crisis created by the ruthless Tigers. The Government houses, feeds, clothes and looks after those displaced civilians as a moral duty. Help is pouring in from all quarters and the situation would improve within months.

The West cannot act like paragons of virtue when they have inherited the shame of “Holocaust’, and the ignominy of Baghdad. Facing all possible obstructions in their path from the valedictorians of the self-righteousness, Sri Lanka has weathered the atrocious onslaught of the ruthless Tigers far better than what the Westerners ever imagined.

Mob rule in Western capitals

The UK, Europe and Canada also faced malodorous mobs of ruffians taking to the streets to thwart all sensible approaches to the situation in Sri Lanka. They did not have enough courage to halt these exhibitions of criminal outrage. No one had the guts to call these gangs organized thugs. Highways and roads to hospitals and places of work had been blocked as if they had established Eelam in the Western capitals-UK and Canada in particular-have not practised what they have been preaching to the Sri Lankans.

There is even a more damning accusation that can be levelled against the West. They stood by and watched as the LTTE murdered thousands in cold blood over the past 30 years. Their kidnappings of toddlers and using them as canon fodder, the deprivation they unleashed against Tamil families have gone unpunished.

The unmentionable ethnic cleansing the Sinhalese and Muslim civilians suffered en masse were crimes against humanity allowed to go undetected. Human rights groups did almost nothing about them all these years.

The murder of 674 Police Officers by the LTTE, after who laid down arms and surrendered to them, were crimes that the West ignored. As the LTTE bombed killed and maimed thousands during the past three decades, the West stood unconcerned. Even when they issued warnings occasionally, the Human Rights groups always coupled that with sanctimonious strictures about Sri Lankan efforts to fight terror.

The Westerners are simply hallucinating about ground realities based on convoluted thinking. Sri Lanka will create living conditions conducive to good governance without the West imposing double standards. We have produced a terror fighting model that the West can learn from. Ironically, the very people who urged us to fight terror had become turn coats. Neo-colonialism will not succeed in Sri Lanka. We have friends outside the inner sanction of the Western diplomats posing as do-gooders carrying gifts.