Landmine-clearing undresses pro-LTTE Eelam clowns
Military
Spokesperson Major General Ubaya Medawala has said that a total of
307,200 mines have been cleared and destroyed by the Army Field
Engineers in a land area of 1,872 square kilometers. This has been done
by both manual and mechanical methods. Close to 1,300 soldiers have been
deployed for this task in Jaffna, Mannar, Mullaitivu, Trincomalee,
Batticaloa, Polonnaruva and Vavuniya districts, he said. The stretch
from Oddusuddan to Nedunkerni has been completely de-mined by troops
with the help of international and local organizations, he added.
This is not just painstaking work it is costly and extremely
dangerous. The total number of landmines in the Northern and Eastern
provinces remains undetermined. Those who bury them don’t necessarily
keep meticulous records of location and as is natural in conflict
situations, there is no guarantee that those who have some knowledge
pass it on or that they are still alive.
It is a no-brainer that in a post-conflict situation where life and
people return to normalcy and original residences respectively, ordinary
citizens run the greatest risk pertaining to landmines. This is
something that the pro-LTTE Eelam and anti-Government sections of the
Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora just don’t have the heart, mind or ethics to
talk about.
Towards mine-free society. File photo |
Ground realities
It is their right to talk about rights and complain about the fact
that things are not yet ‘back to normal’. They spend enormous amounts of
time, energy and money to vilify the Government, paint myth as fact,
conjure non-existing grievances and inflate existing ones, complain
about perceived sloth in resettlement and rehabilitation etc but
studiously avoid the honest appraisal of ground realities.
Only the totally deluded among would claim that resettlement and
bringing back normalcy is not just part and parcel of recovering dignity
but a precondition for a possible re-launching of their political
project. It is one thing to engage in propaganda, deceit, outright lying
and such and quite another to wish for continuing misery. The former is
politics-as-usual, the latter barbaric in the extreme. If a rebel is a
fish then the support of the people he-she purports to fight for is the
water it needs to survive.
As Victor Ivan pointed out in a recent article in the Ravaya, the
LTTE thought Diaspora Dollars was a good enough alternative to ‘People’,
so much so that they used the ‘water’ as cannon fodder. It seems that
the pro-LTTE Eelam Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora continue to believe they
constitute ‘water’ and perforce the Tamil people in Sri Lanka they
believe (erroneously) want Eelam as badly as they say they do, are
dispensable. The moment of truth came in May 2009. A year and a half has
passed. A question remains unanswered: ‘What have the bleeding-heart
Eelamists done for their brethren in the Northern and Eastern
Provinces?’
Security Forces
It is not just the pro-LTTE Eelam deluded in other countries whose
heart purportedly bleed profusely for the imagined horrors lived by
those Tamils who until recently were held hostage, literally by the LTTE
and metaphorically by the Eelam project. There was no lack in so-called
humanitarians and ‘peace-lovers’ in Sri Lanka and particularly in
Colombo (i.e. the I/NGO circuit) during the time the LTTE was riding
high.
They just couldn’t stop salivating at the imagined prospect of the
LTTE besting the Sri Lankan Security Forces. Of course they claimed they
were speaking on behalf of the long-suffering Tamil people. Well, we are
yet to see them volunteering to do the clean up to ease their suffering.
It’s been a year and a half and that’s long enough to wait for ‘put up’.
In other words it is now ‘shut up’ time.
You can be part of the problem or the solution. That’s an old saying.
I am waiting for the likes of Jehan Perera and Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu
to get into land-mine clearing gear along with their respective staffs
and fellow travellers in the bleeding-heart business. And I am waiting
for the vociferous and deluded Eelam-trippers in various Western
countries to join them.
[email protected] |