Weed out terror together!

Some observations by Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa which we front-paged yesterday are highly revelatory of the lack of perceptiveness and policy coherence among some sections of the international community which profess to back Sri Lanka in her efforts to weed out LTTE terror. If terror is to be contained, the democratic world needs to fight it as one man, with singularity of vision and purpose. In the absence of these factors, the civilized world’s efforts to stamp out terror could very well be weakened.

The Fatal Cleopatra, if we may call it, of some Western countries which claim to be democratic, is that they are highly ambivalent in their attitude towards those political personalities and activists from the developing world, who claim to be espousing this or that ‘cause.’ Need we remind these witting or unwitting defenders of these persons and groups taking up obscurantist ‘causes’, that the end can never justify the means? Those persons and organizations which are wedded to violence and terror could never be granted asylum or be protected in any form in countries which claim to be the practitioners of democratic governance. This is the incontrovertible truth and there could be no quibbling on this score. What is recognized as a crime at home remains a crime everywhere. Needless to say, violence and terror are universally condemned.

Those familiar with post-independence Sri Lanka need hardly be told that this country has been traumatized by violent political movements, over the past few decades, and that these groups have had their origins in both Southern and Northern Sri Lanka. While the ends they proclaim are highly controversial and have not made an impression on the vast majority of this country’s public, their use of violence has met with strong public disapproval and revulsion. In other words, these movements, besides using anti-democratic methods, are the very anti-thesis of the democratic way of life. All this should be abundantly clear to the West and it could be befuddling as to why activists from these violence-prone organizations are offered refuge in some of these liberal democracies of the West.

The West cannot adopt double standards on these issues if the blight of political terror is to be contained or managed. Democracies from both hemispheres should unite to free the world of the pervasive menace of terror and there is no denying that the practitioners of political violence should be shown the door by these countries which are committed to democracy. We urge that the strongest law and order measures be taken against the violators of the law, thrusting aside double standards and ‘double vision.’

The Gunaratnam Affaire is the very latest in a series if instances where Western ambivalence on persons of questionable political credentials is being exposed. Most often than not, in the case of well known LTTE activists too over the years, it has been a case of Sri Lanka trying to disabuse Western minds of the highly misleading notion that the granting of asylum is indicative of democratic accommodativeness. Rather than establish the latter, misguided sections of the West have been only helping in the growth of terror by failing to crackdown on those committed to political violence.

We call on the states concerned to get their act right on these matters. Sri Lanka stands solidly behind those countries which are committed to democratic governance and pledges its allegiance to the law and order agencies of the world which are intent on curbing political terrorism and other anti-democratic forces. Come what may, democratic institutions must thrive and no partiality could be shown in any quarter to forces which are intent on violence and on anti-democratic practices of any kind.

Those sections which are yet to realize the magnitude of this lapse of not coming down hard on terror, need to hearken to Sri Lanka’s position that it should be given the opportunity to grow and make the best of the atmosphere of stability that is currently prevailing in this country. However, it cannot do so if the entirety of the democratic world is not going to cooperate with it in stamping out terror. The world should be made the breeding ground of democracy and peaceful living. It is only a collective effort on the part of mankind which could help further these aims.