DOUBLE TALK OF THE LTTE AND THE WEST
Solheim who came back from Mallavi after meeting with Thamilchelvam has gone back. We do not know whether the Tamil terrorists served him masala thosai for breakfast, but Thamilchelvam on the orders of Prabhakaran has insisted on three pre-requisites, according to the newspapers. It is said that the pre-requisites are not pre conditions in order to fool the world. It is not known who is behind this usage of words but one cannot rule out Solheim and the west who are passmasters in this game. One has to remember that Norway, according to Solheim and the ambassador, is only an innocent facilitator and not even a mediator in this business.
So Prabhakaran, after all, is a decent chap and he has not gone back on his birthday speech last year that the LTTE would not impose any conditions on the so-called peace talks. One is also aware of the fact that the outgoing Bishop of the Church of Ceylon has given Prabhakaran a testimonial to the effect that the latter is a humane person and one should not expect him to impose any conditions, going back on his word. He only insists on pre-reqisites, while Solheim (Norway) only facilitates.
While Thamilchelvam was coming to Mallavi to meet Solheim an attempt has been made to "kill" him. If it is not the humane Prabhakaran who was behind it then who would have tried to "kill" Thamilchelvam? The Tamil Net made a futile attempt to tell the world that the Sri Lankan army is behind it. But the whole world, including Thamilchelvam, knows that the Tamil racists are safe from army attacks in these areas. Apparently on his way to Mallavi, Thamilchelvam has got down from his luxury pajero and got into the double cab that accompanied the pajero.
Ms. Colvin "the brave not so young lady" of the London "Sunday Times" should also have noted that the leaders of the LTTE travel in luxury vehicles in addition to observing the poor facilities of the ordinary people living in those areas. If she had the time to visit Moneragala, Hambantota and other such districts she could also have observed for herself the facilities the Sinhala peasants "enjoyed" in those areas, and in Anuradhapura Polonnaruwa and Ampara district she would have come across the relatives of those who were killed by the LTTE. Unfortunately the Christian love of the western journalists and academics is not for the Sinhala Buddhists when it comes to matters connected with the LTTE. There seems to be a division of labour. While the western journalists, academics and the Christian Peace movement in Sri Lanka love the Tamil Hindus, the western and local evangelists love the Sinhala Buddhists. The Christian love overpours for the Sinhala Buddhists only for the purpose of conversions and it is strange that these evangelists have no love Christian or otherwise for the poor Sinhala Christians. Perhaps this is a case of loving thy neighbour without loving those who are at home.
Coming back to Thamilchelvam, why did he change vehicles? Did he know that there was a threat to his life, by Prabhakaran? Or was it a drama staged by Thamilchelvam and Prabhakaran to deceive the world at the expence of a few terrorists who did not know what was going on. For Prabhakaran, sacrificing a few lives is not a difficult task. In order to achieve Eelam he is prepared to kill any number of Sinhalas, Tamils and Mulims. It is very likely that both Prabhakaran and Thamilchelvem knew the exact time and place of the impending explosion and Thamilchelvam changed veichles according to the script written by the LTTE top guard. We should be very careful in interpreting LTTE actions as they are very often designed mislead us.
LTTE's so-called pre-requisites which are nothing but pre conditions include a ceasefire and the lifting of the ban. The lifting of the so-called embargo is a request to send what the LTTE wants and a ceasefire, and as has been proved so many times, would be used to get more arms for the terrorists. Why does'nt Solheim tell the LTTE that they should not impose any conditions and stick to what they had earlier said, that they are for so-called peace and would not insist on conditions. Instead of doing that Solheim runs between Vanniya and Colombo and between Colombo and London. Why is he going to London almost always on his way back home? Has it become a habit? Is it to meet Balasingham? Can he meet in London representatives of organisations banned in the UK? Or is he meeting representatives of the British government under the guise of bringing "peace" to Sri Lanka in addition to meeting Balasngham? This time he has gone to the USA to meet the officials there. Isn't Solheim the agent of the west in general, and not only of Norway?
Solheim is supposed to be a facilitator. Nobody has so far given a definition of the word facilitator and people are in the dark as to what Solheim is doing. Is he supposed to remove any obstacles to Peace? If that is the case then he should support the government to remove Prabhakaran and defeat the LTTE as they are the obstacles to Peace. However he is not atending to that and instead keeps himself, the army and the airlines busy by shuttling between Vanniya and Colombo, and Colombo and London. It is clear that he has his own agenda and his version of peace, which he wants the others to adopt and implement. His version of peace spealt with a capital P, is the one formulated by the west. Solheim, the west, the NGO's, the Bishops, the Christian Peace movement, the Bhikkus of the Palli Nikaya and the peace vendors want the "Sinhala extremists" and the government to achieve Peace that makes the Sinhalas a non entity in the northern and eastern provinces and are not interested in any other peace.
The LTTE wants the government to lift the proscription. A press statement released by the LTTE, after the talks between them and the Norwegians has said: "We wish to enter political negotiations with Sri Lanka as the authentic, legitimate representaives of our people for which the proscription on our organisation should be lifted. These are not demands or preconditions for talks but rather pre-requisite necessary steps to create the very foundation for political negotiations. The international community should understand that we cannot participate in peace talks as an illegal, criminal entity with a distorted false label as "terrorists". Our liberation movement cannot be equated with other rebel groups who participated in peace talks as proscribed organisations. We have fought a liberation war for more than two decades and have a standard conventional army and a mass of territory under our administrative control. The historical conditions of our struggle are unique and cannot be compared to IRA, PLO and other rebel groups in northeast India. It is the collective aspiration of our people that the ban on our liberation organisation should be lifted. If Sri Lanka wants peace and a permanent resolution of the ethnic conflict, it should not hesitate to remove the ban as the Tamil people's demand, Tamil Chelvan told the Norwegian delegates."
It should be clear to Solheim and Co. that the LTTE is an obstacle even for the Peace of the west. Now USA, for whatever reasons, has already banned the LTTE and the UK has named the LTTE as a terrorist organisation. It is not clear as to whether UK has banned the LTTE or not. In any event, the LTTE is of the opinion that it is not a terrorist group and that as far as it is concerned terrorist is a distorted false label applied to the organisation. Could the LTTE identify a terrorist group in the world, at present or in the past, so that the rest of the world, including the west, may have an idea of what the LTTE means by terrorism. It is true that to a certain extent we live in a world of words, ( I am not thinking of the language and the associted spaces of the post modernists, as it is possible to have concepts without words. If people cannot conceptualise without words then small babies would not be living in any world) but the words have to be used in some consistent way with respect to the other words.
LTTE by refusing to call itself a terrorist organisation has shown that bombing Dalada Maligawa is part of its so-called liberation struggle and not a terrorist act. It is true that the historical conditions of their "struggle" cannot be compared to those of IRA and PLO. IRA and PLO may be having some historical reasons to justify their struggles. But what has the LTTE got apart from the "history" created by the Tamil racist leaders from the ninetenth century. Tamil nation was created only in the beginning of the twentieth century and the so-called Tamil homeland was created as late as 1976. The "history" of Tamils as seen by Tamil racists and the so-called Tamil homeland have been created with one purpose. That is to have a separate state for the Tamils. If not for the Tamil "history" and the Tamil "nation" in Sri Lanka (by the way has there been a Tamil nation in India, at any time?) created by the Tamil racists with the assistance of the Dutch and the British, there would not have been any Tamil "grievances". Tamil "grievances" arose as a result of the refusal by the Tamil racists to accept the significance of the Sinhalathva in the country. Why wern't there any Muslim "grievances" until recently? The Muslims had a political grievance in the ninetenth century when the British appointed a Tamil to represent the Muslims as well. However that was not "against" the Sinhalas and the Muslims have continued to be members of the UNP and the SLFP and the Sinhalas have voted for the Muslims (as well as Tamils), some of whom became ministers. It has to be understood that the Muslim grievances are vis-à-vis the Tamils, from the nineteenth century, and even the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) was created in the east essentially to find a solution to this problem. It is the LTTE that ethniccleansed Jqaffna and chased away the Muslims with the Sinhalas. If not for Tamil racism there would not have been a SLMC and Muslim politics as such.
As there was no history of a "Tamil nation in a Tamil homeland" the Tamil racists and their supporters, in order to refuse to accept the significance of the Sinhala. language, Sinhala culture and Sinhala history in this country started a campaign to "establish" that the Sinhala nation was a creation of Anagarika Dharmapala in the late ninteenth century. The Mahavansa phobia was created and the case study social scientists in this coumtry who fabricate data to suit the theories of their masters in the west have had a field day since then. The so-called LTTE liberation movement is being justified by these academics in Sri Lanka, their white masters and the foreign journalists. In that sense it is correct for the LTTE to say that the historical conditions of their so-called struggle are unique. If not for the west there would not have been any Tamil "grievances" or a "struggle". As we have often said there is only an "aspiration" of the Tamil racists from the very beginning and at least the Colombo based Tamils have been gradually dropping grievances, Tamil Homeland and Tamil nation as they cannot defend these concepts any longer.
The LTTE says that they wish to enter political negotiations with Sri Lanka as the authentic, legitimate representaives of Tamil people for which the proscription on them should be lifted. Leave aside the political negotiations, what is the basis for the claim by the LTTE that they are the authentic, legitimate representaives of the Tamils? The LTTE claim that they are the authentic, legitimate representaives of the Tamils is no better than their claim that they are not a terrorist organisation and the claim by Norway that Solheim (Norway) is only a facilitator.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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