TO GENEVA THROUGH LONDON AND BOMBS
I am afraid that Part II of "Sulu Karuna of Elankesan" has to be postponed in order to discuss Prabhakaran's attempts to kill the army commander whom he is scared of, and the support he gets from the western countries to carry out his campaign for an Eelam. Both the west and the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), the latest mission to Sri Lanka from Europe, have no doubt as to who has violated the so-called cease-fire agreement (CFA). They should know, as it is the Norwegians and others who drafted this document that is on the road map to Eelam. The SLMM is firmly of the view that the Government of Sri Lanka has violated their CFA by taking retaliation measures in Sampur. Did the LTTE violate the CFA by attempting to murder the Lt. General Sarath Fonseka, killing a number of others in the process? There is no answer to that question, as most probably the SLMM is investigating vigilantly to identify the suicidal bomber who appeared to be pregnant, and to find out whether she was a member of the LTTE. After all any Sinhala Buddhist female could have done it only to discredit the LTTE, as it is very unlikely that a saintly organisation such as the LTTE would have engaged themselves in such a dastardly act. There is a Sinhala proverb which goes as deekirata Balalluth Sakshi and the SLMM is a cat giving evidence in defence of tigers.
While we are prepared to give the SLMM any amount of time to decide on this matter (in any event the SLMM will take their own time) things happen in double quick time with respect to other events. It appears, according to a weekend newspaper, that the British government has not lost any time in questioning the Sri Lankan government on retaliation action against the attempt at the life of the commander of the army. The British Foreign Minister Jack Straw had given a ring to his local counterpart while the attack on Sampur LTTE camps was in progress. It is said that the local counterpart did not know anything about Sampur retaliations as, probably as the minister of foreign affairs, he was busy with matters that took place outside the country. He is after all the minister of foreign affairs and not the minister responsible for home affairs. One wonders whether the British foreign secretary thought that Sampur was in Eelam and that he should consult the minister of foreign affairs in Sri Lanka. Unfortunately the minister of foreign affairs had not been informed of home affairs.
However, the million pound question is how the British minister of foreign affairs came to know of retaliation attacks in Sampur while they were in progress. Was it the British High Commission in Sri Lanka that informed Jack Straw of the attack? Apparently the good minister has been disturbed that the civilians were being attacked in Sampur. We do not know how many civilians were affected by the incident, but did the minister know that the attack was on the LTTE camp in Sampur? In any event we find that British Foreign Secretaries are not disturbed by what is happening in Iraq when it comes to civilians in that country. How the British people were deceived by the British government on the arms supposed to be possessed by Iraq is a different question altogether. Here in Sri Lanka we find the self-same British government keeping silent on the LTTE camps and shedding crocodile tears on the plight of the poor civilians in Sampur. It may be that the British High Commission in Sri Lanka had not briefed the innocent minister that the retaliation attacks were on the LTTE camps. The minister on his part lost no time in questioning the "former" colony, of the Sampur attacks.
If it was the British High Commission that took steps to inform the British minister of the retaliation attacks, how did they come to know of it so quickly? It may be that they have their own intelligence unit in the Eastern Province, but it is unbelievable that the intelligence gathered such information so quickly, especially on the so called attacks on the civilians, to pass it on to the British Foreign Secretary. If it is not the British High Commission in Sri Lanka, who passed the information to the Foreign Secretary? In any event are we to believe that there is a mechanism, either through the British High Commission in Sri Lanka or otherwise for the LTTE terrorists to pass information to the British government? Could the Sri Lankan High Commission in London contact a minister of the British government in such short time and would a British minister take action so quickly on a matter brought to notice by the High Commission? The cat has jumped out of the bag and we have another case of a deekirata Balalluth Sakshi. It is clear that there is a network operating between the LTTE and the British government either through the British High Commission in Sri Lanka or not. I would not be surprised if the LTTE has direct communication facilities with the British government and if the British ministers are more than willing to listen to the tiger calls.
I would not be stretching my mind too far if I assume that the Sampur retaliation attacks were stopped after that call from Jack Straw to Mangala Samaraweera. Poor JVP, in 1987-90 it did not have any British ministers giving calls from London to Sri Lankan ministers in Colombo on attacks on civilians. The British government that would not allow President Mahinda Rajapakshe to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair saying that the Sri Lankan government is acting against the Tamils in Sri Lanka is not unlikely to have a network with the LTTE in spite of the so-called ban of the tigers in Britain. As we have pointed out so many times in spite of the so-called ban, Anton Balasingham, the former employee at the British High Commission in Sri Lanka, operates from Britain without the British government taking any action against him. The Anglophiles in Sri Lanka among the Sinhalas should at least now start looking at these matters from a different perspective. Norway, and Sweden to a lesser extent are directly operating in Sri Lanka on behalf of the LTTE but the force behind them is none other than bad old Britain. If not for Britain there would not have been terrorism in Sri Lanka, though it was the Dutch who brought the Vellalas from South India for their tobacco cultivation. The British who baptised and nurtured the Tamils in Sri Lanka would always back them on the pretext that the Sinhalas are discriminating against the Tamils.
The terrorist problem would not be eradicated as long as the Sinhala elite who were educated at the schools that give essentially a British education (this includes the so-called Buddhist schools and central schools that sent their "brightest" products, who could not think independently of the British, to Peradeniya and the British universities. Gunadasa Amarasekera describes those products who went to Peradeniya from the central schools in his Ekama Kathava and Katha Pahak, but he does not realise that the gemi ugath parapura-the village educated generation-was also educated in the same schools, continue to worship the British. The Sinhalas have been trained to please the British more than any other nation or ethnic group in the world. In the schools that the British established, the students were taught to pronounce English the way the elite English pronounced, and those who could not do so were laughed at. The Sinhalas would take "pride" in the "fact" that they spoke Queen's English better than the Tamils or the Indians, and would often boast of a non-existing Oxford accent among them. They have been very late in realise that there is a Sri Lankan English or a Sinhala English. If Sinhala children found it difficult to learn English until recently it was mainly due to the snobbish attitude of the English speaking elite and their offspring in the country, on English pronunciation. The Sinhala elite were the number one imitators in the world and all that they knew was to worship the British. This was not due to anything with the Sinhala culture, but due to a deliberate policy adopted by the British.
In history, no other nation fought fearlessly against the western modernity and the associated colonialism than the Sinhalas. They were able to defy the Portuguese, Dutch and British. The British were finally able to "capture" the Sinhale only after deceiving the Sinhala leaders through that Cambridge scholar D'Oyly. When the Sinhala leaders realised that they had been deceived it was too late and the British were able to massacre the Sinhalas and their leaders when they rose against the British. After that the Colebrook-Cameron commission (we have had more than our share of missions and commissions) recommended various means to break the backbone of the Sinhalas and appointed a set of people as the leaders of the Sinhalas. These leaders were trained to worship the British and their institutions including Cambridge from where D'Oyly came, and we are still saddled with the cultural descendants of most of them. These leaders did not fight for independence, and they only begged for independence, claiming that they could imitate the English, in their speech, mannerisms and attitude to life. The British had so much faith in these leaders that they produced, introduced universal franchise to Sri Lanka before they did so anywhere else in the "empire".
To cut a long story short the Sinhala "leaders" are yet to get over their predisposition to please the British, though the latter has been favouring the Tamil leaders from the nineteenth century. The British know the weakness of the Sinhala "leaders" and they are certain that the Sinhalas would go that "extra mile" to please the British. As long as the Sinhalas are prepared to go the extra mile to achieve a peace that the British want through the Norwegians, and hence please the British, the terrorist problem would not be solved. The LTTE is allowed to go on its killing spree claiming that it is not a government and not bound by any agreement (including the CFA), but the Sri Lankan government is warned that they have to abide by all the agreements. This asymmetrical situation has been created by the British and so-called international law, and it is the Sri Lankan government that is always at fault in the eyes of "the international community".
There is neither a war nor cease-fire in this country. When the LTTE explodes bombs continuously during a given period of time we call it war, and when the LTTE explodes bombs intermittently it is called a cease-fire. It is the rate at which bombs are exploded that determines whether it is "war" or "cease-fire". Very soon there will be another "cease-fire" and we would see Nimal Siripala de Silva leaving Katunayke for Geneva for yet another round of Eelam talks that have been named peace talks by interested parties. The LTTE that is not capable of defeating Karuna, has been projected as an invincible force while ridiculing the Sri Lankan armed forces. This is all humbug and if not for Indian invasion the Sri Lankan forces could have defeated the LTTE at Vadamaarachchi. Today we are not in a position to defeat the LTTE due to the intervention of the British, mainly through Norway. The LTTE can gain an Eelam only through talks and they are bound to come for negotiations under "pressure from the international community". The cycle of "war" and "cease-fire" or the acceleration of bomb explosions and normal explosions by the LTTE would continue with rounds of Eelam talks until either Eelam is given or the Sinhalas find a leadership that is not hell bent on pleasing the British even up to the point of giving Eelam to Tamil racism.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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