The Island Editorial

Solheim is now in the same predicament as a person with his life-time savings invested in a collapsed finance company. He backed the LTTE to the hilt and duped Norway into sponsoring terrorism in Sri Lanka in the hope that Prabhakaran would succeed one day and they would then be remembered for services rendered. Their ‘investment’ project came crashing down when their hero ruined his outfit as well as himself in record time.

Solheim was one of the ardent Prabhakaran fans who remained very sanguine that the LTTE would achieve its goal; he said that the army would face a Stalingrad type situation in Kilinochchi. He not only hoped and prayed for the LTTE’s success but also bragged from the refuge of Oslo that Prabhakaran would trap the army and wipe it out in style.

Poor Solheim with his hopes dashed now needs something to hold on to. So do his counterparts in the US and the EU, especially in the UK. They are all out to avenge Prabhakaran’s death.

A sovereign country is being harassed for removing the scourge of terrorism! However, President Abraham Lincoln is remembered not for his destructive war to prevent America’s disintegration but for its positive outcome. The Allied Forces became heroes and not villains after they marched on Berlin, in spite of all their excesses which could have been avoided.

Perhaps, the US committed the biggest ever war crime by obliterating Hiroshima and Nagasaki with two atomic bombs. But never has the US been made to pay for that heinous crime. Neither the US nor the UK has been held responsible for war crimes being perpetrated in Afghanistan or Iraq in the name of democracy. The UK audaciously defended the out-and-out Chilean butcher cum despot Pinochet, whose hunt for rivalsƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…”ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…”especially his much dreaded Caravan of DeathƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…”ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…”left thousands of dissidents dead, and had no qualms about naturalising many LTTE leaders and sheltering them including Anton Balasingham, while the LTTE was massacring civilians in their thousands in Sri Lanka.

War is nothing but death and devastation. But, unfortunately, wars have to be fought like the one Sri Lanka successfully concluded last May, when the civilised world is left without an alternative. Today, nobody is dying because of war in this country. And what needs to be attended to urgently at this juncture is the resettlement of IDPs; the flaunting of doctored videos containing ‘evidence of war crimes’ is of little use in helping the war affected people in the post war period.

The western media which pontificate to others about ethics in journalism have laid bare their true faces as the shock-troops of their governments by telecasting concocted evidence of war crimes against Sri Lanka. While claiming that authenticity of the video at issue cannot be verified, they are beaming it across the world. Worse, they juxtapose it with some archival material on the Sri Lanka army in such a way that they clearly give the impression to the uninitiated that the purported massacre was committed by the Sri Lankan military!

Why the western media outfits are making an anti-Sri Lankan propaganda mountain out of a Goebbelsian molehill is not difficult to see, as we argued the other day. The EU is scheduled to decide on the renewal of GSP Plus concession to Sri Lanka shortly and the piqued western governments and their media acolytes donning the mask of professionalism are all out to have that concession scrapped in a bid to make Sri Lanka’s economy scream as punishment for eliminating the LTTE leadership. But, they have only made a mockery of their war crimes campaign by betraying their bankruptcy. Together they called for a UNHRC Special Session to press war crime charges against Sri Lanka a few moons ago. But, today, they stand exposed for having embarked on that venture without credible evidence. Their anti-Sri Lanka campaign rests on a few photographs signifying nothing and a fabricated video sans any authenticity!

It is time Solheim and others of his ilk were asked to come out with better lies.

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