H. L. D. Mahindapala

 Just last week — on June 6, 2014, to be precise —  I was glued to CNN channel watching its day-long coverage  of the 70^th anniversary of D-Day held on the Sword Beach of Normandy. What prompted me to follow this event closely was my curiosity to find out whether  the Western leaders were guilty of triumphalism” in commemorating their victory that began with the landing of massive forces on Normandy Beach on the dawn of June 6, 1944. It was the decisive day which marked the beginning of the end of World War II.

 That happened 70 years ago. Gen. Eisenhower declared that every soldier who set foot on Omaha Beach in Normandy was a hero. His forces never looked back, stopping at nothing that stood in their way, until they reached Berlin. The 70^th anniversary held in Normandy last week was a celebration of the courage of the war veterans whose heroism saved Europe  from the inhuman horrors of Nazism. It was a fitting tribute to their sacrifice, their heroism and their indomitable spirit that fought against all odds to save Europe and the world from the horrors of fascist terror.

 Nineteen heads of states, from Barack Obama to Vladimir Putin and the Queen to the new President-elect of Ukraine, chocolate billionaire, Petro Poroshenko, presented a united front  of triumphalism in paying homage to the victory of Allied forces that reduced Germany to rubble and wiped out the Nazis from the face of  this earth. The commemoration had all the trappings of a victory celebration. The 21 gun salute, a fly past, military taps, flags and parades gave it a military coloration that reflected the martial spirit of the 1000-odd veterans assembled, perhaps, for the last time in Normandy. It was a grand show of the power and the glory of the Western victors.

 The triumphalist spirit of the day celebrated the victory of democracy over fascist tyranny. President Obama hailed Normandy as the beachhead for democracy”. French President, Francois Hollande, paid a tribute to America for liberating Europe. In the foreground facing the nineteen leaders was the tragic Omaha Beach where 9,387 American youth were mowed down by German soldiers on the first day of landing. President Hollande recalled their courage and honoured them as heroes. Yes, they were heroes.” he repeated. The leaders agreed unanimously that it was the sacrifice of  the soldiers that gave them the legacy  of peace, democracy and freedoms they enjoyed today.

 No  one shed a tear for the Germans. No human rights pundits piped in to say that hundreds of thousands of German civilians were killed by the Allied  forces. No NGO moralist wrote that the triumphalism of the 18 leaders of the West hurt the sensitivities of the defeated Germans. Neither the German version of events nor any German who fought for Hitler was a given a place in the celebrations. There were no Nazi flag or images. Every event of the 70^th commemoration was to glorify the heroism and the victory scored by the Allies on the beaches of Normandy.

 The assembled leaders declared their gratitude and their debt to the veterans who sacrificed their lives and limbs for the cause of peace and freedom. Some were in wheel-chairs. President Obama asked them to stand, if they can, and receive the applause of the people. It was the longest applause of the day. He also went round shaking hands with the war veterans. In fact, he arrived for  the celebrations  accompanied by a war veteran whom he accompanied protectively all the way on the red carpet.

 CNN reporter covering the ceremonies said, pointing to the monumental memorials in Germany, that they are all dedicated to the fighting spirit of the Allied forces and  not for the defeated Germans. He pointed to one monument that stood for the Soviet soldiers. The German youth who fought for Hitler had been wiped  out of the official memory of the nation. The commemorating ceremony itself was held against  the background of the memorial erected for the American youth who sacrificed their lives n the beach to liberate Europe. The memorial on Omaha Beach – the mass graveyard of GIs who never came home —  says: The spirit of the American youth rising from the waves.” There were rows and rows of white crosses and all were for the Allied soldiers. There were none for the Germans.

 The most striking feature in last week’s commemoration was that Germany’s Angela Merkel, who represented Germany, never uttered one word against the Allied forces that (a) fire-bombed and flattened Dresden, (b) killed hundreds of thousands of German civilians, (c) subjected Germany to humiliating conditions, (d) imposed terms  and conditions of surrender forcibly down the throats of the Germans, including  stripping its armed forces, (e) enforced rapacious reparations, (f) put on trial Nazi leaders and sentenced the leaders to death, (g) hunted and brought to justice those who escaped, and, (h) last but not the least, launched a de-Nazification program with a ruthless thoroughness until the Nazi power to raise its head in any form was eradicated forever. Except for the fringe freaks in neo-Nazis haircuts there is hardly a trace of Nazism left in Europe today.

 The humiliating outline sketched above was the reality faced by the defeated Krauts in post-war Germany. The triumphalism of the Allies has not stopped even seventy years after the collapse of the Nazi regime. While Western conquerors celebrated their  victory in grand style President Mahinda Rajapakse couldn’t even eat a piece of kiri buth or kiss the Sri Lankan earth when our  soldiers ended the needless Vadukoddai War that raged for 33 years. His endeavors to offer thanks to the nation and the soldiers that stood by him were criticized by the moral morons in the NGOs as triumphalism”.  For instance, Izzeth Hussain, who claims to be one of the five great diplomats of the world” (he has yet to mention the names of the other  four!), complained that the President should  not have kissed the tarmac at the airport when he got off the  plane, delighted with the news of the defeat of the Tamil fascists, but should have gone to Bambalawatte beach and bathed in sand like the Caliph who conquered Constantinople. The idiocy of these critics was exposed once again last week on the Normandy Beach.

 The heroic Sri Lankan soldiers ended the 33-year-old war with three great achievements to their credit: 1. liberated the Tamil children from the heartless Boko Haram of Jaffna – a feat which even highly paid bureaucrats  in the UN like Radhika Coomaraswamy, acting as the Mother Teresa of all children, failed to achieve; 2.  restored peace to war-torn Jaffna after 33 years – an achievement that all the foreign-funded punditry of NGOs failed to achieve with their pro-Prabhakaran publications, lobbying and seminars etc., and 3. opened up democratic space for the Tamils of the Northern Province en bloc to elect their representatives for the first time in the history of the northern territory.

 As revealed in recent history, these are remarkable achievements which billions of dollars poured into the Middle-East by the biggest powers on earth failed to achieve. The declared objectives of the humongous  offensives launched by the West on a global scale (examples: Iraq, Afghanistan) have been to liberate nations under dictators and democratize societies for the greater good of peace, stability and reinforcing democratic institutions.  But when Sri Lankan forces liberated the north and delivered Tamil children back to the desperate Tamil parents the entire Tamil Diaspora, which financed and cheered the abduction of Tamil children, worked tirelessly to put the soldiers on trial.

 When President Mahinda Rajapakse restores democratic institutions, free from the threats of Tamil Tiger terrorism, Navi Pillay, another Tamil in the larger Tamil diaspora, puts her sticky beak in to hold inquiries into the conduct of soldiers. Western leaders who suffer from selective amnesia about their nations’ role in the last five months of World War II commemorated the 70^th anniversary of their military triumph to honour, rightfully, of course, the war veterans who made victory possible – a victory won over the millions of dead civilian left behind in the wake of the advancing Allied soldiers. But when President Rajapakse pays tribute to the heroic village lads and lasses who saved the Tamils and restored peace and democracy he is branded as a triumphalist” who has no right to celebrate victory in any form.

 The elimination  of Prabhakaran – the most evil force in Tamil history after Sankili — from the political equation is a historic achievement which led to the re-unification of the nation under one democratic umbrella. It was a victory for the Tamils who were freed to exercise their political rights without seeking  permission from the Tamil Pol Pot of the Vanni. Mahinda Rajapakse won for Sampanthan, Sumanthiram and Wigneswaran their birth right  not to go on their bended knees to get nominations from Prabhakaran. They are liberated human beings today who can walk the earth with a dignity that was denied to them by their Suriya Devan”. However, it must be stated that though the extremist Tamil lobby and their agents in NGOs deny the right of the heroic soldiers to celebrate their victory they are privately happy that the Sinhala Government”, which they love to hate, has restored to them the dignity and the freedom which they never had under their Tamil Suriya Devan”.

 After the sudden and unexpected fall of the one-man regime in Vanni the Tamils were spinning in a political vacuum. Their bitterness turned into vindictive politics. Their only relief came from refusing to believe that Prabhakaran was dead and in reviving the failed politics of Prabhkaranism. And of course, doing their damnedest to spoil the honours due to the soldiers who liberated the Tamils.

 As seen in the D-Day celebration it is the most natural thing in  the world to celebrate victory. It  is the natural instinct of human beings in any society to celebrate victories, particularly if it is a victory scored in a  battle between good and evil, between democracy and fascist terrorism, between war and peace. But this legitimate and justifiable celebration of a historic victory was denied to the Sri Lankans ONLY by the West and the Tamil separatists.

 The Sinhala people, who sacrificed the most in restoring peace and democracy, were told that they should have covered  themselves in ash and gone into mourning in perpetuity. However, the NGOs who prescribed wailing as the appropriate mode for post-war conduct, a la the hired Negombo women at funerals, never failed to celebrate their rich life style sustained by sucking Bloody Marys” oozing from the victims of the war. Their income from foreign donors increased in proportion to the number of Sri Lankans killed by Prabhakaran. They also offered each other awards for peace which never came out of their theories, formulas, dissertations or some useless seminars.

 Sri Lankan Security Forces put an end to the war and the fake theories of the NGOs on May 18, 2009. They liberated the Tamils who were used as the human shield to protect the most brutal leader in Tamil history. They paved the way for the creation of democratic institutions which has given the Tamils of the entire northern territory a representative body elected by the Tamils for  the first time in their  entire history. Earlier  they had elected local members for small-scale Tamil village councils, Tamil town councils, and Tamil municipal councils. But they never had the entire northern territory under the control of their elected representatives until the Sinhala soldiers opened new paths of peace for the Tamils to elect the TNA representatives by defeating Tamil fascism.

 It  is the pride of liberating the Tamils of the north and restoring democratic institutions in the north that give the Security Forces their right to celebrate the defeat of the most evil figure in Tamil history. The NGO moralists who argue against celebrating victory of democracy over Tamil fascism should take another look at the 70^th anniversary commemoration  that celebrated the triumph of democracy over fascism in Normandy. The Western leaders who  were in Normandy last D-Day  are, after all, the paymasters of these NGO leeches who lived off the blood of the helpless victims of the Vadukoddai War they justified all the way to Nandikadal.

 If celebration of victory over their enemies is good enough for the paymasters of NGOs why is it bad for the people of Sri Lanka and their leaders? In my mind every soldier, who fought to liberate the Tamils and saved nearly 300,000 Tamils used as a human wall to protect Prabhakaran, is a hero. Their contribution to the restoration of normalcy in the north deserves respect and glory. Tamil vindictive politics, of course, cries for the blood of these soldiers. In contrast, the grateful Germans erected public monuments to thank the Allied  forces that liberated them from Hitler’s tyranny. But in Jaffna the sado-masochistic Tamils are rushing to erect monuments for Prabhakaran who killed more Tamils than all the other forces put together.

 They say that people get the government they deserve. And the Tamils got Prabhakaran – the first Tamil Boko Haram that came out of Vadukoddai militarism. The post-war conduct of the Jaffnaites indicate that they deserve not  only Velupillai Prabhakaran  but many other genetically engineered Prabhakarans to keep them in their place. The Vellahla rulers that  preceded Prabhakaran kept the Jaffnaite under sub-human upper caste fascism. Prabhakaran  kept them under his jackboot through barbaric low-caste fascism.

 Cloning more Prabhakarans seems to be the only way of solving the problems of the diseased Jaffna Tamil politics. Prabhakarans have the power to do what others can’t do: to kill more Tamils than  anybody else and be deified as the Tamil saviour. What  is more, the Tamils in the Diaspora will rush to take back to their homes in Canada, Australia, America, UK etc., photos of them standing next to the deified mass murderer of Tamils. They will place these photos in their mantel piece, to boast to their children, or their friends, that they stood shoulder to shoulder with first Boko Haram of Jaffna who, mercifully,  had no chance of grabbing the Tamil children in the Diaspora.

 They will lobby internationally to justify and praise their cloned Prabhakaran as their savior who can kill more Tamils than anyone else with impunity. Which, in their political blindness, seems to be the Final Solution they yearn for right now. That is understandable considering their desperate state of mind. The question that arise from this latest Tamil aspiration is simple: how many more Prabhakarans do the Tamils need to get wiped out from Jaffna and solve not only their problems but also that of all the other communities?