CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

GOOD ADVISE TO THE BRITISH PEOPLE ON THE FACE OF REBEL ATTACKS

Mahinda Weerasinghe

We were shocked by the rebel attack on the British citizens. Not really shocked by the attack in itself (soon the British people should learn to live with such things), in fact the real surprise came within minutes of the onslaught, when without any 'how do you do' these rebels were elevated to the status of 'terrorist' by your media. Didn't you know that these were rebels pure and simple?

Congratulations for not loosing any British life? Still your media was howling blue murder as if this was an act of pure genocide. In fact your media crowed over the manner how British man on the street was keeping a stiff upper lip on the face of unmitigated terror and going stoutly about his business with courage and dignity as if nothing has taken place. That was truly commendable I thought.

In fact I was touched by the suffering caused by the offensive on your precious mother land that I am taking the liberty of giving some timely advice. Well not really advice devised on my own; heavens forbid that I have so deep insight and wisdom to be creative. Besides I am not good at giving free advice or a moral. But I thought I will do the next best thing. I would pack some of the cheap advice offered to Sri Lankans the last two and a half decades from the wise men of your fair land, and return it back to you with compliments. It should help a lot, especially if you are with amnesia or Alzheimer.

Routinely over the past years we received some sound advice from your High Commissioners in Colombo. Indeed your current High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, Mr. Dominic Chilcott maintained the good tradition and was quite vocal with his cheap advice as how to solve our problems. We thought now it's time the good all British 'know how' come in handy to your selves, now that you are bogged down with rebel problems of your own.

In the course of his speech to Sri Lankans; Chilcott announced that "Britain's interest in Sri Lanka is to strengthen respect for human rights and good governance, the war strategy is doomed to fail; only negotiations could usher in lasting peace, the Tamil community has been discriminated, power should be devolved".
Now if you simply interchange Britain and Sri Lanka from the above quote, the British parliament would be able use this unique piece of insight as how to tackle your own current dilemma.
Indeed we find Britain just a few days ago directing its former colony Sri Lanka to "end its military campaign and resume peace talks with separatist Tamil Tiger guerrillas. Junior foreign minister, Kim Howells, said in London he was worried about growing rights abuses and an escalation in the conflict, which has left scores of combatants dead on both sides".
In fact I was reflecting why is it that Britain unable to use such first class analysts such as Howells' and Chilcott's to negotiate with these rebels in Afghanistan and Iraq instead of bumping them off left right and centre, after all these rebels have not invaded UK soil. Here we are speaking of your home grown rebels who didn't take kindly to been pushed around.

The sad thing is; the terrorist Mr chilots and his predecessors asking us to negotiate with are killers of Prime Minsters, Presidents, temple worshipers and innocent passengers of buses. Indeed these are the mass murderers who bombed a Central Bank of Ceylon killing thousands long before 9/11 was conceived. British government was adamant that we now speak to butchers who murdered over 700 police under their detention in the raw, the ones who were practising genocide of Muslims, Sinhalese and in fact Hindu Tamils from the East routinely. Now it is not merely ethnic cleansing with them but it has grown over to tribal cleansing.

Though we are offered advice how to negotiate with these out and out, fascistic murderers of thousands, we find it sad that Britain is unable to talk with rebels who had hardly bumped off anyone by comparison.

The world was naturally amused because you own such wise men with deep insight, and who were very adapt at providing good advice as how negotiate with terrorists, but found such advise useless to use at home.
From prospective we realise why you own such double standards; for over two decades we find you practiced a dual policy of terrorism. One went by a, 'LTTE Jaffna Tamil Catholic terrorists' were not really terrorists but rebels, and a democratic nation can legitimately negotiate with them as equal partners. On the other hand the Islamist terrorists were 'terrorists' and needed to be exterminated with impunity. This covert policy we feel was put in place to reward the Jaffna Tamil Catholic accomplices for the services rendered, when Ceylon was raped by Europeans for over four hundred and fifty years. So for decades surreptitiously, you allowed LTTE terrorist to operate freely on UK soil and let them collect funds for their terror campaigns, all the while providing them with legitimacy and respectability. You may be under the illusion that you are hoodwinking the world at large by a 'Performa declaration' that LTTE is a terror organization. But alas' now you find you have cheated your self, not the world at large.
No wonder President Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka was mockingly sympathetic to UK's plight and was moved the other day to comment;
"With our own commitment to peace and democracy, and determination not to kneel before terrorism, we shall be extremely vigilant about any terrorist activities planned or attempted in Sri Lanka against Britain and the British people".

For those who are daft and unable to decipher his obvious message, he was clearly insulting you for whimpering like pussies, when no one has been killed. What he in fact was hinting at was, his people stood up 10 feet tall after two and half decades of terror on a daily basis. They did not merely learned to live with Catholic terrorist but humbly absorbed the cheap advice dished out to them using 'strong arm' tactics by the old colonials such as you. So the crocodile tears of Howells and Chilcotts are like 'pouring water on a ducks back' on Sri Lankans, it simply tickles away.

So stop being cry babies and start negotiating with your rebels. They are fighting for their right as you have discriminated them. Sooner you start negotiating with them the better. In fact in this way you can set a good example to these Sinhalese Buddhist chauvinists at the same time.
There is moral here somewhere and I have a feeling that it must be 'what goes around comes around'.

Soon you will find out that cheap advise is 'dime a dozen'.

10-07-07

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