Bon Voyage!
Posted on May 11th, 2009
Bandula Kothalawala
Motivated by unalloyed concern for the plight of the civilians trapped in the war zone in Sri Lanka, the indefatigable Mr David Miliband, British Foreign Secretary, has embarked on yet another long-haul flight, this time, to New York. He has rendezvous with his affable French counterpart, Monsieur Bernard Kouchner. The duo is due to perform at an informal briefing at the UN Security Council following their rather unsuccessful rescue mission.ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚
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Curiously, for all his well-publicized compassion for the civilians in the war zone, Mr Miliband does not seem to have used his influence with his LTTE friends to free the innocent helpless Tamil civilians held hostage by the outfit under appalling conditions. Mr Miliband has made a song and a dance about his concern over the suffering of the trapped civilians. He waxes lyrical about civilian safety, oozes sympathy for them and apparently has had sleepless nights in the past few weeks. Mr Miliband and his band in the FCO have so far made no less than11 statements on, or references to, Sri Lanka between 1st April and 10 May 2009.ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Yet in none of them did he or his colleagues manage to bring themselves to ask the LTTE in unequivocal terms to surrender despite the UN call on 23 April 2009. Things get even more bizarre. Mr Miliband has not yet uttered a half-a-syllable over the slaughter of 143 civilians in Afghanistan by the US Air Force, either. Mr Miliband has been conspicuously silent on the tragedy. Perhaps, he was too busy to make a statement. Yet, lo and behold, Mr Miliband lost no time in issuing a statement condemning the deportation of Channel 4 journalists from Sri Lanka!
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Mr Miliband and his Government dish out gratuitous unsolicited advice ad nauseum on the rule of law for the consumption of developing country governments on a fairly regular basis. However, his Government has allowed the supporters of a banned organisation to go on the rampage on the streets of London. High Commissions and embassies in the capital have been attacked. Unconfirmed reports say that the Metropolitan Police have advised the demonstrators to use children to carry LTTE flags so that they would not have a problem with the police. This has been ignored, anyway, by the protestors, for they have been brandishing LTTE flags in all their demonstrations with scant regard for the law of the land. ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚
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Mr Miliband says that he is appalled over the loss of civilian life. So am I. I am just as distressed over the loss of civilian life in Afghanistan and Iraq. Miliband, however, disdainfully looks the other way when Anglo-American forces kill innocent civilians.ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚
May 12th, 2009 at 12:58 am
I am quite concerned that the Sri Lankan Army is now taking too long to finish the campaign. I understand that there is a need to respect the health and welfare of trapped people in the NFZ but unfortunately the delay is now turning the internationl tide of opinion towards the LTTE. If more countries start to become concerned with the continued suffering of the trapped people then this may turn them against Sri lanka and this could result in trade issues which would have a direct impact on the way of life for most Sri Lankans. I believe the Government needs to make a bold decision to escalate the conflict up as quickly as possible so that the pain and suffering although intense will only be for a short period. More deaths are occurring rapidly anyway. The LTTE will continue to bomb its own people and accuse the Government they have nothing left to do. Allow the Generals to decide the operations once and for all and rid this world of such a horrible organisation the LTTE. Ignore the rantings of of a now defunct Colonial Empire. Britain has no teeth and internationally it has no standing among the common people. It is a shadow of its former self, a country that has no economic might or a military that has proved less than decisive on the world stage of conflict.
May 12th, 2009 at 11:37 am
I truly dont understand why the western so called media people so aginst with SL gov. I always knew that jurnalism and media nowadys in western countries is so corrupted as you know the so called credit crunch also a design of western media. I never belived that british media can be bribed easily. But it is so obvious for a person with decent level of intelligence, ( more than a average british), to understand their biased news reporting. If you check media like ITV, C4 and MSN network,they all put news so against the SL gov, blaming government for even a noisy fart of a displaced. It is obvious that all above set of institutions are linked together at adminstrative level. (have LTTE terrorits given some money to those who are in top chairs? …to me it is possible)
My biggest question is why on earth these so called journalists never ever mention about LTTE for the civilan deaths.?? They never even mention any wrong doing of LTTE.. this is bloody ridicuious. Even today C4 news, they only blamed the gov but never mentioned the name LTTE. These people are satanic.
What SL gov should do now is to counteract these issues by setting up strong media campaign in the west. (first they should send home all ineffective SL embessadors such as who is in the UK.