Ranjit Rupesinghe Brisbane, Australia

The Editor
TIME Magazine
Since Romesh Ratnesar’s crocodile tears were shed on page 5 of this week’s Time, Sri Lanka’s security forces have single handedly expunged from the pearl of the orient, the world’s most savage terrorist group.

Ratnesar’s piece smacks of monumental hypocrisy. He has finally lifted his pen to convey his “pain” to Time readers, plucking from thin air some statistics to butress his argument but pray may I ask where was he when the brutal LTTE whose bloodlust spanned 25 years, was practising its savagery and killing and maiming thousands of innocent civilians and indeed political leaders. Did he ever think then of asking the terrorists to cease its fire? Permit met to remind Ratnesar that the government of Sri Lanka doesn’t need his advise. They have just concluded, in the most humane manner as possible, one of the great hostage rescue operations ever in appalling conditions of warfare, releasing from the clutches of the terrorists, thousands of Tamil civilians who were held in a vice like grip in the north-east of that beautiful land. With the help of its friends around the civilised world the government will soon start the huge task of rehabilitation and reconstruction, and though that will take time, Sri Lanka will once again be a stable and united nation.

When President Mahinda Rajapakse decided in 2007 that he could no longer see his country bleed despite the country’s pleas for help over the past quarter century, he conveyed to his countrymen that “enough was enough” and decided to fight the scourge of LTTE terrorism with his security forces alone. And they delivered with brilliant military strategy rarely seen in contemporary military history. I would therefore, urge Mr Ratnesar that instead of criticising Sri Lanka, to give credit where credit is due and hail the final outcome of that internecine war as beneficial, not only to Sri Lanka and the region but to the entire free world in general.
Ranjit Rupesinghe
Brisbane, Australia