Editorial Island News paper in Sri Lanka

“Experience in many civil conflicts around the world has shown that countries that don’t take adequate measures to addres reconciliation and accountability frequently experience a regeneration of the insurgency that they faced. We could see very much that similar situation in Sri Lanka.”

Thus spake President Barack Obama’s point man for South Asia, Robert Blake, the other day in an interview with the Associated Press. If the situation is so bad in Sri Lanka as Blake claims, why on earth has the US called for the withdrawal of military from the former war zone? Is it to facilitate the ‘regeneration of the insurgency’?

It was leniency of the self-appointed Co-chairs of Sri Lanka’s peace process towards the LTTE and their failure to rein in the terrorists who resumed attacks on the armed forces, the police and civilians in blatant violation of the CFA that led to the bloody Eelam War IV, which Sri Lanka had no alternative but to fight. Had the US and other Co-chairs carried out their duties and responsibilities instead of coddling the terrorists and tightening screws on the Sri Lankan government, Prabhakaran would not have been so cocky as to plunge the country back into war. He abused the CFA to procure shiploads of arms, recruit combatants including child soldiers, train militia, acquire an air capability, albeit crude, and install big guns at strategic locations in the East and the North with a view to cutting off air and sea supplies to the North by mounting attacks on both the Trinco harbour and the Palali airbase simultaneously.

Blake is now talking about accountability. But, what action did the US take against the LTTE when it targeted a chopper carrying a group of western diplomats including Blake himself in Batticaloa in February 2007. Some of the envoys were injured in indiscriminate shelling by the LTTE and all of them returned to Colombo the worse for wear. Blake never so much as called for punitive action against the LTTE. The excuse given by the LTTE and accepted by the western governments whose envoys had a close shave was that the LTTE had been unaware that the chopper was carrying a group of foreign dignitariesƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…”ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…”as if the terrorists had a right to attack helicopters transporting others! Neither Blake nor any of his predecessors now hauling Sri Lanka over the coals for accountability issues asked Washington to crank up pressure on the UN Security Council to take tough action against the terrorist outfits including the LTTE that the UN named and shamed for recruiting child soldiers!

The International Criminal Court has delivered its first judgment in ten years. It has found Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga guilty of abducting children and turning them into killers. While Prabhakaran was snatching away children the US pressured the Sri Lankan government to negotiate with him. Today, Blake has no qualms about shaking hands with LTTE activists in the US, who aided and abetted Prabhakaran’s terrorist operations including child abductions.

We have some questions for Blake, if he cares to answer them, which we doubt very much. Why is the US bringing pressure to bear only on the Sri Lankan government to address the so-called accountability issues? Who should be held responsible for the crimes the LTTE committed against civilians for nearly thirty years including high profile political assassinations (of Rajiv Gandhi, President Ranasinghe Premadasa, Gamini Dissanayake, Lalith Athulathmudali, Lakshman Kadirgamar, A. Amirthalingam, Uma Maheswaran, Sam Thambimuttu, Neelan Tiruchelvam and a countless number of others), massacres, blowing up civilian targets and forcible conscription of children? Now that Prabhakaran and other killers are long dead, doesn’t Blake think those who financed and backed his terror campaign should be held responsible? Since prima facie evidence of the LTTE’s crimes are available as opposed to the unsubstantiated allegations against the Sri Lankan military, doesn’t Blake think the US should, before asking Sri Lanka to probe war crimes, set an example by taking action against the hardcore LTTE members on its soil like Rudrakumaran, who has even posed for photographs with Prabhakaran in the Vanni? LTTE spokesman Anton Balasingham’s wife Adele, who wore the LTTE uniform, brainwashed and trained female LTTE suicide cadres, is living in Britain. Why don’t the US and the UK arrest her and haul her up before a war crimes tribunal for her active involvement in terrorism and crimes against civilians? Since the US, Canada and the EU are worried about war crimes, they ought to arrest and try the cadres of the LTTE banned on their soil and then pressure India to try and hang the likes of Vaiko, who supported LTTE terrorism. He, too, has been photographed in LTTE uniform in Sri Lanka. This, they must do before calling upon the Sri Lankan government to probe the allegations of war crimes allegations against its military. They must also call for action against the TNA politicians and others who openly supported the LTTE, recognised it as the sole representative of the Tamils and represented its interests in the Sri Lankan Parliament. Fair enough, Mr. Blake, eh?

Most of all, Blake owes a public apology to the families of those killed in LTTE terror attacks on villages, buses and trains during the CFA because he as the US Ambassador representing the interests of the US as a Tokyo Co-Chair did not do anything to prevent the LTTE from violating the truce.

What Sri Lanka desperately needs at this juncture is not gratuitous advice but time and space for reconciliation. Blake and others of his ilk are only lacerating the healing wounds. He has said the US resolution will not be weakened further. He doesn’t have to do so. It is strong enough to weaken, if passed, Sri Lanka and thwart her reconciliation efforts. It is an innocent-looking, sugar-coated, poisonous pill waiting to be forced down Sri Lanka’s throat. It must be defeated!