Bodhi Dhanapala, Quebec, Canada

When public suspicion is aroused, it is extremely important to ensure that innocent people are not victimized just to satisfy  blood-thirsty crowds and opportunistic politicians. Those who are under suspicion must be investigated in a transparent way, and the accused must NOT be harassed by investigating officials, the public, or by Buddhist monks who should, as true followers of the Buddha,

should exercise their compassion and allow the justice of Kamma to act unhindered instead of engaging in street battles and farcical fasts.

The attack on the Churches and the murder of some 260 people, while injuring over 500 others have indeed raised public indignation. Politicians linked with the Thowheed organization have been singled out for public wrath. Muslim ministers and governors were made to resign, and lethargic public servants have been made the scapegoat for the sins of Presidents and Prime Ministers. If the Prime minister did not get security briefings while even the ailing father  of one of his MPs had got the information, is that not an abject failure of the PM?

Did the Muslim politicians   have more serious links than those of other politicians who were looking for the Muslim vote? Did they engage in some illegal activity what ever? 

But what about the members of Parliament who openly  collaborated, aided and abetted the LTTE in its hay-day, and even now talk glowing of the terrorist leader Prabhakaran?  When Vaiko, the Tamil Nadu politician made statements in support of Prabhakaran he was promptly hauled up in a tamil Nadu court and indicted. UNP  politician Vijayakala spoke of  Velupillai Prabhakaran in glowing terms during a government function in the Northern Province, and called for a revival of the LTTE. In December 2017, she claimed 200,000 Tamils had been massacred along with Prabhakaran.  If these accounts are correct, she is guilty of sedition. Venerable Rathana, a member of the UNP, did not hold a  farce unto death”  in front of the Temple of the tooth and ask the leader of his party, the Prime Minster,  to take action against Ms. Vijayakala. It was the Prime Minster, or was it Mr. Sumanthiran from behind the thrown, who moved swiftly to  remove the defense attaché at the High Commission in London for allegedly making an inappropriate gesture at LTTE sympathizers who allegedly brandished terrorist flags of the LTTE?

It is not just Ms. Vijayakala, but also Mr. Sampanthan, and Mr. Wigneswaran, etc., who have made statements in support of the LTTE and its leader,  at various times, and celebrated the memory of Suicide bombers. Are we to soon allow the celebration of the memory of the Thowheed suicide killers  like Zahran Hashim in the name of reconcilliation?

Unlike the present leaders of the LTTE, the Muslim leaders do not seem to have sought to glorify the Thowheed Jamat suicide killers, and in fact there is clear evidence that information from the Muslim community, and the security forces, were already with the AG for over a year.  But, just as they soft peddled the seditious acts of pro-LTTE Mps, the Thowheeds have also been soft peddled by the AG’s department.

Mr. Wigneswaran’s pro-LTTE parole came about only after he became the Chief Minister of the Northern Provincial Council (NPC). On the other hand, Mr. Sampanthan and Mr. Sumanthiran have a clear track records of being mouth pieces of the LTTE and in fact came to power because they were the candiates of the LTTE, and the LTTE ensured that opposing candidates will be assassinated or driven out, seeking sanctuary in Colombo or in foreign climes. Mr. Shamindra Ferdinando’s columns on the War on Terror” may be perused by those who have forgotten those times.

Why are the carnage in Churches by the Thowheeds in April 2019 treated differently from the carnage in the Kattankudy Mosque, or the killings of Monks in Aranthalawa, and the killings of pilgrims in Mahamevna Park, Anuradhapura, by the LTTE when LTTE collaborators are still among us?

So the case against Sampanthan, Sumanthiran, and their ilk who were LTTE spokesmen is much stronger than the case against Azath Ally, Hisbullah and other Muslim leaders who are being targeted. The supreme irony is that Mr. Sumanthiran is a member of the Public Security Commission that is probing into the Terrorist Attack!

Do we back-peddle any criticism of Tamil sedition and Eelamism  in the name of reconciliation, and do we do the same with respect to Thowheeds? Is that why the Attorney General’s department and senior security officers  took no action against the hatef language of the Thowheeds, and the Vijayakala?

So, let us say that the Rajapaksa government has already set the tone of not acting against the collaborators of the LTTE, and hoped to let bygones be bygones, repaired the infrastructure of the North,  de-mined the land, and appointed the NPC legislators to build up the North. Unfortunately, Mr. Wigneswaran never even fully spent the budget that was given to him, and spent more time reviving  a Nationalist history of the Tamils,  building statues of Sankilli, and making seditious statements against the Sri Lankan state, in the hope that he can provoke the Sinhalese to riot, and there by please the Diaspora extremists who are demanding their Shylockian pound of flesh.

Mr. Wigneswaran is Lawyer enough to know how the French Government under  General de Gaulle handled the Nazi-collaborators of the Vichy regime. Surely, international justice and national fair-play demand that the TNA leaders who supported terrorism, and continue to talk of reviving the LTTE, be treated just as the leaders of the Vichy government were treated.

 Why victimize the Muslim leaders and become part of the world-wide Islamophobia fanned  by the US, when those who abetted and aided terrorism for three decades are treated as honorary citizens because they have a handle on Western administrations led by the US?