{"id":102514,"date":"2020-05-18T17:06:23","date_gmt":"2020-05-19T00:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=102514"},"modified":"2020-05-18T17:06:23","modified_gmt":"2020-05-19T00:06:23","slug":"11th-anniversary-of-the-victory-against-the-ltte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/05\/18\/11th-anniversary-of-the-victory-against-the-ltte\/","title":{"rendered":"11th Anniversary of the victory against the LTTE"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><strong data-rich-text-format-boundary=\"true\">MEDIA RELEASE Mahinda Rajapaksa Prime Minister<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>On the 19<sup>th<\/sup> of May we mark\nthe 11<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary of the victory against the Liberation Tigers of\nTamil Eelam. That was not a war against the Tamil people but against an\norganization designated by the FBI as the deadliest terrorists in the world.\nDue to the defeat of the LTTE, Tamil people are now free to live as they wish. Tamil\nchildren are no longer forcibly recruited by the LTTE. Tamil politicians no\nlonger live in fear of LTTE assassins. Furthermore, due to the absence of the\nLTTE, elections can be held in the Northern and Eastern provinces and that has\nsafeguarded the sovereign rights of the people of those provinces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The armed forces and police that\namazed the entire world by winning what was widely considered to be an\nunwinnable war, are now once again engaged in a joint operation with the state\nhealth sector in combating Covid-19. All indications are that Sri Lanka is winning\nthe battle against Covid -19 as well. The frontline role played by the armed\nforces and police in working with the general public, has undoubtedly been of\nimmense help to the health sector in bringing the spread of Covid-19 under\ncontrol in the present manner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This once again reminds all of us\nthat the armed forces and police are the sentinels of the nation, ensuring the\nsafety of the general public in all crises whether man-made or natural &#8211; whether\nthe crisis be terrorism, floods or disease. In this context, I wish to condemn\nin the strongest possible terms, the attempt being made by the yahapalana\npolitical parties to create an artificial social dichotomy between \u2018military\u2019\nand \u2018civilian\u2019. If a retired member of the armed forces is appointed to some\nposition in the government, that is being portrayed by the opposition as \u2018militarization\u2019.\nA person who has retired from the armed forces is a civilian and no longer a\nmember of the military. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Furthermore, the Ranaviru\nconstituency is now an integral part of the Sangha, Weda, Guru, Govi, Kamkaru social\nline up of former times. So whenever we happen to be in power, there will\nalways be former members of the armed forces and police holding various\npositions in the government. We must always be mindful of the historic role\nthat the armed forces and police have played in this country in safeguarding\nthe peoples\u2019 sovereignty based on universal franchise by defeating all attempts\nto destroy the democratic system of government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On this 11<sup>th<\/sup> Anniversary\nof the war victory that amazed the whole world, I wish to reiterate that the manner\nin which the yahapalana government betrayed our armed forces internationally and\nthe vicious manner in which they persecuted both retired and serving members of\nthe armed forces have not been forgotten. We once again pledge that justice\nwill be done to all those who faced humiliation and persecution under the\nyahapalana government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mahinda Rajapaksa<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Prime Minister<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MEDIA RELEASE Mahinda Rajapaksa Prime Minister On the 19th of May we mark the 11th anniversary of the victory against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. That was not a war against the Tamil people but against an organization designated by the FBI as the deadliest terrorists in the world. Due to the defeat of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125,6,5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mahinda-rajapaksa","category-politics","category-security","category-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}