{"id":53849,"date":"2016-04-16T13:30:19","date_gmt":"2016-04-16T20:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=53849"},"modified":"2016-04-16T13:30:19","modified_gmt":"2016-04-16T20:30:19","slug":"sinhala-tigers-in-sheeps-clothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/04\/16\/sinhala-tigers-in-sheeps-clothing\/","title":{"rendered":"Sinhala Tigers in sheep\u2019s clothing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Janaka Perera<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

It is amusing to see \u2018Comrade\u2019 Surendra Ajith Rupesinghe pontificating on Constitutional reforms after years of supporting LTTE separatism in Sri Lanka and abroad.\u00a0 To him the Tigers were a political organization that represented the national-democratic aspirations of a nation\u201d. Like hell!<\/p>\n

We suppose he is still a Tiger sympathizer because he has never said he no longer believes in the LTTE ideology or that he regrets supporting them.<\/p>\n

Rupesinghe\u2019s April 12 article to Lanka Web exposes the sanctimonious humbug he is. Of course in the present context he cannot directly say he is backing the Tamil separatist cause.\u00a0 But when one reads between the lines one will not fail to miss the real objective couched in the usual rhetoric of the dubious \u2018human rights\u2019 lobby.<\/p>\n

One wonders what he mean by saying \u2026. A democratic political solution that respects the right of internal self-determination of oppressed nationalities\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is little doubt his idea is to promote the creation of ethnic enclaves or if possible a Sri Lanka-Tamil Eelam confederation.<\/p>\n

As always Rupesinghe is trying to have one foot in Sri Lanka and other in the mythical Tamil Eelam. He has been playing this \u2018constitutional\u2019 game for the past 16 years. On August 24, 2000 he organized seminar at the BMICH, Colombo under the themes, \u2018An Honorable Peace,\u2019 \u2018A United Country\u2019 and \u2018A Liberated World\u2019.<\/p>\n

Five months later in December 2000 he convened a so-called Citizens Initiative for Constitutional Change at the Bogambara Grounds, Kandy. It was one of several meetings the CIFCC held in the country since mid-2000.\u00a0 A \u2018peace procession\u2019 from and back to Bogambara Grounds preceded the meeting where a \u2018Citizens\u2019 Resolution for Constitutional Change\u2019 was adopted.\u00a0 The crux of the arguments of the speakers was that as long as the Tamils\u2019 right to self-determination and the Tamil Homeland\u201d in the North and East was not recognized, the LTTE was justified in waging war.<\/p>\n

I was among several journalists who covered this meeting. When one of them recalled how the LTTE reportedly threatened a group which called for non-violence and peace in the then Tiger-infested Wanni, Convener Rupesinghe said that the LTTE had every right to do so.<\/p>\n

His response: They need the war until their rights are met.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked why the LTTE massacred innocent Sinhala and Muslim civilians he gave an evasive answer and made a weak attempt to defend the Tigers\u2019 image by blaming the Indian Intelligence Agency RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) as being responsible for the atrocities.\u00a0 (That the RAW initially trained the LTTE and other Tamil militant groups is a different issue).<\/p>\n

Rupesinghe was more preoccupied with the \u2018justice\u2019 of the LTTE\u2019s war rather than its injustice. Apparently he believes that justice is a government\u2019s responsibility and not of insurgents or rebels no matter what the latter\u2019s avowed objective and what their methods are.<\/p>\n

If the CIFCC organizers hoped that day to get the message of peace across to the Sinhala majority in Kandy it was the last thing they achieved. When this writer asked an old friend, a Kandy resident, for his views on the meeting at Bogambara, his response was:<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a LTTE meeting, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n

I reported the event in the Daily News of January 10, 2001 under the headline: HOW NOT TO PROMOTE PEACE.<\/p>\n

Over decade later \u2018Comrade\u2019 Rupesinghe was in the news again \u2013 this time as Secretary, \u2018Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist)\u2019 to castigate Sinhala Buddhists in Marxist jargon following the condemnable mob attack on a disputed Islamic prayer centre near the historic Dambulla Rock Temple.\u00a0 The whole incident was blown out of proportion by sections of the media.<\/p>\n

He wrote in the Colombo Telegraph of May 1, 2012:<\/p>\n

What exists as Buddhism as a Sinhala (Aryan) supremacist political ideology that has been nurtured by the British colonialists and which serve the class interests of the dominant status quo and politics of the Comprador Capitalist ruling classes.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a case of devil quoting the scriptures.\u00a0 The whole world knows what happened to religious freedom in China when Mao\u2019s Red Guards went on the rampage during the so-called Cultural Revolution, though Rupesinghe pretends to be unaware of it.<\/p>\n

Likewise he must be thinking people have short memories and have forgotten his track record in serving Velupillai Prabhakaran\u2019s agenda. \u00a0Both Ajith and his brother Kumar figured prominently in the \u2018peace campaign\u2019 aimed at weakening the opposition to the LTTE at all levels.<\/p>\n

In September 2007 Kumar Rupesinghe\u2019s \u2018Foundation for Co-existence\u2019 jointly with the Indian High Commission organized an exhibition in Colombo to mark the centenary of Mahatma Gandhi\u2019s Satyagraha against the British colonial rule.<\/p>\n

According to Kumar the exhibition was to stress the need for Sri Lankan citizens to be imbued with values of non-violence\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an article I wrote on the subject in the now-defunct Lake House weekly \u2018Friday\u2019 I asked why not get the same Gandhian message across to the LTTE-dominated Wanni. Since in an armed conflict one or more groups are involved it is imperative all parties involved should get the same message.\u00a0 The onus for this noble task I stressed rested on the Foundation and not on the Indian HC because Indian domestic and foreign policy is not based on Gandhian principles.<\/p>\n

Since it is now seven years since the LTTE was militarily crushed we see intellectual frauds exploring other ways and means of destabilizing Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Janaka Perera It is amusing to see \u2018Comrade\u2019 Surendra Ajith Rupesinghe pontificating on Constitutional reforms after years of supporting LTTE separatism in Sri Lanka and abroad.\u00a0 To him the Tigers were a political organization that represented the national-democratic aspirations of a nation\u201d. Like hell! We suppose he is still a Tiger sympathizer because he has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-janaka-perera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53849","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=53849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}