{"id":58094,"date":"2016-08-28T16:06:20","date_gmt":"2016-08-28T23:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=58094"},"modified":"2016-08-28T16:06:20","modified_gmt":"2016-08-28T23:06:20","slug":"norwegians-abandoned-peace-for-a-peace-process-that-enthroned-prabhakaran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/08\/28\/norwegians-abandoned-peace-for-a-peace-process-that-enthroned-prabhakaran\/","title":{"rendered":"Norwegians abandoned\u00a0 peace for a\u00a0 \u201cpeace\u201d PROCESS\u00a0 that\u00a0 enthroned\u00a0 Prabhakaran."},"content":{"rendered":"

Bodhi Dhanapala, Quebec, Canada.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The Norwegian intervention in Sri Lanka had only one answer to every terrorist act orchestrated\u00a0 by Prabhakaran, the late LTTE leader. When Kadirgamar, the internationally respected\u00a0 Sri Lankan Foreign minster was assassinated\u00a0 during a peace-process\u201d monitored by the Norwegians, the latter sought to shield the Tigers from their crime in the name of the peace process, as stated by\u00a0 the veteran journalist Sharminda Ferdinando who backed his claim using Wiki-leaks revelations.\u00a0 Mark Salter is an apologist who\u00a0 defends such crimes of\u00a0 the Norwegians and the controversial Eric Solheim. Salter claimed (e.g.,\u00a0 20th August, Island)\u00a0 that\u00a0 the crisis provoked by Kadirgamar\u2019s assassination clearly necessitated redoubled efforts to bring the two sides back to the negotiating table. And this is exactly what the Norwegians did, including via the \u2018secret\u2019 letter to LTTE leader Prabakharan\u201d.<\/p>\n

When I pointed out the criminality and rank immorality of this attempt to shield the blood-stained hand of\u00a0 a proven serial killer who began\u00a0 killings as a teenager,\u00a0 Mark Salter replied (25 August) with an implicitly\u00a0 racist opening, stating that\u00a0 a voice from the Sinhala diaspora\u201d had taken\u00a0 issue with\u00a0 his endorsement of Norway’s misconduct. So, had I not been a Sinhalese would I have endorsed the Norwegians and ignored accountability to negotiate peace with a proven mass murderer?<\/p>\n

Sebastian Rasalingam, a well known voice from the Tamil Diaspora wrote in 2008 about the Norwegian brokered cease-fire agreement (CFA) as follows: (http:\/\/www.srilankaguardian.org\/2008\/12\/lessons-unlearnt-by-our-journalists.html<\/a>):
\nBut the CFA, imposed without the consent of anybody, did NOT bring any relief to the ordinary Tamils living in the Vanni, ever under the Jackboot of Piraharan. In fact, the CFA sealed the fate of the Tamils, until Karuna took a decisive step and broke off from that Tyranny. Tamils will for ever be thankful to Karuna for that death-defying act\u201d.<\/p>\n

Should I remind Salter how the Norwegians reacted to Karuna’s break away and worked feverishly to restore Prabhakaran’s hegemony? It is not just the voices from the Sinhala diaspora\u201d, but many significant voices among the Tamils, e.g., the journalist JBS Jeyraj, who\u00a0 continually\u00a0 clarioned against Prabhakaran’s tyranny.\u00a0 However, the Norwegians never wanted to hear from the Tamil or\u00a0 Sinhala peoples. Instead the Norwegians spent close to half a billion dollars setting up NGOs whose job was to spread the Norwegian gospel, hold workshops for journalists and opinion makers, hold rallies for the public, and collect statistics that re-affirmed the political message that they themselves had spun and spread! When Kadirgamar or\u00a0 the army commander was shot\u00a0 by the Tigers, the Reuter and AFP reporters never failed to quote\u00a0 NGO-funded\u00a0 spin doctors\u00a0 like\u00a0 Jehan Perera or\u00a0 Saravanamuttu who sounded very like replaying Mark Salter!\u00a0 Salter justifies this\u00a0 mega-dollar-funded political purchase\u00a0 of\u00a0 public opinion in a country where the average monthly income is a few hindered dollars. He\u00a0 claims that support for the CFA in particular was needed within the majority Sinhala community\u201d, admitting that there was no support. Here again he targets the Sinhala community, just as he saw in me a Sinhala Diaspora\u201d voice. Is he convinced that there was no need to promote peace\u201d among the Tamil politicians who had become the mouth pieces of Prabhakaran and Anton Balasingham?\u00a0 Anton and his wife were allegedly\u00a0 privy to every political assassination of the Tigers, but they were also the partying buddies of Eric Solheim who conveniently paid for the Whiskey and the international jaunts!<\/p>\n

The retired diplomat Izeth Hussein writes (27-Aug) that\u00a0 the foreign presence in our ethnic problem has been far too intrusive\u201d. But he asserts that I have never had the slightest doubt that Norway was impelled by nothing but the noblest motives …\u201d. However, I hold that their good motives were propelled\u00a0 by a moral blindness and a blinding desire to be dominant\u00a0 players in world affairs.\u00a0 There is no doubt\u00a0 that the\u00a0 medieval Christian fathers who advocated the massacre of thousands of heretics were impelled\u00a0 by the Noblest Motives of executing God’s will\u201d. But they were totally and completely morally blind. The Norwegians too were acting with the conviction that they are doing the right thing\u201d. They knew that Prabhakaran had reneged every promise, starting from those made to his political associates\u00a0 that he conveniently assassinated afterward, be it an Amirthalingam,\u00a0 Uma Maheswaran or a Rajiv Gandhi. When Prabhakaran reneged Rajiv,\u00a0 he sent the Indian military to\u00a0 disarm the Tigers and contain them. Rajeev understood the limits to negotiations, unlike the Norwegians who advocate negotiations, and even more negotiations to cover up the latest layer of blood on Prabhakaran’s hand. The Norwegians had NO MECHANISM to ensure that Prabhakaran honoured promises made via his agents who went to Oslo\u00a0 or Geneva at the behest of the peace process\u201d. Prabhakaran had become so imperial that\u00a0 co-chairs visiting the Tiger\u00a0 counted a diplomatic success if they even got an audience\u201d with the Tiger boss, let alone beg him to become a good boy!<\/p>\n

Although Izeth Hussein diplomatically says that we should thank the Norwegians, he is savvy enough to know that the peace process prolonged the agony of the Vanni and soured the south, taking\u00a0 thousands of victims from 2002 to 2009 when the bloodbath was ultimately stopped by the one and only method of dealing with mass murderers.<\/p>\n

Did the Norwegians, or apologists like Mark Salter think that if a CFA were to hold\u00a0 under the aegis of the co-chairs, then the Tamils\u00a0 can live under Prabhakaran and thrive as a people?\u00a0\u00a0 Tamils living in the Vanni knew that to be sheer pie in the sky\u201d. Prabhakaran was useful to the upper-class (upper-caste) land-owning Tamil politicians living in the safety of Colombo, and to the Tiger Diaspora who fed the war with millions of dollars worth of armaments, as reported by the Canadian Royal Mounted Police and by Jane’s military analysts. Izeth Hussein, being an old-generation diplomat, would know that what mattered to the Norwegians was not PEACE, but the peace PROCESS.\u00a0 Living under Prabhakaran’s Jackboot even if sanctioned by a negotiated peace was not peace\u201d, but the sheer subjugation of a people to an armed cabal\u00a0 led by a serial killer. In the best CFA scenario, the Tiger cabal\u00a0 can reign for many years\u00a0 conducting\u00a0 low-intensity killings, while the Norwegians continue to\u00a0 successfully avert higher-level conflagrations.\u00a0 Thus\u00a0 the Norwegians can become\u00a0 the long-term\u00a0 deal maker and\u00a0 CEO of peace\u201d in this corner of the planet.<\/p>\n

When Kumar Rupasinghe, the CEO of a Norwegian-funded NGO\u00a0 cajoled\u00a0 the Tigers to some type of peace without going though the Norwegians, the Norwegians struck him down and reneged funding agreements with Rupasingha. The Norwegians did not want Peace, but wanted the peace PROCESS only if run by them, for them, and in their hands alone.<\/p>\n

The diplomatic clout of the Norwegians maximizes when they run the peace machinery\u201d.\u00a0 It is the peace PROCESS\u201d, and\u00a0 not peace\u201d itself, that the Norwegians wanted\u00a0 to sustain for as long as possible, on the back of the Tamil people while the Sinhalese\u00a0 are kept drowned in well-funded propaganda that labels any one who calls for the elimination of Prabhakaran as a Sinhala racist war-monger\u201d. The Noway-funded NGOs\u00a0 and their\u00a0 associates would label Izeth Hussein as a Muslim Chauvinist-racist\u201d\u00a0 in the pay of the Sinhala government\u201d, if he were to criticize Tamil militancy\u201d. The Norwegians feted the LTTE in the name of negotiations, when the rest of the world banned them.<\/p>\n

A peace process\u00a0 may begin with pure motives, but when it fails to recognize evil, and begin to\u00a0 kiss the blood-stained hand of a monster, then\u00a0 Goodness has morphed\u00a0 to its exact dialectical opposite, namely,\u00a0\u00a0 pure Evil. This was, and is, the moral failure of Norway, Erik Solheim and\u00a0 apologists like Mark Salter.<\/p>\n

Bodhi Dhanapala, Quebec, Canada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bodhi Dhanapala, Quebec, Canada. The Norwegian intervention in Sri Lanka had only one answer to every terrorist act orchestrated\u00a0 by Prabhakaran, the late LTTE leader. When Kadirgamar, the internationally respected\u00a0 Sri Lankan Foreign minster was assassinated\u00a0 during a peace-process\u201d monitored by the Norwegians, the latter sought to shield the Tigers from their crime in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58094","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=58094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}