{"id":60533,"date":"2016-11-07T21:47:49","date_gmt":"2016-11-08T03:47:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=60533"},"modified":"2016-11-07T12:32:46","modified_gmt":"2016-11-07T19:32:46","slug":"aborting-the-hard-won-peace-to-placate-the-implacable-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/11\/07\/aborting-the-hard-won-peace-to-placate-the-implacable-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"Aborting the hard won peace to placate the implacable \u2013 III"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Continued from Saturday November 5th<\/sup>, 2016<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Touching on the economic aspect of the current Sri Lankan problems, Draper quotes prime minister Ranil Wickremasinghe as saying: It\u2019s a history of missed opportunities\u201d. We are told that here Wickremasinghe was referring to the unfulfilled economic potential of the country\u201d during the Rajapaksa administration. He has told Draper that Rajapaksa\u2019s agriculture-based model purported to be populist, but wasn\u2019t really giving anything to the people, and was really meant to consolidate family rule\u201d. Such assertions are contrary to available evidence. Economic growth which recorded a high 6-7% during the Rajapaksa administration has fallen to around 5-4% over the past twenty-one months.<\/p>\n

Draper falsely maintains that Rajapaksa escalated the war against the Tigers. The truth is that like all his predecessors, he exhausted all peaceful approaches to come to a settlement with the Tigers. But they remained intransigent. So, Rajapaksa did what any responsible ruler would do to overcome rebellion against the state. Had Draper been better informed about Sri Lanka\u2019s internal conflict, he won\u2019t have made the following irresponsible comment about how the Sri Lanka army ended the war:<\/p>\n

By mid-May 2009 they had slaughtered the last remnants of the Tamil Tigers along with trapped civilians. The war was over. In the end as many as 100,000 people have been killed\u201d.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t this statement meant to have incriminatory implications against the Sri Lanka army, as required by the West and the Tamil diaspora, which are hell-bent on wreaking vengeance on the patriotic Sri Lankan leaders who defeated terrorism? To assert that that the army \u2018slaughtered\u2019 the remaining \u2018Tamil Tigers along with trapped civilians\u2019 is an utter falsehood. Those Tigers died in face-to-face combat. The unambiguous implication of the sentence \u2018As many as 100,000 people have been killed\u2019 is that the number refers to \u2018the last remnants of the Tamil Tigers\u2019 and the \u2018trapped civilians\u2019. (The allegation implicit here calls to mind Ban Ki Moon\u2019s unwarranted comparison of the situation in Sri Lanka to the Rwandan and Sebrenica genocides.)There is a deliberate mix-up here, which only the very few sufficiently well informed among the target readers can be expected to correctly sort out. (Actually, 100,000 was the estimated total number of people killed over the 30 year long conflict, including civilians killed in LTTE bombings and massacres, and other terrorist attacks, and security personnel killed in action.) Why should the army kill the \u2018trapped\u2019 civilians? What benefit did they achieve by doing that? The army actually rescued 295,000 Tamil civilians held hostage by the LTTE as human shields, accommodated them as soon as possible, under the then prevailing difficult conditions, in livable camps, and looked after them until they could be resettled in their own lands. As much as 90% of the land acquired for security purposes was returned to the original owners by the previous government. Most of the demining of the land heavily mined by the LTTE (495,000 anti-personnel mines, 4900 landmines) was done by the army, leaving only a smaller portion of the job to be done by foreign NGO demining crews (contrary to what Draper implies). About 12,000 surrendered and captured young LTTE cadres were rehabilitated and returned to their parents; there were 530 LTTE child conscripts among them. Only about 200 hardcore cadres, charged with criminal offences including mass murders, burnings, abductions, etc are being held in prison until due legal processes deal with them. Draper\u2019s claim that the government held \u2018Tamil political activists\u2019 indefinitely without charges is another big lie. There are no political prisoners (people held on the grounds of their political views) among them.<\/p>\n

This is how Draper tries to justify Western intervention in our internal affairs:<\/p>\n

Rajapaksa\u2019s tyranny-of-the-majority vision for Sri Lanka was not sitting well with the international community. In 2010 the European Union halted the country\u2019s benefits from certain sustainable-development and good-governance incentives on human rights grounds. Dissatisfied with the Rajapaksa Administration\u2019s halfhearted war crimes investigation, the UN Human Rights Council commissioned one of its own in 2014. Under a withering spotlight, Sri Lanka seemed on the brink of yet another disappearing act\u201d.<\/p>\n

There has never been\u00a0 any tyranny of the majority in this country. By the time the armed separatist terrorism was defeated, naturally, Rajapaksa had emerged as the most popular national political leader of the country who provided the most acceptable leadership to all the communities. Though this was good for the country, it was not looked upon with favour by the so-called \u2018international community\u2019. Correspondingly, for local politicians of rival political ideologies, Rajapaksa became a most hated figure because he represented a huge roadblock to their personal political ambitions. No wonder, Rajapaksa became a common target of these two camps.<\/p>\n

Draper sees continued\u00a0 army presence in the North at a reasonable level ( which is an absolute necessity in view of the still precarious security situation there) as \u2018occupation\u2019. If we apply his logic, we can\u2019t station the army anywhere in the country without having it \u2018occupy\u2019 the land! But Draper\u2019s skewed logic is apparent in the following completely untrue comment:<\/p>\n

But the military\u2014which until the 2015 election was headed by Rajapaksa\u2019s brother Gotabaya\u2014has been slow to respond to the new administration and continues to occupy some of the roughly 12,000 acres that it confiscated during the war\u201d.<\/p>\n

He advertises a similarly biased view of the constructive way the army was used under the earlier administration for kick-starting long disrupted development in the region (as a temporary measure) as done in the south as well (e.g., for urban development). In this connection, he shares the ignorant unreasonable attitude of the 46-year-old woman quoted in the following passage:<\/p>\n

We have no confidence that we\u2019ll get our land back,\u201d said a 46-year-old Tamil woman who has lived in a squalid camp since the army seized her land in 1990. They\u2019ve built a hotel on my property. They\u2019re earning revenue there. Are you telling me they\u2019ll just hand it back over to us?\u201d<\/p>\n

Draper is careful to connect the absurd \u2018White Van\u2019 abductions story (which used to be prevalent in\u00a0 the south as well) to the missing persons issue by quoting another Tamil woman:<\/p>\n

I lost my husband eight years ago. He was abducted in a white van.\u201d<\/p>\n

The writer completes his story (meant, no doubt, to be illustrative regarding the missing persons problem) about the 34 year unnamed Tamil woman by saying that she did not find her husband in the prison where she was hopeful she\u2019d find him.<\/p>\n

Draper refers to the extremely biased September 2015 UN document about (uncommitted, as we Sri Lankans know) war crimes document which, he says, cites \u2018years of denials and cover-ups\u201d on the part of the Rajapaksa regime.\u2019 In the same context, he refers to what most rational Sri Lankans condemn as thoughtless betrayal of the country by the yahapalana regime: By not protesting the findings, the new government implicitly signaled it was ready to confront the truth\u201d.<\/p>\n

He says that Ranil Wickremasinghe told him, We will get a second chance \u2013 we\u2019re already working on it\u201d.\u00a0 The PM acknowledged (to Draper) that it was crucial that an earnest attempt to make Tamils feel like part of a new Sri Lanka. They just want to lead a normal life like everyone else\u201d according to Draper. No one would dispute these sentiments. Contrary to what Draper probably implies here (i.e., that Ranil\u2019s words embody a revelation of something not appreciated before by others), that is what every Sri Lankan leader at the helm from the formidable D.S. Senanayake first premier of independent Ceylon (Sri Lanka)\u00a0 down to the current incumbent Ranil-Maithri duo.<\/p>\n

Since this article has become more than twice as long as I intended it to be, I don\u2019t want even to\u00a0 touch on the other fallacious arguments (about such things as alleged majoritarian tyranny, Buddhist fundamentalist extremism, etc.) that Draper advances in support of the \u2018international\u2019 persecution of my long suffering country or the ruining of the national peace achieved, at the cost of so much blood and tears, in 2009 with the defeat of armed terrorism. But the conclusion of his article which wraps up his grand theme must needs be attended to. A few days before meeting with the prime minister, Draper says, he had seen the fisherman\u2019s wife in Jaffna. She had a photograph of 168 Tamil prisoners at a penitentiary somewhere near Colombo (all of them looked like men from Mannar to her) published in a newspaper; the men had their eyes blacked out, but she was able to spot her husband in that photograph. But when she located the prison and looked for her husband, he was not there, nor were there any of the men from Mannar she had seen in the photograph. (I am deeply suspicious of the authenticity of this story, for reasons that any careful reader of Draper could see; it sounds like a convenient fiction. But, be that as it may be.)<\/p>\n

When he subsequently met with the PM, he asked the latter if the men were being held in secret detention in sites guarded by the military\u201d. The PM replied that he had been told by the military that there are no such places.<\/p>\n

Meaning \u2026\u201d (?)<\/p>\n

They\u2019re all dead,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Robert Draper concludes his essay with these words:<\/p>\n

In June the Sri Lankan government acknowledged that more than 65,000 people have been reported missing since 1994. It also announced plans to create an office to investigate the disappearances and to issue certificates of absence\u201d to families of the missing so they can collect benefits and, hopefully, move on with their lives. Assuming it does so, perhaps Sri Lanka will also move forward\u2014consigning its ghosts to memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

I need not comment on this, because its implications are clear to my informed readers. Incidentally, before concluding, I think I should make a passing reference to the remarks of UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues Rita Izsak Ndiaye, who was in Sri Lanka recently on a 10-day visit. Like journalist Robert Draper in the National Geographic, she also made certain egregious comments on Sri Lanka\u2019s alleged ethnic problem, betraying her abysmal ignorance about our country\u2019s history, culture, and current politics. She has suggested that a fully empowered independent commission for minority issues be included in the (proposed) constitutional reforms to implement mandates and foster relations between communities (as if there is a serious ethnic problem in the country \u2013 RRW). More shockingly, she identifies alleged \u2018Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian leadership as the main cause of minority grievances and the country\u2019s civil war, and referred to the primacy given to Buddhism in the constitution \u2018could lead to further suppression of and discrimination against minority religions and communities\u2019! But there is absolutely no\u00a0 religious or racial discrimination in our country which would justify such a censorious judgment against it. For the \u2018international community\u2019 to get poor Sri Lanka harangued and harassed by the Drapers and the Ndiayes of the world is adding insult to injury.<\/p>\n

Concluded<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala Continued from Saturday November 5th, 2016 Touching on the economic aspect of the current Sri Lankan problems, Draper quotes prime minister Ranil Wickremasinghe as saying: It\u2019s a history of missed opportunities\u201d. We are told that here Wickremasinghe was referring to the unfulfilled economic potential of the country\u201d during the Rajapaksa administration. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rohana-r-wasala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60533","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=60533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}