Liberating the Church from
terror
Secretariat for Coordinating
the Peace Process (SCOPP)
28th April 2008
After the sacred MADHU shrine and its precincts fell
under the care of valiant troops, Rt Rev ANTONY VICTOR SOOSAI, Deputy
for MANNAR Diocese arrived at the holly premises to inspect the most
venerated shrine.
The Peace Secretariat welcomes the extremely dignified manner in which
Sri Lankan forces regained control of the Madhu Church premises on behalf
of the people of Sri Lanka. Whilst anti-governmental organizations persist
in talking about indiscriminate attacks on civilians, the record of
the forces, in which not one civilian life has been lost in the course
of army offensives, speaks for itself.
The incident at Kathiravelli, seventeen months ago, the only one about
which LTTE propagandists can make adverse comments, is the exception
that proves the rule: even propagandists have to grant that the LTTE
opened fire first, and that their forces had been moving around and
that there were bunkers in the premises to which mortar directing radar
had guided the response of the armed forces.
After the adverse propaganda surrounding the removal of the sacred
statue to LTTE controlled territory, it must have been tempting for
the forces to establish control swiftly of the Madhu premises. Despite
evidence of the LTTE using the site as a military camp and stockpiling
weapons there, the forces graciously, so as to ensure that there was
no damage for the premises, waited for the LTTE to withdraw.
Such an action, unthinkable in the forces of other countries battling
terrorism, confirms the vision of the armed forces as to the pluralistic
nature of Sri Lankan society. Their prompt restoration of the site to
its rightful custodians, the church authorities, once the danger of
LTTE offensive threats emanating from there was removed, makes clear
that their struggle is neither sectarian nor divisive, but based on
the highest principles of national integrity and integration.
We hope that now the Catholic hierarchy will respond in kind, and make
clear its understanding too of the need for law and order and democratic
pluralism in Sri Lanka. We appreciate that clergy functioning in areas
under the control of the LTTE have been under pressure, and must safeguard
their flock, but their training, like that of the armed forces, must
have ensured that they can behave with dignity and in accordance with
the highest principles. They have an enormous role to play in the reconstruction
that must follow liberation of the people from totalitarian terrorism,
and their conduct now can make clear their suitability for this role.
Certainly the explosive response of the LTTE to the restoration to
sacred purposes of the Madhu Sanctuary makes clear the need for the
Church to dissociate itself from their activities. Providing spiritual
comfort and humanitarian assistance to individuals must be separated
from what could be construed as support for terrorism. The calculated
killing of so many innocents in the explosion at Piliyandala must be
condemned for what it is, callous brutality, with no holding of a spurious
balance that in effect privileges terror, given its single-minded viciousness,
over the professional decency of the Sri Lankan forces.
Half a century ago the Anglo-Catholic writer C S Lewis described in
a novel entitled That Hideous Strength the relentless slide into violent
extremism of forces devoted only to their own aggrandizement. The infernal
machine that results makes no distinctions as to its victims, and in
the end destroys its apologetic as well as its devoted adherents. Clergy
in the north may be under pressure, but in the end their allegiance
must be to their religion and its established order, and there can be
no compromise with terror and its infernal machinery. And the Catholic
Church as a whole should even now dissociate itself firmly from the
infernal machine that dominates an ever smaller space with ever greater
brutality, and set itself firmly in the mainstream of democratic pluralist
Sri Lankan society.
Prof Rajiva Wijesinha
Secretary General
Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process
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