[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 February 2008, 12:00 GMT]
In a poll conducted by the Sunday Times on the 3rd of February, Mahinda Rajapkse was named the 3rd best leader Sri Lanka has had, following D. S Senanayeke and R. Premadasa. This highlights the various misconceptions that the racist Sinhalese people are laboring under, and both the LTTE and its partner agencies and representatives such as Louis Arbor, have thought it necessary to clarify certain issues.
The present government in Sri Lanka is practicing state terrorism. The LTTE is a legitimate organization, and as the sole representatives of the Tamil people, are compelled to follow a particular course of action in pursuit of their single-minded goal of achieving Eelam. The Sri Lankan government has no right to stand in the way of this goal, and arrest innocent LTTE members under the guise of preventing terrorism. The arrest of any Tamil person, for whatever reason, is clearly an act of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The constant comparisons of the current state of terror to the time period of the ’80s, where the violent JVP uprising was crushed, is clearly incorrect. First and foremost, the JVP were a Marxist party, and as such, the government of Premadasa had the implicit approval of the Western powers to crush such a group; that Marxism in all its forms should be suppressed by whatever means was a global maxim.
The LTTE, on the other hand, are the sole representatives of the Tamil people. As such, key voter bases in England, Canada and Australia vote as per the LTTE’s wishes, and it is detrimental to any Western country to see the LTTE demolished. The present government, in its aim to crush the LTTE, is acting without the consent of Western powers, and this is clearly intolerable. There is a hierarchy in this world, where small Asian countries are supposed to tow the line of larger Western nations. Sri Lanka is clearly stepping out of line.
Further, Ms. Arbor points out, the JVP consisted of Sinhalese youths. The arrest, detention or killing of Sinhalese by other Sinhalese is completely within the framework of UN approved actions. Those acts also did not represent the violation of any human rights, as the Sinhalese have no rights to speak of, and Marxists are not human. Where then were the violations, she asks.
The LTTE as representatives of Tamils, are different. As per Ms. Arbor, any minority with a significant voting populace in Western countries are immediately bestowed the rights of a Westerner, which naturally is higher than that of a pagan Asian. Therefore, the Sri Lankan government by trying to quell the actions of the LTTE, are committing heinous crimes for which Ms. Arbor has promised retribution.
Very soon, a UN Human Rights Commission will be opened in Colombo, and one of their first projects will be to educate the Sinhala masses on the Human Rights scale, and why they do not figure on it. Perhaps then, it is hoped, the Sri Lankan government would halt its state terrorism, and more importantly, the public would stop approving such un-Western actions.
- Reporting from Geneva