War effort must be supported by politics and diplomacy
December 24th, 2007
By Dayan Jayatilleke
You can’t make the mistake of being weak. If you’re weak with security, you are defeated.”-Fidel Castro: My Life (2007: 321)
We are about to step into 2008, the 60th year of Sri Lanka’s Independence. It shows every sign of being a decisive year. Indeed it must be made so. Sixty years after independence is the right historical and psychological moment to resolve the major problem facing Sri Lanka. That is the reunification of this small island. Sri Lanka’s natural borders must be its political boundaries. Its armed forces must enjoy the sole monopoly of violence throughout its territory. Whatever its internal arrangements, the country must be one, single, indivisible political entity.
What does this mean in concrete terms? It means that the LTTE must be eliminated as a military challenge to Sri Lanka’s unity and territorial integrity. This in turn means that the Tigers must no longer be an armed force capable of rivalling Sri Lanka’s armed forces. The LTTE must no longer exist as a parallel army. This entails the destruction of the LTTE as a fighting force; the elimination of its leadership, its armed cadre and military assets. This would create the opportunity for the LTTE to convert itself into a democratic political formation, provided it accepts that any solution to Tamil political grievances and identity issues must be pursued peacefully and democratically within the parameters of a single, united Sri Lanka.
This objective is both imperative and feasible. It is imperative because any sustainable progress requires the elimination of the enemy armed force and its capacity for instant destabilisation. The varied futures envisaged for the country by leaders as diverse as Presidents Jayewardene, Premadasa and Kumaratunga were thwarted by one factor: Prabhakaran. Sri Lanka can move forward only if it eliminates the obstacle in its path. Its economy can grow in a sustainable manner only if military expenditure levels off and is progressively reduced, and more fundamentally, if the national market is reunified, which means the reunification of the national territory as a single space. After decades of armed conflict punctuated by ceasefires and internationally mediated negotiations, the elimination of Jonas Savimbi was the key to peace and prosperity in resource rich Angola.
The war can be won. We are at a rare moment in our country’s history in which we enjoy a favourable confluence of factors: a President (and Defence Secretary) with political will and determination; an experienced and respected military leadership; massive popular support; high military morale; increased recruitment; high performance on the part of all three armed services. Those who make the most facile parallels with the Bush administration, Iraq, Afghanistan and all points of geography and history would do well to ponder the statistical fact that after a quarter century of military conflict, the Sri Lankan people are not about to throw in the towel and bring the boys back home, for the simple reason that the boys are fighting precisely for their home, and therefore a massive 84 % percent of a huge 75% of the island’s people, a massive majority of the majority, support the President’s war effort. So too does a significant (under the circumstances) segment (20%) of the main Tamil minority. The war is now a People’s War.
That is also the secret of the Govt’s success in defeating the Budget conspiracy: no party or formation which bases itself at least in part, on a nationalist or patriotic appeal, can afford to be seen to topple the Government at the expense of the war effort and to the benefit of the LTTE. This is also why the Govt does not have to succumb to every slogan of the more extremist or radical nationalist forces but can negotiate if not from strength, certainly not from inferiority.
2008 must then be designated as our Year of Victory. Certainly the war cannot be won by solely military means, but let there be no illusions: a war can be won only by primarily military means. The main, central and decisive effort in the coming year must of necessity be military: in a war, the armed struggle is the main axis and ‘motor force of development’ of the historical process. All else is utopianism. However the war effort must be supported by politics and diplomacy.
Prabhakaran will attempt a replay of 1987, when he successfully leveraged the external factor (at the time, sub-regional, i.e. Tamil Nadu). Today it will be pressure from those countries which have a large, electorally significant Tamil Diaspora, which plays a role more like the notorious Miami mafia than the Jewish lobby. These Western states seem determined to prevent the military victory of the Sri Lankan state over the Tigers, and seem to prefer the survival/existence of the Tigers as a military entity. Sri Lanka cannot afford to be deterred by these pressures, and sacrifice its future. Any student of the Cold War would recognise the use of the instrument of Human Rights and so-called ‘dissident civil society’ by the West, to penetrate and undermine regimes and states. Sri Lanka cannot make the mistakes of Gorbachev (the latter years) and Yeltsin, be tranquilised, have its sovereignty penetrated, be weakened and dismantled as countries. Sri Lanka cannot be oblivious to the use of the slogan of “humanitarian crisis” to dismantle the former Yugoslavia. Today the West stands ready to ignore the UN resolution that reiterates that Kosovo is a part of Serbia, and to recognise Kosovo as an independent state.
The anti-Sri Lanka campaign will accelerate next year as Sri Lanka makes headway in the struggle to overcome the Tigers. The West, preceded by the Western-dominated media, will howl about a “humanitarian crisis”, and brandish the policy of R2P (’Responsibility to Protect’) at us as we close in on Prabhakaran’s bunker. However, in our case R2P is ultimately something of a paper tiger. It works in a context such as the former Yugoslavia, a country put together in the post-war years from the most diverse components (in bold, laudable experiment by Tito). Sri Lanka is not a failed or failing state. It is a continent too far for an imposed R2P to be sustained. It is located in Asia, has a distinct cultural identity and a decisive homogeneous majority, a consciousness of a continuous existence as a state entity, an educated and militant youth population. And no part of Sri Lanka hankers after EU membership!
The coming anti-Sri Lanka campaign must be blunted by three counter-thrusts.
We must rebuild our national defences by rejuvenating our National Human Rights Commission and/or creating new and credible institutions headed by internationally respected Sri Lankans. It must be recognised however, that human rights violations will drop off drastically when the war is over, when the enemy has been defeated-just as human rights violations in the South of Sri Lanka dropped off sharply when the JVP had been militarily defeated. The re-enfranchised Tamil people will swiftly recover their rights in a peaceful environment where the highly competitive politics of Sri Lanka’s proportional representation come into play.
We must devolve power to the North and East, swiftly and sustainably. This means, as a first step, reactivating the 13th amendment, as proposed by Douglas Devananda. The weight of the Indian state upon the Sri Lankan and the reluctant cooperation of a Government with a 5/6ths majority in parliament, could not secure in 1987, the “Indian Model” so beloved by certain Tamil moderates. The 13th amendment is as good as it gets, and any improvement will have to await a more favourable parliamentary balance of power, with a drastically altered mass consciousness. (Faced with the stark choice at a referendum of deleting the term “unitary” from the Constitution, I do not see the majority of Sri Lankans, voting “yes”). A realist solution would aim to protect the 13th amendment from further roll-back as was threatened earlier this year. Mr Devananada’s Tamil rivals may depict themselves as more pro-Indian than he, but it does not suit India’s interest to have a pro-Indian Tamil politician who is so unacceptable to the Sinhalese that he winds up in India, a la Vardarajahperumal! Devananda is a Tamil politician who is loyal to Sri Lanka and close to India; therefore able to act as a bridge. He is the only Tamil politician who will accept a solution within the existing Constitution, and is also the only Tamil politician trusted sufficiently by the Sinhala South, to be permitted to hold a significant measure of power in the strategically sensitive North. Like the 13th amendment, Mr Devananda is also as good as it gets. Reactivating the 13th amendment in the present day translates itself into an interim administration in the Northern Province and early Provincial elections in the East.
Our foreign relations must be consciously reoriented, and foreign policy must turn for inspiration to “Kadirgamar Chinthanaya”. Those Sri Lankans whose natural tendency is to ask “how high?” when the West says “jump”, as well as those whose knees knock at the thought of Western cutbacks, neither recall the history of Sri Lanka’s own foreign policy nor understand contemporary international relations. It was in the 1950s, in response to the Rubber-Rice Pact between China and Sri Lanka (under a UNP administration!) that US Congress passed the Hickenlooper Amendment cutting aid to our country-yet we did not waver, still less wilt. As for those who would counter that the Socialist camp existed at the time as an option, it is to be recalled that the “moment of uni-polar hegemony” has passed its zenith or is in crisis, and we live in the period of the Iraqi debacle, the revitalisation of Russia, the rise of China and tendencies towards multi-polarity. Under President Rajapakse, Sri Lanka has already embarked upon a diversification of its dependence. To avoid a tedious debate on foreign policy, for which I have no time, working as I am at one of Sri Lanka’s global FDLs here in Geneva, I would only remind the incorrigibly negativist and the defeatist that Sri Lanka’s finest foreign policy thinker the late Lakshman Kadirgamar had already, in the last stage of his tenure and life, publicly signalled the geopolitical/geo-strategic reorientation of Sri Lanka’s external relations. I advocate a return to that emergent thrust, within an overall Realist policy of power balancing, especially multi-polar power balancing.
Until this war is over and won, our foreign policy has to be the handmaiden of strategy, an overall strategy whose primary goal and objective must be the unification of the state through the military defeat and destruction of the secessionist-terrorist enemy, the LTTE. Foreign policy must be defence-driven, rather than the other way about. It cannot be oriented towards those states that have large Tamil lobbies and which instrumentalize human rights hypocritically to prevent our victory. It must be oriented towards precisely those states, blocs and tendencies which are uninfluenced by such lobbies, and are in favour of combating that which China refer to as “the Three Evils: Separatism, Terrorism and Extremism”.
In our 60th anniversary year Sri Lankans would do well to be inspired by the words of Fidel Castro, a product of another small island nation in the tropical sun. In his 700 plus page autobiography My Life (2007) Fidel Castro says “Those who don’t respond, those who don’t fight, those who don’t combat, those people are lost from the beginning, and in us, you’ll never find that kind of person.”
EDITORS NOTE: The writer is Sri Lankan ambassador to the UN in Geneva. We are not in agreement with all of the views expressed in this article. We are posting it at transCurrents in the belief and hope that it would stimulate an informed conversation.
Entry Filed under: transCurrents Commentary
64 Comments Add your own
1. Reasonable Man | December 24th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
The author has put forward completely laughable claims in the garb of pushing for a promising future.
He has completely neglected the fact that Sri Lanka has the dubious record of being the only country to seek help from Iran and Pakistan, two countries which have repeatedly come close to being declared Terrorist States. Ever heard the saying, Birds of the same feather flock together?!?
The fact that Sri Lankan debt situation looms dangerously at the edge of a precipice has also been conveniently ignored by the author. The prices of essential commodities has sky-rocketed to alarming and drought-like proportions. While the common man, whether or Colombo or Jaffna, is left to grapple with such mounting challenges, the educated elite of Lanka have the luxury of turning a blind eye to such dismal realities.
The budget vote was a hastily cobbled exercise and we were treated to the extremely amusing spectacle of members of the House defecting to the opposition at the wave of a finger or drop of a hat!!! There is a huge difference between flatulent opportunistic politics and good governance. Jumbo cabinet ministers going for junket trips while the abductions and cold-blooded killings continue….Lawlessness rules supreme and unchallenged in the land.
2. Mervyn | December 24th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Kadirgamar has given the Sinhalese the smell of Tamil blood. Now Rajapakse and his advisors believe that the Tamils can be militarily subjugated. It is upto LTTE to maintain military balance to safeguard Tamil interests. There can be no solution that does not guarantee a Tamil State in the island.
Let us be under no illusion that Lakshman Kadirgamar has set the groundwork for this type of thinking.
3. The benevolent Dictator | December 24th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Interesting insight into the thinking of a govt man. Thanks Dayan.
I agree that wars can be won by primarily military means. However, that is a simplistic view that doesn’t take into account the reasons for this conflict of ours. Whilst I agree that the LTTE no longer represents what it claims to represent, i.e. the rights of the Tamils etc etc, there is still the question of addressing the rights of ordinary Tamils. While it may seem obvious to most that ending a civil war requires winning the hearts and minds of the minority (or even majority) populace in question, this govt has done the most since J.R’s govt to create a climate of fear in the Tamils. I don’t think I need to go into the details as they are evident for most to see. Supposing the govt manages to militarily defeat the LTTE (which would be good news), how does the govt propose to build bridges? What plan of action does the govt have to reverse the increasing trend in the N and E, and indeed the rest of the country, towards militarism (armed gangs etc). Does the govt even have a plan to deal with thousands of Tamil youth in the LTTE in terms of psychologically treating them in preparation for integration into civil society? What does the govt intend to do with the TMVP? Remember the TMVP contains former members of the LTTE responsible for most of the atrocities and quickly establishing control in the East. Is there a master plan to neutralise the TMVP?
These are all questions the govt needs to answer (well maybe except the last one for obvious reasons). Maybe you could answer them, since you are part of the govt. These questions become more pertinent in light of your declaration that 2008 should be the ‘Year of Victory’.
4. Dyan | December 24th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Funny man with impossible ideas.
5. r.veera | December 24th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
The person supporting state sponsored terrorism preching nonsonse and treat tamils as idiots. Mr dayan what you tryiing proove? Do you know tamils suffering under your sinhala modaya forces? are you going to defend your brutality? you must shame your self? you have nothing to show for tamils and their grviences? you must change your attititude and trying convince tamils, if you have any honor leave tamiils alone let them choose their destiny…
6. Sen | December 24th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
The problem of many Srilankan (mostly Sinhalese) intellectuals is that they fail to see why LTTE came into existence at the first place. This writer suggests that the LTTE should be a political force not the military force, sadly the majority Sinhalese governments from the independence has used thuggary and violence on non-violent Tamil political expressions. Many Sinhalese believe by eliminating the LTTE the Tamil national question will go forever, sadly it may be take a slump for a few years, but new prabaharans will come with more vengeance and with more militarily power including scud missiles to challenge the Sinhalese majority state, if the Tamil national questions is not solved promptly to satisfy the majority of the Tamil speaking people, I emphasis Tamil speaking people, since before Portuguese came to Ceylon, Ceylon was not a single country, it had 3 kingdoms (3 nations), the Srilankan state and the Sinhala policy makers should remember it. From the inception of independence the Sinhala policy makers have encroached the Tamil lands, firstly Ampara district, then Seurvalla in Trincolmale district and the list goes on’ now on Thopigalle (Kudumbi malli). Sadly many Tamil politicians who were on the government payroll couldn’t resist these colonization’s at the expense of losing their individual privileges.
Even though I am not the supporter of the LTTE or the Prabaharan, VP has shown the world that he can not be bought over similar to other rebel leaders or the Tamil politicians. Although he has committed many crimes this attitude has to be admired by the Tamils. On the other hand, what is Mr Douglas Devanda (an ex criminal) stands for? Only for privileges to his family and his clan !!!. what a sad reality of a former freedom fighter, he was brainwashed by RAW, which wanted to create another satellite state for India in Ceylon, but that expectation is expired with today’s geo/political reality. Similarly, Karuna, who was a good fighter (committed many crimes as well) but bought over by the Srilankan intelligent operatives who exploited a east/north divide among Ceylon Tamils. What is he doing’ languishing in a UK prison waiting for his fate on war crimes and other atrocities he committed with the connivance of the Srilankan war state.
7. ratna | December 24th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
I have read this writers previous articles in an Anti-Tiger website. At that time he openly encouraged to use terrorism to fight terrorism.
After the CFA Sri Lanka was turning to see a bright future, but today, Sri Lanka in a state like this because of hardliners like this.
Today, Prabakaran has suceeded in making a permanent division between Tamils and Sinhalese. Prabakaran knows he will be eliminated very soon and he wanted make sure there are more Prabakaran’s are born and the next one may be harder to deal with.
8. sam ratnayake | December 24th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Dear Editor,
We are very interested to hear your point of view of the ideas expressed in this article.
We were also pleasantly surprised to read that the UN ambassador favors minister Douglas Devananda to play significant role in any future democratic government in the N&E provinces.
Looking forward to hearing from more knowledgeable sources
9. S.A. Christy | December 24th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Well said Mr. Jayatilleke! The Sri Lankan people, especially the Tamils have undergone immense difficulties for nearly three decades and this is the best time to grasp the opportunity to implement the 13th amendment. Douglas’s proposal is the best starting point. The Interim Council should be administered by a capable person. Douglas Devananda is the only person who could do this at the present situation as he has established himself well in the North and East by maintaining offices even during the most difficult times and under difficult situations. At present he is the only democratic leader, without the influence of the LTTE, representing the people of Jaffna in parliament. He has also proved that he could function in the North by taking up various portfolios and running them successfully since October 2000, although his life is in constant danger. For the last 30 years the Tamils have achieved nothing by the LTTE’s struggle, except that they lost their loved ones, lost their properties, became displaced and emotionally affected. Like you have said Douglas is also a trusted friend of the South and India. Hence every one who is sincerely interested in the welfare of the Tamil- speaking people should support his proposal, which would eventually lead to a final solution through the APRC.
10. mathew | December 24th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
very well written.i can understand mr gunatilakes sentiments from the point of view of a sinhala national who have only one tiny island as their homeland with a population of about 20 million people.what have you to say about 80 million people and their resolve to create a nation who are saying “give us freedom or give us death”time will tell
mathew
11. Expatriate | December 25th, 2007 at 12:34 am
It is shameful and criminal of Mr. Jayatilleke to whitewash and dismiss the very serious issue of abductions and murders of innocent civilians committed by the Rajapaksa regime and to dismiss the concerns of the West in analogy to the cold war. .
As the UTHR has meticulously brought out, complicity for these murders and abductions extends to the Rajapaksa family and all its sycophants. At the top of the list of the sycophants are Mr. Jayatilleke and Mr. Rajiva Wijesinha.
When the wheels of justice turn, as they will surely do–albeit, sometimes slowly, all these sycophantic criminals trying to hide muderous tyranny under the guise of diplomacy will face justice.
Only a criminal like Mr. Jayatilleke will promote another criminal like Mr. Devananda as an alternative to the LTTE. If Tamil people are tired of the LTTE and its crimes, they are even more tired of the criminal gangs that govern Sri Lanka and promote lumpen criminals as ministers and diplomats.
On behalf of the innocent civilians in Sri Lanka who have to suffer through the actions of these criminals, Tamil and Sinhala expatriates–indeed, all men and women of conscience–should relentlessly expose these criminal minds and seek to expedite justice in every possible forum,. in every possible country.
As Canada shows even under a conservatove government that is not sympathetic to Tamil plight (and possibly Britain too), if evidence of criminality committed under the cloak of diplomacy is shown, these people can be denied any diplomatic status and visa. Next time a Devananda or Jayatilleke or Wijesinha is travelling, take action.
12. k. mani | December 25th, 2007 at 2:06 am
We must not forget the past.We must learn from the past.What happened when Varatharajaperumal was the chief minister?Didnt they kill hundreds of our policemen?Didnt they kill hundreds of their own people?They were the ones who started child conscription first.LTTE is continuing now.Didnt Perumal declare Eelam unilaterally before he left Srilanka two decades Ago? How can we give North and East to Douglas?
13. craig | December 25th, 2007 at 2:11 am
funny illogical author!!!
14. roshann wickremesinge | December 25th, 2007 at 6:44 am
Dear Dayan,
Best solution for our mother land, let tamils rule themselves in their own place (North & East). We ruined our economy and theirs for long time. All sinhalease brain washed by sinhala leadership. They must learned to respect srilanka belongs to every one. They must stop thingking mahavamsa b*** s***. You and me living in a kushy life in foreign land. People in back home suffering a lot, because of our sinhala leadership since independence. You must be mad to defend sinhal forces brutality in UN. Please use your influence and convince sinhala leadership to let tamils choose their solution. You and me know ultimate aim of our leaders, I bet you it will not going to succeed.
GOOD BYE
15. Yabi | December 25th, 2007 at 8:26 am
Small comment on Reasonable man’s assertion that “The fact that Sri Lankan debt situation looms dangerously at the edge of a precipice has also been conveniently ignored by the author”.
Debt as a % GDP has consistantly fallen over the years. Debt will be quite easily managed as the economy steadies around 5-6% growth. Thanks to our overseas workers, more than 71% of our current acc deficit is financed by worker remittance.
Hey, the economy is not as bad as one think it is……
16. Dingiri | December 25th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
This guy is Sri Lanka’s latest Rumsfeld style neo-con. Two of his lines stuck in my mind.
“Sri Lanka cannot be oblivious to the use of the slogan of “humanitarian crisis” to dismantle the former Yugoslavia.”
–He obviously does not believe there was a real humanitarian crisis in Yugoslavia. Only a western conspiracy to devide Yugoslavia.
“Those Sri Lankans whose natural tendency is to ask “how high?” when the West says “jump”, as well as those whose knees knock at the thought of Western cutbacks, neither recall the history of Sri Lanka’s own foreign policy nor understand contemporary international relations.”
—-But Dayan, the west is not asking us to jump. They are merely asking us to stop murdering people and to come up with a fair proposal to give the Tamils some autonomy so the war can end. What is your answer to this? Why do you believe it is so unreasonable?
The language this man uses betrays his callous disregard for human suffering.
Mr. Jayatilleke, what is so sacred about this unitaryness that you think is worth sacrificing a generation for it? Why cant we just have a referrandum on who wants to secede and then give them a proportionate slice of land to live in as they please?
17. Zona | December 25th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
One more reason for Tamil people all over the world to support LTTE and contribute to the cause cos war is surely declared loud and clear
18. wijayapala | December 25th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
I concur with The benevolent Dictator. It is telling that Dayan has completely ignored the current plight of the “liberated” Eastern Province. Can someone explain to me how Dayan, who endlessly praises Castro as a guerrilla leader who minimized atrocities (supposedly) can simultaneously praise the Rajapaksas who have definitely not won the crucial “hearts and minds” campaign.
The only answer I can offer is that there is simply no other leadership among the Sinhalese to handle the LTTE than Mahinda & Gotabhaya. Chandrika had lost Eelam War III due to gross incompetence and negligence and paved the way for Ranil’s CFA which allowed the LTTE to strengthen, before the Karuna rebellion. It was primarily through these two that the LTTE gained the illusion of invincibility which has recently been shattered to all but the most craven LTTE bootlicker.
Ranil may have provided some respite from war for the Tamils, but ultimately he did nothing to build bridges between the Sinhalese and Tamils as Prabakaran would’ve got mad and scuttled the farcical peace process. Even if he manages to topple Mahinda’s control in Parliament, you can be sure that Ranil won’t be rebuilding anything in the East if he becomes PM again.
On behalf of my fellow Sinhalese I hope to apologize to our Tamil and Muslim brethren that we do not have better leadership to bring us together. I wish you all a Happy Deepavali, Eid, and Christmas.
19. Reasonable Man | December 25th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
“The Benevolent Dictator” has raised very pertinent questions. But unfortunately such searching questions are being wasted on a state whose policies has never been framed after deep thought or consideration. Sri Lankan governments have repeatedly exhibited an attraction towards short sighted policies that only serve the interests of a select few in the polity : Park yourself at UN’s doorstep for aid, if your atrocious Human Rights records turn them off, make a beeline to Iran and Pakistan and stretch forth the bowl. Ergo, whoever shows you pennies becomes your short term buddy.
Dayan being the ambassador to the UN finds himself in a tight corner with respect to polcies of the Sri Lankan government : He can neither disprove the very obvious and reality-stricken claims of the UN Human rights groups, nor indict the government for often setting off like a loose cannon. The latter course of action will find him promptly sent back to Colombo by the Rajapakshe brothers
20. r.veera | December 25th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
I proove myself, and dayan support my claim their is only solution for thamils total separation. He is Dr dayan, just imagine educated sinhala Dr dayan defend his brutal sinhala forces and still believe militatary victory over ltte, We thamils have no choice complete support for ltte is the only answer and teach these ignorant evil sinhala mind.
21. thiaga | December 25th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
I believe the best way to reply is to counter the mis-leading points he has made.
There was never an intention of the present and past Sinhalese politicians to address the grievances of Tamils in good faith. Now they attempt to solve it by military aggression and he justifies it with his recent statement that killings and disappearances are normal during war times, not least bit worried about human life.
I think UN has to take a careful look at him what he stands for.
The Tamil militancy was born due to the subjugation of rights of the Tamils and make them 2nd class citizens. Can any one justify to limit Tamils entering Universities by means of standardization in education among other things, I myself was a victim.
He talks about a conspiracy to defeat the budget; he pretends not to know of what took place behind the scenes. ( bribery, intimidation, promise of ministry posts, betrayal ). It is not over yet, security of opposition politicians ( specially the Tamil / Muslim ) is being systematically withdrawn as we speak. Next would be the elimination of these politicians.
The statements that he attributes to Fidel is best applied to all those who stand against the present military regime.
“Those who don’t respond, those who don’t fight, those who don’t combat, those people are lost from the beginning ”
Sir, Please do us a favour, stand in front of the mirror and you can see for yourself a man of duplicity.
22. Ivar | December 26th, 2007 at 6:57 am
Daer Mr Jayatilleke
You are about 50 yrs behind time. Still living in your dream.
It appears that all the problems facing this island is artibbuted to Prabakaran ONLY ??
Take an unbiased review of the history ( if you can) and you WILL be surprised.
This country is already split..divided. You are 50 years too late.
23. S.Ganga | December 26th, 2007 at 9:41 am
We knew Dyan’s father. Will he appove Dayan’s position if allive, Dayan should ask himself.
24. Dayan Jayatilleka | December 26th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Dear Dingiri,
A “Rumsfeld style neocon” who has authored a favourable book on Fidel Castro? Man, you must be one seriously confused dude.
25. S.NADA | December 26th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
I totally agree with Dayan Jeyatilleke’s “elimination of Jonas Savimbi was the key to peace and prosperity”. Unless Prabakaran is eliminated there won’t be peace in Srilanka. People in Vanni want Prabakaran eliminated more than the Sinhalese. Douglas is working hard for peace, risking his life. Tigers did their maximum to disrupt Douglas’s development activities in the North, but could not succeed. Douglas has proved that he can withstand the Tigers and win the hearts and minds of the Tamils. He is the one who opened the democratic space in the north.
26. rathakrishnan | December 26th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
We can’t live in an imaginary world. We must do something to stop this ongoing war. I am neither a epdp supporter nor one who support the war. It is the war mongering Tamil diaspora and NGOs(dollar crows) supporting the war. These people make money out of innocent peoples’ dead bodies.
Neither Prabhakaran nor Mahinda Rajapakshe was affected by this brutal war. The people who are really suffering in Srilanka longing for peace. I have my doubt whether the srilankan government will bring a solution acceptable by ordinary Tamils. One thing is certain. As long as Prabhakaran is alive, there won’t be peace in srilanka.
27. RAVI | December 26th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
TAMILS KNOW VERY WELL http://www.TRANSCURRENTS.COM IS THE ONLY HONEST WEBSITE RUN BY TAMILS.
28. Jay | December 26th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
Dayan has a long and disgraceful history of betting on wrong horses just for his personal advancement.
Just one point to illustrate his ignorance: JR could not deliver anything more than 13th amendment despite his 5/6 majority because he, himself was opposed to tamis having more rights (and not because Indians/Tamils couldn’t persuade him). Premadasa also belongs to this Southern Chauvinisitic machinery. Chandrika could not deliver her package because of ‘democracy’ in Sri Lanka which has institutionalized Sinhala Buddhist hegemony (and UNP or any other party could work against it).
Percy Mahendra Rajapakse will not deliver anything to Tamis/Minorities even after the LTTE is eliminated (if he could) because of the friends he chose (JVP/JHU)and the path (Children of 1956) he walked. If he does realize his folly and attempts to rectify, he may find himself in SWRD’s place – fearing for his life at the hands of Bikkus.
There you go Mr. Ambassador… When people like you, despite your education and want to bury your head in the sand, the current and future administrations will continue to belive our failed state is indeed a paradise.
29. S.Ganga | December 26th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
SL Ambassador to UN/Geneva Mr. Dayan Jayathilake is a calculative rascal. But we are also rascals and not fool. Look what this man says ‘Tamil political grievances and identity issues must be pursued peacefully and democratically within the parameters of a single, united Sri Lanka’ Sounds very innocent! Unbelievably demacrat! This is the psychological war many of these Sinhala racist so-called Intellectuals wage along with the murderous racist real war on the grounds.
Such men should be told to understand that this is what Ramanathans, Ponnambalams, Chelvanayagams, Amirthalingams, Ashrufs and Thondamans tried and failed under the Sinhala Buddhist racist regimes. Common, Dayan you don’t act dump and blind. All those above listed peace loving ‘Ahimsavadhi’ Tamil speaking political and trade union leaders wanted equality of rights within one single united country. That is the post independence history of our country.
Think of the peaceful ‘Satyagraha’ which was staged at the Galle face green for very reasonable language rights in 1956. What was it, Mr. Dayan? Did any of those leaders who participated in the peaceful activity threw at least one single stone at the (then) Parliament, what is now the presidential secretariat? It is the state set goon thugs who attacked the ’satyagragis’. Did not your esteemed father tell read you this piece of history, Dayan? We do not approve terrorism. We are the most peaceful god fearing ethnic community in the world. Most of the great Tamil epics are based on gods and lords and ‘think good, speak good, do good’ philosophy. Simple as that: We do not need your preaching on good governance and behavior. It is you who made the blunder of mistakes. So you come forward and re do it. Let LTTE be LTTE. You and your mistakes created it, didn’t you? Now you guys be apologetic. Bring in proposals. Tamil speaking communities are honestly ready to test out it. If they honestly address our aspirations and grievances, ok we shall together build a peaceful prosperous Lanka. Or get lost together.
30. Maveer | December 27th, 2007 at 12:34 am
According to latest newsfrom Vanni. Pottu is in a heavy power strugal to reach the next leadership. Internal information says he is the one gave T.S’s location to SLAF and he is responsible of leaking V.P’s location to SLAF as well. HIs plan is to take over LTTE leadership after SLAF kill VP.
31. Sinna | December 27th, 2007 at 8:59 am
Tamils need more than the 13th amendment. But, Prabaharan has made it unattainable. He has hijacked the Tamil cause and transformed it into a fascist euphoria. Tamils have lost many opportunities, indo-Lanka accord and the presence of large contingent of IPKF in our territory, Chandrika’s August 1994 proposal, 2002 MoU etc- all due to the intransigent of one person.
Devananda, as a person living amongst the Tamil people has seen the realities and his request to start with the 13th amendment should be seen as the only viable alternative available in the present political scenario.
Thanks to Dayan for admitting in his own words that the Government is violating the human rights-’human rights violations will drop off drastically when the war is over’. What has happened in other countries or during JVP insurrections cannot be construed as a justification to what is happening today. Rather than Fidel Castro, I prefer to remind Dayan of what Mahathma Gandhi has said.’We must achieve the right thing through right means’.
The war against LTTE cannot be a Sinhala-Buddhist crusade. Look at today�s report in �Sri Lanka Guardian�. A Buddha statue has been erected at the top of Lawrence Road, adjoining the Wellawatte Pillayar Temple, an area where very high concentrations of Tamils are living and well known Tamil and Hindu cultural centers are functioning. Is this a war against Prabakaran or Pillayar?
32. Rodhan | December 27th, 2007 at 11:44 am
This same Dayan was sitting on the fence and criticising CBK/Anuruddha Ratwatte during “War For Peace” in the 90’s.
Tamils will fight to the last man standing. The next round wouldn’t be rosy as Dayan Thinks.
Tamils can be rounded up and herded out to Boossa. But, the point is giving more cannon fodder to LTTE by these acts. UN Ambassodor don’t see the “Democracy and human rights” in these acts. Funny for Dayan so educated .
33. JJ | December 27th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Sri lankans have a penchance for punching above their weight. We had a foreign minister in a previous government with a massive ego and a satdium named after him who got the government to spend a fortune lobbying for a UN job. A former diplomant got himself into the peace secretariat and promoted himself for the same job at great cost to the country’s coffers. By the way, the Peace Secretariat is a misnomer. We have only had war mongers in there.
Perhaps our dear author of this article has his sights set for one of the big jobs somewhere. He must of course praise those in power and pay homage to some chintanaya or other so that he gets their patronage.
Our dear author is not the first one to advocate a military solution. He has declared that the war can be won. He himself wont be willing to wear the tin hat. And when the going gets tough where will he be?
34. eeroppesinhaya | December 27th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Thank you Dayan; Well said!!
This is the right thing unfortunatly still some liberal minded idiots cannot understand the ground reality. Sri Lanka has done all the possibilities what west thinks brings peace in to the country; unfortunatly each and every time Praba BS at them. Sri lanka and its people cannot stay any longer waiting as a nation a while a mass murderer like Praba dictate their day today life . This has to be end. And to all those liberal looking racist pandits find some other place to live till then. Definitly they can come back after SLARMY clear Praba and his thugs from Vanni. Because then they will have a peacefull country to pratice liberalism as much as they like.
35. Castro | December 28th, 2007 at 3:23 am
Dayan, It is foolish for you to masquerade as a leftist and talk of cold war, unipolar and multipolar power structures when ultimately you are no different from the racists masquerading as leftists–the JVP.
It is hard to believe that you have been given a position to represent Sri Lanka. It shows how far racism has gone into the life blood of this island.
36. Dayan Jayatilleka | December 28th, 2007 at 8:24 am
Dear Mr/Ms S. Ganga,
Since you mention my father, may i say that he was lucky enough not to be alive when his dear friend Dr Neelan Tiruchelvam was blown up by a Tiger suicide bomer just yards from his office. My father was also not alive when his close friend Hon Lakshman Kadirgamar, whom my father brought into the Foreign Affairs Study Group( FASG) in the early 1990s, was murdered by a Tiger sniper. My father was also not alive when his close friend Mr C. Loganthan’s son Kethesh, of whom both my parents were very fond, was shot dead on his doorstep by a Tiger assassin. Had my father been alive during these atrocious crimes i have no doubt as to what he would have felt and written. Though he correctly designated Mr Prabhakaran as the Man of the Decade in the Lanka Guardian, that was not a value judgement, any more than TIME magazine’s current listing of president Putin. What he meant was that Prabhakaran had influenced Sri Lanka’s processes in the 1980s , more than any other. In his writings, my father had already described Prabhakaran as “arguably the world’s prime exponent of pure unbridled terror…displacing from that title, Abu Nidal” who had been exclusively interviewed by my father in Baghdad in 1975 ( in my presence i might add).
37. Naga UK | December 28th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Look who is talking! This is the same person who was at Wesley College Kalmunai addressing a Tamil audience in 1980s on behalf of EPRLF of which Varatharajaperumal (another VP?) was the leader who later became the Chief Minister and raised the eelam flag! In this talk I was personally in attendance where he advocated a separate state, no less on account of the intransigent attitude of the successive Sinhala Governments. Now he is a patriot telling all and sundry what should be done and what should not be! With advisors like this Mahinda Rajapakse does not need enemies.
Primarily, I feel, it should have been “A CONFIDENTIAL NOTE TO THE “JHU and JVP” or some fundamental elements on ‘How to propagate an ethnic hate oriented government’ with copies to Mahinda Rajapakse and others like Mervyn Silva and Weerawansa. This article illustrates the quality of turncoats pretending to safeguard the virtues of the government and that of the country. They are in fact causing irreparable damage to it.
It is more than amazing that he has been lecturing innocent University Students on politics and got away with it. Dayan should have had some questions like ‘what does it hold for the future of the country?’
There is no question about how the LTTE terrorists and its leader should be dealt with. Coming from the mouth of undiplomatic diplomats of his caliber gives an entirely negative impact to the message. Terrorism is a disease of the society that should be treated appropriately. Merely treating the symptoms will only lead to aggravation of the disease. Headache could be a symptom resulting from blood pressure. Giving pain killers could be a first aid and not a treatment. Continue to give pain killers, the patient ends up with heart ailment needing radical surgery, at best. This problem has gone far beyond that hypothesis. Even surgery could be not be an option. May be “leda marunath bada sudhthai” sceenario. One cannot fathom the mentality of the people like Dayan. They are not serving anybody or any community but themselves. We are increasingly becoming full of them.
38. Dingiri | December 28th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Dayan,
Indeed, a neo-con authoring a favourable book on Catro makes you even worse than Rumsfeld. Ever heard of running with the hare while chasing with the hound? It only reveals your hypocrisy when you advocate the downfall of Batista style tyranny in Cuba while defending the same in Sri Lanka. Perhaps you authored a book on Castro specifically so as not to be called a neo-con. But your plan to keep bludgeoning the Tamils into submission rather than offer them a fair compromise cannot be seen as anything but neo-con. Intollerant, unilatteral, selfish, obnoxious, deluded and ultimately destined to catastrophic failure. If the country ends up a lawless wasteland ruled by feudal war lords at some point in the future this idealogy will be responsible for it.
What you are basically saying is that a brutal war, whatever the casualties and whatever the cost is worth it just in order to get rid of Prabakaran. You then say that MR will offer or impose a fair solution on the Tamils. If there is such a fair solution why not offer it to the Tamils now to wean them from Prabakaran? The reason you dont as you well know is that whatever solution you have to offer, if at all, is not one that the Tamils will ever want.
To save the country why can your master not offer a solution which in priciple accepts Tamils and Sinhalese as equals with equal entitlements before going after Prabakaran?
How can the majority force an entire community (or at least a large portion of it) into an integral Sri Lanka against their will? You obviously dont believe that the Sri Lankan land mass is a shared asset that belongs to everyone. If your wife wishes to leave you would you rather bludgeon her on the head and bury her in the back yard or sell the house, split the money and go your separate ways?
39. Dayan Jayatilleka | December 28th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Dear Rodhan,
Comment is free but facts are sacred. I did not oppose CBK and Anuruddha’s ” war for peace’ but strongly supported it. The pro-Tiger Eelanatham’s daily edition Vellinatham even exaggerated this and called me an “advisor” of CBK during this period. l did criticise the Operation jayasikuru as it commenced, because i foresaw its failure due to overextension. I also disagreed with CBK’s package, as excessive, but supported the draft constitution of 2000. My on the record support for war against the LTTE goes back to the Indo-Lanka accord and a 1987-8 interview given to the (Maoist) Indian Peoples Front (IPF) journal Voice of Alternatives.
40. S.Ganga | December 29th, 2007 at 8:38 am
Mr. Dayan, thanks for your comment reply to me. I too condemn the killings of Neelan, Kadir and all killings. But tell me you read only the mentioning of your father’s name in my comment. Did not you read anything else in my above comment #29.
41. sakthiF | December 29th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Hi Dayan,
Please take a day off and try to answer these central questions asked by the Tamils. I think many Tamils agree to the following comments written by participants #29, #6, #38, #1and #3.
Don’t reject these comments as unreasonably sympathetic to LTTE. They are not!
42. Kasmalam | December 29th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
The ethnic problem of Sri Lankan can not be resolved by getting rid of Prabaharan or the LTTE. Only way this issue can be resolved is by provide a viable solution to the Tamils. Until then there is not going to be peace in SL. I don’t see any Sri Lankan current or future leadership who has the willingness or guts resolve this issue.
You have to understand how LTTE and Prabaharan came into existence to resolve the problem. Until you resolve the root problem the will be NO peace is Sri Lanka.
Dayan, Good luck with your plan to kill more innocent people.
43. Dayan Jayatilleka | December 29th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Dear Naga ( UK),
I can’t quite recall the talk at Wesley College, Kalmunai in the 1980s ( it must have been the early 80s) but what’s the contradiction? Even the former military leader of the EPRLF Douglas Devananda , turned against Eelam and the LTTE. So did the entire Eelam Left ! And by the way, when Vardarajaperiumal raised the Eelam flag, it was 1990 and I had resigned from the Provincial Council.
44. Expatriate | December 29th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Mr. Jayatilleka,
You mention the murders of Thiruchelvam, Kadirgamar and Kethesh.
The LTTE’s politics of assassination is indeed abominable. But how deceitful of you to hide the involvement of the state you represent in murdering innocents like Prof. Raveendranath, Raviraj, Taraki (Sivaram, who was your friend, too) or Pararajasingham, the Trinco youths, the Muthur NGO employees and the abductions, rape and murders of hundreds of innocents?
Just this week, there was a gang rape incident in Vadamaradchi. The abject failure by the state you represent to come clean about its involvement in such atrocities, or to take any tangible actions to prosecute those involved or to make sure that such actions don’t happen again, gives legitimacy to people who say you reprersent an illegitimate state and to seek the state’s destruction is moral and necessary.
You continue to support a murderous government, and if you want to prevent proceedings against you as a war criminal, you should surrender to the International Court of Justice or Louise Arbour and come clean about how the Rajapaksa brothers and their minions are involved in abductions and murders.
You are one of those who advised Rajapaksa publicly to make use of the Karuna group in the East–and now that Karuna is in the hands of the British, any involvement of the Karuna group in abductions or murders cannot be washed away by you or Rajapaksa.
In other words, your hands are stained with the blood of Raveendranath, Raviraj, Pararajasingham and countless others. Therefore, unrelenting contempt should be reserved for you by all men and women of conscience.
45. Naga UK | December 30th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Dear Mr.Jayatileke
It does not change anything. Only goes to show the camellion principles of our leaders. Prabaharan changed his colours and accepted money from Rajapakse to bring him to the throne thus assassinating the entire Tamil community. He dug his grave from day one from that date. Now he is dearly paying for it. So will others.
46. Dayan Jayatilleka | December 30th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Dear Expatriate and like-minded others,
Let’s get to the basics:
1. The Tigers are not winning the war and are not going to win. They’ve been fighting for 25-30 years now, and whichever cut off date you choose, their performance has been abysmal. In far less time, Mao liberated the world’s most populous nation, and the Vietnamese beat the Japanese, French and the Americans! Prabhakaran has lost most of Jaffna and the East. After a quarter century or more, its a pathetic performance. The Hezbollah and the Eritreans are in a far higher league. Even if the Sri Lankan forces lose one to every one of the Tigers, they win. By this time next year, who knows, the match may be over.
2. On a small island, a small minority cannot setup an independent state against the wishes of the large majority.
3. The international community isn’t gpng to save the Tigers. The West isn’t the international community, and India hasn’t forgotten or forgiven Prabhakaran and Pottu Amman.
4. The best chance for the winning of Tamil rights and redressing of grievances, is through the ballot, capitalising on Proportional representation. There is simply no better – indeed no other – option.
5. I have no disagreement with the list of Tamil grievances until 1987. Until then the primary – though not sole – cause of Tamil suffering was Sinhala chauvinism, State and non-state. However, this inverted itself after 1987. Since then, every bit of suffering that the Tamil people have undergone – and I will not deny these – were avoidable, and were avoidable had Prabhakaran not gone to war against the IPKF in October 1987! Indeed, had Prabahakaran not murdered Rajiv in 1991, or had he not gone back to war against Premadasa in mid -1990 ( Anita Pratap writes that Premadasa was ready to hand him the Northeast on a silver platter), or had he not unilaterally recommenced hostilities against Chandrika in 1995, or had he not walked out of peace talks with Ranil Wickremesinghe in 2002 April, or had he not prevented the Tamil people from not voting at the last election, the Tamil people would not be suffering and living as displaced or refugees. All of that is the consequence of war, and war was every single time, uniltaerally re-started by the LTTE.
So, my friends and critics, if you really care abut the future of the Tamil community, the tamil people, place the blame where it is due: at the feet of Sun God Prabahakaran and the Tigers.
47. wijayapala | December 30th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Amb. Dayan,
Thank you for taking the time to respond to some of these comments. I am less interested in 1950s satyagraha and 1989 NEPC than what is going on *today.* What is going on today is that Sri Lankan governance is going into the sewer, and all fingers point to Pres. Mahinda Rajapaksa.
As the LTTE’s forces continue to diminish and they increasingly lose control over the Vanni and the Tamil population, the war will shift from conventional towards guerrilla/counterinsurgency like what is happening in Eastern Province today. In the latter sort of war, winning the hearts and minds matter far more than any ability to kick down doors and find the guerrilla. The ‘hearts and minds’ campaign in turn requires a high quality of governance to succeed. The French won the battle against the FLN but lost the Algerians hearts and minds and thus the entire war (even though the French Algerian Army comprised of Algerians outnumbered the total number of FLN cadre!).
The recent Mervyn Silva episode demonstrates the depths to which Mahinda has sunk Sri Lankan governance. We would like to hear your response please
48. Dayan Jayatilleka | December 30th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Dear Dingiri,
Your confusion worsens! You accuse me of defending a Batista style tyranny in sri Lanka. On what planet do you live, buddy? Batista, an army sergeant, siezed power in a coup! Sri Lanka is acknowledged by the entire world to have been a functioning, competitive multi party democracy throughout its history (albeit flawed by an authoritarain interlude after JR’s referendum).
And forget about my book. How many neoconservatives do you know whose essays on che guevara have been published in the official organ of the central committee of the Communist Party of Cuba? Mine was, last month.
With people as confused and intellectually impoverished as you, no wonder the tamil community is in such bad shape! I guess Prabhakaran killed off all the clever ones like Rajini, Neelan, Kadir and Kethesh.
49. Dayan Jayatilleka | December 31st, 2007 at 10:53 am
Dear Wijayapala,
Both in my official capacity as well as an academic, I am not primarily interested in domestic governance issues, however good or bad. I am interested in matters of the State, not so much the Govt or administration. The Rajapakse presidency is tackling the long-standing military challenge to the Sri Lankan State with more clarity and higher priority than its predecessors. That is why 87% of the vast majority ( including UNPers) support him on the war and the Tigers. As for good or bad domestic governance, I leave that to Sri Lanka’s democracy and the ingrained democratic culture and behavioral habits of the Sri Lankan citizen-voter, in whom i trust.
50. Expatriate | December 31st, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Mr. Jayatilleka,
We are fully aware of what crimes the LTTE has been responsible for and what the state you represent has been responsible for.
And nobody here is talking about the attainability of Eelam.
That the LTTE’s hands are blood-stained, too, is no excuse for the state to commit the most heinous crimes against innocent civilians, who are supposed to be protected by that very state; who are being advised by you to use the ballot and be part of that very state that murders them.
The state you represent cannot even come up with a measly federal solution, preferring instead to exterminate the Tamils as a people through murder, rape, forced displacement and pillage, and then to pass the blame on to the intransigence of the LTTE.
You aim for a dictated peace in which Sinhalese hegemony will remain entrenched, and for that you seek accomplices from people from within the Tamil community–Devananda, Karuna and Pillaiyan.
If you have any moral fiber left in you, come clean, Mr. Jayatilleka, about all the crimes the Rajapaksa gang and the state you represent have committed. And spare us the lecture about the attainability of Eelam or the LTTE’s crimes.
51. sakthiF | December 31st, 2007 at 2:23 pm
***In far less time, Mao liberated the world’s most populous nation, and the Vietnamese beat the Japanese, French and the Americans! Prabhakaran has lost most of Jaffna and the East. After a quarter century or more, its a pathetic performance. The Hezbollah and the Eritreans are in a far higher league.***
The LTTE is not an organisation which is as big as Mao’s or the Frenchmen’s army. It consists of 10.000 members of which 50% are children and 25% are girls who are not even trained to fight a real war (I suppose you’re aware of that!?). The Sinhala Army, however, has a formidable army with an awesome fighting capacity and consists of 300.000 (mostly adult men) who claim that they are fighting to “liberate” the Tamils.
How come that you haven’t been able to beat back your enemies (women and children) and retake the control of the areas that they had had control of for more than 25 years? If you really had the intention of “liberating” the Tamils you could have done that long ago, but since your intentions are to terrorize the Tamil population and force them to submission, you feel that you’ve got plenty of time. But nobody has!
52. Dayan Jayatilleka | December 31st, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Dear All,
Happy New Year and ‘bye for now.
Let’s return to the topic this time next year.
53. Naga UK | December 31st, 2007 at 9:17 pm
Dear Dayan
Your analysis of the problem is very very superficial and not befitting the man of your standing and you know it very well. But you are sadly not in a position to open up. The fight that is going on is mere tit-for-tat and both parties have forgotten why this started and what should be done about it. False prestige has taken the centre stage. You say that most of the miseries suffered by the Tamils could have been avoided – forgetting the fact by that time so many powerful personalities have metamorphosed holding big monetary claims on the war. The have been acting as powerful catalysts of prolonged conflict. If the war is to come to an end even after the demise of the LTTE, they should be weeded out on a priority basis.
Unfortunately we have a catch 22! The people supposed to weed out and the weeds are the same. Do we have a future? Be honest.
54. damian | January 1st, 2008 at 7:06 am
It is all come down to the point that you lost your ministerial post (in the defunct provincial government).
55. thiaga | January 1st, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Dear fellows, I think perhaps we should leave Dayan alone.
I appreciate him taking the time to reply.
Judging from his replies the more we reason out the more he hardens his stance. His mind is set that the war is the answer and he believes the end justifies the means ( HR violations and the all the rest ). We cannot get him to say anything against ( the well known facts ) to the present authoritative govt. However much we try or even if he wants to, for he will go down like Maheswaran, the latest victim of this cycle of violence.
He fails to understand that we are not speaking on behalf of LTTE. For some magical reason he believes once the LTTE is eliminated then we can go to polls and everything will be hunky dory after that. For the past 50 years or so we have had polls and any party that put forward giving Tamils rights as an election issue has lost in elections. For all we know the way things are moving there won’t bey any fair elections in the near future; poll monitors will be shunned. The stage is set for a dictatorial militaristic regime like Burma a failed state which once was prosperous not long ago.
56. Dayan Jayatilleka | January 1st, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Dear Damian,
I did say goodbye for now but I suppose a postscript is permitted. Where have you been man? I did not lose my minsterial portfolio in the Provincial Council, as the whole Sri Lankan reading public knows. Every single newspaper in Sri Lanka, ranging from the Sunday Times acros the board, in all three languages, carried my open letter of resignation to chief minister Vardarajaperumal in February-March 1989. That was a year before the Council was dissolved.
Now this time, its really bye. Gotta get back to work at the FDLs.
57. Dayan Jayatilleka | January 1st, 2008 at 7:06 pm
A little learning is indeed a dangerous thing.
Dear SakthiF, You want to play the numbers game? Ok, let’s. A few hundred guerrillas under Fidel Castro’s leadership liberated all of Cuba, an island much larger than Sri Lanka, in two years! A few hundred urban guerrillas liberated Cyprus and Aden from British colonialism. face the facts: read any foreign scholarly study of guerrilla warfare and you will see that Prabhakaran rates only insofar as the use of suicide bombers is concerned! he is not counted one of the greats of unconventional war, theory or practice. He counts as great only in the Tamil imagination. As for your query of why the sri Lankan army has taken so long, you seem to forget that when it was on the verge of victory in 1987, India intervened. That was a one off!
Dear Wijepala, don’t you know that Algeria was a French colony across the sea, while the North east is apart of the same island of Ceylon/Sri Lanka?
58. Thamilan | January 3rd, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Dayan Jayatilleke,
Look at what you are comparing. 25-30 years and a state army with sophisticated weapons/training/financial/manpower and you still have not eliminated the LTTE not to mention the intervention by the IPKF which also proved fruitless. LTTE cannot be defeated as long as the Tamils aspiration demands are not meet, if this war keeps on going Sri Lanka will crumple economically (which is evident at the moment)/ politically (uneducated presidents are the best proof). Once all these crumble where will you go for money to build your Sri Lanka? Are you going to sell all the Sinhalese women to the Arabs (poor women who are sent on the pilot project are crying to come home from Middle East)? Are you going to let the entire Sinhalese Children to be violated by tourist (at the current rate, it wont take long to replace Cambodia and Thailand combined for Child Prostitution)? Are you going to go around begging all the other countries and lick their boots for money?
Do the Sinhalese people have any shame?
Tigers on the other hand dont need to worry about money. They have endless supply of money from the successful Tamil Diaspora community. In the short term this war has made the Tamil suffer, in the long term it is the Sinhalese who will suffer regardless of who merges as victorious.
If the Tiger looses, you will have a bigger problem to worry about which are the 70 million Tamils living right above you for suppressing the right to self-determination of the Tamils.
59. Thamilan | January 3rd, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Dayan Jayatilleke,
When India intervened the Tamils were not at the verge of defeat but Sri Lanka was at the verge of disaster. Remind you at the same time you have the JVP movement taking the ground in the south. LTTE and other militant groups who are not worried about Sinhalese lives; they were about to go on rampage killing every Sinhalese that stood in the way. India saved the Sinhalese; they also had their own agenda and also they had to act to stop the rise of Tamil nationalistic feelings in Tamil Nadu when the economic embargoes were on the North and East. Again another save from the wrath of Tamil Nadu, which could have wiped the island clean if the feelings of Tamil nationalism were let to grow.
60. Dingiri | January 3rd, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Dear Dayan,
In reply to your comment..
“Your confusion worsens! You accuse me of defending a Batista style tyranny in sri Lanka. On what planet do you live, buddy? Batista, an army sergeant, siezed power in a coup! Sri Lanka is acknowledged by the entire world to have been a functioning, competitive multi party democracy throughout its history (albeit flawed by an authoritarain interlude after JR’s referendum).”
I’m afraid the confusion is all yours. The similarities in the Batista and Rajapakse govts are not in the maner they came into power but in the manner they weild it. The Batista regime was ruled by a cabal of corrupt thugs who acted with impunity and were above the law. And so too with the Rajapakse mob. Where else could an unelected thug appointed a minister by non other than the President himself, storm a TV station with two low-life characters from the underworld wanted for multiple murder, and assault the head of a state institution with impunity? Only in a Rajapakse/Batista style “democracy” where the rulers are above the law.
You go on to say..
“And forget about my book. How many neoconservatives do you know whose essays on che guevara have been published in the official organ of the central committee of the Communist Party of Cuba? Mine was, last month.”
To clear up the confusion.. One is genarally classified a neo-con owing to their ideology as amply outlined in your article. Authoring a biography of Che or Castro does not necesarily alter this fact one bit unless of course you identify with them as well. However if you do, I would have to reclassify you as a “Schizophrenic Neo-Con.”
Only a neo-con would put all their eggs in one basket and go after a villian while breaking all the china in the china shop in the process.
A more astute statesman will try to formulate a compromise that both Tamils and Sinhalese can live with and then let the Tamils deal with VP. Afterall, as you say He has violated the Tamil’s rights more than MR has. There is no point in liberating people against their will.
And by the way, you appear to have confused me for a Tamil. In fact I happen to be a Sinhalese as the name implies and not all Sinhalese have hard-line attitudes to the war.
61. Subra S.Massey | January 18th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
I read portions of your writing. How old is this gentleman.
Does he know how the current situatiion arose? It is the systemetic discrimination by the elected government of Sri lanka that fostered this hatred between the two races.
If he thinks they want to solve it, call upon LTTE to the table and talk about it. Why is that you are reluctant to talk.
Okay let talk about the post war Sri Lanka, LTTE is gone, come in the Tamils money again the disparity is going to happen. Communal violence again so do not write theories come up with a plan now and enshrine it in the contitution. I hope this gentlemen understand what I am saying, your people are always going to be underdogs, The wealth of Tamils in the world is about 1.25 Trillion.
1,250,000,000. I am businessman and we have made significant progress in some technologies unknown to rest of the world. So the Tamils are always going to be rich and properous. How will that play in the mind of the Sinhalese? Haterd again therefore my request is for Mr.. Jayatilake is to help his people to increase their self esteem and become industrious. Don’t blame the Tamils. We have become prosperous in a world where your people are working as maids and dish washers. Why don’t you address that problem of self esteem in your own community. I invite you to visit the world class businesses that are operated by Tamils from your own country.
This is the way to approach the problem inherent in your community. Get your people educated, get them to start businesses, get them to educate their children. My people when they came to Canada they worked as dish washers, but now they own own all the high class restaurants. See Mr. Jeyalitake, that is how you build your life and your community, not by degrading The Tamils. You will never, never degrade us. What else did you miss, the creativity of the Tamils, if we can create new products in the highly competitive world market we could have and would have done great things to your community. It is not in your genes to have self esteem and respect for other communities. I can write a book on this subject but you got the message. Go improve your community and leave the Tamils alone. But at the same time do not UNDERESTIMATE THE TAMILS.
62. Dingiri | January 20th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Dear Subra,
Good luck with these technologies that are known only to Tamils and not the rest of the world, but please first brush up on your 5th grade arithmatic before you go on to make further brilliant inventions. 1.25 trillion is 1,250,000,000,000 and not the numerical figure you have given. You have missed three zeros in your haste to educate us dumb Sinhalese by giving us the number verbally as well as numerically.
I may be just a stupid Sinhalese but conceit and the notion that making money is everything is often a dangerous mix in any community.
63. Subra S.Massey | January 21st, 2008 at 8:17 am
Mr.Dingiri,
Sure I am in a haste for the last 50 years to help MY country to come to grip with realities. Thank you for correcting my mistake, that is how a baby learns and that is how we all learn. This concept may be alien to you.No body is born stupid, we all can learn but one must make an effort. Didn’t I learn something from you today?
You just proved me why there is trouble in our holy land. You simply cammot open you mind and heart. what is the problem? The Tamils?
64. Dingiri | February 7th, 2008 at 5:43 am
Mr. Massey,
You really need to need to see your therapist. It is impossible to follow your train of thought from your musings. Also, you read one thing and conclude something else. Do you hear voices in your head? Do the people on the telly talk to you?
One minute you are on a supremacist ego trip saying..
“…..You people are always going to be underdogs, The wealth of Tamils in the world is about 1.25 Trillion.
1,250,000,000. I am businessman and we have made significant progress in some technologies unknown to rest of the world. So the Tamils are always going to be rich and properous. How will that play in the mind of the Sinhalese?….”
Next minute you are eating humble pie and full of self riteous humility.
You claim I am symptomatic of the trouble in our “holy land” and I havent opened my heart. That I think Tamils are the problem.
Well, go a little further up and tell me where in my exchange with Dayan or yourself I have suggested this?
If I have an agenda in this forum it is to counter the supremacists and jingoists on both sides and try to make people see that it is better to concede what is fair to the other side than to keep fighting for what is not rightly yours.
Leave a Comment
Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed