Open Letter to Mr. Gotabhaya Rajapaksa

- Defence Secretary,

Government of Sri Lanka Colombo, Sri Lanka

Sir:
The word that is going around is that* “Enough is Enough. It is now clear to everyone that all these terrorist activities are being planned and executed by the LTTE Tamil Tiger terrorists living in lodges in Colombo. Therefore, the Sri Lanka Government should take immediate actions to inspect all these lodges and arrest suspected personnel.”*

* *Last June when 301 Tamils of a population of 125,036 Tamils in Colombo were removed from lodgings and bussed North, as it had been suspected for months that these lodgings were cocoons for Tamil Tiger bomber-assassins, there was a big hue and cry by Human Rights advocates, local and foreign, saying that it was ‘ethnic cleansing’. They obviously did not have an inkling of what ‘ethnic cleansing’ was all about. Perhaps they may want to be honest with themselves and revisit incidents of ‘ethnic cleansing’ around the world before labeling the Sri Lankan government’s alleged act of ‘ethnic cleansing’ with the 301 Tamils sent north.
Here is what ‘ethnic cleansing’ is all about, and not the 301 Tamils bussed north which the bleeding-hearts Human Rights activists would like us to believe.

In 1990 when the Tamil Tigers wanted 100,000 Muslims in the North of Sri Lanka to get out within 24 hours, leaving their belongings and treasured valuables at the nearest mosque, that was a text book example of ‘ethnic cleansing’ /par excellance./ Prabhakaran made Idi Amin look like an angel as Amin had a heart to give the Asians in Uganda three months to leave the country and not 24 hours, the deadline being November 9^th , 1972. And that was “ethnic cleansing”. When in August 1977, the 400 Sinhalese undergraduates and lecturers were stoned and chased out from the Jaffna campus and the peninsula itself, that was ‘ethnic cleansing’. I hope these bleeding-heart human rights activists now got a real understanding of what ‘ethnic cleansing’ is all about.

With that pressure from busy-bodies of Human Rights groups, Sir, your government let loose the 301 Tamils and they took a bee-line back to the Colombo lodgings, terrorists and all.
But what is painful is that these lodgings have been recognized to be the spawning grounds for the likes of, Minister Douglas Devananda’s attempted suicide bomber who killed herself and one other and injured two others critically. Then the Nugegoda market place bombing which killed 19 and injured 37, and now the Slave Island bombing which has killed four and injured 28.
So these bleeding-heart human rights advocates won the day with a shot in the arm, when the Supreme Court brought down an interim order in response to a petition filed by the Centre for Policy to stop removing these Tamils from suspected bomb making lodgings. But, then, there hasn’t been one single voice of reason screaming that there have been human rights violations by the Tamil Tigers abusing the right to life by snuffing out the breaths of the unfortunate innocent victims who were killed by these terrorists assassins by detonating their planted bombs. The question that goes begging is who has the democratic rights –is it the Tamil Tiger terrorists who are allowed to go about killing with impunity or is it the innocent civilians who have a right to life, and are killed by these Tamil terrorists for no reason at all? That is indeed the million dollar question.

Another question that needs to be answered is, was the rounding up of Colombo’s transient lodgers who were all Tamils from the North, to be checked out by the law enforcing authorities a fair price to pay, because some among them would, very likely go out and plant a bomb to kill scores of innocent civilians. Is the government abdicating its responsibility to guard the right to life of its subjects by giving into these bleeding-heart human rights activists with knee-jerk reactions?

But what is needed here is to keep the eye on the ball. The fact is that Sri Lanka is at war, and we’ve got to make sure that we do not harbour Tamil Tigers, mousing-up with tripping wires, detonators, exploding chemicals, gunny bags filled with millions of lead pellets and suicide body packs, and later for them to go out and plant the assembled bombs to kill hundreds of people.
If there was one suicide bomber among the 301 Tamils bussed back to the north only to be kept away from Colombo, then it would have been a substantial winning for the government even though having been lambasted by Human Rights critics, as the Devananda, Nugegoda and Slave Island bombings would have never happened. At that point Sri Lanka could have told these bleeding-heart human rights activists, to go fly a kite as the government believes that safeguarding the right to life of her subjects overrides sending back the Tamils to where they came for the security of her peoples.

Let them know that protecting human rights is no monopoly of theirs as it also happens to be Sri Lanka’s business, and that is protecting the right to life of those that the Tamil Tigers want to snuff out. Especially when Prabhakaran expects his Tamil Tiger Colombo lodgers sent on a mission to plant a bomb on a busy street in Colombo by hook or by crook and detonate it.
Sir, your Government does have a choice. If you all are not allowed by Human Rights activists to sieve out these assassins from the private lodgings as one would use a pest controller to get rid of vermin, then for God’s sake have these underground bomb assembling lodgings closed for good. Remember, the government has a role to play in this feud. To keep Law and Order as well as guarding the right to life of its citizens, and the latter would certainly override removing the transient Tamils from these suspicious lodgings. There is no reason to hesitate. Just, do it.

Asoka Weerasinghe

OttawaCanada