Sri Lanka’s Pledge
22 September 2009
The world Tamil community and human rights groups are suspicious of the new Sri Lankan pledge to resettle about 280,000 civilians with over 60,000 children within this year, citing that this could be another attempt by the authorities to satisfy IMF loan conditions and European Union.
The notable difference between the Swat Valley relocation and the Sri Lankan crisis is the level of participation of international organisations which have expertise on the projects of similar nature.
In Sri Lanka, the conduct of war and the incidents following the war were carried out in complete media blackout, and aid agencies were expelled. The areas from where the civilians were herded during the two-year war is said to be going through a major change, demographically.
In Kilinochchi district
alone, the buildings of cultural importance to Tamils have been demolished and replaced by military complexes.
Sri Lanka has been denying every human abuse allegation insisting that no civilians were killed by its security forces. It will be interesting to see if the visiting UN political chief, Lynn Pascoe will be able to match the high sophistication of the Sri Lankan authorities to achieve anything more
than just pledges.
The writer tries to compare the Swat valley situation to the crisis in the north of Sri Lanka, conveniently forgetting the fact that most of the areas in the north of Sri Lanka are still laden with land mines, booby traps, IED etc, sowed by the terrorist who were trying desperately to stop the advancing Sri Lankan troops and to bar the Tamils held captive by them as a human shield leaving those areas.
Unless the areas are clear and declared safe, no sane government would allow innocent people to resettle on those lands.
Writer was further bitter that not much international organizations’ participation in those resettling and clearing areas, which have expertise on projects of similar nature.
To be very frank that many Sri Lankans do not trust those so-called international experts knowing well what they did when the terrorist were holding certain parts of the country north of the country.
All what those experts did were to provide monetary and emotional support to a group of terrorists and supply international medias with wrong information purposely to prolong the war as well as to discredit a democratically elected government.
So many international NGOs had been working in those areas for the last three decades but yet they could not build a single school, hospital, play ground in those areas.
All they did manage to build were luxury mansions and bunkers for terror group’s elite leaders and light aircraft and air strips to enable terrorist to terrorized innocent civilians in other parts of the country too.
Finally the writer cries about buildings of cultural importance to Tamils are being replaced by military complexes in Kilinochchi district.
It is sad to note that when the terrorist were running those areas, they have destroyed numerous Sinhala Buddhist archaeological sites and expelled non Tamils from those areas to create a hundred percent Tamil areas thus changing the demography existed before, but no international community crying foul now for every action taken by the government, never ever dared to open their mouths in protest then.
If someone is interested to know the true demography existed before the fishermen turned smugglers turned terrorists started wagging their tails and totting their gun, I recommend them to see the 1971 census records to enlighten them on those issues.
Finally, I am as confused as anybody else of the claims of culturally important buildings they have in that country when those people who first came to Sri Lanka a few centuries ago were in fact looking for horses to trade than anything else.
They may have their cultural heritages in the land from where they first came to and definitely not in that land.
Even the much feared and dreaded word “Eelam” in Tamil means the “land of the Sinhala” and not anything else.
Kithsiri Sasanka De Silva from Oman.
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