Judges in the buff

Saturday 27th March, 2021

The Opposition would have the public believe that the UNHRC resolution against Sri Lanka could have been avoided if the government had cared to do so. Its MPs sounded like a group of apologists for the western bloc, when they waxed eloquent, in Parliament, on the UNHRC decision, the other day. There was absolutely no way the government could prevent hostile actions of the UNHRC, which is acting at the behest of the western powers bent on punishing the SLPP leaders and the war-time military personnel for defeating terrorism and ending the armed conflict, which the US and its allies used as an excuse for their involvement here to further their geo-strategic interests. However, there are others who could have obviated the need for the UNHRC resolution at issue.

No need for the UNHRC resolution against Sri Lanka would have arisen if the US, the UK and their hangers-on had made LTTE eschew violence and agree to a political solution, when they acted as the self-appointed ‘Co-chairs’ of a peace process which Sri Lanka was forced to enter into, in the early noughties. If they had cared to tame the LTTE, the Eelam War IV could have been prevented. Instead, they gave kid-glove treatment to the LTTE in spite of its blatant truce violations and acts of terrorism and went so far as to tie the implementation of a USD 4.5 billion aid pledge to the progress to be made in ‘peace talks’ between Sri Lanka and the LTTE. Thus, the US- led forces helped promote LTTE terrorism by tying the hands of Sri Lanka.

Likewise, if India had desisted from creating the LTTE to settle scores with Sri Lanka, or disarmed the outfit in keeping with the Indo-Lanka Accord, in the late 1980s, tens of thousands of lives could have been saved, and there would have been no need for UN involvement here. It, however, acted wisely later by helping Sri Lanka in more ways than one during the final Eelam War. Having done so, it has been supporting the UNHRC witch-hunt against those who neutralised the LTTE!

Let it be repeated that the leaders of the present dispensation are facing UNHRC hostility because they dared defeat terrorism and, thereby, brought to an end massacres, political assassinations, child abductions, extortion and gun-running. They may be blamed for many things including corruption, abuse of power, suppressing democratic dissent, nepotism, environmental destruction, etc., but the fact remains that they and the Sri Lankan military deserve praise for having eradicated LTTE terrorism and making all Sri Lankans, especially children, safe.

Time was when husbands and wives did not travel together lest their children should be orphaned in case of terror attacks on buses and trains. Parents were scared of sending their children to school in the North and the East as the LTTE abducted them and turned them into cannon fodder. The TNA leaders are now in a position to champion democracy because the LTTE has been defeated. While Prabhakaran was alive, they chose to lick his boots instead of fighting for democracy. Some of them are commemorating the dead LTTE leaders who gave them doormat treatment!

The end of Sri Lanka’s war has benefited everyone except the economic refugees masquerading as war victims, arms dealers, and the western powers.

There was only one way the present-day leaders could have prevented hostile UNHRC action against Sri Lanka; if they had emulated their predecessors and continued with the flawed ceasefire with the LTTE, during the previous Rajapaksa government, instead of defeating terrorism, there would have been no trouble for them or the Sri Lankan military, in Geneva, but nobody except LTTE backers would have been safe in this country, and thousands of more lives would have been lost.

Meanwhile, the Geneva resolution at issue is an indictment of the Opposition as well. The UNHRC has frowned on the postponement of the Provincial Council elections. The SJB leaders, as powerful Cabinet ministers in the yahapalana government, were responsible for manipulating the legislative process to postpone the PC elections indefinitely for fear of losing them. Let the UNHRC be informed that the blame for what has befallen the PCs in the Northern and Eastern Provinces as well as in other parts of the country should be apportioned to the TNA, which, together with the JVP, helped the yahapalana government postpone the PC polls, in the most despicable manner, while promoting devolution of power.

The US, the UK, the EU and India stand accused of having helped engineer the 2015 regime change here, and, therefore, they cannot absolve themselves of the blame for what the yahapalana government did or did not do. So, the question is whether they have any moral right to make an issue of the postponement of the PC polls, having remained silent thereon while their puppets were in power here.