On Europe day this week, they were all there. The living glitterati of peace, in cluding Norwegian Ambassador Jon Westborg, state spokesman Minister G. L. Peiris, the Indian Ambassador Gopal Gandhi, sundry NGO activists- the slithering types and other types - and peace promoters from civil society.

They should have heard what the University Teachers for Human Rights have to say about some of them. In a report released just yesterday in Jaffna, the UTHR says : "Nothing was to be left to chance. At a public rally in London, the home of the 'Mother of Parliaments', (Anton) Balasingham warned TNA members on the eve of the elections. They were told that should they get other ideas after being elected, they may have to be 'garlanded' by LTTE suicide teams. The West that lectures us endlessly on democracy, human rights and good governance, graciously sent us Balasingham on a special flight with a Norwegian escort, to determine the future of a 'liberated' Tamil community.

So here is the bottom line, courtesy of the West. The LTTE is to be rewarded with the fait accompli it achieved through terror and murder. The Tamils will enjoy puppet democracy with Big Brother pulling the strings. To give one example of how the people are being represented, the press recently questioned the TULF MP in Batticaloa about child conscription. The MP claimed that he had received no reports. However, a senior TULF official in Colombo confided that this was taking place on such a huge scale that people in Batticaloa are pleading with them to put a stop to it.''

The report comes from Jaffna. It is first hand. It is not a report cooked up by "PA peace-obstructionists'' in the South, or "chauvinists'' of the Sihala Urumaya.
These are the University Teachers of Jaffna - and they blast this "totalitarian peace'' to smithereens, because they see, first hand, the effects of this peace on the people of the North and the East.

But yet, the South is deliriously pacifist. The Sri Lankan government is failing to protect its own civilians in the North and the East, for fear of upsetting the LTTE's apparent desire for peace, as the UTHR report bluntly puts it. The UTHR report further states: "What we have now is a very misleading MoU widely observed in the breach, delivering far less than it pretends to, while the Government and the Norwegians give a glowing picture of the peace process. If it is admitted that the kinds of violations presented in this report are taking place unchecked, one needs to be very skeptical about the kind of peace at the end of the process, if indeed there will be peace. The people thus find themselves utterly powerless. They can see no one who would stand up for them. The message to them is, "You are being sold, if you want to survive, surrender!" The effect on the civilian population is generally very devious. Those looking at the surface could argue that there is nothing fatally wrong.''

So, while that's the ground situation, there are cocktails at the Hilton, where the Norwegians, the Swedish from the side, G. L. Peiris from the government, and a few other Ministers to boot, with their ever-loving bevy of National Peace Council admirers and other NGO fraudsters and sundry crooks, break bread and enjoy cocktails!

Well to them, let us give this one message, coming from Tamil academics and intellectuals in Jaffna. Which is (repeat): "So here is the bottom line, courtesy of the West. The LTTE is to be rewarded with the fait accompli it achieved through terror and murder. The Tamils will enjoy puppet democracy with Big Brother pulling the strings.''

But yet, the South has almost resigned to an unjust peace. "An unjust peace is better than war,'' they say, quoting Cicero light-years out of context. The South is therefore seen to be utterly supine and defeated - so utterly without backbone that there seems to be a willingness to settle for an "unjust peace,'' when, technically at least, a just peace could be aimed for, even via this SAME process of negotiations and détente.

But the Southern conspiracy - count the Norwegian boys and the NGO boys and the Lanka 1st boys in - is to say "look, there is no alternative to this unjust peace. Anyone saying otherwise is a chauvinist at best, and a fanatic at worst.'' That's ludicrously devious, because there is no call for a just peace via this same peace process. Anybody who says "we want a just peace as opposed to a totalitarian one'' through this same Wickremesinghe initiated peace process, is automatically in the doghouse. Result: Either we have war, or we have an unjust peace. Anybody, who is therefore against this unjust peace, is a war-monger and a miserable hawk!
Well, if the South needs anything to snap out of this demeaning conspiracy ( …if it is not conspiratorial outright , it is definitely conspiratorial by default… ) it is the report of the UTHR. This column has been consistently pointing out that the peace process is flawed - that there are gaping holes, and a wholesale loss of integrity, supported by transparently corrupt NGO operatives.

By taking up that position, this columnist who was supportive of a change of government in the South, and supportive initially of this same peace process, ran the risk of being labelled a "Sinhala chauvinist'' or a "miserable hawk.'' Now comes the UTHR report. It supports everything that this columnist (and of course many others) have pointed out about the peace that is near-fatally flawed. The UTHR report is comprehensive, and is a must-read for anyone who has any doubts about the peace that's said to be dawning in the beaten terrain of the North and the East.

One thing about the UTHR report is that it is heavily documented. The total number of children recruited, after the signing of the MoU (22.2.02), from a single school in a Trincomalee suburb - Chelvanayakapuram High School - is placed at well over 100, for instance. The report adds: "The Norwegians are trying to play two crucial roles, namely, facilitation/mediation and monitoring. Undertaking the combined responsibility has affected their monitoring function. The present monitoring committees embody locals nominated by the Government and the LTTE. This shows a lack of understanding of political realities in the North-East. The Government's Tamil nominees are also subject to control by the LTTE and of necessity have limited independence. The cases presented below in this report are a tiny fraction of similar incidents taking place in the North-East.''

But yet, there can be if not a chance, a least a call for a "just and equitable peace'' to be arrived at through this same process of negotiations. For which, for a start, the Norwegians, if they want to be seen as impartial by all right thinking people in the North and the East, have to self-effacingly re-define their role in the peace process. The Norwegians are being silly by being pugnacious. They are not doing their own cause as a third party any good. In the face of such glaring evidence (read the whole UTHR report Westborg and Furuhovde) the Norwegians have to take a bow - retreat - and re-define how this whole peace thing is to be handled. The second is that a lot of corrupt NGO supporters of this peace process need to be exposed for their duplicity and for their self-aggrandizing corruptibility. They give peace - any kind of peace - a bad name.

Three, for a just peace, the LTTE needs to be told where to get off. There is no fait accompli - the LTTE needs to get that message clear. All allegations of army atrocities committed previously in the East should be probed as suggested by the UTHR. Peace must be seen as primarily involving the long suffering people of the North and the East. Those who criticize the peace, apart from obvious political provocateurs, should be seen as people who are right thinking and want the right thing done. (Such as the UTHR academics.) Set down those tequilas and the Schnapps ye Norwegians - and get down to making a real just and equitable peace - if the Norwegians and NGO's together (not to mention dazed Sinhala elites) can ever envisage such a thing as a "just peace'', that is.

Back to Top

Back to Columns

Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Webmaster