As we grieve this 11th for the attack on an American icon, we must remember our own important national icons attacked in a similar dastardly manner. On 14th May 1985, Tigers machine gunned monks, nuns and pilgrims at the Sri Maha Bodhi. On 25th January 1998, a Tiger suicide cadre drove an explosive truck into the Dalada Maligawa. Both shrines, potent symbols, have histories thousands of years old.

The Dalada is to us what the Vatican is to Catholics and Mecca to Muslims. Being the national palladium it has been for centuries the prime symbol of our sovereignty. The sacred Bo tree commemorates the era Buddhism was introduced. These are sites which the British and Dutch colonizers dared not touch, although the Portuguese barbarians attempted acts of violence on the Dalada, just as they devastated other Buddhist shrines. So attacks on them were our September 11th. The two "September 11th" - ours and theirs - contrast in many other ways.

The sensational story two weeks ago was the training films of Al Quaeda shown by CNN. In our case, recruiting films of the LTTE including footage of key Tiger attacks on Elephant Pass and the Airport are openly sold. When Ranil Wickremesinghe addressed his members a few days ago at Trincomalee, a special stall was selling them. Americans have arrested large numbers of terrorist suspects and are holding them incommunicado. But LTTE suspects, even those who attacked our national shrines, are being released. A top Tiger was secretly treated in a Colombo hospital by the government recently. In the US, a "Patriot Act" was passed which makes a large number of anti-national acts a crime. If it was the US, many acts of the present government and its allies in the foreign funded NGO opinion sector would be liable for legal action. Many would have been arrested.

America has increased her surveillance and intelligence; we do the opposite. A recent directive has stopped serious data gathering in the North East. Defence Minister Tilak Marapana turns a blind eye to arms smuggling. The Central Bank bows to IMF diktat but ignores the illegal Tiger banks. The US is monitoring pro-terrorist money. Here, new laws welcome Tiger money. Denying obvious evidence, Finance Minister K.N. Choksy says no Tiger taxes are being levied.

Pursuing their self interests, the US and India are today building a strategic partnership. Tamil separatism arose in a nexus between South Indian and Jaffna elites. Today South Indian Tamils have become major enemies of the Tigers. The Indian central government demands Prabhakaran's head.

The US disassembled the dictatorial regime in Afghanistan, ours embraces the LTTE dictatorship and helps extend its authoritarianism to all organs in the North and East.

And what of the Muslims. Shipping Minister Rauff Hakeem went on a pilgrimage to London to meet Balasingham; a man whose head would have been demanded by any self respecting government.

Tigers by all accounts have lost the war as any visitor to their claimed areas and examining their casualty figures would realize. They only have the ability to launch suicide attacks - the very type the Americans are taking great precautions against. No wonder seeing our mentality of unnecessary surrender, a surprised former American Ambassador Spain, told a reporter "We [meaning Americans] still blame the Japanese, but ironically in Sri Lanka , the people do not blame India" who armed the separatists and then made an incursion into the country.

It is not the Tigers who are frightened of September 11th but the government. They have given into the many demands that the Tigers could never win in battle. In Tiger parlance: a weak Premier of the South has unnecessarily surrendered to a militarily weak Premier of the North.

Back to Top

Back to Columns

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