Please permit me to reply S. Gardiarachchi’s letter in ‘The Sunday Times’ of February15. It seems to me that the writer fails to recognize a true fanatic before saying, “Let’s not follow fanatics.” A fanatic is a person filled with excessive and unreasoning enthusiasm regarding a religion, a race or a particular cult. Such personages were unknown in our far-famed history, until the appearance of Prabhakaran who is ideologically akin to Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany or to Benito Mussolini of Fascist Italy.
Can any of our trade union leaders be called fanatics when they agitate for reasonable wages, allowances and other facilities for workers? Isn’t it their privilege to struggle for the legitimate rights of workers? If every attempt fails they resort to strikes - which indeed is the last democratic weapon. They only ask for justice and fair play.
The Nurses Union calls out strikes from time to time which seems to me a dire necessity. If one were to probe into the root cause of such strikes by nurses or any other Union, one could discover the truth. Strikes are a reaction to the diabolical false promises made on election platforms by irresponsible politicians. I do agree that strikes cause much hardships to the general public. Nevertheless it is an eye-opener to those in power.
Nursing is a noble profession. Lord Buddha extolled it by saying, “Ye that nurseth the sick nurseth me”. Nurses of our National Hospitals do an enormous service. They ought to be treated in a manner befitting their contribution to the nation at this crucial hour when we are at war. Sad to say, leave alone many of their grievances, even that material to tailor their uniforms are not supplied promptly. When nurses are treated so shabbily it is a true patriot and not a fanatic that shall fight for their cause.
Mr. Gardiarachchi seems to conclude that if any person were to remind the President of a tradition hitherto followed at all important state functions, such a person is fanatic. This is ridiculous. For no valid reason did the President break with tradition in speaking only in English on the occasion of the country’s Golden Jubilee of independence. Whatever said and done, after half a century of independence, the Head of State should have thought it fit to address the citizens in their mother tongue. I think there is something deeper in this. It is typical of a microscopic minority of our English-speaking affluent society to shun Sinhala and give the pride of place to English. Unfortunately is seems that the President too had been led astray. Otherwise she would have followed her honourable father’s footsteps. It will be appreciated if she followed China on such national ceremonials. After all China is her beloved mother’s most friendly country. Nothing but Chinese was spoken by the President of China Jiang Zemin on 30th June last year in the presence of Prince of Wales, and British Premier Tony Blair at the colourful ceremony held to hand over Hong Kong to China. Sri Nehru, one of the greatest statesmen of this century visited Sri Lanka a few decades ago. Addressing a mammoth gathering in Colombo, he spoke a few words in Hindi. He excused himself for not being able to speak Sinhala and rather reluctantly spoke refined English. Mr. Gardiarachchi’s contention is that the State Language Bill in 1956 “has brought about the present deadly plight”. This is sheer partiality. Along with it a Reasonable Use of Tamil Bill was also passed. Universities switched on to Sinhala and Tamil media. English, since then was a compulsory second language. The decline of our English knowledge was due to the faulty educational system.
It was with great horror I read the story in The Sunday Times about the attack on Mr. Athas and the blatant violation of privacy accorded to every citizen by the Constitution. Every civilized person on this earth will condemn this dastardly act. This clearly indicates that some influential person somewhere got tremendously upset by Mr.Athas’s writing.
Mr. Athas is one of the few investigative journalists we have been gifted with. His writings are based on careful analysis of the facts. It should provide valuable resources to our security forces, specially the top brass if they care to read the column. Those who specially believe that guns are superior to the human brain are defeated even before they start the battle in any war. This may be the reason our leaders make one blunder after the other and terrorists score one hit after the other in the city and in jungles as well.
While condeming the attack, I request Mr. Athas to install a surveillance camera in his house so that it could capture those who enter his house in case another attack takes place. I would like to launch a fund-raising campaign for this purpose if Mr. Athas permits me to do so in the name of media freedom. At the same time I would like to urge every law abiding citizen to rally behind the media in its cause of moulding a just and free and an informed society.
Recently I came across a letter to the editor from a reader in New York who took umbrage at our editorial condemning the recent terrorist bomb attack on a sacred Buddhist place of worship in Sri Lanka.
Reader M. Pathmakumar in a letter to the ‘Hong Kong Standard’ says we have been outraged at the attack on the Dalada Maligawa, known to the world as the “Temple of the Tooth” where a highly venerated Tooth Relic of the Buddha is preserved, in which some 16 persons died.
His complaint is that we were not similarly outraged when a church in Jaffna, the heartland of the minority Tamils, some of whom are engaged in a secessionist struggle against the Sri Lanka Government, was bombed. He asks why.
Mr. Pathmakumar’s choice of words could very well lead readers not particularly acquainted with the chronology of tragic events that have marked Sri Lanka’s recent history to be led into comparing the two incidents.
Whether this was an adroit attempt to twist the facts and thereby condemn us to purgatory or not, I don’t know. But the truth is that it could easily mislead readers into believing that we have been partial in our assessment of two events separated by three years or so.
If the intention was to mislead, then it is mischievous and detracts from Mr. Pathmakumar’s seemingly measured call for a balanced approach.
He refers to the Navaly Church bombing in the same breath as the bomb attack on the Temple of the Tooth. But the common word “bomb” which links the two incidents hides a fundamental difference between what happened in Navaly and in Kandy.
Therein lies the attempt, deliberate or otherwise, to connect the two and confuse readers with his criticism of our editorial.
The Navaly Church was bombed from the air. The pilot missed his target and the bombs fell mostly on the church compound, causing death and destruction. It was a tragic occurrence. No person with a conscience would condone such deaths, but unfortunately death is an inevitable by-product of war.
Mr. Pathmakumar is surely aware that bombing runs from the air are not always accurate, that in the history of war there have been numerous such errors where civilian installations were hit instead of the intended military targets.
This is not to minimise the tragedy but to underline the fact that accidents do occur. At the same time, it is just as well to point out that the Tamil Tigers who are pursuing the separatist war have often used religious places and school premises to store weapons and fuel and have often placed civilians between themselves and the army or in other ways exposed non-combatants to the dangers of war.
Such instances have been well documented even by the Jaffna University Human Rights Group, consisting largely of Tamils, who have been better placed than most to form such judgements.
The attack on the Temple of the Tooth was entirely different. It was a premeditated and surreptitious attack on a sacred place, away from the theatre of war by a suicide squad, while the aerial bombing of the Navaly Church could well be a military accident.
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