While the Libyan rebels are being assisted by a collective of western governments to the hilt in unleashing hell on enemy positions in their hunt for a dictator on the run regardless of the staggering human cost, Sri Lanka, which eliminated the military muscle of a bloodthirsty terrorist outfit banned in over 32 countries, is being persecuted instead of being praised and helped with its reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts.
When Sri Lanka’s war on terror reached its closing stages in 2009, Britain and France sent posthaste their foreign ministers, David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner, respectively, to stop military operations purportedly on humanitarian grounds. But, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy rushed to Tripoli the other day to pledge solidarity with the Libyan rebels. They never so much as expressed concern about the humanitarian crisis in that country!
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka has sought to counter the on-going malicious propaganda campaign against its military and political leaders by engaging its detractors in what may be called a diplomatic offensive. A delegation of US-based Sri Lankan diplomats including Ambassadors Dr. Palitha Kohona and Maj. Gen. Shavendra Silva has met some Human Rights Watch bigwigs recently. Sri Lankan envoys have pointed out, inter alia, the lopsided nature of the on-going campaign for a war crimes probe and stressed the fact that though the LTTE military arm is no more, those who aided and abetted its terror campaign are at large in the western world and they should be dealt with.
Heinous crimes the LTTE committed for over two and a half decades against civilians are only too well known and it is those atrocities, besides narcotics trade, gun running and money laundering, that compelled the US, the EU (especially the UK), Canada and many other countries to ban the outfit as a foreign terrorist organisation. Even the UN named and shamed the LTTE for crimes against children.
The LTTE’s military leaders may be long dead but their confederates must be held answerable for those barbaric crimes, as the Sri Lankan diplomats have cogently argued. Vishvanathan Rudrakumaran actively involved in LTTE activities, is a US citizen. He champions LTTE’s cause openly with impunity. The late Anton Balasingham’s wife, Adele, believed to have served at Prabhakaran’s ‘suicide bomb factory’, where hundreds of men, women and children were brainwashed and turned into ‘children of fire’ or human bombs, has found sanctuary in Britain. Thousands of other terror backers who made Prabhakaran’s terrorist war possible by raising funds for lethal weapons and explosives continue to operate freely in western capitals hobnobbing with senior politicians and manipulating political institutions there.
Therefore, the US and the UK, being two countries campaigning hard for a probe into unsubstantiated allegations of war crimes against the Sri Lankan military ought to take action against the LTTE activists, especially the likes of Adele, as there is prima facie evidence of war crimes against them. Let Washington and London prove their bona fides by arresting the LTTE backers and pressing war crimes charges against them.
Will AI, HRW etc call for the arrest of terror backers who assisted the LTTE in committing war crimes? They have welcomed the UNSG’s advisory panel report, haven’t they? It contains ‘credible evidence’ of the LTTE’s war crimes. So, before asking the Sri Lankan government to act on what is stated in that report, they have to do so themselves.
Editorial
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