The Island and the Daily Mirror of Thursday, 23rd September carried the same report of President Kumaratunga’s press conference at UN HQs - not surprising, because they draw on the same referral source of a Presidential Secretariat press release. The report attributes some extraordinary statements to her, which I set down below in some meaningful sequence.
Calling terrorism "The most dehumanizing and most horrendous phenomenon of our times", she nonetheless says that in the world’s fight against terrorism, the use of force and violence by a state should be the last resort.
Answering a journalist’s question, she had said her Government believes that the way to resolve conflict is through negotiation and dialogue. "Even if the expression of the conflict may take the most horrendous terrorists form, we believe that there are justified reasons for it". She had then argued that legitimate grievances must be considered apart from the acts of violence.
There have been two constant and distinctive features of her public rhetoric ever since that fateful autumn of 1994. On one hand, a mixture in varying degree and proportion of inaccuracies/falsehoods/misrepresentations adding up to incoherence, and on the other, begging many more questions than the points made by her. So again, let me sort this out for you as succinctly as possible.
The LTTE have been widely labelled and prescribed abroad, as a terrorists organization. The President has herself often publicly called them the most ruthless of their kind. The LTTE’s record of massacres of innocent Sinhalese and Muslim civilians (men, women, children and infants), their murders of political rivals and dissenters from Prabhakaran’s fascist rule, the unconscionable killing of Sinhalese and Muslims worshipping at their respective shrines/temples/mosques, and the assassinations of Sinhalese as well as Tamil politicians of the democratic mainstream in the country have been documented in full and gruesome detail, both in our print media and in books - notably SL Gunasekara’s trilogy about Tiger terrorism.
Yet, the President would have the world believe that the LTTE have been forced against their better nature and impliedly perhaps due to state violence and armed force, into engaging in these brutalities because of legitimate grievances which constitute justifiable reason. (I don’t suppose that even she would expect any politically literate and seriously engaged voter-citizen here to swallow this portion of witches’ brew?) So, now for the question/s which these statements beg, and on intellectual bended knee to boot.
i) If the situation is as her statements suggest, namely, that she stands ready willing and able to enter upon dialogue and negotiation with an organization which is moved by the justifiable cause of legitimate grievances, what was the point of that Kadirgamar world tour at tremendous expense to the exchequer, undertaken around 1995-99, canvassing the view that the LTTE was such a terrorist organization as should be proscribed by all those countries visited, much of it at a time when even his own leader had not seen fit to proscribe them here? (now ‘All Countries Seen’ Hameed must have envied Kadirgamar’s luck, watching all that First Class jetting around the globe from his present abode.)
ii) Then again, if the situation is indeed as described by her, are we witnessing tne launching of a second Kadirgamar world tour, this time to ask the USA, UK et al. all who have proscribed the LTTE kindly to lift that proscription, because she (the President) is keenly waiting to commence dialogue and negotiation with the said LTTE on the basis of their legitimate and justifiable grievances?
iii) To expand that thought, is there a hint here of a possible horse-deal, deal, whereby the President will canvass the lifting of present prescriptions of the LTTE abroad, for the quid pro quo of an immediate commencement of talks, not just about the LTTE’s ISGA but also about the Peace Secretariat’s IA as well?
Let me shift the focus now, to another implication of the "residents press conference remarks, and the question/s which that one begs.
She is reported to have said that in the world’s fight against terrorism, the use of force and violence by a state should be the last resort. We here have for long now faced a terrorist-military challenge to the writ of the sovereign and united Sri Lankan state from the LTTE, seeking to carve out a separate fascist-terroristic Tamil state in our North and East. We are not in some esoteric ‘War on Terror’; we are engaged in protecting the sovereign unity and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka, against intended and self- proclaimed Tamil Eelam. So, to hold out the begging-bowl again:
i) Does the President mean, by her use of the phrase "the use of force and violence by a state should be the last resort", that she wishes to see (and remember, she is the Commander-in-chief of our Armed Forces, many of whose senior officers were only too happy during the period 1995-2000 to ‘toe the line'. Whilst Rhinestone General Ratwatte, acting in the name of that C-in-C, led us to huge military defeat our Armed forces metaphorically at least confined to barracks, until the LTTE actually attack us?
ii) Pursuing that line of thought, are we then having here, a hint of the commencement of the dismantling of High Security Zone, and other processes of ‘dropping one’s guard’, designed to instil confidence in the LTTE, during re-commenced talks about ISGA and IA, or whatever else the Peace Secretariat may come up with?
The import of all of this suits Ranil Wickremasinghe very nicely. So, when his Spin-doctor GL Peiris does his little song and dance about the ‘double-talk’ of the two texts of the President’s UNGA Address, he is seeking to divert attention - a.k.a. floating red herrings. The real double-talk has to be looked for in the President’s unscripted remark at that UN/HQ press conference. If she played true to form, we should be having a correction/clarification quite soon, from her Secretariat, denying both contents and import of those news reports mentioned.
Moral: let’s watch the play of the game: hang the cheer-squads.
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