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Is it to erase what remains of Tamils?

As this Government has failed to make peace moves constructively the aid and assistance extended to us by peace loving friendly nations have slipped out of hand without reaching our deserving mouths. Adding to the held up aids is the state of economy today. Due to the state leadership lacking vision, efficiency, and clarity in respect of economic policy the country's economy is in an unprecedented miserable state. Cost of living is soaring to heights a large majority cannot reach and creating problems even for those of the higher strata. In this context it is shocking to note the requisition the military head places before the state head. This naturally arouses suspicion in the minds of the people as to what the military arm is bent on.

It was at the national Security Council meeting last week this request was made by the head of the military command. This requisition is entirely of weaponry including number of high powered tanks. This shocked even those present at the Security Council meeting. When the country is in peril in the case of economy, if it is to spend millions of rupees on tanks alone for warfare what amount of expenditure would it be for items such as weapons and other military hardware and for naval and air force requisition. This question naturally arose in the minds of the military hierarchy attending the national Security Council meeting. One of the high officers couldn't resist asking, 'what those tanks in large number were for?' with a tag whether they were going to invade Iraq. The suspicion was even grater in the context of having been adhering to the Cease-Fire Agreement that is quite in place and in force for longer than two and a half years. The President herself inquired if any utility or movement of such tanks listed in the requisition was possible in the cities and their peripheries.

The Tamil homeland, that lost its hard earned infrastructure through the long horrendous ravages of war, has just begun, though slowly but steadily, to reconstruct with the sweat of its own brow. Though the state doesn't sufficiently co-operate and support this tremendous effort to restore the destructed infrastructure. Tamils are taken on themselves to rebuild all what are to be their own with whatever support the international agencies, local non governmental organizations and the assistance generously extended by their Diaspora abroad.

The State is unwilling to grant the Tamil homeland and interim administration that could responsibly carry out the reconstructions but is happily responding to procure dozens of tanks and weaponry for warfare that would never do any good for anybody's welfare. These tanks, among other military items, had the lion share in the nasty achievement of destroying all that long acquired and well-founded infrastructure of the Tamil homeland.

Now the requisition placed before the National Security Council for the state to procure more and more of these military tanks, has to be construed as a wishful act, and as signaling willful plans for erasing even what remains of the Tamils in the Tamil Homeland. The State of Sri Lanka has to understand and realize that the destructive inclines of theirs would only aggravate suspicion against the bona-fide of their professed peace efforts. They are yet to learn of the futility of warfare if the bygone devastation of war inflicted by them on the Tamils is still not enough for them to have learnt it. Any lesson however frequently repeated won't be of any effect unless and until there could be a precursor for the learner to help himself /herself to be free of intoxication caused by blind belief in aggressive warfare and addiction to war that makes them to lose sight of all lessons of history.

(Editorial comment in the local daily Uthayan)

13 October 2004

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