Dear Mr. Miliband and Mr. Kouchner,
Bogus Humanitarian Mission To Sri Lanka
It is amusing to see representatives of two of the world’s biggest colonial plunderers pay a joint visit to Sri Lanka presumably to intercede on behalf of the remaining displaced Tamil civilians who are being held hostage by the brutal Tamil Tiger terrorists. Your silence about their plight for the past year when they were herded by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and forced to withdraw from their villages and move eastward with the retreating Tamil Tiger fighters is shocking to say the least. You cannot deny knowledge of the situation as you would have been appraised of what was taking place by the various western funded INGO and NGO groups that operated in the Vanni for the past two decades, and your own diplomats in Colombo who maintained close contact with these so called international relief agencies.
Your rushing to Sri Lanka after a lapse of over 18 months following the forced removal of the civilians by the LTTE, coming especially at a time when Sri Lanka’s security forces have successfully rescued nearly 90 percent of the civilian hostages from the clutches of the Tamil Tigers is certainly not going to fool the educated observer. The advance of the Sri Lankan forces into the Vanni exposed the international relief agencies operating in the region as having callously neglected the civilian population who lived in squalor whilst they collaborated with the Tiger terrorists to bolster their defensive and offensive capabilities. Though you may imagine yourselves as White Knights pressuring a developing country with every lever including the blocking of a grant of an IMF loan to interfere in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka, others are bound to see you as ‘Knights sans Clothes’.
Your hidden agenda to provide a lifeline to the cornered LTTE terrorist leaders under the guise of a humanitarian mission to introduce foreign personnel to enter the designated ‘safe zone’ and negotiate the release of the remaining 15000 trapped civilians held at gun point, behind earth bunds and mined terrain, is a ‘non-starter’ for the 20 million citizens of Sri Lanka whose ‘right to life’ has been under threat from the same LTTE for the past 30 years. Also, your seeking to have the LTTE leadership surrender to the UN or other independent third party is one that will not fly, as the perpetrators of the atrocities costing over 70000 lives, maiming of thousands and causing of inestimable damage to valuable property in the country must submit to the Sri Lankan authorities to answer for their enormous crimes.
The Sri Lankan forces are in the process of breaching the terror bunds, clearing the mines, neutralizing the fire power of the Tiger terrorists and bringing the remaining trapped civilians to safety and care of the government and people of Sri Lanka. This will be achieved in the next little while with minimum harm to the civilians as already demonstrated in rescue missions earlier carried out including the eastern province.
Think again Mr. Miliband and Mr. Kouchner, the votes of pro-LTTE demonstrators who are blocking your streets and breaking your laws needed by you for re-election and holding of political power is of negligible value to that of ridding Sri Lanka from the horrors of Tamil Tiger terrorism, after three decades of maniacal violence in pursuit of the creation of a second homeland for Tamils in addition to that of Tamilnadu in South India. If you really want to help, you could contribute to the resettlement of the displaced Tamil civilians, rehabilitating the brainwashed and misguided LTTE cadres and enabling the people of Sri Lanka to resolve their matters amicably. Whether you help or not, the Sri Lankans will ably manage their affairs within their means.
Yours very truly,
Mahinda Gunasekera