People are blinded by many things. Some times it is patriotism that blinds them. Maybe it is religion. It could be power or search of glory. Then it could be some ideal they hold on. Also it could be money. I cannot say what has exactly blinded Mr. Bruce Fein. What ever blinds him it creates disastrous inhumane bias against innocent civilians and instigates a culture of worship of suicide bombing, using civilians as defence body armour, drug trafficking, human smuggling, kidnapping children and sending them to war front as canon fodder, credit card frauds and various other crimes.
[ad#200×200]I, as a humanist, always appreciate and admire any human being who speaks up against oppression but when people patronize terrorism in the name of humanity that is a worse crime than terrorism itself. If one wants to stand against oppression in true sense then they must oppose all forms of oppression. Only then we can stand as true humanists and help oppressed people. An example which satisfies this condition is University Teachers for Human Rights, Jaffna, Sri Lanka.
I do not wish to whitewash or talk down horribleness of 1983 riots. Leaders of then Government were responsible for that crime. This is obvious. As Mr. Ananda Sangari once pointed our, what is not obvious is that what happened was what LTTE exactly wanted to happen. Then Government played into the hands of LTTE. Though this does not alleviate, excuse the role of Sinhalese mob or that of the Government, 1983 riots speaks up volumes for cruelty, barbarianism, unscrupulousness of LTTE.
If the LTTE can use so called their own people, whom they say that they are the sole representative of, as bait and if the LTTE can kill their own people whom they say they are liberating without any mercy and if the LTTE can use the people whom they are going to liberate as cheap body defence armour that has less value than a bag of dirt that itself stands as evidence of their inhumane nature of unspeakable magnitude. If so called humanists cannot see this, then if this is not natural blindness of perceiving reality, then it should be a blindness caused by wishful and wilful search of wealth. This kind of blindness is as bad as LTTE terrorism.
Swarnajith Udana
Lankaweb