The visiting US Asst. Secretary of State Robert Blake accepted the congratulations of Colombo for the death of Osama Bin Laden. At the same time, in the context of the UN panel report on Sri Lanka’s war crimes he has said, “International mechanisms can become appropriate in cases where states are either unable or unwilling to meet their obligations.” But Colombo’s diplomatic community, as seen from what Dayan Jayatilake has written on Tuesday, pins its last hope on making a comparison between its genocide and the imperialism of the USA, thinking that such conflations could save its sinking ship. What the Sinhala polity that is neither prepared to concede nor share sovereignty with Eezham Tamils fails to see is that a precedence has been set in South Asia where powers could supersede sovereignty to implement what they think is right, writes a political analyst in Jaffna.
Further comments from the political analyst:
The Sinhala polity also fails to see that the Eezham Tamils could make use of the same precedence to argue and demand that either the USA or India should now directly ‘operate’ in the island to put an end to a state that goes down in history as one of the worst terrorist and genocidal states of our times, if the UN is either unable or unwilling to meet its obligation.
Sri Lanka received enough warning from Mr. Obama towards the end of the war that reconciliation would be difficult in the way it was conducting the war.
Mr. Blake in Colombo reportedly made a comparison between Osama and Pirapakaran: “I think they will both go down as two of the worst terrorist leaders in history,” and adding that “Certainly no one in the United States, certainly not in my government, mourns the passing of Prabhakaran.”
Mr. Blake making generalising statements on behalf of his government, without ‘truth’ being transparent may be judged by History. But his superior, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, before the last presidential elections, has made a clear distinction of cases national in nature compared to what the USA was preoccupied as ‘international terrorism’.
Whatever the case may be time has now come for the USA to prove its international credibility in History.
“America promised to break the spine of the LTTE taking into account the fact that the Tigers were an obstacle to the SL’s peace. It was their conviction that as long as the Tamil Tigers existed a political solution for the Tamil people cannot be formulated. Blake was a faithful follower of this belief and propagated this within America,” says a Sinhala columnist, Upul Joseph Fernando writing in Daily Mirror Wednesday, and adding that “it was America which monitored the movements of Prabhakaran via satellite and handed over the details to the SL Army,” but Blake and America were finally deceived by Colombo in the fulfilment of political solutions.
As a matter of accountability Mr. Blake should bow down to his mistakes or the US government should remove him from dealing with the plight of Eezham Tamils. Allowing him to continue with his policy of appeasement to justify his blunders will not bring in any reconciliation.
Colombo’s cabinet minister and General Secretary of the Jathika Hela Urumaya, Champika Ranawaka on Wednesday has said, “If Western powers push us towards the wall, we will have no choice than to transform this country as hub of political defiance against Western interferences, worldwide.”
The West, especially the USA should realise that the danger Champika Ranawaka points out essentially comes from a formula of continuing a failed experiment of a united state in the island. The danger will continue as long as the USA and its policy planners like Mr. Blake who were gullible to Colombo’s age-old tactics insist on perceiving the island as a single political entity.
The moment an international consensus realises that the best way for all sides, including the international sides, to come out of eternal indictment is to keep the nations in the island separate, and if that message in unequivocal terms goes into the hearts of the masses, then perhaps in a milieu of true reconciliation and positive competition for development, the island could be expected to be free from being a hub of undesirable defiance from any side.
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