US Role in Sri Lanka
by Wakeley Paul, Esq.
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In SL, each party to the conflict is suspicious of the other. The Tamils want the Sinhalese to relinquish their tight control over us, while the Sinhalese want to perpetuate the tight-fisted grip they presently exercise over us. The situation is like a deep itch that makes solving the problems that divide us by struggling to merely scratch it away seem extremely elusive.
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Sinhalese ruling regimes, including the present one, allied as they are with racist groups of the worst order, should fear that their unsavory past will undo their future. Instead, they are being bolstered by the U.S. government to believe that their spurious past is a tolerable sin which can be forgotten and forgiven. We Tamils are not only astonished that these conditions are allowed to continue, but are deeply disappointed at the prospect that the U.S. government seems to be unaware of the gravity of the problem facing us.
Relationships are about communications, and where there are none, there are no relationships. In SL, each party to the conflict is suspicious of the other. The Tamils want the Sinhalese to relinquish their tight control over us, while the Sinhalese want to perpetuate the tight-fisted grip they presently exercise over us. The situation is like a deep itch that makes solving the problems that divide us by struggling to merely scratch it away seem extremely elusive.
Yet, the U.S. government joins the GOSL in the finger-pointing circus, where each side accuses the other of CFA [Ceasefire Agreement ] violations. The GOSL, while highlighting alleged Tamil violations, ignores the fact that the SL army and their Karuna allies have been responsible for over 50 deaths and 100 arrests and disappearances in the areas under their control in December 2005 and January 2006 alone.
How many reactive attacks on the SL armed forces [not civilians] have there been by the LTTE in this same period? The U.S authorities continue to echo the GOSL accusation that the LTTE are terrorists, while ignoring the terrorism of the SL armed forces and their allies in the NorthEast. Does the U S government assume that this is conducive to bringing the parties together to ensure a permanent solution to this seemingly uncontrollable nightmare? Do they realize that it is like trying to reconnect tattered threads which never were tightly woven in the first place? Weakening those threads further by strengthening the armed might of the GOSL, supporting the GOSL’s allegations in the finger-pointing game and threatening the LTTE with retaliation in case peace is not forthcoming, is hardly consistent with the role of a genuine peacemaker.
As Tamils, we can only view these unhealthy trends as if they are occurring at the far end of a microscope. We appear to be dealing with a wintering world, instead of being encouraged to regard oncoming events as occasions that would heighten our hopes for peace. We can only view the near future as a long gray blur, based on the U.S, government’s clearly demonstrated biases in favor of the GOSL.
What we need is a future brimming with pulsating events brightening the prospects for peace, in place of the most powerful nation in the world supporting the most recent of the Sinhalese regimes which are glued to a belief in their religious right to discriminate.
wakeleypaul@sbcglobal.net
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