EVEN when Mahatma Gandhi was felled by a depraved character, the West was not as disturbed as it is by the impending end of Prabhakaran, the maniacal killer.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is behaving as if London had come under another terror attack. He keeps calling President Mahinda Rajapaksa repeatedly in a desperate bid to have Prabhakaran off the hook. Brown has seen red! His choleric reaction to Sri Lanka's military campaign to eliminate a terror mastermind and a band of terrorists reminds us how one of his predecessors–– John Major is his name––blew a gasket, when the US granted Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams visa to attend an IRA fundraiser. And he boycotted calls from the White House for one week in protest!
William Blake created "The 'Tyger' and another Blake is trying to recreate the two-legged Tiger faced with extinction in this country. Given this kind of frantic effort by US diplomats to save the endangered Tigers, we believe, the day may not be far off when President Obama leaves aside all his important work including the grandiose bailout project to telephone and pressure President Rajapaksa to give up the army’s hunt for Prabhakaran. President Sarkozi might follow suit.
Now, we hear British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and his French counterpart Bernard Kouchner will be here to step up pressure on the government to let go of the Tigers on their last legs. (Before we proceed, let it be added that Britain is full of nice men, women and children but unfortunately they are only an idle wheel in a frightful system which promotes terrorism and unflinchingly commits crimes against humanity. This comment is, therefore, not intended to be a slur on those people who are in no way responsible for their leaders' sins. The same goes for the ugly US system and the nice Americans as well as France and her cultured people.) These two busybodies going hell for leather to save the Tigers may be able to hide anything but their striped tails. They epitomise the monumental partiality of their governments to monstrous dictators.
How those two countries have pampered homicidal maniacs is only too well known. Suffice it to say France had no qualms about mollycoddling Bokassa of Central Africa––a bloodthirsty lunatic who crowned himself as emperor and fed his pet crocs with schoolchildren and his guests with fattened prison inmates!
French President D'Estaing provided a loan of one million pounds sterling to help that monster buy limousines and motorcycles for his ‘coronation’ and shamelessly received blood diamonds as gifts. Bokassa had the habit of showering diamonds on his special guests and organising safaris for them.
Finally, France had to get rid of him.
Britain shielded Pinochet responsible for crimes against humanity and harboured him in spite of a court order to deport him to stand trial for massacres. His Caravan of Death churned out death and devastation across Chile following the 1973 coup but Britain backed him to the hilt for his services during the Falklands war!
Today, we carry on the opposite page an appreciation a grief-stricken father has written on three schoolboys who were among over 30 civilians killed in an LTTE bomb attack on a packed passenger bus in a Colombo suburb last year. The LTTE has carried out over 200 such savage attacks on civilian targets at Prabhakaran's behest and all those who try to save that homicidal maniac and his death squads now holed up in Mullaitivu naturally earn the wrath of the near and dear ones of victims of terrorism.
All the countries that have been harbouring the LTTE in spite of bans have the blood of LTTE's victims on their hands as it is on their soil that the outfit has been raising funds for its terrorist war.
How would the British take it if Sri Lankan Foreign Minister were to visit London seeking to arrange for a peace deal between Britain and Al Qaeda responsible for the London bombings? And what would be America's reaction, if such a peacemaking mission were ever to be undertaken by another country? When bin Laden himself offered a truce a few years ago, it may be recalled, the White House rejected it out of hand and declared that the best was to deal with terrorists was to send them out of business. The US and the UK must never forgive the savage Al Qaeda killers who must be destroyed in their hideouts. And those countries must recognise the right of other nations to deal with their terrorists in a similar manner.
That Sri Lanka's minorities have got a raw deal from successive governments is an irrefutable fact. But backing terrorism is certainly not the way to set about righting wrongs or bringing about racial amity which this country sadly lacks.
If LTTE terrorism emerged as a desperate solution, it became part of the problem shortly afterwards. That it is no liberator is evident from the fact that it has wiped out the entire democratic Tamil political leadership, killed many Tamil intellectuals and ordinary Tamil civilians and used Tamil children as combatants. During the past few weeks, it has laid bare its true face as never before as a ruthless terrorist outfit by taking civilians hostage, using them as cannon fodder and resorting to brutal violence to prevent them from escaping.
Prabhakaran has been no better than a fox in charge of poultry farm. He, his family and his partners in crime including those protesting in foreign capitals to save him have fattened themselves on the blood and sweat of the ordinary people. So, Prabhakaran and the LTTE must be physically removed and their ideology politically defeated as the first step towards ushering in a lasting peace.
Those like Miliband and Kouchner who are rushing here carrying oxygen cylinders for the Tigers are obviously trying to plunge Sri Lanka into a bloodbath once again to further their sinister interests.
Only carrion-seeking, drooling hyenas stand to gain from the survival of Tigers! (Courtesy : The Island)
