Landmine-clearing undresses the pro-LTTE/Eelam clowns

 (by Malinda Seneviratne)

Military Spokesperson Major General Ubaya Medawala has said that a total of 307,200 mines have been cleared and destroyed by the Army Field Engineers in a land area of 1,872 square kilometers.  This has been done by both manual and mechanical methods. Close to 1,300 soldiers have been deployed for this task in Jaffna, Mannar, Mullaitivu, Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Polonnaruva and Vavuniya districts, he said.  The stretch from Oddusuddan to Nedunkerni has been completely de-mined by troops with the help of international and local organizations, he added. 

This is not just painstaking work it is costly and extremely dangerous.  The total number of landmines in the Northern and Eastern provinces remains undetermined.  Those who bury them don’t necessarily keep meticulous records of location and as is natural in conflict situations there is no guarantee that those who have some knowledge pass it on or that they are still alive. 

It is a no-brainer that in a post-conflict situation where life and people return to normalcy and original residences respectively, ordinary citizens run the greatest risk pertaining to landmines.  This is something that the pro-LTTE/Eelam and/or anti-Government sections of the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora just don’t have the heart, mind or ethics to talk about.  It is their right to talk about rights and complain about the fact that things are not yet ‘back to normal’.  They spend enormous amounts of time, energy and money to vilify the Government, paint myth as fact, conjure non-existing grievances and inflate existing ones, complain about perceived sloth in resettlement and rehabilitation etc but studiously avoid the honest appraisal of ground realities.

Only the totally deluded among would claim that resettlement and bringing back normalcy is not just part and parcel of recovering dignity but a precondition for a possible re-launching of their political project. It is one thing to engage in propaganda, deceit, outright lying and such and quite another to wish for continuing misery.  The former is politics-as-usual, the latter barbaric in the extreme. 

If a rebel is a fish then the support of the people he/she purports to fight for is the water it needs to survive. As Victor Ivan pointed out in a recent article in the Ravaya, the LTTE thought Diaspora Dollars was a good enough alternative to ‘People’, so much so that they used the ‘water’ as cannon fodder.  It seems that the pro-LTTE/Eelam Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora continue to believe they constitute ‘water’ and perforce the Tamil people in Sri Lanka they believe (erroneously) want Eelam as badly as they say they do, are dispensable. 

The moment of truth came in May 2009.  A year and a half has passed.  A question remains unanswered: ‘What have the bleeding-heart Eelamists done for their brethren in the Northern and Eastern Provinces?’ 

It is not just the pro-LTTE/Eelam deluded in other countries whose heart purportedly bleed profusely for the imagined horrors lived by those Tamils who until recently were held hostage, literally by the LTTE and metaphorically by the Eelam Project.  There was no lack in so-called humanitarians and ‘peace-lovers’ in Sri Lanka and particularly in Colombo (i.e. the I/NGO circuit) during the time the LTTE was riding high. 

They just couldn’t stop salivating at the imagined prospect of the LTTE besting the Sri Lankan security forces.  Of course they claimed they were speaking on behalf of the long-suffering Tamil people.  Well, we are yet to see them volunteering to do the clean-up to ease their suffering.  It’s been a year and a half and that’s long enough to wait for ‘put up’. In other words it is now ‘shut up’ time.

You can be part of the problem or the solution. That’s an old saying.  I am waiting for Jehan Perera and Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu to get into land-mine clearing gear along with their respective staffs and fellow-travelers in the bleeding-heart business.  And I am waiting for the vociferous and deluded Eelam-trippers in various Western countries to join them.