Dialogue is the only Healthy Paradigm to Achieve Peace
by Ranjit Emerson
As I read the article and the comments, I am left with an impression, we are just exercising racialism and shallow thinking. Whether we are Sinhalese or Tamils, we are all Srilankans. What we have lost is not 21 black tigers and 14 airforce personnel, but 35 Srilankans, our national wealth. The forefathers of this nation built this country to provide free education and health systems to those fallen heros. Every person that is killed is lost of national wealth.
All those damages that were done were not the property of the political leaders, but it is the property of all Srilankans. We have lost lives, we have lost properties. Like in the Philippines during Marcos’ time, every citizen of SL must rise against, the political leaders, who fail to bring peace to this beautiful country. Our Srilankans can rise up and dispose leaders who can not rule this nation without peace. We see now political leaders are not afraid to practice nepotism, and accumulate wealth for them. They are in a safe secured place, while the farmers’ children, and sons & daughters of humble families are sacrificing the their lives because of poverty.
The Srilankan army could have crippled the military uprising of the Tamils, in the beginning, if they did not terrorise the Tamils both in the North and East. It is because of the intimidation of the Srilankan army and arresting innocent Tamil school going children separated Tamils of the North and East from them. It is at this junction, LTTE became the sole protector of the victimized Tamils. When the atrocities increased against the Tamils of the North and East by the government forces, the innocent Tamil civilians became defend less people. They became vulnerable to continuous violence performed by the government forces.
When LTTE came and offered protection, naturally, they began to support LTTE. In other words, LTTE earned the support of the Tamils by protecting them. So it is the poor politics and governance of South political leaders gave birth to LTTE. It is very imprudent to think that militarism can obliterate LTTE. But it is actually creating more LTTEs than before.
Further more, the grievances of Tamil people in Sri Lanka has been categorized as terrorism. Some Western World leaders have voiced this misinterpretation in their political platform. Instead of analysing our country’s present situation, our political leaders have rather condemned such opinions of the Western World and determined to carry on their own thinking, which only profits them and not the people of Sri Lanka. As a result, we are struggling politically, economically and psychologically. This war has created many single parents, fatherless children, and cripples (physically) society.
Tamils are Srilankans. They are part of Sri Lanka’s wealth. The cardinal priority of our nation is to solve our minorities’ issues to accomplish peace. This can’t be achieved through militarism because violence begets only violence–this is a universal fact. By using militarism, we are only suppressing one of the symptoms of the Tamils’ infringements, but not the core problem. So dialogue is only healthy paradigm to achieve peace. If we fail to implement this dialogue now, it will be extremely impossible to achieve peace in the future. If our leaders fail to dialogue now, we will make our country like Sudan or Somalia. We were once called the Paradise of the East, now we are become the ‘Hades of the East.’
Editor’s Note: Written by Ranjit Emerson, as reader’s comment for the article, Anatomy of Tiger Assault on Anuradhapura Air Force Base
35 comments October 29th, 2007