Editorial - The Island
One's opposition to the Moon Panel report should not be misconstrued as one's disregard for the suffering of civilians during the war. For, those who are supporting that document to the hilt are the very ones who backed and defended the LTTE thus enabling it to scuttle several peace processes, plunge the country back into war, use human shields, recruit child combatants and kill civilians in their thousands. If they are genuinely interested in having crimes against civilians probed, they should ask for an investigation into all phases of the eelam war. By demanding that only the final phase of eelam war IV be probed, they are trying to cover up what theLTTEhad done previously.
moreThe question that should be posed to the proponents of the Moon Panel report is whether they do not consider the non combatants who perished due to the conflict before Jan. 2009, for nearly two-and-a-half decades, civilians. In other words, they want the chapter closed on crimes the LTTE committed here and abroad, before being pinned down in the Vanni in 2009, such as over 200 massacres of civilians, the forcible eviction of Muslims from the North, killing of political leaders including Rajiv and President Premadasa, Amirthalingham and Neelan, bombing buses, trains and aircraft, extortion, fratricidal violence e. g. the execution of Mahattaya and about 250 of his followers owing to a personality clash, the mass murder of 600 policemen who surrendered to the terrorists on government orders in 1990, child recruitment, drug trafficking, gun running, human smuggling etc.
In condemning the Moon Panel report, its critics only register their protest against the UNSG, the LTTE rump, a few INGOs, some western political leaders and diplomats, who are making a collective effort to penalise this country for eliminating terrorism. Their real objective is not to protect human rights or investigate and find out who was responsible for the alleged accountability issues. They are all out to continue the war by other means. Their duplicity poses a much bigger threat to human rights and democracy than terrorism itself does, period. The US has welcomed the UNSG's advisory committee report which is not even a UN report. But, it has shot down an official UN report on Gaza because Israel is its ally. The allegations contained in that report may be true or false. Israel has denied them. But it has manifestly exposed America's hypocrisy.
Among the ardent supporters of the Moon Panel report are TNA politicians who stooped to the level of recognising the LTTE as the sole representative of the Tamil people under Prabhakaran's gun and endorsing, in the process, the outfit's crimes against civilians. Did the TNA ever take up the issue of child recruitment, extortion and brutal suppression of dissent, with LTTE leaders? The answer is an emphatic 'No'. The same goes for others of their ilk like Jayalalitha, Karunanidhi et al. Neither the UN nor the western governments that have taken up the cudgels for Sri Lanka's war victims, did anything to stop the LTTE in its tracks. Why? If they had translated their much advertised opposition to terrorism into action and cracked down on the LTTE's overseas activists funding the war in Sri Lanka from a safe distance, Prabhakaran would have had to eschew violence and stop harming civilians. If they had, in dealing with the LTTE, exerted ten per cent of pressure they have so far brought to bear on the state of Sri Lanka, the outfit would have given in years ago. They did not do so. Why? The LTTE’s agenda dovetailed perfectly with theirs.
The UN Colombo office conducts various inquiries against its satffers and metes out punishment but when two of its workers were abducted and held by the LTTE in 2007, it did not call for punitive action against the terrorists, Instead, it chose to have clandestine talks with them and kept New York in the dark.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillai is demanding a war crimes investigation against Sri Lanka, based on the Moon Panel report. That she is prejudiced against this country and hell bent on penalising its political and military leaders for having wiped out the LTTE's military muscle is evident from the fact that immediately after the war in May 2009, when there was not even a flawed panel report on 'war crimes', she clamoured for a war crimes probe and went to the extent of abusing her position in a failed bid to achieve her objective.
Prabhakaran was one of the worst terrorists the world has ever seen. Let it however be added that he had the courage to fight for what he wanted, though the methods he used were criminal, brutal and deplorable. But, the LTTE rump and its sympathisers lack the courage; they are using subterfuge, politics, diplomacy, influence peddling and human rights to achieve that end. They have succeeded in making a cat's paw of the UNSG to pull their political chestnuts out of the fire.
This is why the Moon Panel report must be defeated. It has very little to do with the plight of the civilians during the conflict. It is only part of a war theLTTErump is waging on the pretext of protecting human rights and probing 'accountability issues' to destroy this country, which is too small to be divided but certainly large enough for all communities to live in peacefully.
