|
|
 |
| Sunday, 21 April 2002 |
 |
|
 |
Editorial |  |
| News Business Features Security
|
Please forward your comments to the
Editor, Sunday Observer. E-mail: [email protected] Snail mail : Sunday Observer, 35, D.R.Wijewardana Mawatha, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Telephone : 94 1 429239 / 331181 Fax : 94 1 429230 Tourism for peace The few star class beach resort hotels in Trincomalee are now full and large scale refurbishing and expansion programmes are being considered. In and around Batticaloa, local tourism entrepreneurs are bemoaning the ravaging and pollution of the East Coast's famed beaches in the course of the war. Tour bus operators are revelling in the rush Eastwards. All this came, after Cease-fire Agreement 2002 was concluded in February. Significantly, many of the tourists heading East are not the dollar-rich foreign tourists who are the primary market for the tourism industry as a whole. The bulk of those going East are Sri Lankans. Interestingly, many of them are not even rupee-rich Sri Lankans. Gone are the days when local tourism was the privilege of the social elite, largely Colombo-based. Many of the first people to visit the East coast were ordinary village folk in the adjoining regions whose access to the neighbouring Eastern seaboard had been blocked by the war for a whole generation. People in the Kantalai, Polonnaruva,and even Anuradhapura areas, who, twenty years ago would have routinely commuted to Trincomalee and adjoining areas, have been deprived of such access till the suspension of hostilities this year. Now with the cease-fire, whole generations of Sri Lankans, for whom the Eastern seaboard had been almost alien territory, are able to visit and see for themselves the environment and the lifestyle of communities in the region. They can also begin trading and other economic activities that will, no doubt, greatly uplift the local economy. All this will only help the peace effort. Sri Lankan Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims are engaging in greater exchanges between their respective areas, are mingling in the course of their business and leisure travel, and are learning about each other's lifestyles. When the foreign tourists finally do arrive, they may find themselves crowded off the beaches! Palestine we Sri Lankan must surely have a sense of deja vous as we watch the tragedy of Palestine deepen by the day. The level of sheer brutality of combatants on both sides and the level of human rights violations on both sides must also remind us of similarly patterns of behaviour in our own country. Hopefully, in our own land, the violence, at least, is now fading into our nightmarish past. In Palestine, however, the tragedy is worsening. And in Palestine the lines of conflict, the moral disjunctures are much sharper. Israel has long been identified by the global community of nations as the clear aggressor. The original "terrorists" were seen in the Western-backed Jewish militias that invaded Palestine in the 1940s and systematically drove out the Palestinian Arabs. Right up to this day, Israel remains the occupying power and the Palestinians remain the colonised and even exiled people with nearly two thirds of all Palestinians living in either refugee camps or as exiles in other countries. Even as successive Israeli regimes refuse to act to resolve the conflict and end the Occupation, the violence worsens and the cycle of hatred and revenge grinds on. The current military strikes against the virtually defenceless Palestinian refugee camps have resulted in a new horror of ethnic cleansing that is surely far worse that that meted out by the first Zionist settler groups. Palestine's Arab neighbours are not likely to sit by and watch the crisis for much longer. Iraq's action to suspend oil exports in solidarity with the Palestinians may be branded by some as a cynical move by a politically marginalised regime seeking to curry favour. But across the whole Arab world, governments and nations will also begin to act and no single global policeman will be able to impose order then -especially if order cannot be easily imposed now. The capacities of the world's sole super-power, the power that is the principal backer of Tel-Aviv, face a major test in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Given the leverage Washington has, and insists on maintaining, in that volatile region, it must apply the required pressure where necessary to demonstrate the effectiveness of the global pre-eminence it claims. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
