The Rajpal Abeynayake Column

Don't cry for me Colombo, at least not in the NGO boardrooms

The tears that flowed from those hunkered down in the NGO bunkers for Kethesh Loganathan were so copious that they could have filled a whole Mavil Aru.

This time the grim reaper came close to them, and almost leered in their faces...

Kethesh was a good man, and no amount of tears seems adequate to mourn him. But, when the NGO floodgates opened, a torrential outpouring of words was chosen to condemn the killing, and to condemn the killers. Some named names, and this was a considerable shocker to us all that an NGO man would (in real life) stare into the camera and say that the LTTE was responsible for Kethesh Loganathan's death.

But, why didn't the NGO man stop the camera rolling, and ensure he could spot some of the blood for Kethesh's killing that might have spilt on his own hands? Unerringly and unremittingly, these NGO men provided the rationale for the existence of the LTTE. The same NGO bluff artiste from the National Peace Council - who must have the hide of a racoon - shed copious tears when the EU banned the LTTE, almost the same amount of tears that he shed on behalf of poor departed Kethesh Loganathan.

This J. Perera took the banning of the LTTE by the EU almost as a personal affront - or at least as a personal challenge to surmount. The EU banned the LTTE because the LTTE kills unarmed persons such as Loganathan - and there was a lengthy record in Sri Lankan NGOdom and civil society to prove that fact. But at that stage of the EU ban being considered, Perera played possum. Would he stare those past deaths in the face, and oppose the banning of the LTTE by the EU, when he stares so much butter, bacon and buckshee in the face - to fatten seven coming generations - if he continues to provide the rationale for the LTTE, thus qualifying for his fund component as a peacemaker?

Then again, NGO actress Radhika Coomaraswamy told a local newspaper that she is shocked by the 'bombing deaths of children last week in Mullativu. Well, she woke up, didn't she? There was a bus laden with schoolboys which was deliberately claymore bombed in Kebbilithigolewa a few months back. Newspapers carried nagging and poignant pictures of a father wailing over the dead body of a tyke who could not have been over five years old.

Radhika Coomaraswamy was conspicuous by her silence at that time, and there was no verbiage of the kind that would have shattered a few glass panes by the force of such an explosion that could have come from the direction of her oral cavity.

That sort of gelignite was reserved strictly for the Mullativu bombings, which - even assuming that children were indeed involved - were of a certain collateral character as the Air Force was carrying out what were thought to be strikes on Tiger camps.

The Kebbilithigollewa attacks were a calculated cynical targeting of civilian schoolboys, where the ugly word 'collateral' could not be squeezed into the equation under any stretch. So what's this child minder doing other than being hypocritical with her expression of shock over Mullativu - speaking in tongues?

In real life, there are no bleeding hearts out there, but there are opportunists. How could it be that the said Perera apologises for the Tigers 90 per cent of the time, does not want the EU to ban the Tigers - - and eventually cries his heart out when the LTTE assassinates one of his buddies, a man who was a well-known face in NGO seminar rooms?

Is it possible that men can have genuine changes of heart when trouble hits closer home, and one of their own is taken, in contrast to several luckless tykes in a ramshackle bus in distant Kebbilithigolewa? Is it possible that just because your child gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar and feels awfully sorry for the moment, that he will stop eating cookies?? It appears that Perera, who feigned outrage at Loganathan's killing and lambasted the LTTE last week, was doing what he always does - which is to stand up on behalf of the LTTE, so that he could get more funds for the ostensible peace agenda, which of course in reality is an agenda for structurally propping up the Tiger.

How did Perera protect the LTTE last week? He condemned the attack on Kethesh Loganathan, though he has not raised the nail varnish on his finger previously about LTTE attacks on men, women children and Muslims in the recent past.

He stood up for the LTTE last week, to the extent that his words on behalf of Loganathan were a safety valve that served to temporarily salve the conscience of Colombo's NGO structural-support group for the Tigers. Loganathan may have worked for the government, but he was urbane and a well-connected Colombo intellectual - too closer home to be considered an outsider. Colombo was in profound shock. It happens, and it subsides, this breast-beating in this city is all too routine. But this acute temporary sense of shock in Colombo had to be assuaged, and given release to. Perera did it. He played the pressure cooker's release outlet.

He thrust his chest forward - the length of it that he could actually physically thrust out - - and wonder of small wonders - spoke as if he did have a backbone, naming the LTTE as being the dastardly perpetrator of the Loganathan crime. Great piece of acting. Visualise this also: He went home, got into the hot tub, washed himself with Lifebuoy and hooted.

Anything can be done in Colombo if you have a yen for theatre, eh what? Are we being unfair to Perera, or the other gentleman whose voice was audibly cracking when he spoke of Loganathan last week? How could a man who otherwise prostitutes himself for the LTTE by saying that the EU ban was wrong - knowing the LTTE's history of attacks on hundreds of Tamil innocents and NGO innocents such as Neelan Tiruchelvam - feel queasy now about one killing of one unarmed man? The only explanation is that this quick conscience attack was the release mechanism for and on behalf of the LTTE. Job well done. Another dollar, another day.