Lakshman Kadirgarmar was not politicking when he told the truth

Who but the most obtuse will refuse to acknowledge that our front page story today is the best vindication of the unpopular — and popularly reviled — position that Lakshman Kadirgarmar took, in exposing the massing of new LTTE camps in the vicinity of Sampur.

By controlling the Sampur area, the LTTE’s long-term intention was to interdict ship movement in the Trincomalee harbour, a move that would have enabled unimpeded access for the LTTE’s own vessels supplying the North. The path to Tiger expansionism was via the Trincomalee harbour.

It’s uncanny coincidence therefore, that the push to revert to the status quo ante (pre-ceasefire), when these camps were non-existent, comes with Kadirgarmar’s first death anniversary. It’s almost as if the man has spoken from beyond his grave.
Lakshman Kadirgarmar reached a happy medium in practising his politics and viewing his reality. For garden-variety politicians, their politics was an affair of posturing, because their popularly held positions did not coincide with reality.
On the other hand, when Kadirgarmar was said to be politicking, he was holding out the truth.

Today, that truth has come to haunt Sri Lankan politicians of an ersatz variety who are in stark contrast to Kadirgarmar. They vilified him to the point of barely acknowledging his assassination, on the basis that he was a rabble-rouser who was serving his own political ends.

A posthumous apology is now in order from Ranil and Co., but these are apologists (...we know for whom...) who are not known to apologise... But, Lakshman Kadirgarmar impeded a process that would have eventually ended up in the bifurcation of the Sri Lankan state, and the current process to revert to the status quo ante (pre-ceasefire), is the culmination of a trend that Kadirgarmar initiated years ago, when he spearheaded the UPFA’s return to power. The armed forces mean business, and the charge to regain territory that was legitimately Sri Lankan, is a salute to the memory of a man who aggressively marketed the truth.
 

Aid workers and others

The murder of 17 aid workers belonging to a French Non governmental organisation campaigning against hungar, is justifiably a traumatic event for the NGO community. The NGOs have taken almost personal umbrage against this act of outrage, which is reprehensible by any standards. Condemnation has followed like quicksilver flowing from a broken thermometer pipe..
The question ‘who killed the aid workers’ is something that could and should be determined by careful forensics. But, the tendency has been to pre judge and blame the killings on one party to the conflict.

This has been either by the direct apportioning of blame or by implication.

There is mischief afoot in the use of such blanket condemnation. There is almost a sleight of hand in trying to pass off a horrendous crime without any reference to the broader perspective of the current state of the conflict.

One hundred Muslims were massacred by the LTTE last week in Mutur, but there was no condemnation by the NGO community, which has however, voiced a collective scream of agony over the death of their aid workers.

The rationale maybe that their aid workers are kindred — and that the Muslims are but civilians who got in the way.

How then would the death of a three-year-old girl on the pavement on Dickman’s Road last week, ratiocinate in this scheme of things? Aren’t international aid organisations and local organisations repulsed by the killing of a three- year- old in a bomb attack that even the LTTE wouldn’t deny is its own work? Or is it that aid workers lives are more sacrosanct than the lives of three year olds, or those of Muslims fleeing violence? The point to be made here is not that one life is more sacrosanct than the other, or that one attack is more venal than the other.

But, all lives are sacrosanct, and all attacks on civilians are reprehensible, and this is a fact that is not brought into perspective in condemning the murders of aid workers alone - - when scores of civilians are perishing in the conflict, and most of them at the hands of the LTTE. The death of the aid workers should be condemned, but not in isolation, but with reference to the broader contours of a conflict that should take into account attacks, counter-attacks and genocidal campaigns, all in proper perspective.