By way of a reply to Peter Foster’s “The Wanni Situation According to an UN Aid Worker ”

Sri Lanka had been able to do things without being aided and assisted by foreign Aid Workers, or humanitarian activists for quite a long time .

The Aid Workers are a phenomenon that appeared after tsunami. At least some of the Aid Workers had not confined themselves to the work they were entrusted with, thus putting in question the wisdom to allow Aid Workers access to any where in Sri Lanka.

All Aid Workers are anti government, that is the Western prejudice against what ever is not led by a white westerner. They also presume that they know better than the Government, what should be done an what should not be done in all situations.

It is also not strange that any article about Sri Lanka will make reference to any information coming from the Government as doubtful . It is seen when Peter Foster writes 200,000 civilians are trapped in the conflict zone, with a within bracket comment the Sri Lanka Government says 100,000. The civilians trapped in the conflict Zone is now less than even 70,000. There had not been a census in Mulativu for nearly three decades. The total population could be around 100,000. Of which nearly 40,000 have come to the Government controlled areas. Therefore the number of civilians trapped in Mulativu may be around 60,000.

In Sri Lanka as in many developing countries, a White Westerner is considered more or less a perfect being punctual, honest and trustworthy. They are received with arms wide opened. They have access to every place and every person. The Government too make them feel welcome, and listen to them making them feel very important.
But since a few years ago, Sri Lanka and its people have come of age, and know a little better their foreign visitors. They have understood that the white Westerners are not any better than a brown or black natives.

They now know that there are among them rogues and scoundrels. Only difference between them and the natives is that they have more money to spend, and is of a different culture. But that does not give them any superiority over the natives. Peter Forest is the same, he is no better than a Tamil or a Sinhalese.

The Sri Lankans now know that these Westerners are here not for any love they have for the country or its people. They are just doing a job because they like the adventure and the risk involved and they have some thing to gain from what they do. Some of them even live much better than they were in the expensive west.

In Sri Lanka they do not see terrorists; for them they are merely another group of natives fighting to liberate the Tamils from the Sinhala majority. They call them the LTTE. The whole story about terrorism for most of these Aid Workers is a sort of a hoax of the government to discriminate against the Tamil population. Therefore they indulge in doing what they should not do. That is to take side with the minority Tamil Community against the majority Sinhala Government.

Peter Foster speaks about strained relation between the UN and the Government. Of course the Government expected to have honest dealings with the UN System in the government’s attempt to eliminate terrorism from Sri Lanka. The UN System though it has noble sentiments expressed in its constitution, has employed ordinary people whose sentiments are some times not so noble as those expressed in the constitution.

Instead of helping the government to rid itself of the terrorism that had got encrusted in to the country, hampering any form of development, and attempts to unify the communities , the UN influenced by the International Community led by Norway which had been working in complicity with the terrorists , called the government for a peace settlement with the terrorists accusing the government of violation of human rights.

To have given into the UN, and end military operations- interpreted as violation of human rights, and invite the terrorists for peace negotiations would have been to allow terrorism to continue unhindered. The government however accepted to negotiate for peace with the terrorists. But the terrorists broke away from the negotiations.

The several representatives of the UNHRC who came to Sri Lanka had their own agendas and were working to set up a mission in the North and East to control the government’s, so called violations of human rights.

This interference of the UN with the Government’s declared object of elimination of terrorism from Sri Lanka was incompatible with the “undeclared” intentions of the UN Representatives. It was that, which caused the government’s loss of confidence in the UNHRC.

In addition to this interference, when two terrorists were killed in the bombardment of a terrorist communication centre, by the Government Air Force, the Director General of UNESCO issued a statement condemning the Government for killing two “journalists” in the bombardments by the Government Air Force. Later, though the Director General of the UNESCO withdrew the statement, he never apologised to the Government for his confusion of journalists ,with terrorists.

It was only after the change of the UN Commissioner of Human Rights, and after our most able and outspoken Ambassador Mr. Dayan Jayatilleke took office in Geneva that the Government’s strained relations with the UN became normal.

Peter Foster includes a statement made by a veteran aid worker, showing the difficulties he seem to have had in carrying out his work, and his observations. He states the difficulties he had in transporting and delivering material as humanitarian aid , because the government feared them falling into the hands of the terrorists, making humanitarian aid difficult to be distinguished from aid to enemy.

He also speaks of how UN Vehicles and personal employed by the UN were subject to search, despite the relevant clauses in the Geneva Convention. The Veteran Aid worker accepts the cruelty of the LTTE, but expected higher standards from the Government. And says that in Kosovo the Serbs were not so disrespectful to the UN Staff as the Sri Lanka army to the Aid Workers.

This attitude of the Sri Lanka Army he says while denying to the suffering displaced people needed aid operations, gave the world a reason not to take at face value the Sri Lanka government’s good intentions.

Even though Peter Foster’s Aid worker doubted the government’s fear of falling material being delivered as humanitarian aid falling into the hands of the LTTE, the facts that have come to light, after the areas under the Control of the “ LTTE” ( the terrorists), were captured by the Sri Lanka Army show that the governments doubts were justified. A large number of the material transported for humanitarian aid had “fallen” in to the hands of the “enemy”.

No construction work had apparently been done in the terrorist held areas for the civilian population, though lorry loads of building material had been transported to these areas as ”humanitarian aid”. But on the other hands many bunkers and mansions had been constructed for the use of the “enemy” . Some of the material found which had been used by the “LTTE”( terrorists), carried the UN Symbol.

Some of the walls of the houses used by the “enemy” (terrorists) had been safeguarded by stacking bags of rice with the symbol of the donor, instead of bags of “sand”. This when large numbers of Tamil civilians had less rice delivered for their consumption.

The large number of tractors and earthmoving machines, have put into questions what had actually been transported in some of the unchecked containers driven to the (LTTE) terrorist controlled areas by Aid Workers. There had been lot of construction work such as Air Strips, Submersible Boats, Water Tanks, electrical generators, communication centres, which could not have been done without technical expertise from outside.

It is now being questioned how the terrorist got this expertise . Could it be possible that some of the Aid Workers who went to the terrorist controlled areas were technicians hired by the terrorists ? All White Westerners are not perfect, there were also rogues and scoundrels !

Peter Foster then comes to things which are of actuality. Foster says that pro-Tamil groups are pressing for governments war-efforts to be censured at the UN as genocide against the Tamil minority. Foster then goes to makes his within bracket comment, as if he regrets the prospect, that it want happen as Russia and China will veto such effort.

Then Peter Foster worries, what post-war settlement the right-wing Sinhala Government of Mahinda Rajapakse intends to impose on Sri Lanka Tamils. In this respect Peter Foster has absolutely no reason to worry about as the Tamil Minority is a part of the people of Sri Lanka and the Sinhala Majority had lived with the Tamil, Muslim and other minorities for considerable number of years and we know each other very well. We will settle our problems the best way we can.

The only problem we have is with a group of Tamils who took up arms to terrorise the people and several governments, demanding a separate State. It is against them, who you call “LTTE”, that the government is carrying on military operation. We are on the verge of eliminating them. Once terrorism is terminated, the Sinhala, the Tamils , the Muslims and other minority Communities will sit together to settle their problems. For that we do not need you and we request you to move away to other pastures, leaving us to settle our problems.

Peter Foster’s mind works at great speed jumping from one matter to another. After sharing a communication that he received from a veteran international aid worker who was delivering food-aid to displaced people in the Vanni, he rambles writing on one subject and then another.

It takes the form of a plea for the Tamil minorities, apparently fanned by some anti Sinhala elements, taking the form of Tamil “diasporic” literary style. He speaks of fears that the final settlement would be discriminatory, demanding subservience from the Tamil minority which would amount to ethnic suppression. These are rather incoherent conjectures of a mind which is not quite clear about the subject he attempts to hoist for the benefit of a foreign audience.

The wise and insightful President of Sri Lanka Mahinda Rajapakse, is an experienced politician, brought up among the ordinary people of Sri Lanka . He is a Sinhala, but quite conversant in Tamil the language of the Tamil minority. He vowed to settle the problem of terrorism with which the country was burdened for the last three decades, and true to his word the problem many governments before him failed to solve has been almost settled by him.

Every thing has to be taken in its turn. One problem has to be settled before another taken up. The next in the Agenda after terrorism is to unite the different Communities that make up Sri Lanka. This cannot be done either to please Mr.Peter Foster and the International Community, nor to please India.

It has to be done in the best interest of Sri Lanka, not to divide the country but to unite the country. As the problem of terrorism has been settled the items in the Agenda are, the unity of the Communities , fight against corruption, and the economic and social developments. They will be taken up and settled to the satisfaction of the people of the country.

Even if the Aid Workers do not like long procedures of checking truck loads sent to terrorist areas it is a necessity because there are the agents of the terrorists every where. With the large sums of money in the hands of the terrorists they “buy” even some Sinhala people to help them to get what is needed by them to make or detonate bombs, such as torch batteries, wires, alarm clocks etc. These are then hidden inside packets of dry food sent to terrorist controlled areas, and passed on to the terrorists agents at the other end. There had been instances of claymore bombs hidden in special improvised compartments in trucks.

For the foreign Aid Workers a terrorist he meets at the Omanthai check point is a friendly LTTE Tamil guy.

But that Tamil guy is a terrorist, who is ready to kill and massacre innocent people. These are not just LTTE areas to which the trucks are driven. They are driven to terrorist controlled areas. The terrorists have to be differentiated from the Tamils, because the government has no problem with the Tamils. The government is fighting against the terrorists who identify themselves as LTTE.

The Tamil people in the terrorists controlled areas are not allowed to leave the areas by the terrorists, therefore the only way to give information to the Tamil population in the terrorists controlled areas is by leaflets sent through various means. The government does not send bombs to kill the Tamil people but sending leaflets informing them what is going on in the south harms no one.

Sri Lanka is not Somalia, and Somalia is not Sri Lanka, these comparison one with another is a means to discredit countries, which is not good ethics of journalism .
There was a UN worker in the Vanni who was working for the terrorists. That was a fact

When there is terrorism in a country one has to be extremely careful and nothing or no one should be taken for granted.
.