28 March, 2024

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Mr Gopalkrishnan Gandhi, Your Slip Is Showing !

By Rajeewa Jayaweera

Rajeewa Jayaweera

Rajeewa Jayaweera

The greatest Indian of modern times, Mahatma Gandhi once said “there is a higher court than the court of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts”. His grandson, Gopalkrishna Gandhi (GG), former diplomat and one time Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, delivered the keynote address at the ceremony, to mark the first anniversary of President Sirisena in office. Considering the contents of GG’s address, one could rightfully wonder if he is a man with a conscience and worthy of being referred to as a relative of the great Mahatma.

After praising former President Rajapaksa for giving political leadership to the task of defeating LTTE terrorism, hitherto not given by any of our former Presidents both dead and still alive, GG proceeded to castigate Sri Lanka on the issues of War Crimes and treatment of the Tamil community.

GG attributed the death of Prabhakaran’s 12 year old son, to the GoSL and Sri Lankan Army. By stating, “the killing in cold blood, of a child, for sole reason, that he was his father’s son, has left the world in cold horror”, GG has assumed the roles of prosecutor, judge, and jury all by himself. There is no tangible proof of young Balachandran being executed by SLA. It has not been established if he was executed or a casualty in a crossfire, attempting to cross battle lines while fleeing from SLA. It behooves GG to substantiate his claim with irrefutable proof.

GG must prove his credentials of being a champion against war crimes. When and where has he spoken of war crimes taking place elsewhere, similar to the example he used to castigate Sri Lanka? What was his stand in the case of proven events such one of Osama Bin Laden’s young sons killed in the shootout, shooting of Osama Bin Laden in the presence of his 12 year old daughter during ‘Operation Neptune Spear’, scores of 12 year olds, both boys and girls in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria who have lost limb and life during American drone strikes to name a few? Or does he justify such killings by India’s new found ally, the USA, as ‘collateral damage’, but castigate Sri Lanka for a crime yet to be proven? One wonders if GG is aware that his grandfather once said ‘to believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest’.

GG further stated “if the Ponnambalams and Chelvanayakams had not been disappointed, spurned and marginalized, Velupillai Pirbakaran would not have been required. We may not have those great leaders of Sri Lanka today, but we have in the Tamil leaders of Sri Lanka today, let us not forget, persons who have survived terror. The Tamil Nationalists who has striven to find political solutions within a united Sri Lanka is a terror survivor. The very presence of such a politician is a huge acknowledgement of the efficacy and strength of perseverance”.

Once again, before making such grandiose assertions, should not GG look inside India and ask himself of the status of Muslims in Indian Occupied Kashmir? Why have over 100,000 Kashmiris lost their lives since 1947? For what purpose are 500,000 Indian troops based in Indian Occupied Kashmir, unleashing terror and repression? What of the draconian Indian laws such as Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (TADA), Jammu & Kashmir Public Safety Act 1978, The Armed Forces Special Power Act 1990 (AFSPA), Jammu & Kashmir Disturbed Area Act 1990 and Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) 2002 which constitute a repressive tool in the hands of Indian forces to harass and intimidate innocent Kashmiris? The infamous AFSPA protects members of security forces from prosecution for alleged Human Rights abuses and empower security forces to search, detain and use lethal force against any person acting against the law. GG who hails from and has been a representative, of a country involved in such deplorable acts does not have the moral right pass judgement on Sri Lanka’s national question.

GG’s high principled address conveniently left out India’s involvement in nurturing, training, arming and funding LTTE terrorism, the use of force against Sri Lanka to prevent the annihilation of LTTE by SLA in 1987 thus extending Sri Lanka’s misery and agony by another 22 years, the violation of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty followed by the unwanted drop of food over Jaffna, sending an Occupation Force termed as a Peace Keeping Force after having coerced an ‘invitation’ from a weak and hapless President and refusing to even sell armaments, desperately needed by Sri Lanka, even as late as 2000 when GG himself was India’s High Commissioner in Sri Lanka. There was also no mention of the need to investigate if IPKF had committed war crimes during the occupation of the Northern and Eastern Provinces.

This discourse is not an attempt to justify war crimes committed by SLA if any or the injustices meted out to the Tamil community. It is an attempt to highlight a new tendency which has begun to evolve since 08 January 2015. It is that of the Prime Minister, Ministers, officials and in this instance even a retired official from India arriving in Sri Lanka, giving unsolicited advice even in our Parliament, passing strictures on how Sri Lanka conducted its own war on terrorism, its foreign relations and at least one Indian Union Minister making a statement in the Indian Lok Sabha, contradicting our own Prime Ministerial statement in our Parliament on the Indo-Sri Lanka Bridge issue, to name a few.

Sri Lanka is no doubt a small and powerless country. We need to maintain cordial relations with India for our own good and avoid any acts, detrimental to India’s security. Beyond that, Sri Lanka must retain the freedom to conduct its own foreign and trade relations as it sees fit, without having to kowtow to India. Sri Lanka must retain and must be seen to retain its sovereignty and independence. It cannot be or be seen to being the 30th state of India.

In the Indo – Sri Lanka Relations balance sheet, India had a massive surplus of injustices meted out to Sri Lanka since late 1970s till as recently as 2012. Some of our leaders tend to ignore this fact as their outlook is from a political rather than a national perspective. However, to many ordinary persons without a political or commercial agenda, especially those who lived through the turbulent and traumatic days of the air drop, IPKF etc., the sense of outrage continues and requires a closure. Such a closure is only possible if and when India acknowledges its role and mistakes during Sri Lanka’s war on LTTE terrorism, followed by an apology suitably worded in a manner maintaining India’s own pride and dignity.

This writer would like to conclude by quoting the great Mahatma; to GG, “ an error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it; to India “I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people” and to our own leaders “it is any day better to stand erect with a broken and bandaged head than to crawl on one’s belly, in order to be able to save one’s head”.

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Latest comments

  • 3
    6

    Did he talk about anything about Child soldiers or Suicide bomber youthful women trained by LTTE and how they trained suicide bombers ? For him, one child was important than the 30 years of mayhem for 22 million.

    How about children kiled by LTTE and hundreds of soldiers of soldiers who are disabled because Indian govt setting up of Sri lanka and their child LTTE. How about those children and relatives suffering while living ?

    He talked in a mixed dialogue which mixed english, Tamil, Sinhala and tried to set up a precedence. but, he think only the concept of their world exists even when Mahabharatha became India and india is on the verge of disintegration. He is simply a man on the fence and he does not want to have any attitude, just like a whore, for everybody.

    That is simply hostile and bullying behaviour towards sri lanka.

    On the other hand, Nehru was a better Indian leader than Mahathma Gandhi.

  • 11
    1

    “There is no tangible proof of young Balachandran being executed by SLA”.

    Dear Rajeeva,
    How do you know that there is no evidence to proof that young Balachandran was executed by SLA? There is video evidence, direct eye witnesses are there but only the missing one is that there were no investigations carried out by Sri Lanka. Not only Balachandran execution by SLA, there were no investigations in this country for vast number of executions by SLA over the six decades under Buddhist Sinhala Fundamentalist Governments. It is pathetic even the day light murder of Lasantha Wickrematunga was not proven yet? Are you not ashamed your Nations Justice system?

  • 9
    1

    Rajiva, stick to the field you know best [Edited out] If you were that child’s father you surely would not have been asking for “irrefutable evidence” after he was killed. Have you got a conscience? It seems not. Yes, the kid happened to be Tamil and so that’s not a valuable life that was snuffed out so cruelly. But if it happened to be Sinhalese , then it would have been an entirely different matter ha?

    [Edited out]

    Been literally in the air for most part, you don’t seem to realise that the concept of sovereignty, as you think, never existed in its ideal form even in its halcyon days. The bigger power always expected the small state to kow tow.This is what Ceylon/Sri Lanka did from 1948 in regard to India.In 1977 JR began to think like you still do and you know what India did in 1987 ha? Mahinda Rajapaksa thought similarly, twirled his moustache, raised his sarong(Medamulana Chena cultivator/petty thug style) and growled like a mouse and you know what happened in November 2014.

    Today the concept of sovereignty exists all but on paper for small states and the new government has been practical to recognise reality and manoeuvre carefully. See how tiny Singapore is manouvering in the South China Sea between the big powers.

    Wake up Rajiva or alternatively take to washing planes!!There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.

  • 5
    1

    Rajeeva [Edited out] Prabas son killed by u r u r sinhala brutal army.[Edited out]

  • 9
    1

    Rajeewa Jeyaweera

    you are either a lier, a hypocrite or an imbecile, when I read what you have written here I am reminded of a Tamil saying ” mullu poosanikayai sothil maraipathupol” roughly translated it means trying to hide a whole pumpkin in a plate of rice or it is like an Elephant in the room.

    Tamil victims of the brutal war know how the barbaric sinhala army behaved towards the civilians. I am originally from Mullaitivu district where I lost over 20 of my own relatives during the dying days of the war in april/may 2009. A sinhala psychopath like Rajeewa by writing this garbage in the CT is trying to urinate on the graves of my loved ones who were brutally killed and then burned or buried in mass graves by the Sinhala army whose commander in – chief was the biggest tyrant of our times Mahinda Rajapakse the war criminal. we are told sinhala army obtained a kind of acid from china to dissolve the bones quickly to eliminate the evidence before a war crimes tribunal could be set up.

    My gut churned when this evil scoundrel Rajeewa tried to argue that Pirabakaran’s son was not killed by his Sinhala captors. There will be a final day of reckoning for these war criminals as well as for those pseudo -intellectual writers such as Rajeewa Jeyaweeras who has spewed venom here in order to cover the genocide and white wash the evil doers .

    The world knows a genocide was carried out by the Sinhala army on its Tamil captive population. Let us have an international war crimes tribunal , let Rajeewa Jeyaweera and the like come before that forum to present their defence of the Sinhala war criminals.

  • 1
    1

    “This discourse is not an attempt to justify war crimes committed by SLA if any or the injustices meted out to the Tamil community. It is an attempt to highlight a new tendency which has begun to evolve since 08 January 2015. It is that of the Prime Minister, Ministers, officials and in this instance even a retired official from India arriving in Sri Lanka, giving unsolicited advice even in our Parliament, passing strictures on how Sri Lanka conducted its own war on terrorism, its foreign relations and at least one Indian Union Minister making a statement in the Indian Lok Sabha, contradicting our own Prime Ministerial statement in our Parliament on the Indo-Sri Lanka Bridge issue, to name a few.

    Sri Lanka is no doubt a small and powerless country. We need to maintain cordial relations with India for our own good and avoid any acts, detrimental to India’s security. Beyond that, Sri Lanka must retain the freedom to conduct its own foreign and trade relations as it sees fit, without having to kowtow to India. Sri Lanka must retain and must be seen to retain its sovereignty and independence. It cannot be or be seen to being the 30th state of India.”
    This piece is a part of your good sense. People world over know very well the recent history of Sri Lanka. Are you saying that all what happened and the npast history of Sri Lanka is all false?

  • 6
    2

    One can but assume that the author of this piece was living in cloud cuckoo land when the video footage, UNCHALLENGED BY THE SRI LANKAN GOVERNMENT OF THE TIME, of Prabhakaran’s son, first alive and then dead, was in the public domain.
    In the circumstances, to say,
    “There is no tangible proof of young Balachandran being executed by SLA. It has not been established if he was executed or a casualty in a crossfire, attempting to cross battle lines while fleeing from SLA. It behooves GG to substantiate his claim with irrefutable proof,” speaks far louder about where this writer is coming from than anything he authors!

    • 6
      0

      Emil van der Poorten

      Rajeewa Jayaweera is a good man, a man who supports the well being of Nepal and worried Nepal was being bullied by India.

      However he writes something that he hasn’t got a clue.

      Perhaps he is a front man (a ghost writer) for Dayan, Black and Decker, MR, …. all other xenophobic paranoid smart ass patriots.

      Please bear with him.

  • 6
    0

    Mr Jayaweera,
    You are still singing the old “Baila”.. Justify our Bads because others doing bad things too. Haven’t you realized that India with vast number of tribal communities like Sinhalese tribe in their 1.2b people doing much better and living with more harmony compared to SL, can’t you see India, Malaysia and others having good progress in this respect in recent years?. Even in Africa, we here less and less News about intercommunal or tribal killing… What was happening in SL in last 50 years???
    When Sinhalese and Sinhala Gov terrorize Tamils & Muslim citizens or when Tamil rebels/terrorists terrorize Sinhalese, hundred thousands of SL refugees flee to India and West. But you don’t even prepare to listen when Indian or Western international relations specialist criticise or giving opinions to minimize tribal hatred in SL… you just ask them to mind their own business….

  • 3
    0

    This person’s photo looks like Warden Norton from The Shawshank Redemption

  • 8
    1

    This is a product extreme Sinhala stupidity. You commit a wrong and point a finger at other wrongs. Gandhi was asked to speak of Sri Lanka and he spoke about it. He was not asked to speak about the killing of Bin Laden’s children or of Kashmir. He must have at least done a search on whether Gandhi has spoken on Kashmir before blowing his Sinhala conch. It lets out loud farts more than blows. No Tamil can condone the killing of innocent Sinhalese people by the LTTE. They must be punished, if any are available -like Karuna- for these crimes under the law of Sri Lanka.The Sinhalese army constituted the state. It had special responsibilities of not killing its own citizens and citizens identifiable through ethnicity. They committed genocide.They are guilty both under the law of Sri Lanka and international law. Their accountability must be ensured. It is no good saying others commit them too. These others also must be tried but it is for other people to do so. In Sri Lanka, we must address our problems not the problems of other people. Jayaweera should know that killing fish is a sin in Buddhism. The fact that others kill fish does not excuse killers of fish.

  • 3
    1

    Mr. Rajeeva Jayaweera,
    Does the conscience of one person differ from that of another person in the event of mass killing or in the event of a child’s murder? It is only in Sri Lanka those who make the laws are unaware of unspoken advantages taken by neighboring and competing Countries of the weaknesses of your Country. Other Countries have taken good advantage for keeping you under their eye and making you kneel down for help just because you are showing racial bias for your own Countrymen and you take advantage over unarmed minorities to kill and suppress them. This method of rule existed in most Countries hundreds of years back but not now! Appearance of LTTE in Sri Lanka is a good example of the Neighboring Countries taking advantage of your weakness. You guys have great racism going on than any other issue in your Conscience! You choose to be racists only finding ways and means to avoid major exploitation by International Community when you commit war crimes on the minority. You are not going to change your conscience anyway until you learn what is good and bad for your Country. All other multi racial Countries in your neighborhood have taken good care for the other Countries interference. May God help your Country.

  • 2
    1

    …… the sense of outrage continues and requires a closure. Such a closure is only possible if and when India acknowledges its role and mistakes during Sri Lanka’s war on LTTE terrorism, followed by an apology suitably worded in a manner maintaining India’s own pride and dignity…….

    OK, Mr Jayaweera, nice effort but let’s try again. This time from a different angle.

    ….the sense of outrage continues and requires closure. Such a closure is only possible if and when those that prosecuted the war in SRI LANKA (MR and his erstwhile lackeys, including Gota, Maithripala S – his ‘ath’u’dawwa’ at the time – and their proxies in the field) acknowledge their roles and mistakes during Sri Lanka’s war on LTTE terrorism, followed by an apology suitably worded in a manner sincere and contrite.

    Alas, there is more chance of the National Airline showing profitability, than the proposed apology forthcoming.

    • 1
      0

      What about an apology from all the LTTE theoreticians, propagandists financiers in SL and the diaspora who are responsible for countless cold blooded murders, Suicides, bombings and destruction. They even sacrifice there own poor Tamils, children included for their megalomania.

      Keep playing the victim without acknowledging your faults. This is extreme cunning and arrogance.

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