{"id":116324,"date":"2013-12-06T12:40:32","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T07:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=116324"},"modified":"2013-12-12T05:54:41","modified_gmt":"2013-12-12T00:24:41","slug":"the-denigration-of-dissenters-from-overseas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-denigration-of-dissenters-from-overseas\/","title":{"rendered":"The Denigration Of Dissenters From \u201cOverseas\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Emil van der Poorten<\/a><\/span>\u00a0–<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Emil<\/a>

Emil van der Poorten<\/p><\/div>\n

It never ceases to amaze one who has several decades of \u201chands-on\u201d experience being part of and subsequently working with new immigrant populations for many years in a \u201cFirst World\u201d country that such absolutely malicious nonsense can be consistently published about those Sri Lankans, who for whatever reason, have settled permanently in Europe, America or Australasia and choose to offer, often very constructive, criticism of the governance (or lack thereof) in what used to be considered the <\/b>beacon of democracy in South Asia.<\/p>\n

In setting the tone for the abuse, our expatriates are accused of a) living in the lap of luxury after having got into places such as Canada under false pretexts, or b) being sentenced, primarily those of Tamil origin (invoking the caste of \u201cuntouchability\u201d), to a lifetime in pursuit of something akin to a PhD in toilet cleaning.<\/p>\n

These broad accusatory generalizations parading as descriptions of the immigrant\u2019s lot are so deliberately false that the authors should be prosecuted for stupidity above and beyond anything expected of them even by their paymasters!<\/p>\n

Having set the tone for the abuse and threat, they begin to allege the motives for criticism of any description of the Sri Lankan regime, and these are basically two in number.<\/p>\n

The first is that because Sri Lanka is now paradise on earth, anyone critical of the broad criminality that is a day-to-day reality here is a paid lackey of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE<\/span><\/a>) or their alleged successors, the Tamil Diaspora.\u00a0 Of course, this shotgun approach does not so much as consider that all Tamils, in particular, no matter where they now live, are not now and have never been (to quote the man who could well be the patron saint of these apologists for the Rajapaksa Regime – \u201cTailgunner Joe McCarthy, he of \u201canti-Commie\u201d witch-hunt fame).\u00a0\u00a0 What is interesting in this context is that the man acknowledged as the Tigers\u2019 primary financial manager who bankrolled the atrocities of a group acknowledged as the worst of its kind in modern history, Kumar Pathmanathan (as he calls himself in one of his many aliases), \u00a0has been, literally, embraced by the Rajapaksa Regime and appears to have been reborn as some kind of Dravidian saint!\u00a0 This is particularly interesting in the context of people such as Arundhati Roy, the late Nelson Mandela<\/span><\/a>, Noam Chomsky, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Louise Arbour etc. etc. being accused of \u201cbeing in the pay of the LTTE.\u201d This monster and several of his surviving colleagues, under the patronage and protection of the Sri Lankan government, are now the leading \u201cgood guys\u201d in the North and East of Sri Lanka.\u00a0 Does this suggest a new dimension in hypocrisy or is it just proof that the government of the Debacle of Asia truly has no limits to its application of impunity? It should never be forgotten that this man is guilty of the most capital offences in the history of our country by directly providing the wherewithal for the murder and mayhem that consumed several generations of Sri Lankans and three decades of our history.<\/p>\n

The other prong is another that lacks even a smidgen of credibility.\u00a0 It is a consistent cry that anyone not prepared to march in lockstep with our local goose-steppers, is seeking to undermine national integrity because they are \u201cjealous\u201d of the paradise that Sri Lanka has become under the Rajapaksa<\/span><\/a> Hegemony and will, therefore, do all in their power to bring all of Sri Lanka to its collective knees.\u00a0 Not one of these noisy individuals is capable of or even attempts to flesh out their arguments and the reason for that is pretty obvious: you can\u2019t \u201cflesh-out\u201d a cadaver.<\/p>\n

That there are, among Sri Lankans domiciled overseas, some who have partisan political axes to grind with the ruling party hardly needs confirmation.\u00a0 This is true of every new immigrant population in every one of those countries that have accepted them. I personally recall the clashes between new immigrants from Serbia and Croatia in the city of Edmonton in Canada at the time that the former Yugoslavia was disintegrating, not to mention the conflict between Eritreans and Ethiopians among others.\u00a0 However, to even suggest that every critic of the Rajapaksa Regime is driven by simple malice and jealousy or is in the pay of some dark force funded by \u201cthe LTTE\u201d is beyond ludicrous!<\/p>\n

What is obvious to anyone who has been following this sort of accusation for any length of time, particularly on web publications that permit interjections by readers, is that there is a battery of \u201ccritics\u201d which, it is suggested by much circumstantial evidence, is part of a \u201cdirty tricks squad\u201d financed and supported in other ways by those close to if not part of the current regime.\u00a0 This had its beginnings with the military activities of the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols that disrupted the military activities of the LTTE and appears to have been transformed at the end of hostilities into a civilian initiative to disrupt the new \u201cenemy,\u201d those who sought a return of civic rights, inclusive of that of dissent, when the war was over.\u00a0 It is particularly interesting that it is those most guilty of irrational threat, abuse and criticism that are most condemnatory of anything even vaguely resembling criticism of the Sri Lanka government particularly from overseas.\u00a0 Talk about glass houses and those throwing stones from within them!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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