I deplore any form of extremism I had seen from the late 1970’s how these extreme Tamil movements developed, especially during the time I served in the North. If you correctly analyse the growth of the LTTE, and how it developed into such a massive organization, you will realize that the strain in the relationship Sri Lanka had with India was the main reason for it. This is clear because at the very beginning India trained the LTTE, including its leaders. They permitted training camps in Tamil Nadu, and the RAW was responsible for training its leaders. At the time the leader in India was Mrs. Ghandhi, and the relationship between President Jayewardene and Indira Ghandhi was a strained one. That was the main reason for them to help the LTTE at the time. There was no other reason. Before that, we had had a cordial as well as a meaningful relationship with India. It was clearly a mistake President Jayewardene made at that time. Unfortunately, his advisors were not able to comprehend the possible consequences of that situation either. They could not foresee the threat of a military organisation emerging against the government. They never anticipated such an eventuality, and it was a big mistake on their part. There were so many incidents to prove this point. A very good example for this was the arrest of Kuttumani and Prabhakaran in the 1980’s in Tamil Nadu. At that time, the Indian government informed the government of Sri Lanka that these two had been arrested. But the government of Sri Lanka did not take it seriously enough, and sent Major Lionel Balagalle and ASP Punya De Silva to India. They were low level officers at that time. And India’s reaction to that was, they just gave the pictures of Kuttumani and Prabhakaran and sent these two officers back to Sri Lanka, they were not even allowed to interrogate these people, and the two were later released. If the government at that time, had the prudence to at least send a minister to India and shown enough concern on the issue, and had higher level discussion, then history would have been different. We lost peace and stability in this country due to such blunders. So you have to judge the performance of these leaders on that. dailymirror.lk/opinion/172-opinion/31838-i-deplore-any-form-of-extremism.html
Posted on: Thu, 04 Jul 2013 13:13:30 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015