SRI LANKA: Public Piqued at Alleged U.S. Double-Standards

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Sep 27 2001 (IPS) - When the stunning attacks took place in the United States on September 11, the entire peace-loving world stood up and condemned the strikes. Sri Lanka did too, but with a rider”I told you so.”

“For those people (in America), that was definitely a shock but it was a good lesson for countries which encourage and are sympathetic towards terror groups,” said Rajitha Attanayake, a second year arts student at the Colombo university. “The time has come for super powers to realise the gravity of the terrorist problem.”

His statement, and those of other Sri Lankans, reflects the anger at what many here see as the U.S. government’s double-standards in dealing with terrorism, particularly in connection with the country’s 18 year civil war.

“When a bomb triggered by Tamil rebels goes off in Colombo, the United States wants Sri Lanka to restraint itself and talk peace while when bombs go off in the United States, leaders there want take revenge,” said one newspaper columnist, in a view echoed by many people.

U.S. President George W. Bush has vowed revenge against those responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, saying “we will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place until there is no refuge or no rest”.

He has singled out Saudi exile Osama bin Laden as chief suspect in the attacks.

For Sri Lankans, the anger of the American people was a reminder of the beginnings in the 1980s of the Tamil rebel revolt for a separate state for minority Tamils living in the country’s north and east. There was anger and animosity towards the Tamils, which turned into bloody riots in 1983 until saner counsel prevailed.

Most of the country’s majority Sinhalese community were appalled and embarrassed by the riots and were hopeful of a peaceful end to the conflict through negotiations between the government and Tamil rebels.

But the fight against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has dragged for nearly two decades, and has resulted in thousands of casualties, and a deteriorating economy. More than 60,000 people, including government and rebel troops, and civilians, have died in the conflict since 1983.

National newspapers, while condemning the U.S. attacks, have also adopted the ‘I told you so’ stance. “Forked tongue,” read the headline of the Sunday Times editorial on September 23.

The newspaper ran a front-page story quoting U.S. embassy spokesman Stephen Holgate as saying that the U.S. government had not changed its stand in calling on the Sri Lankan government to initiate peace talks with the rebels.

“We are fighting against terrorists who are not asking anything; they are not demanding anything, and not coming for negotiations. They want only to kill Americans,” he said.

“There is a distinction between the LTTE and the terrorist in the Middle East. So the U.S. has not changed its stand in calling on the Sri Lankan government to go for peace talks.”

Those comments drew an angry retort from the Sunday Times editorial writer. “The US has nothing to negotiate with Laden as he hates America full-stop. But with LTTE terrorists, it is a different cup of tea, because they are asking for something!”

“If Laden demands one-third of America and 2-3rds of its coast as a separate state tomorrow – does it mean that the U.S. must not then wage war but negotiate with Laden?”

Predictably, U.S. embassy officials joined a peace protest last week called by the country’s business community to end the civil war. U.S. diplomats stood outside their office gates holding hands in a symbol of peace along with thousands of others who gathered across the country in a plea for peace and an end to the island’s bloody conflict.

Worried about growing anti-American sentiments being expressed on the double standards adopted by Washington on terrorism, the U.S. embassy issued a statement reiterating its support to the Sri Lankan government against terrorism.

“The United States has supported, and will continue to support the policy of the government of Sri Lanka which, while resisting terrorism, says that a political solution must be found to the civil conflict in the country. We have long agreed with President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s position that negotiation offers the best hope for long-term peace in Sri Lanka,” said the statement by U.S. deputy ambassador Lewis Amselem.

He said the United State was the first western country to declare the LTTE as a terrorist organisation and in support of this policy has conducted numerous training exercises with the Sri Lankan armed forces and will continue to do so.

The statement said the U.S. government had also supplied the Sri Lankan armed forces with considerable material support including meeting the cost of delivering 300 military trucks last year.

Political analysts point out that whenever Tamil rebels launch bloody attacks in Colombo including suicide attacks, the western world called for restraint and a return to the negotiating table.

Proposed peace talks, guided by Norway, have been on the backburner in the past few months as the ruling People’s Alliance government is pre-occupiued with political and power crises.

“While we feel sorry for the lives of all those innocent men and women who were victims of a barbaric terrorist attack, what we cannot understand is that why nobody is concerned about the lives of unarmed women and children who are killed by the LTTE terrorists in Sri Lanka?” asked Nalin de Silva, veteran columnist with the independent Sunday Island newspaper, known for his Sinhala leanings.

While the suicide attacks in the United States shocked many countries, Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers were perhaps the first to resort to this type of deadly weapon as far back as in the mid to late 1980s.

According to terrorism experts, Sri Lankan rebels have committed two thirds of all suicide bombings in the world. Since 1980, those who were engaged in terrorism used 280 people who were prepared to die for a cause mostly by becoming a walking bomb. Two thirds of the people, 160 according to experts, were Tamils who belonged to the LTTE.

According to a report in this week’s Sunday Times of India, western intelligence agencies were investigating the close and growing links between the LTTE and Osama bin Laden’s shadowy Al-Qaida network at the very time the bombings in America took place.

When leaders of powerful nations wax eloquent about terrorism “we Sri Lankans can only have a smirk on our faces, as we know about terrorism first hand having borne the brunt of a more vicious and ferocious kind of terrorism than the U.S. has just faced for so many years now,” the Sunday Times editorial noted.

It adding acidly: “But then we must negotiate after all, there is something to negotiate – a separate state.”