ISRAEL AND SRI LANKA:

Abduction of soldiers and how they responded

Satchi Sithananthan

ABDUCTION: All the devastation in Lebanon and the relentless pounding on civilian population and vital infrastructures of a nation is Israel's response when the Palestinian Hezbollah seized two Israeli soldiers along the Israeli-Lebanon border obviously to force an exchange for Lebanese prisoners Israel has held without due process. One of them, Samir Quintar has been held for 27 years.

This abduction may not be justified in most circumstances but dealing with Israel, certain norms have to be compromised. Israel, says Rana El-Khatib, a Palestinian writer and author who was born in Haifa but lives in Beirut now, pays no heed to United Nations resolutions and international law and only responds to force.

Israel has also been a faithful proxy holder for the United States in its neo-colonialist expansionist intrusions into the Middle East. Israel's deadly response to the abduction of the two soldiers has the inherent and implicit support of the US.

This position of the US must also be viewed in the manner the US conducted business with Pakistan aimed at destabilizing India over the years and ended up ravaging that nation whereas India, despite all the Indo-Pakistani wars, kept its poise and emerged as a strong power.

Furthermore, in respect of Sri Lanka, the moment Mahinda Rajapaksa became the new Head of State, the US fearing strong action from the new government against the Tamil Tigers, reckoned as the most brutal terror outfit in the world today, had top US officials rushing to Colombo to appease President Rajapaksa and prevent any attack on the LTTE.

Hezbollah is now part of a democratic system and the Tigers are not, and are unwilling to heed to the calls for a political solution. They continue to kill with impunity.

In these three different scenarios, one can observe the three-fanged US Foreign Policy; perhaps there are more fangs to it. One wonders what kind of interests determines US policies in relation to other countries. A country that was founded as a role model democratic state has turned into a global bully; may be Israeli elements and or pro-Israeli sentiments are calling the shots in Washington.

Taking Sri Lanka's case in point, just like the Hezbollah seized two soldiers, the Tamil Tigers have been attacking and killing police and armed services personnel.

Tamil Tiger history is full of these killings; these have never abated. Although the US has been making some noisy criticism of the Tigers it is a kind of red herring, a Washington specialty. US is wary of India and is on guard to scuttle any attempts that Sri Lanka's neighbour may undertake to help solve the ethnic crisis in Sri Lanka.

September 9, last year a police officer along with his colleagues in their hunt for a suspected British paedophile went into an LTTE-controlled area taking the right prior precautions and measures. There were five police officers, two Roman Catholic priests and a child-rights investigator. The Bishop of Mannar was contacted by the officers and there was nothing hanky-panky about this activity. They knew that this paedophile had slipped into the Wanni territory.

The LTTE, however, reacted contrary to the courtesies that should have been offered to them and arrested the party. However, they released all the others except for three of the police personnel and among them was National Child Protection Officer Bandujeewa Bopitigoda. Subsequently, his two companions were released.

He is now being harassed by the sham courts of Wanni without even producing him before any of them, whatever they are, however they are constituted, what kind of justice they mete out and who determines the structure, nature and verdicts of these Kangaroo Courts; this is all sham and cheat.

The Wanni authorities, now known to be at sixes and sevens at each other among them, do not even have the heart to reciprocate the kindness shown by the Government of Sri Lanka to provide emergency treatment to one of their leaders who suffered a heart attack.

He was given such excellent services that this man recovered within two days. As one of the nurses at the Apollo Hospital said, he was in such great fit he could have walked all the way to Kilinochchi from Colombo, some 180 miles away.

Nobody expects any compassion from the Tigers. Compared to the Hezbollah, the Palestinians love their people and for them, they sacrifice themselves. The Tamil Tigers on the other hand, use the Tamils as human shields, provoke the state forces to attack them and have in their grip over three thousand children readied for slaughter many of them enlisted in their fighting cadres by force, even kidnapping them with persons employed for such a despicable task.

Israel's reactions to the abduction of the two soldiers was immediate, Police Officer Bandujeewa Bopitigoda is languishing in a Tiger jail now for eleven months because he went looking for a white paedophile and even the Rt Rev Rayappu Joseph, Bishop of Mannar is doing nothing about it.

The bishop of course with two of his maroon Tamil prelate companions are strong Tamil Tiger enthusiasts and all three of them have not shown any concern for the 3000 and more children claw-held by the Tigers in Wanni.

The Israeli solution is not the answer because there are civilians who will be harmed but it is time the Government of Sri Lanka makes plans to take in all the Tamil Tiger leaders and arraign them before the appropriate courts in Sri Lanka, India and the International Court in The Hague. What the government needs is an Entebbe style commando action and this is quite possible.

In respect of the Wanni leaders, there is already a readiness to face a possible attack by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces. The wives and children of the leaders have already been dispatched to countries like Norway, Great Britain and Switzerland and they are taking firm roots there.

They have also readied a kind of resistance that would lead to a massive loss of lives of children and young people, LTTE's fighting cadres. During the time of what could be a very encounter, the readiness of the leaders will be activated.

This readiness is of course a flight for their lives. It took Major General Janaka Perera twenty-four hours to make the Tigers run for their lives from Jaffna. Had he not been stopped by some forces in Colombo, there would have been no problem from the Tigers today. Are these forces at work today?

This much LTTE-hated military hero executed his duties with relentless determination and decimated the LTTE lock, barrel and stock. Among those who fled was Adele Balasingam who headed six women's torture camps most of them in Nallur and one in Thunukkai.

The LTTE's defeat was so humiliating that they accused the Major General of war crimes. Accusation is one aspect and for the LTTE that would have been a natural reaction to shift the focus of war crimes away from them.

It appears the LTTE is of the view that war crimes are a monopoly that they, and they alone are entitled to practice and the means justified. And that includes over 3,000 children enlisted in their armed cadres.

Moreover, soon after the Indian Peace-Keeping Force left the LTTE went on a killing spree of people who in various ways supported the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace accord, forces, members of other liberation groups and whoever were opposed to the LTTE.
