What Next?
Written after the LTTE’s defeat in May 2009, the piece credits Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sarath Fonseka and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa with the victory and turns to what remains: uniting a people divided by race, religion and caste, and settling the ethnic question. Ivan blames the Tamil leaders who first proposed a separate state as much as Prabhakaran, and argues that 1956 could have been handled differently.
අපි ජයගත්තෙමු. එය ප්‍රමාණවත් ද?
Twenty-nine of the forty-seven members of the Human Rights Council in Geneva voted with Sri
Lanka and twelve against, which Ivan counts an important victory in the international
argument. Some violation of rights is unavoidable in any war and more so against a terrorist
movement; but the victory has created a humanitarian problem the country cannot solve
without the world’s help, and on that question it should speak with one voice.
අවතැන්වූවන් පිළිබඳ ප්‍රශ්න
Ivan calls the UN Secretary-General’s remark to CNN — that he had never seen camps as bad
anywhere — a bad statement, and notes that the Swedish opposition leader who visited the
same day was far less harsh. Housing three hundred thousand people is neither simple nor
quick; the camps are improving rather than worsening, the identification of cadres has to
finish before the army can hand them over, and the contractors’ opportunities to profit
should be cut back.
ආරම්භ වී තිබෙන නව පරිච්ඡේදය අර්ථවත් කරගැනීම
A movement that held a large part of the country by force for close to three decades has
been destroyed, and Ivan writes that in every one of the three armed rebellions the state
has put down, the enemy was its own citizens. What the country owes itself now is to find
the social, economic and political causes that keep producing them, and to use the opening
the victory has made rather than waste it as earlier openings were wasted.
ශ්‍රේෂ්ඨත්වය පරිපූර්ණ කිරීම
Judging by the weapons taken and the infrastructure found, Ivan writes, another decade of
the LTTE would have been past imagining — and both the wars and the peace talks had
strengthened its de facto state rather than dissolving it. Mahinda Rajapaksa is therefore
the greatest of the country’s leaders since independence; but the greatness is not complete,
and completing it means opening every window to a national argument about what Sri Lanka
should now become.
ප්‍රභාකරන්ගේ විනාශය
Prabhakaran’s organisation was thought unbeatable and fell like a great tree. Ivan argues
that had he accepted defeat as Hitler did — taking his own life to release his followers —
the war could have ended without harm to the civilians, and that instead he made them his
shield. Setting him beside Wijeweera, he finds two able men whom a particular political
climate turned cruel, and asks what kind of country would not have done that to them.
ප්‍රඥාවෙන් ප්‍රශ්න බේරාගමු
අප රටක් වශයෙන් සිටින්නේ තීරණාත්මක තැනකය. එල්ටීටීඊය ආරක්ෂක පවුරක් කරගෙන සිටින සිවිල් ජනයාට බරපතළ හානියක් ඇති නොවන ලෙස එම ජනතාව අතර සැඟවී සිටින එල්ටීටීඊ නායකයන් හා කාර්යධරයන් යටත් කරගැනීම හෝ විනාශ කිරීම සිදුවන්නේ කෙසේද යන සංකීර්ණ ප්‍රශ්න කෙරෙහි ලෝක අවධානය යොමුවී තිබේ. ඒ ගැන ලෝක මට්ටමෙන් කෙරෙන වාද විවාද ඇති අතර, ලෝකයේ පවතින එම උද්වේගකර […]
වර්ග සංහාර භාෂණය ගැන වැඩිදුරටත්
Ivan returns to Bhashana, who reads the war as a long-planned extermination on the model of
Hitler’s and Rwanda’s, and notes that in all his writing since leaving the JVP for the
LTTE’s cause there is not one criticism of the LTTE. He sets the 730 days of Wijeweera’s
rebellion, fought with primitive weapons, against the 1,095 days of Prabhakaran’s, fought
with modern ones, and invites Bhashana to do the arithmetic of the dead himself.
යුද්ධයෙන් ජයගැනීම හා ප්‍රචාරක යුද්ධයෙන් පරාජය වීම
The government won the war for territory and lost the argument about how it ended. Ivan
credits it with everything the military victory required — rebuilding the forces’ morale,
ending the factionalism among them, holding to the decision under international pressure —
and finds the same government without a case it could put to the world, when the strongest
argument was available to it: that letting a movement succeed by holding hundreds of
thousands hostage teaches the lesson to every other city.
ආණ්ඩුව හා විරුද්ධ පක්ෂය දෙපැත්තට ඇදීම
The government fought the war as a single-handed act and attacked the opposition through it;
the opposition worked to obstruct the war, likened it to Hitler’s, and sought to cut off
aid. Ivan traces the habit to the system J.R. Jayewardene built to keep an opposition
permanently out of power, follows it through the SLFP’s own years in the wilderness and its
quiet satisfaction at the JVP’s revolt, and ends by asking which matters more to either
side, the party or the country.