දෙමළ සංහාරය ඇත්තක්ද?
Against the claim that the war is a genocide, Ivan sets the arithmetic of the three armed
rebellions the forces have put down. The second JVP insurrection lasted two years and five
months and cost at least fifty thousand lives; the Fourth Eelam War has run three months
longer for perhaps fifteen thousand. He questions the figure of 850,000 Tamils abroad as
evidence of extermination, and notes that fewer than a fifth of the country’s Tamils ever
lived under LTTE rule.
ගෞරවනීය අවසානයක් සඳහා
With 99.5 per cent of LTTE territory taken and the remainder unwilling to surrender, Ivan
proposes that the government turn the question around: invite the world bodies and powers
now speaking for the trapped civilians to put forward a programme for freeing them, subject
to the government’s own scrutiny, with the freed civilians handed to the state and any
surrendering cadres to the forces.
යුද්ධය නපුරුය විනාශකාරීය, ඒ සමඟ එය ඓතිහාසික කාර්යභාරයක් ඉටු කරයි
Answering Ravaya readers angry at his support for the war, Ivan points to Gandhi raising an
ambulance corps in the Boer War and blessing the Allies against Hitler, and argues that the
Second World War was won not by non-violence but by a greater counter-violence. He applies
the same reasoning to the two JVP insurrections and to this one, and — drawing on Michael
Roberts — describes the people held with the LTTE as citizens of a de facto state that ran
its own courts, customs and army on Sri Lankan salaries.
ශ්රී ලංකාවේ දෙමළ ජාතික අරගළය
A comprehensive historical analysis reflecting on the defeat of the LTTE and the 25-year armed struggle. Tracing the political history from the colonial Colebrooke-Cameron reforms to the post-independence Sinhala Only Act and university standardization policies, the author examines the root causes of the conflict. The piece argues that while discriminatory policies by Sinhalese governments fueled the crisis, Tamil political leaders also shared blame due to their utopian demands, lack of pragmatic foresight, and early reliance on ethnic nationalism.
අවසානය කුමක්ද?
Written during the critical final phase of the civil war in February 2009, this article analyzes the LTTE’s strategy of using civilians as a human shield to force a political settlement. The author addresses the outrage from the global Tamil diaspora, pointing out the LTTE’s own history of violence against Tamils. By comparing the military offensive to the much harsher state suppression of the JVP youth insurrection in the late 1980s, the author argues that the government has a duty to defeat the armed rebellion while minimizing civilian casualties, without abandoning its primary objective.
තවත් ප්රභාකරන් කෙනෙකු බිහිවීමට ඉඩ නොතබමු
Written during the final phase of the civil war, this article reflects on the imminent collapse of the LTTE and the resulting leadership vacuum within the Tamil community. The author argues that Sinhalese leaders now bear the responsibility to treat the Tamil people with compassion and justice. It serves as a strong plea for post-war reconciliation and the creation of a united, equal Sri Lankan identity to prevent the rise of future violent extremism.
ප්රගතිශීලිත්වය හා ප්රතිගාමිත්වය
A philosophical and historical reflection by the author on their controversial support for the state’s harsh military suppression of both the JVP insurrection and the LTTE. Drawing comparisons to the non-violent civil rights movements of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, the author argues that when armed rebellions become devastatingly brutal and jeopardize society, state counter-violence can sometimes be a progressive necessity rather than a reactionary evil.
සිදුවූයේ කුමක්ද? විය හැක්කේ කුමක්ද?
Sri Lanka’s throat was caught in two nooses, Ivan writes — terrorism and the political system — and the first is nearly loosed. He explains his own shift: he doubted the account that armed struggle followed the failure of non-violent politics, doubted the Tamil homeland claim, and was moved decisively by the LTTE’s treatment of Ranil Wickremesinghe, who had given them more space than any Sinhala leader and whom they destroyed politically. He defends Rajapaksa’s decision as the most important and most dangerous taken since independence, and argues the war could have gone very differently had the LTTE succeeded in mass suicide attacks, a single trap killing thousands of soldiers, or coordinated massacres in fifty or sixty villages. He then judges the opposition, the courts and the press all to have acted without responsibility, and disputes the reported threatening of Poddala Jayantha and Sanath Balasuriya by the Defence Secretary.
ආධාර කණ්ඩායමේ නව ස්ථාවරය රටට යහපත්ය
Reading the Co-Chairs’ call on the LTTE to lay down its arms, Ivan notes that the European
Union, Japan, the United States and Norway — the parties most opposed to the war — now
accept that the LTTE has been militarily defeated and say nothing of political talks with
it, and argues that their duty is to release the promised aid and help the country with what
follows.
අලුතෙන් හිතන්නට කාලය පැමිණ තිබේ
Sri Lanka is close to winning one of the two decisive questions before it. Where every previous approach had failed and the country was stuck with no end in sight, Rajapaksa made a reckless attempt, staking his own survival and the country’s on fighting the LTTE to a military defeat, and went on down that road against opposition at home and abroad. The world thought he would destroy the country and himself; instead he reached the post he aimed at. The world is changed by those who swim upstream, and until they arrive they are taken for madmen rather than heroes. Military defeat will not settle the ethnic question by itself, but it creates conditions in which it can be settled — and doing so is the shared responsibility of everyone, with the opposition’s duty being to help rather than obstruct. The second question, replacing a disordered political system, needs the same cooperation.