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.
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.
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.
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.
ඇත්ත ඇති සැටියෙන් දැකීම
Ivan answers two replies to his article on the genocide claim, apologises for having left a
professor unnamed, and turns to what international law actually says: who counts as a
combatant, what carpet bombing forbids, which three rights survive an emergency, and what
the International Criminal Court could and could not be asked to do. He closes on a
comparison few make — the caste composition of those killed by Wijeweera’s followers and by
Prabhakaran’s, and of those killed by the forces suppressing both.
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.
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.
පෑරුණු හදවත් සුව කිරීම
Written as the military defeat of the LTTE became inevitable, this article shifts focus to the monumental task of post-war reconciliation. The author argues that true victory requires healing the psychological wounds of the Tamil people, acknowledging past mistakes by the Sinhalese, and addressing legitimate minority grievances. Drawing a powerful historical parallel to the successful rehabilitation of JVP youth after the 1971 insurrection, the piece advocates for a compassionate, rehabilitative approach for surrendered LTTE cadres and a unified, cross-ethnic national effort to rebuild the North.
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.
යුද්ධයේ අවසානය අත ළඟය, ඊළඟට කුමක්ද?
The war is near its end. The LTTE will have to abandon the civilians it holds and flee to the jungle within days, and nothing remains to it but surrender or destruction, whether or not Prabhakaran is still in the country. Defeating what Ivan calls the strongest and most terrible separatist terrorist movement in the world should earn the forces the respect of Sri Lankans and the world — and he names those to whom it belongs: army commander Sarath Fonseka, the navy and air force commanders, the Defence Secretary who coordinated it, and the President. This was a merciless war against the LTTE but not a war against Tamils, though it caused them temporary suffering and produced excesses, as the campaign against the JVP in the south did. No war can be fought with human rights wholly intact. With every Tamil leader killed by the LTTE, that people is now left without leaders of its own, and must be cared for until they have some.