A Soldier's view of ethnic harmony in Sri Lanka

A Soldier says Tamils, Sinhalese and all others can live in concord in Sri Lanka, and here is how ( True stories & facts)

Written by Day
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True Story# 5:

(August 03, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) “On or about 10 July 2010 a midwife (Family Consultant Nurse) found dead, hung inside the Veala’nai government hospital. It is ‘alleged’ that the Sinhalese doctor who was serving in the hospital had killed the nurse and then hung her with a rope in an attempt to show that she had committed suicide. The victim, Saravanai Tharsika, is a 28-year-old midwife and a native of Veala’nai. Tension prevails as natives are enraged in Veala’nai where SLN soldiers and police are deployed in large numbers.”

True Story #6:
“The Jaffna Magistrate M Thirunavukarasu, issued the second warrant on Tuesday, 03 March 1998, for the arrest of Thiagarajah Srikanthan, a member of the Eelam Peoples' Democratic Party (EPDP), on the charge of molesting a young woman S. Pushpalatha (21). The girl had sought refuge with members of the EPDP after she was allegedly raped by Gopalapillai Sivananthan and while she was in the group's care, one of its cadres called Thiagarajah Srikanthan had attempted to molest her, said legal sources in Jaffna. Pushpalatha was placed in care of the Salvation Army.”

Let’s look at the lessons we can learn or observations that can be recorded from the above TS #4, 5 and 6.

#1: A ‘Sinhalese’ can and may rape and kill a ‘Sinhalese woman’ or a ‘Tamil woman’.
#2: A ‘Sinhalese doctor’ may rape and kill a ‘Sinhalese woman’ or a ‘Tamil woman’.
#3: Not only a ‘Sinhalese’ or ‘a Sinhalese doctor’ can and may rape a ‘Tamil woman’ but a TAMIL man, once he has an uncontrollable ‘ERECTION’ may ‘RAPE’ a ‘TAMIL WOMAN’.
#4: Males in this case did not treat the females as if they were their sisters or mothers.
#5: There was no apparent ‘language issue’, Tamil or Sinhala, during coitus by force.

Let me elaborate more on the very hypocritical nature of Tamils as well as GMOA on the issue of rapes involving ‘their people’ (and it is the same when a solder or a policeman assaulting a doctor or a Tamil in a fit of rage). You may have observed that the TS #5 or the rape of Tamil Family Consultant nurse, Saravanai Tharsika, is getting, what is called in the music industry,-a lot of ‘air play’ or in the media business-a lot of exposure and coverage. For what, you may wonder? It is to portray ‘Sinhalese’ or ‘Sinhala civilians’ as ‘a rapist people’ and sensationalize the incident.

In the true stories I mentioned above a mentally sick person with proclivity to rape, whether a Sinhalese or a Tamil, may commit rape when he has the opportunity to prey on his innocent victim irrespective of race, creed, caste, profession, gender or nationality. Rapists are ‘sick and sordid’ people and a nation must get rid of them as quickly or soon as possible, go to heck with a lengthy due process where lawyers are made rich, and a mortar and a pestle are sent to jail!

The GMOA members who are very quick to decry a simple and an isolated police or military assault on their member(s) or quick to call an ‘all island strike’ action putting the lives of innocent patients at risk or in grave danger. They lump sum these threats and assaults into one big one systemic problem to project the military and police in a very negative light, to show to the wider world as if, it is the official military or police policy to flog the doctors. But these shameless doctors belong to the GMOA keep a strange mum when their doctors rape and kill innocent helpless and hapless women from city or backward areas.

They also fail to realize and accept publicly it that their MBBS was ‘fully funded’ by the taxpayer money and they have an absolute duty to take care of the poor and the innocent, whatever the political circumstances prevailing in the country (remember the Socrates Oath), when they come to OPD or are inpatients. But they happily do private practice to make or amass wealth, by forgetting part of his wealth does belong to the country for the free education made available to him or her when Dr. So and So was just a Mr. or Miss So and So.

They wait till a crisis happens, like the dengue situation, or lack of medicine or IV fluids in stocks, to pillory the political system. What did they do to avoid a crisis? Where are the proposals or initiatives? What did they do to build an organization than pricking it? In simple terms where are the modern day SENAKA BIBILES?

Are you ready to hear more true stories, and here they are:

True (and infamous) Story #7
“On August 7, 1996 Krishanthy Kumaraswamy went missing on her way home after sitting her GCE Advanced Level examination at Chundikuli Girls High School, Jaffna, Sri Lanka। She was believed last seen alive at 11.30 am at Kaithady Army checkpoint in Jaffna. Later investigations revealed that she was abducted by five soldiers and another six soldier gang raped and killed her at the checkpoint.”

True Story #8:
The young divorcee Kandiah Urmila Devi, Urmila in brief, was LTTE’s first woman cadre। She was active in the Colombo branch of the Tamil Youth Forum and had worked closely with Uma Maheshwarm and she was his keep or paramour for which Prabakaran was furious. How furious? He (Praba) said, “For you people who live in London it is not a major problem. Here, in our society, it is a serious problem. Who will permit their daughters to join a movement in which leaders molest their cadres?”

Once Uma Maheswarn had fallen out with Prabakaran, and Urmila Devi gone with Uma to PLOTE, the first LTTE woman cadre was ‘GANG RAPED’ on a ‘MERRY X’MAS DAY by Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and killed and burnt’ somewhere in the Vanni jungles (Murrukan)।

Urmila Devi, used to work in an office of a famous optician shop chain (RB) in Colombo and coordinated the attack where on September 7, 1978, the LTTE blew up an Avro aircraft belonging to the Air Ceylon, at Ratmalana airport on the outskirts of Colombo।

True Story #9
“A senior police team has been appointed to investigate a complaint by a woman army deserter who alleged that she had been raped by three police officers including an Inspector from the Buttala Police Station when she went to lodge a complaint against her lover। The woman soldier attached to the Gajaba Regiment is a resident of Udugama in Galle.”

Let’s look at the lessons we can learn or observations that can be recorded from the above True Story #7, 8 and 9.
#1: An ‘individual’ soldier can and may rape and kill a ‘Tamil woman’ (or a ‘Sinhalese woman’).
#2 A ‘Tamil soldier’ (as LTTE had a rank structure) may rape and kill a ‘Tamil woman’ (or a ‘Sinhalese woman during village massacres)’.
#3: Not only a ‘Sinhalese’ or ‘a Sinhalese soldier’ can and may rape a ‘Sinhalese woman’ but policemen are capable of gang raping a Sinhalese female soldier.
#4: If we go by a statement of a Secretary of State, the LTTE was the first to use ‘Rape as a Weapon of War ‘ and it is documented that the first victim was none other than Urmila Devi of PLOTE, long before Sinhalese soldiers were accused of rape of Tamil women in the Eelam wars!
#5: The Rapists did not treat the females as if they were their sisters or mothers.
#6: Again, there was no apparent ‘language issue’, Tamil or Sinhala, during coitus by force.

If and when one looks at the TS #7, 8 and 9 with an open mind you would see that Urmila Devi of PLOTE was ‘ordered gang raped’ by the ‘opposing’ ‘top most military commander’ (LTTE, against PLOTE in the turf war to be the sole military supremacist) that was Praba as an act of revenge and punishment!

Moreover though Tamil terrorists are mainly Hindus but when it comes to gain effective propaganda mileage by the LTTE and the Diaspora they make it a point to highlight or allude to that Tamil tigers are ‘devout Christians’, who are being ‘persecuted’ by majority Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, which is not the case.

Remember Beate Arnestad, and her an hour long documentary film, "My daughter the terrorist," and its visuals depicting those suicide women cadres praying in a church in order to win sympathy in the Christian world, by fooling them?

How come, the so devout ‘Christian-Tamil suicide cadres or terrorists’ GANG RAPE ANOTHER “CHRISTIAN GIRL-URMILA DEVI” on a MERRY X’MAS DAY? The Diaspora and the LTTE sympathizers (DBS, LNW, Vany K, MIA to name a few) owe a ‘PLAUSIBLE’ answer or explanation to the Christian world!

The good news is that Sri Lankan justice system worked and in the Krishanthy Kumaraswamy case culprits were brought to justice, somehow or other. That justice was meted out to a ‘Sinhalese’ culprit in the de facto ‘LTTE’ Drealam, and GOSL judicial system worked fine.

Here is another example that Sri Lanka justice system or law enforcement working fine in the ‘south’ in a case of Tamil victim;

“Acting on a complaint by Ram Mahes Yogarajan, the son of UNP National List MP R Yorarajan, that he was assaulted and robbed of his gold chain while he was in the company of a Russian woman at a karaoke bar the Cinnamon Gardens, the Police have arrested a suspect. The suspect Enston Fernando was produced before Colombo Chief Magistrate Champa Janaki Rajaratne. He was subsequently identified by Yogarajan at an identification parade and finger printed.”

Now I have a question for Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Tamil Diasporas who raise a big hue and cry about these criminal acts when committed by some ‘sick’ individual soldiers (These criminal acts are committed daily in any country on the face of earth), when did you bring the perpetrators of the heinous crime that was gang rape committed on a Merry X’mas Day on Kandaia Urmila Devi of PLOTE? Did you have an Eelam Police? Did you have an IGP named Nadesan, though he did not have a Ph.D? Can we have the mug shots of the rapists of Urmila Devi, like Sri Lanka police had a culprit in custody that was SLA Corporal Somaratna Rajapaksa? Can we see the Tamil Eelam court papers of the rapist killers of Urmila Devi? Or at least tell us how you dispensed justice to the rapist killers of Urmila Devi of PLOTE!

Even though IGP Nadesan of the LTTE police was unable to not catch the culprits, WHY could NOT then the Eelam courts prosecute them in absentia?

Do not worry dear Tamils, the elite operators of Sri Lankan military delivered justice to the perpetrators, the rapist killers of Urmila Devi of PLOTE, on and about 18th May 2009 on the banks of Nandikadal lagoon. It is said that a ‘female’ with roots in Matara had tried to argue like a ‘lawyer’ for IGP Nadesan, reminding the operators of mothers and sisters and save the rapist killers of Urmila Devi, but the justice was so swift and what we call in the military ‘violence on action’ when ‘closed in on the target’ is said to have been so great.

Now Urmila Devi’s near and dear ones in particular and the good Tamils in general may thank the Sri Lankan military for bringing ‘closure’ to the rape and killing of Urmila Devi.at last!

True Story #10
“A Sri Lanka Army soldier was killed and a civilian seriously injured when two motorbikes collided at Kulappiddy junction along KKS road within Jaffna municipal limits, around 8:00 a.m. Friday, 06 April 2007. The injured soldier, L. Ariyadasa, 30, was rushed to Palaly military hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. The injured civilian was treated at Jaffna Teaching hospital.

A number of civilians were injured in Sri Lankan armed forces involved traffic accidents in Jaffna Peninsula in the recent past.”

True Story #11
“Two Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers were killed when the vehicle they were travelling in as part of a military convoy along Palaly road towards Palaly Military base allegedly collided with another vehicle near Kurumbasiddy, Punnalaikadduvan Saturday night, 03 March 2007. Ms. Sarojini Ilankovan, the Mallaham District Judge, visited the scene of the accident Sunday and conducted the death inquests.

Convoys often travel at great speed due to the threat of claymore mines, according to sources in Jaffna.”

True Story #12
“Two undergrads, one of Jaffna University and the other of Peradeniya University riding on a motorcycle collided with another vehicle Sunday night, 25 July 2010 in Jaffna at Kantharmadam and died on the spot, in Jaffna. The victims were without helmets had speeded up to escape traffic police chasing them and had collided with an oncoming vehicle, according to the witnesses.

The victims were identified as Shanthakumar Chanthuru, 25, a final year Arts Faculty student in Jaffna University and Kanishdas Gajendran, 25, an Engineering student in Peredeniya University in Kandy.”

Please read carefully the TS #10, 11 and 12 between lines, you would see the bias in the Tamil media. It shows clearly why Sinhalese and Tamils are not attracting towards each other, why they behave or dispel like the north pole and north pole of two magnets when brought together rather than the attraction one would see when the north pole of one magnet brought together with the south pole of another. This is the cause for this great polarization or not liking each other.

If you read the TS #10 the Tamil media is trying to portray that the soldiers of an ‘occupying’ army is running all over Tamils of Tamil Eelam recklessly (“A number of civilians were injured in Sri Lankan armed forces involved traffic accidents in Jaffna Peninsula in the recent past “) without regard to human life. In the TS #11when two soldiers were killed the Tamil media sends a subtle and sarcastic message that SLA resort to navigate at high speed because they are afraid (Not anymore!) of LTTE land mines (Convoys often travel at great speed due to the threat of claymore mines, according to sources in Jaffna is said to be the cause of many accidents.). Though two soldiers were killed unfortunately in this incident, we in the military decide driving speed as a Force Protection (FP) measure.

In the TS #12 luckily for GOSL, the bias Tamil media do not nor cannot blame an occupying army for the death of two Tamil undergraduates though the two Tamil undergraduates had an IQ (intelligent Quotient) level to get selected to university but DID NOT have what is most important to a human being to possess: COMMON SENSE! They decided to ride without PPE (Personal Protection Equipment), namely: helmet, gloves, reflective vest or belt and a fully covered thick dress.

What is important to remember here is that thousands die and/or seriously injured in roads accidents all over the world in a year. Some are at fault and some are innocent victims. Some do not care and behave like speed demons, some drive drunk, under influence or while impaired and 99.99999999% of these culprits DO NOT WEAR Sri Lanka MILITARY UNIFORM! So how come, the Tamil media apportion blame to an ‘occupying’ army for a common daily occurrence in the world?

!f not for the Victorious Army most of the northern and eastern Tamils may have died like the tall Sri (Sabarathnam-late Indira Gandhi’s Jaffna-Karthakolamban-mango friend) of TELO in a raging fire, burning bright, even if you crawled out of the raging pyre, your flesh burning they would have thrown you again in the fire to have a (TAMIL) HUMAN B-B-Q for LTTE cadres to relish, enjoy or satisfy their bestiality or cannibalism! The northern brethren of Sri Lanka need to be grateful to the elite operators of Sri Lanka military for not allowing that day to dawn on you again!

When it comes to daily occurrences like death, rape, accidents, robbery, slaying and whatnot it has nothing to do with ethnicity or nationality. It has something to do with human flaws, human carelessness or mental aberrations of an ‘individual’ in question. It has to nothing to do with ‘uniform’ of a Nation’s or country’s military.

An 8th Grade soldier like me need not patronize or be condescending to the ‘Tamil intellectuals’ in Colombo, in Jaffna, in Vanni or overseas. The need of the hour for the Tamil intellectuals or the intelligentsia is to educate and instill in the mind of every Tamil, poor or rich, high caste or low caste, northern or eastern, educated or uneducated, NOT to view a daily occurrences in ‘racist light’ or ‘racial light’. That way Tamils in Sri Lanka can LIVE in CONCORD and AVOID the next KIGALI. You know what I mean and I will explain it later too.

Now let me tell you the real stories of Sinhalese magnanimity and selflessness and taking risk regardless of losing jobs, lives or the futures to take care of Tamil brethren, take care of Sri Lanka’s own.

True Story #13
“During the 83 black July riots, then a Major, educated at STC, the first ever Under Officer of SLA Diayathalawa Military Academy, named VSM Jayawardena, 1Field Engineers, was on patrol on the railway line near the Kinross Club, (Wellawatte), Colombo 6 aka the Little Jaffna. The hooligans were about to have a field day, to loot the Tamil households. He gave a warning which was not heeded to. The hooligans may have thought because he was a Sinhalese he was a ‘racially motivated officer; would turn a blind eye to a crime being committed or he was a guy who would wink and give a nod of approval to attack and loot. The hooligans were sadly and highly mistaken. The next thing they saw was he was aiming his nine mil, service pistol at them. The hooligans heard shots being fired, legally speaking, a report of a gun was heard by them LOUD and CLEAR and they took to heels. A local crisis averted, some Tamils saved, millions rupees worth of property intact!”

True Story #14
“Remember what the famous Col Karunathilaka, the very good friend of late General Zia-ul-Haq and the famous Bhuttos, from SLA Armoured Corps said, when he asked by the international media about the burning bodies, about 30 in number at a stretch on the roadside very down south during the Reign of Terror (1987-1989) (a few days before that the insurgents had burnt down his house); “There was a procession conducted by a nearby temple in the night so they did not have illumination I think and am sure those burning piles have provided ample light!””

The international media HEARD .it loud and clear, what they DID NOT want to hear! The international media beat a hasty retreat with their ENG (External News Gathering) equipment.”

But why human rights activists, media and Eelamists DECRY those deaths but DID NOT give him the CREDIT or an AWARD for PERSONAL COURAGE for the following incident:

When Maj Karunathilka was in the Anuradhapura army camp a soldier went on berserk and sprayed into a military cell killing a number of Tamil terrorist suspects. What DID Major Karunathilaka DO? He KILLED the solder with his side arm! Believe it or not, he killed his own soldier; he being ‘Sinhalese’ killed another ‘Sinhalese’. He showed his unquestionable personal courage to the world, as an army officer he would be fair and firm to Tamil brethren and that justice delivered may not be a result of a court decision but would be delivered. But it would be the swiftest and most effective justice. Why the Diaspora and Human Rights Commissions maintain chilling silence for this act of personal courage. I am baffled.

To be Continued...