JVP leader tells UN Assistant Secy. Gen. Kane

=Lashes out at Radhika and ICES for pushing for R2P

JVP Leader Somawansa Amarasinghe has, in a letter to UN Assistant Secretary General Angela Kane, called upon the UN to help Sri Lanka decimate what he terms the remaining parts of the LTTE’s open prison in the North.

He has told Ms. Kane that the UN was founded by the Allied Forces that destroyed Hitler, who posed a threat to humanity and, as such, the UN must not in anyway resort to any course of action that will help LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, a follower of Hitler, with his terror project.

The way to repair the strained relations between Sri Lanka and the UN, he has said, is for the UN to stick to its anti-colonial roots without placing dark forces of racial hatred on par with the noble principles of democracy and tolerance.

Amarasinghe has said the JVP suspects the activities of former ICES head Radhika Coomaraswamy now involved with the UN. He lambastes the ICES for promoting R2P.

Full text of the JVP leader’s letter:

"We thank you for meeting with us in the JVP.  We found that you were refreshingly different from Ms. Louise Arbour, who met with us earlier.  Let us recapitulate what we discussed.

You said that you are worried about the negative publicity that the United Nations had been getting in Sri Lanka. 

We reminded you that that this was well earned.  We gave some examples like the former UN Secretary General expressing concern at the death of a terrorist leader and attempts by sections of the United Nations to intervene in Sri Lanka, including the not so hidden attempts to give effect to R2P.  You denied such attempts initially, till we presented to you incontrovertible facts.  At this stage, you said that it may have been former UN officials but the present ones were different.  This, of course, was ingenuous as the United Nations or for that matter any other organisation is a corporate body and not an organization of different isolated individuals.  We are happy to hear that present UN officials are different from their predecessors.

We believe that the extent of the negative propaganda in Sri Lanka could not have been carried out without inside UN efforts. We pointed out that we suspect the activities of Radhika Coomarswamy, a former head of the Sri Lankan foreign funded NGO, ICES which was started by a member of the Tamil Arsu Katchchi (Tamil State Party), a Tamil racist separatist party and which acted in many ways as its foreign arm. The ICES we know was instrumental in promoting R2P and we also know its present head Bradman Weerakoon has, according to a recorded statement, helped the LTTE smuggle advanced communication equipment.

 The United Nations arose out of the ashes of World War II and the defeat of the ideologies and practices of Hitler and Mussolini.  The United Nation's rise was welcomed and made possible by those oppressed by Western colonialists and the birth of new free nations.  The United Nations arose at a time when the victorious Allied Powers were removing the poison of Nazi and fascist propaganda from the minds of the liberated Germans and Italians through major changes in the media and in school curricula.  Most importantly, the German anthem "Deutschland Uber Alles" was banned as was the book by Hitler "Mein Kampf".  We believe that you would understand this very well.  That philosophy of removing racial hatred and fascist intolerance became the guiding principle of the UN itself.  At the beginning of UN, there were no attempts to place dark forces of racism on par with noble principles of democracy and tolerance.

LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is a follower of Hitler.  Like the Lebensraum of the Nazis it has demarcated a "racially pure" area as his Heimat- homeland from which all other ethnic communities have been driven out wherever it was possible. Like the Nazis, Prabhakaran has killed all the democratic Tamil leadership and brooks no dissent.  He has assassinated a President of Sri Lanka and a Prime Minister of India and has unsuccessfully attempted to take the lives of another Sri Lankan President and one Prime Minister, besides several other successful and unsuccessful attacks on many other Sri Lankan leaders.  Going beyond the tradition of Hitler Youth "Hitler Jugend", Prabhakaran kidnaps little children, poisons their minds with his racist ideology and uses them as cannon fodder.  Following the example set by the fanatic Japanese Kamikaze of World War II Prabhakaran introduced suicide bombings to the modern world.  In Prabhakaran's sick mind there is no room for tolerance, freedom of expression, human rights or democracy.  Like in World War II, there is only one alternative left for the democratic forces in Sri Lanka. That is to eliminate this intolerant cancer exactly the way the Allied Forces who went on to form the UN, did in the case of Hitler.

The UN has, at times, come under the influence of some of its temporary officials who want to indirectly reward the LTTE by sponsoring colonial policies like R2P. It does this through neo-colonial establishments that Western powers fund as a new form of control. One such is the ICES with its close links to sections of the interventionist wing of the UN. This is a return to the colonial era with the UN being used as an instrument of Western powers. The JVP values the UN for the good it does but will always resist it being used as a Western colonial proxy. We want the UN to stick unwaveringly to its anti-colonial roots.  If it does, you do not have to worry about public protests and demonstrations of which you said you were very concerned.  And as you correctly said, we must have a new beginning in Sri Lanka-UN relations.  We will heartily support you if this is done in the right spirit.

We believe that your visit to the Eastern Province would have been very useful to convince yourself that the Sri Lanka security forces have liberated the innocent people who were languishing in the open prison of the LTTE. Now it is the duty of the UN to assist Sri Lanka, an old and active member of the UN, to restore democracy in the Northern Province by dismantling the remaining part of the open prison of the LTTE."