Defending the decision to conduct a census of Tamils from the North living in the Western province, Defence Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa said yesterday the primary objective of this move is to prevent the LTTE from pressuring civilians to carry out attacks.

"The Government has no intention to harass innocent civilians and we have taken all precautions not to inconvenience anybody unnecessarily", he said. "All what we need is to obtain data on these persons".

"It is an impossible or rather difficult task for anyone to identify an innocent Tamil from a terrorist until they are apprehended as they all go under the guise of Tamil civilians", he told The Sunday Island.

A good example of this was the Lotus Road suicide bombing. The intelligence authorities discovered that the two LTTE operatives who had masterminded the bombing had fled the country after the attack — the accomplice had fled to Singapore and the mastermind to India, Rajapaksa explained.

"With the assistance of the INTERPOL we were able to arrest the LTTE operative in Singapore and he disclosed that the mastermind had lived at Wellawatte for a long time", he noted.

"We checked all the data that was available at the Wellawatte police and was able to obtain the information which ultimately led to the arrest of the mastermind".

Take for example the two train bombings at Dehiwala — the main suspect was a smart young man, well educated and nattily dressed that nobody would suspect him to be a terrorist. He was an air-conditioning engineer and his employer was a Sinhalese who commended him as an efficient and excellent worker of good character, the Defence Secretary said.

"Nobody could believe that he was a terrorist until he was apprehended".

This man’s wife knew that he sympathized with the LTTE, but was totally unaware of his acts of terrorism. When his wife was taken to the CID after his arrest and was shown the photographs of the innocent civilians who had been killed by her husband, she got into frenzy, screamed and started hitting him with her fists. She even tried to throttle him before CID officers intervened, Rajapaksa said.

"We quite understand that each and every Tamil is not a terrorist, but 99% of the terrorists are Tamils. The Government and the security forces have a major problem on their hands to identify terrorists", he explained.

"It is easy for some people to tell us don’t do this or that and criticize the Government, but if a bomb was to go off the very same people would criticize the Government for its failure to prevent an attack".

This census in the Western Province is to save innocent civilians. It is a precautionary measure to safeguard innocent lives from being used as pawns to carry out acts of terrorism by the LTTE, he said.

He said the requirement for Tamils to register started two and a half years ago. ‘We are now re-enforcing this as we have found that not even 10% comply voluntarily when requested to do so".

"When we decided to carry out this census, we discussed how we could avoid inconveniences to civilians and what type of facilities we could provide. As we all know, we don’t have facilities to take them to air-conditioned places to carry out this operation conducted in the country’s national interests but we have ensured that they won’t be harassed or hassled", the Defence Secretary noted.

The US and even British Governments have started collecting similar data to ascertain from where a person hails from, where he is staying, his occupation, his assets, his Bank account number, his vehicle number, telephone numbers etc. When required, all this information is made available to the Intelligence Agencies at the touch of a button so that it becomes easier to identify and catch them, when necessary, Rajapaksa elaborated.

"We have been able to curtail or minimize the attacks by the LTTE in the South at a time when we are pursuing them in to strongholds of Kilinochchi and Mullaithivu. Our brave Security Forces and the Police need the support of patriotic countrymen at this decisive hour of our battle against terrorism", he stressed.

"We are not having road blocks and carrying out checks for fun, but for the greater good and safety of our people".