During the course of last week, Shanie (Notebook of Nobody, The Island of 11-4-09), taking a cue from the current thinking of one Mr. Gunadheera, decried what she calls Sinhala "triumphalism". Thinking ahead about Prabhakaran’s future, she suggests that Prabhakaran should be given the same honours posthumously, as Dutugemunu gave Elara. Prabhakaran, she states, quote: "stood up for his people as much as Keppetipola, Gongalegoda Banda and Veera Puran Appu stood up for the Sinhalese in their hour of need". Most Lankans would agree that this is a mindless insult to national heroes who gave their lives fighting a foreign invader, and indeed to Elara, who in order to prevent loss of life in a bloody armed conflict, engaged Dutugemunu in hand-to-hand combat instead! In marked contrast to these heroes, the megalomaniac murderer, Prabhakaran, in his quest for Eelam, has killed all Tamil leaders who opposed him, and brought only suffering and death to countless Tamils. Prabhakaran, who asked his cadres to kill him if he betrayed the Eelam cause, is now cowering in a bunker, in civilian clothes, hiding among the civilians, looking for a means of escaping his well deserved fate.

This columnist, Shanie, belongs to the group of "moderate" Tamil intellectuals who – together with conflict resolution specialists, academics, and self-professed intellectuals of foreign funded NGOs, are known as the Peace lobby. They believe that the "minorities" (read the Northern Tamils), have been oppressed, because their aspiration for division of the country on an ethno-territorial basis has not been fulfilled. They want an area consisting of the combined Northern and Eastern province, (the mythical ancient Tamil homeland of the "Tamil nation"), solely for the Tamils living there, which is 5% of the country’s total population, (the other 5% live elsewhere in the country). The other minorities like the Muslims, the Upcountry Tamil’s, the Burghers and Malays, historically have not complained of oppression or made territorial demands, but have sought to achieve their aspirations by joining the political mainstream.

There was also a LTTE proxy in the guise of a columnist, who in another newspaper wrote: THEEPAN OF THE LTTE: HEROIC SAGA OF A NORTHERN WARRIOR, (Daily Mirror, 11-4-09) where he mourned the death last week of many LTTE leaders and their cadres, with a detailed resume of Theepan. In his column, he made a ridiculous comparison between these fascist, terrorist murderers and Macaulay’s heroic Horatio at the Bridge, defending Rome with two other warriors against the Tuscan army. The fact is that being cornered, with no means of escape, in no position like their leader to hide in a bunker in civilian clothes, they met their inevitable fate at the hands of the government forces. These were not high principled heroic warriors but brainwashed terrorist murderers who have killed innocent Sinhalese and Muslim men, women and children in cold blood, because of their race, and also countless Tamils and their political leaders who disagreed with them, in their fight for a racist fascist Eelam.

Feature writers and columnists of Shanie’s ilk, in their past writings, have boasted of their symbiotic relationship with the LTTE, which they considered the sole representative of the Tamils, while dismissing other Tamil political groups as impotent nonentities. They exhibited "triumphalism" at the LTTE’s military successes, suicide bombings and other atrocities, presenting them as a proof that the LTTE was invincible. Throughout the current war, they continually downplayed the evident military successes of the armed forces, with a self-deluding belief in the ability of the LTTE to reverse its defeats. The peace lobby banked on the military capabilities of the LTTE and Prof Vitarane of the APRC to achieve their separatist goals, but these hopes have been all but dashed.

There is now a concerted external pressure on the government to delay the imminent destruction of the LTTE, by calling for a ceasefire and a "political solution". Western politicians, Human Rights INGO’s, individuals from UN agencies, and sections of the International media that have financial and other allegiances to the Tamil diaspora, are united in the endeavour. The local journalistic fifth columnists are giving unstinted support to this foreign group in a last desperate attempt to resuscitate the moribund LTTE.

In the guise of champions of human rights and democracy, they endorse through the media, the most outrageous accusations against the government and armed forces, while warning of the disastrous consequences to the economy of not appeasing the foreigners. They accuse the security forces of deliberately targeting civilians, and civilian facilities. The fact that the government does not permit international monitors and media in the conflict zones is portrayed as evidence of its disingenuousness. However, they give little emphasis in their columns to the reality, which is that the LTTE is using civilians as human shields and shooting those who attempt to escape into safe areas. In fact they argue that many of these civilians are there of their own choosing.

Despite what is frequently said to the contrary, there surely is media freedom in Sri Lanka, when individuals who provide almost undisguised support for a fascist terrorist organization causing the nation so much grief, are free to do so with impunity. Can one envisage the Western media, eulogizing and extolling the military prowess of Al Quaida, or Taliban cadres and their leaders, or protesting at their elimination?