While a sinister campaign is on overseas to press war crimes charges against Sri Lanka, one of our columnists, Durand Appuhamy, has made a valuable suggestion (in an article on this page yesterday). Since former US Ambassador in Colombo Robert Blake has sent a report to the US Congress on Sri Lanka presumably in a bid to make a case for the prosecution of its armed forces chiefs for war crimes, Durand asks what prevents the Sri Lankan parliamentarians from putting up a united front in defence of the heroic forces who defeated terrorism. That is the way, he rightly points out, to convince the US Congress of the need to look at both sides of the issue raised by Blake allegedly after meeting some LTTE activists abroad.

We could not agree with our columnist more! But, the problem is that most of our MPs are notorious for running with the hare and hunting with hounds. Some of them are deriving a perverse pleasure from Sri Lanka's predicament in the post-war period. On the other hand, they are in the good books of foreign powers hostile to this country and they may not want to ruffle their masters' feathers. So, it is highly unlikely that all parliamentarians will join forces to defend the defenders of the nation voluntarily.

The government deserves the credit for defeating terrorism and the main Opposition party has also claimed part of it. The Opposition and UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe famously said in the aftermath of the decimation of the LTTE that the UNP, too, had contributed to the country's victory because among the armed forces personnel were members of the UNP. He got it right to some extent! Moreover, the UNP was the first to take on the LTTE militarily and build the national military to the level of a modern combat outfit. It also lost many of its stalwarts at the hands of terrorists in the process.

Therefore, there is no reason why the two main parties cannot come together and defend the Sri Lankan military vis-à-vis the on-going human rights witch-hunt against them and clear the country's name. However, even the patriotic parliamentarians on either side of the political divide are not likely to make common cause on their own because of their confrontational politics and animosity. Someone has to take the initiative.

It was only the other day that Speaker W. J. M. Lokubandara told the House that it must oppose the shoddy treatment being meted out to Sri Lankan VIPs in some foreign countries. Similarly, Parliament is duty bound to defend the servicemen who have made Sri Lanka safe for her citizens irrespective of ethnicity and religion.

Today, no one is dying because of war. There are no assassinations; no massacres, no bomb blasts; no illegal taxes; no kangaroo courts; no illegal prisons and, most of all, no child recruitment. UNICEF had been striving to prevent child conscription by the LTTE for over two decades but and a few months before the conclusion of war, it launched an expensive advertising campaign aimed at raising public awareness of the crime of child recruitment. That prompted us to say in these columns child conscription would continue as long as the LTTE lasted and children would be free only when Prabhakaran’s killing machine was decimated. And today children are free from conscription in all parts of the country!

These benefits considered unthinkable a few years ago have accrued to the country as a whole because of the selfless sacrifices of the armed forces bravely led by a government against tremendous odds and amidst unbearable pressure from external as well as internal forces determined to save Prabhakaran and his killers. Therefore, now, it is the country’s turn to defend the armed forces, their commanders and the political leaders who gave them leadership in war.