Liam Fox the current British Defense Secretary who is the Cabinet Minister of Defense the portfolio currently held by President Rajapkse in Sri Lanka, gave the postponed Laxman Kadirgamar speech in Colombo yesterday recalling his friendship with him, especially as it pertained at the time to the resolution of the LTTE issue which never happened in the end.
Either way he elaborated about various issues in history relating to the discussions he had had with LK on the Tamil issues and then subsequently with Bogollagama after a long hiatus to the day of his lecture.
In the end in light of the loss of many of our freedoms today, he concluded with the wishes that we in Sri Lanka can dare to hope for a better future for our citizens, a poignant wish! I also hope that sense will prevail amongst all the citizens of Sri Lanka to realize the loss of their freedom and the need for a more accountable and less intrusive state with the freedoms of speech and expression enshrined in the constitution to be renewed with the removal of the state of emergency.
Just because constant cashes of arms are being unearthed in many places in the North we should not be spooked as to how clever these arms had been hidden in underground bunkers in places one would least expect them to be found. That in itself is not indication of the security of the state being at stake.
However well we can secure our borders we must never fail to realize how easy it is for India to destabilize Sri Lanka much in the way they were able to do in the past. With about 500 RAW agents in Sri Lanka now and the ability to harness armies of LTTE sympathizers from South India, we must keep our relationship with India intact and not make any unnecessary comments that may irk them.
In Conclusion, we still have a long way to go in reconciling the warring factions and getting people in Jaffna to truly and ungrudgingly accept the status quo if they are able to see that there is progress to reconcile and the state removes some of the more insidious memories of their status of occupation in the North. We must do all in our power to prove our government wrong with the normal people of the country emerging from a racist history and looking forward to be citizens of the new technological world devoid of need for claiming land and territory as we have to be everywhere and be permitted to go anywhere in this island.
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