Crimes and Punishment! Sri Lanka Style – Accused?

The 40 year tragedy of Sri Lanka is that the Crimes committed in the past 40 years were by Sri Lankan citizens, and the victims were Sri Lankan Citizens. The Government engages in constant comparisons of the US crimes in the Middle East, Afghanistan and latterly of crime by UAVs in Pakistan.

When a US citizen is a target of a crime it gets sensational news, as in the case where the US had a killed a US citizen deliberately in Pakistan as a matter of policy of targeting him.

Using that standard, as Sri Lankan logic is so warped, that US has been engaged in systematic massacres in Iraq etc. how about the fact that in Sri Lanka we cannot point fingers at anyone else for the crimes committed in Sri Lanka by our own kind. Whether you are Tamil, Muslim, JVP or LTTE it is all about Sri Lankans killing Sri Lankans. We are a nation of murderers, and where NONE of these 200,000 murders has resulted in even one person being prosecuted. That must be a record.

No one in Sri Lanka has received the death penalty for any of the crimes committed in the past 40 years in the name of patriotism, liberation, terrorism or massacre. There is therefore NO possibility of ANYONE being accused, prosecuted or even convicted of the thousands of series of heinous crimes committed during this period.

This simply means that we live amidst a bunch of murderers all the way from the top and accordingly gives shelter to the murderers down there. These guilty have conveniently forgotten their guilt, presuming innocence and as a patriotic duty and have gone to their graves, or met more violent ends, but NEVER had to face man for their crimes. Their maker is probably giving them a hard time in the outerworld.

Psychologists often say that until there is closure people cannot move on. That is why we in Sri Lanka are still in war time mood, imagining we are about to go back to war. It is obviously very conducive to the Government not to resolve the problem as it can divert the attention of the public from more pressing matters.

We owe it to the Country to get above this petty politics of playing the same blame game, and call a spade a spade, face the facts and move on. When our leaders live in an escapist world where they think they have not done anything wrong, it is their reasoning of right and wrong that is at fault, and not whether some event occurred or not.

Time to stop the rot, bite the bullet, open up our hearts and our heads to all who will listen and get on with building the spirit of our citizens to overcome our failings.