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Battle of Wayamba - forces, police and STF fired on by ministers
By our Defence Correspondent
The armed forces, police and Special Task Force are reeling from the humiliation they suffered this week from the deliberate and unprovoked insults of some of the most senior members of the Cabinet.At a press conference attended by more than 60 journalists, which was broadcast throughout the world as well as on every radio and television channel in Sri Lanka, no less than eight Cabinet Ministers and two Deputy Ministers slammed the forces, police and STF, saying their personnel had created chaos in the Wayamba by plotting with the United National Party to prevent voters from casting their ballots.
'The STF was actively supporting the UNP. I saw it myself. These are the same type of people who murdered Tamils and threw their bodies into the Diyawanna Oya,' an almost hysterical Minister D. M. Jayaratne screamed at the journalists.
'I saw police who were guarding one polling station, preventing voters from entering. Finally, some other policemen who had come from Vavuniya forced the doors open, and even shot at the police guards. The two policemen guarding the booth tried to shoot back, but their rifles didn't fire, so they ran away,' shouted Minister Kingsley T. Wickramaratne.
When challenged by journalists that the government hadn't done its duty of keeping law and order for the election, Minister S. B. Dissanayake shouted, 'we are trying to keep law and order, but the forces and police are plotting with the UNP.'
What was most disturbing about Wednesday's press conference, held at the Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation on Galle Road in Kollupitiya, was that these were not isolated remarks of one or two Ministers.
Present on this occasion, and actively supporting the accusations of the forces and police conspiring with the UNP to destabilize the Northwestern Provincial Council election, were Tourism and Aviation Minister and SLFP General Secretary Dharmasiri Senanayake; Posts, Telecommunications and Media Minister Mangala Samaraweera; Samurdhi, Youth Affairs, Sports and Rural Development Minister S.B. Dissanayake; Agriculture and Lands Minister and PA General Secretary D.M. Jayaratne; Internal, International Commerce and Food Minister Kingsley T. Wickramaratne; Industrial Development Minister C.V. Gooneratne; Mahaweli Development Minister Maithripala Sirisena; Local Government and Provincial Councils Minister Alavi Mowlana; and Deputy Ministers Pavithra Wanniarachchi and Anura Priyadharshana Yapa and MP Kesara Lal Gunasekara.
The furious onslaught on the forces, police and STF was part of an astounding attempt by the Ministers to duck away from blame for any election violence, and pass the buck to the UNP and even the independent election observing groups. Scathing attacks were made on Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremasinghe, and the election observer groups.
But many officers are worried that the amazing campaign against the forces, police and STF that day will cause the fighting men to become disillusioned and lead to problems in morale.
It is unclear why President Chandrika Kumaratunga allowed eight members of her Cabinet to humiliate the forces and police, at a time when a hard-pressed army is trying to advance further against the LTTE in the Wanni.
The eight ministers appeared to be following some kind of plan to defend the People's Alliance, with Wickramaratne and Jayaratne being the most vocal.
The fact that all the other ministers agreed with these remarks was extremely evident from the fact that none of the other ministers made a hum of protest or tried to get his colleagues to soften their remarks. They all sat there and blasted the forces and police, repeatedly saying that their personnel were involved in the illegal and anti-national activities of the opposition.
The press conference was not a short one either, and went on for more than two hours.
Since eight Cabinet Ministers appeared so unanimous in their criticism of the forces, it seems that their views on the loyalty and trustworthiness of the forces and police are the views of the entire Cabinet, and probably even the President's.
Certainly, no attempt has been made by any other Minister or the President to disassociate themselves from the attack on the forces and police made that day.
The STF in particular was singled out for the harshest treatment that day, with the Diyawanna Oya incident being brought up to humiliate that proud service. Our readers will remember that the bodies of more than a dozen Tamil civilians washed up on the shores of the Diyawanna and Bolgoda lakes, and several canals around Colombo. More than 20 STF personnel were arrested and charged in courts for torturing and murdering these civilians, who were ordinary people arrested at checkpoints. The killings had been done in the most brutal fashion, with victims being strangled at the STF headquarters in Colombo.
The first concern for all in the country is to wonder whether the ministers' accusations are correct. Were the forces and police involved in a widespread planned campaign to destroy democracy in the Wayamba, plotting with the opposition?
If so, does this mean that the government has lost control of a significant section of the forces and police? Is the country slipping further towards anarchy?
Most worrying is the possibility that if these accusations are true, the same thing may happen in five more provinces, when elections are held within the next three months.
What kind of an election will the country have, if the Cabinet's charges against the servants of law and order are true?
But of vital importance is how this will all affect the war situation. If large sections of the forces and police are getting heavily involved in politics, they are not going to be very interested in finishing off the war. Remember there are a large number of crucial elections coming within the next 21 months, starting with the Provincial Council elections in the Western, Uva, Sabaragamuwa, Central and Northcentral provinces within the next three months; then the Southern Province before April of next year; then the General Election before September of next year, and finally the Presidential Election by December of 2000.
Are we now going to let the Tigers off the hook, after pursuing them on a long hard campaign for nearly four years?
Certainly, the government doesn't seem at all interested in fighting the war anymore, and is definitely concentrating on politics. Elections are obviously bigger battles than those being fought with the formidable enemy in the north.
Prabhakaran, one of the most authoritarian dictators in world history, must be clapping his hands in glee in support of democracy, since it is keeping him and his war alive.
Of course, while there are small sections in the forces and police who were actively working for each political party, the problem is probably not anywhere near what the ministers made it out to be. But what is damning is that none of the eight ministers tried to clarify matters, perhaps by saying that only certain sections of the forces and police were involved.
But it would be nice if the government took action against the personnel concerned, and the Cabinet members shut up, instead of tarring and blackening all the valiant fighting men and women who are giving their lives to keep this ungrateful country together.
By Gwynne Dyer
'The important thing is what you do with a window of opportunity,' said Jamsheed Marker, UN special envoy for East Timor, when he visited the Indonesian-occupied territory last July after the fall of the dictator Suharto. 'You have to jump through it.'The window was not yet open then, but Marker understood the basic dynamics of these things. At some point in the transition from dictatorship to democracy, there would probably come a moment when Indonesia's interim rulers would be willing to consider letting go. That moment must not be missed.
It was Suharto who invaded East Timor just as it was getting its independence from Portugal in 1975. So long as he ruled there was no hope of change, for he could never afford to admit that it was an error and a crime. But now the moment has come.
In Jakarta on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Ali Alatas, after unveiling a plan for giving the island nation autonomy within Indonesia, pronounced the magic words: 'If the Indonesian proposal...is rejected, the cabinet will (ask) the next (parliament) to consider letting go of East Timor.'
The East Timorese, who have lost 200,000 dead (out of a population of 800,000) to bullets, starvation and disease because of the Indonesian invasion and the 23-year guerilla war that has followed, will never voluntarily agree to stay in Indonesia. Indonesia's first-ever genuinely democratic parliament will be elected on 7 June. So East Timor should soon be free, right?
Bishop Carlos Belo of Dili, who shared a Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 for his work in East Timor, seems to think so. Responding to Alatas's speech, he warned against immediate independence, urging a long period of autonomy and then a referendum.
'If they grant independence now, how do we reconcile the groups who favour and oppose (it)?' he fretted. 'Some time should pass in order to reach common ground and a process of reconciliation.' As if East Timor had all the time in the world.
Never trust a diplomat - especially not one as clever as Alatas. The transitional Indo-nesian government has come under great outside pressure to let East Timor go since Suharto's fall, and it badly needs foreign good-will in its present economic plight. So it has come up with a half-promise to let East Timor go - but LATER.
When Ali Alatas says that if East Timor rejects Jakarta's current offer of autonomy, then 'it is only fair and wise...to suggest to the upcoming elected people's representatives to allow East Timor to separate from Indonesia,' it sounds pretty sincere. But you have to read the fine print.
In the next breath, Alatas said it would be wrong to let East Timor vote on the offer of autonomy, because 'it would lead to conflict or civil war'. (Pardon? Your army has killed a quarter of East Timor's people, but now you worry about causing a conflict?)
So who does Ali Alatas think should decide on Jakarta's offer of autonomy? The obedient East Timorese 'representatives', chosen by Jakar-ta, who sit in the outgoing parliament, perhaps?
If too many foreign governments object to that piece of legerdemain, then Alatas will just hand the decision on to the new parliament that will be elected in June. And what will that new parliament do? It will immerse itself in the hundred urgent things that must be done to get a democratic Indo-nesia up and running.
Nobody will nag it about East Timor, because every foreign government will be praying for it to succeed. And by the time the new parliament finally does get round to East Timor, in six or twelve or eighteen months, the cement will have set again.
The ecology of democratic politics is Darwinian: every possible niche of opinion and ideology is colo-nised by one group or another. So by the time Indonesia's democratic government is ready to deal with East Timor, various people and parties that have to be placated will have taken up firm positions about preserving 'the sacred integrity of the motherland'. It won't be worth the government's time to try to shift them, and foreign attention will long since have moved elsewhere. So nothing will happen.
Ali Alatas is a skilled practitioner of the diplomatic art - already Timorese in Indonesia's pay are echoing his predictions about 'civil war' - and he plays a long game. Foreign pressure has forced him to open the window a crack, and if the foreigners keep pushing, the Timorese could jump through it before it slams shut again. But there will not be a second chance for independence.
If you think I am being too hard on the Indonesian government's motives, consider this. Last week, crackers in Indonesian pay hacked into the computers of Ireland-Connect, a Dublin-based Internet server that acts as volunteer host to the country code domain (.tp) that has been registered to East Timor.
The probing of Connect-Ireland's defences began last March, said director Martin Maguire, but the final assault was a coordinated effort coming from countries as far apart as Australia, Japan, Holland and Canada. 'There were eighteen simultaneous attacks on our server by robots trying to claw down our defences,'
'We began to get worried when they succeeded in creating a buffer overflow attack on our name daemon,' said Martin. 'We waited a while and watched what they were doing, but then we disconnected all our computers when they managed to execute a buffer overflow in our POP (email) daemon.' It took a week to get the system up again.
Even as Jakarta was apparently offering freedom to East Timor, its agents were trying to destroy its entire Internet domain - the virtual East Timor - in the first clear case of information warfare. It doesn't mean that Alatas is a monster of evil, but it does mean the Timorese have to take his strategy seriously.
If Estonia and Ukraine and Georgia had not seized their independence from Russia in 1991, could they get it now? Ask the Chechens. The window only opens briefly, and you have to move fast.
