No more 'Pace Talks' with Terrorists

It was 11 June 1990. LTTE terrorists, while supposedly engaged in peace talks with the government, suddenly surrounded and attacked all police stations in the Batticaloa and Ampara Districts. The tigers attacked with Rocket Propelled Grenades, Mortars and automatic weapons. Though outnumbered and possessed of no similar weaponry most police officers defended their stations valiantly.

Repeated appeals made for air and artillery support fell on the deaf ears of the Government which ordered them to surrender instead, and surrender they did.

The LTTE who had before the surrender, promised to give these police officers safe conduct and to release them, took all the Sinhala and Muslim police officers from all police stations to the jungles of Thirukkovil, blind folded and with their hands tied behind their backs. There, they were made to lie down, and murdered in captivity with spray upon spray of automatic fire. The total number of Sinhala and Muslim police officers so murdered in captivity in the East by the LTTE on that occasion was over 600. They paid with their lives for the trust reposed by the Government in the LTTE.

The previous track record of the LTTE regarding 'Peace Talks' did not, for some unfathomable reason, cause the newly elected PA Government to gauge the foul intentions of the LTTE in engaging in 'peace talks' in late 1995. With a naiveity that defies description, the Government continued to trust the LTTE.

The Government of Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge was elected to office at the General Election of 1994 and she assumed office as Prime Minister on 17 August 1994. The principle promise given to the People by Kumaratunge at the hustings was to restore peace by negotiation with the LTTE - a promise that was incapable of fulfillment as the promise given by her mother Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike 24 years earlier at the General Election of 1970 to feed our hungry people with rice brought even from the moon.  However, while her mother did not, upon election of office, seek to honor her promise of importing rice from the moon, Mrs. Kumaratunge did seek to achieve the equally impossible task of restoring peace by means of a negotiated settlement with the LTTE terrorists. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge's Government , composed as it was of tame 'yes men' many members of which had only the other day castigated the UNP for engaging in fruitless ' peace talks' with the LTTE reposed its trust in the LTTE and commenced in September 1994 with an incomprehensible degree of credulity a new set of peace talks with it. A cease-fire followed shortly thereafter.

As was the case during the ' Premadasa Peace Talks' the LTTE used the respite given to them by the 'Kumaratunge Peace Talks' to further prepare for war. Thus, they recruited and sometimes forcibly conscripted and trained fresh cadres; they built up supplies; they built bunkers and made intense preparations for war while making stout denials that they were doing so and accusing our Armed Forces of preparing for war.

Making the moronic mistake of trusting a set of unrepentant criminals with a proven track record of unbelievable treachery, duplicity and brutality is prohibitively costly in terms of human lives and limbs, misery and the destruction of property. There never was any question of "whether" we would have to pay that cost. The only questions were " When?" and "How Much".

The LTTE answered the question "When?" on 19th April 1995 when without any warning or notice of ending the cease-fire its 'frogmen' penetrated the Trincomalee harbour and sank two Naval gun boats murdering 12 Naval Personnel. The question "How Much?" was answered by the LTTE in the months that followed. The dirge of terror that followed upon the LTTE aborting the 'Kumaratunge Peace Talks' predictably to any rational observer of events, but tragically not to the Government is made evident from the disasters of the 39 days from 19th April 1995.

Thus, in the first 39 days of the LTTE treacherously abrogating the 'Kumaratunge Peace Talks' the total human toll was 321 dead, 264 wounded of whom 125 were members of the security forces. In addition to the human casualties, two gun boats and two Avro aircraft were destroyed.  Of these 27 attacks, 17 were in the Eastern Province where the LTTE had never gained mastery until the 'Premadasa Peace Talks' was driven out thereafter and obviously gained ascendancy again during the 'Kumaratunge Peace Talks '. Further, just as the LTTE unable to defeat or over-run a fortified Army camp or sink a ship until the 'Kumaratunge Peace Talks' but was able to do so thereafter. The LTTE after the 'Kumaratunge Peace Talks' was able to challenge the mastery thereafter.   More aircraft were downed, more Army Camps over-run in the North and even more in the East, and more ships sunk after 27 May 1995.

The inescapable conclusion that arises from this chain of events is that while the Government with less than childlike simplicity trusted the LTTE, the LTTE utilised the 'Peace Talks' to prepare for war, with its customary and foreseeable treachery recommenced hostilities when it was good and ready. Yet, the LTTE, as it did after it foully abrogated the ' Premadasa Peace Talks' once more sought refuge in the 'big lie' and sought to lay the blame for its own hideous treachery on the Government by singing again its usual refrain that it was forced to recommence hostilities because the Government was not 'genuine' during the ' Peace Talks' and was preparing for war!! If it was the Government and not the LTTE that had been preparing for war during the 'Kumaratunge Peace Talks' it would surely have been the LTTE and not our forces who would have suffered such appalling reverses.

Our Armed Forces cannot afford another betrayal in the form of a cease-fire and negotiation with the LTTE. Our troops and impoverished but equally patriotic Sinhalese and Muslim villagers living within and around the provincial boundaries of the North and East are not expendable pawns, but citizens entitled all the human rights including the right to life and limb to the very same extent as any civilian anywhere. The debt we owe to them is incalculable. Our forces must not be regarded as a tap that can be turned on and off whenever someone cries out for 'peace talks' for if military operations are stopped from time to time to hold fruitless 'peace talks, and our forces continue to suffer set backs as a result, the time will come when something must snap, and if that happens our country is doomed.

  Home