Troubled waters in need of bridges

While flooding follows the force of gravity and knows no difference of a Tamil, Sinhalese, Australian or Brazilian, Sri Lankans remember full well how some international agencies backed by prominent states of Europe refused to land a helping hand to Sri Lanka on its fighting and rooting out of secessionist rebel Tamil Eelam who caused untold pains to the nation.

Sri Lanka people prevailed in 2009 in the great ordeal of the nation and it’s now quite natural and logical for them to perceive these agencies or nations with suspicion.

It takes time to build mutual trust, particularly when one party was forsaken by the other in the wee hours of need.

That's the damning stigma of being a poor, hapless nation, with little to offer by way of natural resources or strategic importance, in this flagrantly self-serving & shamelessly selfish world we live in.

Other than hollow tokens of sympathy, empty platitudes & hypocritical lip service from the developed nations, Sri Lanka will have to face the harrowing travails facing it, on its own.

Sad & tragic..

nkab:

"...it’s now quite natural and logical for them to perceive these agencies or nations with suspicion."

Agree with this... well, not exactly 100%.

Nations from which falsely philanthropic NGOs come don't bear responsibility for their sneaky ways. Pretending to be apolitically concerned by human rights or poverty, these cover organizations for Leftist activists damage the image of the countries they are based in when they push their radical agenda - or directly aid terrorists and even participate in terrorist operations, like they do in Israel for instance.

What I miss in the article is settled, peers' reviewed and impartial scientific proof that the devastating floods in Sri Lanka are the result of heartless refusal of evil America to ditch her gas guzzlers and build light rail systems instead.

It's clear without saying that floods in Australia, unashamedly capitalist and willing participant in unjust imperialist assaults against... er... militants and freedom fighters, are totally different from those in Brazil and Sri Lanka. They had it coming, what with their over-consumption of resources and oppression of native Australians, right?

Well, the NGO in my neighbourhood says so.

The amphibious vehicle shown in the photo would have been far more useful in the flood affected areas instead of transporting (self-serving) politicians through the streets of Colombo/Parliament area. In the east there are reports that flood affected needy had stormed and damaged a government office in the east because they discovered food stocks denied them for distribution to politician's supporters! That indeed is the real ugly face of politics/politicians in Sri Lanka where people don't matter except at election time, more so if they happen to be minorities. Not surprisingly for many reasons donor reponse has been poor so far due to intense fatigue perhaps after what happened to the 2004 tsunami foreign aid where 2.4 B $ yet remain unaccounted for, according to Transparency International. Even an Opposition MP on that occasion was sentenced to 2 years in jail for having merely mentioned at a public meeting that 85,000 $ of foreign aid had been sluiced into a private account by the high and mighty of the land in contravention of an obliging Supreme Court
order. He was given menial tasks in prison like cleaning toilets but finally decided to ask for pardon from the mighty and obtain his release. He sat later with the government! Wallah! anything is possible in Paradise Lost.

In connection with the recent floods it had ben reported that the President flew by helicopter to the north to visit an area of recent cleansing and settlement but could not go to the east where the problem lies due to the floods.

As for the reference to the 'sharing of power' it is already announced they, the minorities, can sit at the Center, including in a second debating Chamber called the Senate in Colombo which was the case at the dawn of independance in 1948 but was scrapped in 1972 by the same political party as 'a waste of time' and the consensual constitution of 1948 was simply dropped in favour of a unilateral constitution enthroning Sinhala Only language and Buddhism foremost religion. Tamil Tigers were not even born then. Not even police powers in the contemplated 13+ Amendment whatever that means. The President has even referred to a joint position among quite diverse Tamil parties in the sure knowledge of the outcome. Besides it would have been far more pertinent for a bipartisan approach from among the major Sinhala parties as this had been the running snag from 1956 to 2010, each party from teh south vying for majoritarian. In any case whatever became of the famous All Party Talks on ethnic reconciliation held on no less than 3 occasions between 1999 and 2010, the last one where the President is still sitting on their Report! This so called "13+ business" is doomed the same fate despite the blood bath in the Wanni in 2009. The spirit of politics never changeth.

Without the necessary will there is and can be no way out of the political quagmire! People pay the price in the end.

Again Jehan Perera, the favorite mouthpiece of international NGOs plying their nefarious agendas against Sri Lanka, is trotted out here as the impeccable unbiased independent source of information of human rights and governance in Sri Lanka.

Nothing is further from the truth. Jehan Perera is a political gadfly surviving on iNGO handouts, consistently supporting the positions of his sponsors, selling out his Motherland for pieces of tarnished foreign Gold.

When Jehan Perera's name is mentioned, all Patriotic Citizens of Sri Lanka .. yes those vast multitudes of Sri Lankans who handed the present Government of Sri Lanka successive landslide victories .. throw up rivers of vomit.

No Sri Lanka gives two hoots about what Jehan Perera thinks or writes; he is merely a Sri Lankan Quisling.

[The disaster may also offer the chance to repair damaged relations with international donors and aid agencies, as well as with domestic NGOs.
.....
Some international agencies, frustrated at government restrictions, have quit the country.]

B ravo, Sri Lanka! Sri Lanka is not interested in attracting "aid" from "international NGOs" who have worked to undermine its stability and sovereignty under the guise of providing humanitarian aid. The iNGOs kicked out of Sri Lanka are those who supported the Tamil terrorists, interfered in local politics undermining the indigenous patritic forces of Sri Lanka, and have aggressively pursued evangelical conversions of its people to other religions exploiting the poverty of the poorest segments of its people.

In the future, Sri Lanka will only accept aid from organizations that give aid without attached strings, and are committed to STRICT NON-INTERFERENCE in both local politics and activities that alter the community demographics of Sri Lanka.

[The disaster may also offer the chance to repair damaged relations with international donors and aid agencies, as well as with domestic NGOs.
.....
Some international agencies, frustrated at government restrictions, have quit the country.]

Bravo, Sri Lanka! Sri Lanka is not interested in attracting "aid" from "international NGOs" who have worked to undermine its stability and sovereignty under the guise of providing humanitarian aid. The iNGOs kicked out of Sri Lanka are those who supported the Tamil terrorists, interfered in local politics undermining the indigenous patritic forces of Sri Lanka, and have aggressively pursued evangelical conversions of its people to other religions exploiting the poverty of the poorest segments of its people.

In the future, Sri Lanka will only accept aid from organizations that give aid without attached strings, and are committed to STRICT NON-INTERFERENCE in both local politics and activities that alter the community demographics of Sri Lanka.

There are no restrictions on NGOs in the South - it's all only in the North. This must be seen in the context of the economic oppression from the time of independence - peacetime, wartime or natural disastertime.
Instead of going to the East to see the people affected by the floods, the President has gone to Jaffna to ''celebrate'' (actually to consolidate support for him in the forthcoming elections)Thai Pongal - forcing people to celebrate when they are deprived of help from NGOs who have been forced to leave Jaffna when the people ravaged by three decades of war haven't even gone back to their original dwellings which are occupied by the occupation army:

Challenge to good governance posed by budget, Jehan Perera, Chairman, National Peace Council, 25 October 2010:''When people are taken back and put into the midst of land in which all buildings and infrastructure is destroyed, and the jungle has grown, it is not resettlement where the government can wash its hands, and say that it has done its duty, and now the people must fend for themselves. It is indeed tragic that the government is prepared to devote so much of resources to satisfy the needs of its defence budget and so little to satisfy its war displaced people….’’

Four "New" Sinhala Doctors Conduct a Medical Camp in Mandaitheevu, Fr.Lasantha de Abrew, 18 April 2010:
‘...We could see Army sentry points every two hundred meters, some are newly done. Kilinochchi town seems to be an Army village, so many personnel, army run shops, army vehicles, and army men playing cricket leisurely. Rarely did we see Tamil people....For the past twenty years, the Sri Lankan Navy has captured the Mandaitivu village with these peoples’ houses and made it a High Security Zone. The people were displaced several times in different places and have last come back but they are staying outside of the naval camp in huts just gazing at their own homes occupied by the Navy. The doctors spoke to the people and observed their utter poverty.….’’

When Tamils must be given space to resettle, recover and develop, the President is spoiling the systemic and systematic revival and regenration of the Northeast:
Amid Sri Lanka's boom, life for Tamils remains bleak, Rick Westhead, 23 October 2010:
In 2008, the governor nixed a new law that would have introduced motor vehicle licensing fees, a venture that could have raised as much as 1 billion rupees ($100 million) a year for the province, said Dr. K. Vigneswaran, a former member of Sri Lanka’s parliament who is now an adviser to Pillayan. More recently, the governor killed an effort to pass a bill that would have allowed the provincial government to formally collect contributions from the Sri Lankan diaspora.''

Well, international attention is not a tap that can be turned off and on as you please it. the Sri Lankan Government did not want any international media or attention when it about exterminating just not the LTTE but tens of thousands of innocent Tamil civilians caught in the crossfire. Any international attention at that time was very inconvenient and was not welcome. Now they cannot complain that the world isn’t paying heed to their suffering.

@ Ananda-Sinha

If you are looking for aid without strings attached, perish the thought. Increasingly, the world is concerned about how you treat your people and you cannot expect them to be silent bystanders while you go about systematically committing genocide. If you want that sort of aid, go to China but even they will ask for concessions in Hambantota. With the sort of aid fatigue that you see globally, to even think of aid without strings is like day dreaming. Get real.

Humanitarian aid for Sri Lanka's flood-affected is coming in. See the Govt of Sri Lanka and donor press releases on http://www.reliefweb.int/
This includes aid from Japan, European Union, Islamic Relief, Canada, United States and India...

It is important to note that life-saving humanitarian aid is different to assistance for rehabilitation and development. Some may see aid for development purposes and trade concessions as more "political" as these forms of assistance may be awarded on for political reasons, and/or on the basis of principles like respect for human rights, and not violating the laws of war or committing acts tantamount to serious war crimes against their own citizens including civilians and others regarded as vulnerable such as women, children and the elderly.

Who ever who wrote this article, summarized the facts very correctly. The government has failed to facilitate war-free dividends for the people and establish equity and mutual trust. As a result reconstruction and rehabilitation work too delayed and flood victims too affected. Flood is an ideal event to open the eyes of the Sri Lankan Government

Who ever who wrote this article, summarized the facts very correctly. The government has failed to facilitate war-free dividends for the people and establish equity and mutual trust. As a result reconstruction and rehabilitation work too delayed and flood victims too affected. Flood is an ideal event to open the eyes of the Sri Lankan Government

As pointed in the last paragraph, again the distribution of aid is becoming a contentious issue and will contribute more towards the breakdown of the peace in Sri Lanka.

In the past and current, any natural disasters, the aid is only distributed to Sinhalese. in 1981, Batticaloa suffered a lot due to cyclone, but the aids went to Ampara, where Sinhalese lives and who were slightly affected than Tamils, Tsunami aid distribution was same, the Tamils get only minuscule amount of aid, majority went to Sinhalese. Sinhalese majority government is only interested in serving their ethnic community but they beg the world showing the plight of Tamils. The war reconstruction aid was just a good example, if you travel South to North and East to West, you will see the anomaly of reconstruction. The self serving a few government Tamil politicians are only interested in praising the President in order to get better benefits as serving lap dogs, they are not interested to the welfare of Tamils, as majority of them are not elected by the people, but got into the parliament by backdoor, so only god can save Tamils of North and east of Sri Lanka, former Ceylon.

some more information:
http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=33407

http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=33378

And here we have another "perfectly unbiased" blogger citing the Tamil Tiger's Tamilnet.com website as an impeccable source of unbiased authoritative facts on Sri Lanka's handling of disaster aid. For crying out loud!

When their objective is to undermine Sri Lanka, nothing is good enough, no matter how well Sri Lanka performs compared to other nations in similar situations.

When Eelamists come bearing unbiased opinions from Tamilnet.com, put on your blinders and move on to the next post!

Here we go again, and again!! The President and his troupe/troops and political collaborators in the north are in the north opening the Sengupiddy bridge across the lagoon linking north with Mannar but only party loyalists and supporters were allowed along with recent state supported Sinhala colonisers from Navatkuli BUT local Tamils were chased away! Even worse is that the President made NO mention at all of the monetary aid of 1 B Rs from Britain (by British Steel Corpration) towards meeting the cost of the bridge! Nothing changeth just like with the 2004 tsunami aid. And then His Most Excellency and his troupe/troops moved on to Jaffna to celebrate Thai Pongal ( a Hindu festival). No singing of natioanl anthem except in Sinhala only on pain of execution as happened quite recently to a Deputy Director of Education in the north. BUT his Greatness has had no time so far to visit the floodstricken people of the east, it appears. Probably waiting for the Billions of $ to flow in even though a UN official is said to be flying in from New York to Sri Lanka for aid giving only (Note- not for any investigation on human rights which is being very well taken care of localy by its own unimpeachable Commission).

Sorry to go off-topic. Can anyone else access this AsiaView article:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/asiaview/2011/01/singapores_media

I started reading it last night, it appeared to discuss the blogshpere in Singapore. I couldn't find it on the Economists website today. The link above was retrieved from my browser history.

Can you access it? If so are you located in Asia? I'm in Australia btw.