Misconceptions on security issues

Try as hard as the state might to clarify matters, misconceptions seem to be persisting among sections of the North on security issues. The Defence authorities have time and again given the public to understand that objective considerations and none other, account for the adoption of certain security arrangements in the North.

Despite it being clarified by no less a person than the Defence and Urban Development Ministry Secretary that there is no disproportionate military presence in the North, rumours and misinformation on these questions seem to be abounding. Besides, they are treated as the truth by some.

On our front page we run a news story quoting top security officials on the factual situation as regards these security issues. While some sections cling to the misconceptions in questions for reasons best known to them, the truth is that over the past two and a half years, the military presence in the North has been gradually scaled down. Besides, the Army is playing a very significant role in meeting the development needs of the North-East, including providing housing for the displaced.

These and many more developments are visible to the naked eye and one needs to only visit the region concerned to convince oneself that the information given by the authorities is correct.

Myths and lies are propagated by interested political forces for the furtherance of their narrow interests and this seems to be happening currently with regard to the North. However, the state authorities have no choice but to do what is right and tell the world about it so that the separatist rumour mill could be busted. Besides, they have to act in deference to the national interest. In the case of the military presence in the North, this must be regulated in a manner that the security needs of the country are met. The state cannot afford to succumb to popular sentiment on issues as crucial as these.

The irony is that there are more army camps in districts, such as, Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa and Ampara than in the North. Besides, the general public of the North-East get on well with the military and do not generally see them as a hindrance.

Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has gone on record that this is so and it is plain to see that efforts are continuing to cause popular disaffection in particularly the North over these issues.

Apparently, to the extent possible, the state needs to engage with those sections of the North which are yet to see eye-to-eye with it on security and related issues. If misconceptions and rumours are abounding on these crucial questions, the possibility is that, on the one hand, destructive forces have not given up their efforts to destabilize Sri Lanka and, on the other, some are yet to come out of phobias and obsessions which have caused divisions in our polity in the past and are continuing to do so.

In the case of the latter category of opinion, the state needs to continue to engage them with a view to disabusing their minds. If sections of the TNA are continuing to cry ‘foul’ on these issues, it would be in the interests of the Tamil community, if the TNA is indeed desirous of promoting the interests of the Tamil public, for it to seriously consider the state proposition that the TNA joins the PSC process and helps to work out a solution to the conflict.

In relation to the former category of opinion, the state must work out means of alienating them from the general populace.

They in no way represent the totality of the public of the North, and the government must seek to engage with those sections which are intent on working with the state towards advancing the interests of the Tamil people within a united and geographically whole Sri Lanka.