Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse cannot evade culpability for the slaying of Lasantha Wickramatunge of the Sunday Leader. The brave and sentinel voice of Lasantha Wickramatunge, the chief editor of the Sunday Leader, has been violently ended. He was shot and killed by hired gunmen today. It is not too difficult to determine who had the motive to kill him. Sri Lanka has the notoriety of being the worst place in the world for murdering journalists who do not support the government.

This is one of the most cowardly acts of the opprobrious Rajapakse regime of Sri Lanka. A blood-thirsty regime in which there are inveterate killers acting with impunity at the bidding of a ruthless and arrogant President. It ought to be laid personally at the feet (and the cold heart) of Mahinda Rajapakse who threatened Lasantha with death when he published accurate stories of Rajapakse's wife being a Catholic at the beginning of his presidency. It is only in Sri Lanka that such a report can draw the wrath of the President, who is a xenophobic Buddhist. The Sunday Leader and its Chief Editor were among the leading critics of the tyrannical Rajapkse regime. Rajapakse continually issued bloodcurdling threats and previously had his printing press destroyed but Lasantha's integrity was never compromised. Now they have silenced him with a despicable political assassination. It is known that Rajapakse and his murderous zealots have been responsible for the deaths of our heroes like Kumar Ponnambalam and our numerous assassinated Tamil MPs.

Rajapakse staged the foul pretence of celebrating Christmas Carols last month with the Christian clergy in his presidential mansion, while plotting the deaths of all those brave men who oppose his debauched regime. Last week the TV studios of an independent media company were invaded and thrashed by government controlled gangs. This is the execrable regime in Sri Lanka that is promoted by our government in the UK and the rest of the world as paragons of democracy. They provide the international imprimatur to the Sinhala Sri Lankan fascist regime for their genocidal attack on the Tamils of Sri Lanka.

These governments have their diplomats in Colombo who know the truth, but our governments in the West are too venal and corrupt to concern themselves about the fate of the 'brownies' of Sri Lanka , who they consider as sub-humans that do not merit fully fledged democracy. The fate of the Tamils in the Vanni has been worse than that of Gaza under the Israelis but not a murmur passes through the lips of our establishment. The death toll of innocent men, women and children rises in Sri Lanka where human life is treated with little value and is carried out with the passive consent of the West and even India.

The so called leaders of Sinhala society, whether they be civil or religious, have sold their souls to this obnoxious President who treats human lives as dispensable at his command. The Sinhala Archbishop Oswald Gomis of Colombo, has nothing but sycophantic praise on Vatican Radio for his beloved Sinhala chauvinist President who has blood on his hands. He and his Sinhala cohort, Bishop Malcolm Ranjit a careerist in the Vatican, have eased Mahinda Rajapakse's passage in the Vatican to meet with the Pope on two occasions in the past six months in order to project the illusory image of a President who has the Pope's approval.

It is indeed repugnant that this reprobate president, a mass murderer and a thug, enjoys the patronage of Sinhala Buddhist and Christian clergy who are shamelessly in thrall to him. There is no genuine spirituality or even humanity in the Sinhala Christian or Buddhist church in Sri Lanka as they form just a group of unscrupulous anti-Tamil fanatics who provide the savage Buddhist scum under them with the rabid fervour to kill Tamils and those others that disapprove of their murder and rampage.

It is pertinent to remind ourselves that there is another Sinhala man of courage and integrity, Sarath Silva, the Chief Justice, who exercises his esteemed position where necessary to clip the autocratic wings of the President. Although Sarath Silva was responsible for some idiosyncratic constitutional judgments in the past that denied Tamils their rights to a merged North and East or the P-TOMS arrangement to manage Tsunami funds, he appears to be a man not prepared to allow Rajapakse and his southern clan of menacing brothers and family to treat Sri Lanka as their fiefdom and trammel down the rights of the majority Sinhalese. The risk to the life of this man from an incensed President is all too evident, and it is important that the authorities provide the Chief Justice with armed protection and security from the vile gunmen within the control of the President.

Mahinda Rajapakse does not have a bone in his body that will tolerate a contrary view, particularly one that is expressed as a judgment from the highest tribunal in the land. It cannot be too much to imagine that once again a coward hidden in the bushes with a gun in his hand could again strike down a man who is seen as a credible and democratic opponent to a crazed President.

When will Gordon Brown, David Millband, the EU and the West wake up to this monster regime in Sri Lanka that in its racist onslaught has so far avoided the opprobrium of the world. Our hope lies in an Obama administration in the USA.

Ivan Pedropillai B.Sc., M.Sc., FCCA, FCMA

Chief Editor, Tamil Writers Guild, UK

Source: Tamil Writers Guild
Date: 08th January 2009