Record rehabilitation

It is heartening to note that all Ex-female LTTE cadres have been released following rehabilitation. The last batch numbering 206 were released into mainstream society on Saturday from their camp in Punthottam in Vavuniya. Rehabilitation and Prisons Reforms Minister DEW Gunasekera was at hand to observe the release. In all 11,696 LTTEers surrendered to the Government at the end of the war. According to the Minister except for the old and feeble, the sick and students due to sit for their GCE O-L and A-L exams all children and women barring eight have now been released. This figure is 5,819. The remaining 5,877 excepting for 800 will be rehabilitated and released within the next two months while steps will be taken to speed up investigations and the legal process against the 800 detainees.

This hopefully will bring to an end the chapter of LTTE detainees - a topic which has been frequently raised by human rights campaigners both here and abroad. These detainees are not merely released to be a forgotten lot. They have been given the necessary vocational training to equip them for livelihoods ensuring for them a stable future. What is more, by caring for the aged and ill and the infirm among the detainees the Government has displayed a compassion which perhaps is unrivalled anywhere in the world from the point of view of dealing with terrorist detainees. This is a lesson to those who pontificate to us on human rights. It is only the other day that the true picture of the torture inflicted on the Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib came to full light in all its gruesome details. Those who witnessed the harrowing scenes of torture inflicted on these hapless prisoners on an international TV channel, which footage was carried as a scoop, would have been forced to wonder what right has the US and West in general to assume the mantle to be the moral conscience of the world. To say the West has collectively exposed itself very badly on the human rights front would be a gross understatement. Sri Lanka should now do more to expose this hypocrisy of the West.

The decision to hold back students sitting for their exams is also a considerate move to ensure they attend the schooling program arranged for them by the Government. This is hardly the picture of a concentration camp which is how the Western media described the conditions of these detainees in the immediate period after the war. Minister Gunasekera also said that there was no country in the world where such a large number of members belonging to a terrorist organization has been rehabilitated, given vocational training and employment opportunities and released into society within such a short span of one year.

Sri Lanka showed the world how to conquer terrorism by defeating a terror outfit described as the world's deadliest, not long ago. Now it is showing the international community who is perennially questioning the country's human rights record, how it can extend its compassion to the members of the very terrorist organization who caused so much carnage and destruction to the Sri Lankan State. We have shown the world that while we are prepared to deal with terrorism in most the fitting way we are also not shorn of compassion and understanding when it comes to treating the enemy. The EU which decided to suspend the GSP concession over perceived human rights violations in Sri Lanka had better take note. Hopefully this hounding of Sri Lanka on baseless grounds would now stop and the efforts by the Government to forge a lasting peace and reconciliation will be viewed in the correct perspective.

Be that as it may the Government should proceed ahead from this point onwards to compliment this commendable move by also speedily reaching its resettlement targets thereby silencing its critics on the international front. The resettlement issue has become a frequent topic of discussion whenever Government leaders meet international delegations and at international fora. This topic also came up during the President's recent meeting with the Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. But as the Government takes pains to point out mere resettlement without the necessary wherewithal to survive would be a futile exercise.

The de-mining is continuing apace and infrastructure is being built to facilitate resettlement. Everyday we read of large numbers being resettled where these facilities have been restored. The Government also is doing its utmost to facilitate the integration process and the speedy release of detainees would greatly help in this exercise. Since it would now be evident to the parents and relatives of these detainees that the Government was genuinely concerned about their welfare and well-being.