An end to Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict must herald peace, not vengeance, triumphalism and an assault on civil liberties, said The Times in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:
The Sri Lankan Army appears to be on the brink of a military victory that would bring to an end one of Asia’s longest and bloodiest civil wars. Yesterday government troops were advancing on Elephant Pass, the strategic former army base at the entry to Jaffna. Last week they captured Kilinochchi, the town in the far north of the island declared by Tamil Tigers rebels as their separatist capital. With the troops poised to capture the remaining rebel territory, President Rajapaksa’s hawkish government is already trumpeting its success in ending a rebellion that years of negotiations by Norwegian intermediaries failed to accommodate.
Without reconciliation, however, Sri Lanka will find it hard to overcome more than a generation of civil war. The government decision on Wednesday to proscribe the LTTE again will drive them farther underground and reinforce the zealotry of a dictatorial leadership.
