Is Truth Treason?
Sarath Fonseka said that the Army executed surrendering LTTE leaders. This is probably true and most people know it’s probably true, but there’s a huge fuss because he said it out loud. We like the end of war so we deny its brutal means. I understand, but at some point this just becomes pathological. Sarath Fonseka may be a bad politician, but I’m more worried about being a bad human being.
Truth is really the most basic compassion you can extend to another human being. To acknowledge that they exist, or don’t. The dominant narrative of the war basically writes a bunch of people out of history and denies their reality. The story is that it was a hostage rescue, shells weren’t used in the safe-zone, no one was executed, etc. This is all bullshit and we probably wouldn’t have won that way, but we need to pretend.
That is OK I guess, it’s basically textbook cognitive dissonance. That’s a psychological phenomenon whereby people rationalize or deny to fit two contradictory thoughts into their heads. For example A) I like knowing my kids get to school safe B) I don’t like Wanni kids losing their legs.
I think most people resolve this contradiction by ignoring B entirely. If someone points it out then we debate about technical details (was the video real? did he violate the State Secrets Act) until the underlying issue goes away. I understand and I personally explain away a lot of horrible shit because, but a man has limits.
Sarath Fonseka may have betrayed Gotabaya and our consensual hallucination, but I believe that lying betrays God (for lack of a better word). Whatever mental gymnastics I can execute in my head, whatever synchronized bullshitting we can do collectively, I do believe in objective reality. I do believe in right and wrong, and that we do wrong. I also believe that we can salvage our humanity by at least being aware, and by trying to tell the truth.
We did a bunch of terrible stuff to end the war. I’m pretty sure we shelled civilians, executed and abducted people, killed people trying to surrender, and neglected the sick and wounded. It may not have been possible to win the war otherwise, I don’t know. However, if we’re going to accept the end of war we can at least acknowledge the bloody means.
Instead we don’t talk about it at all and assault anyone saying the truth as a traitor. Even if they’re a former General. As if the nation is a consensual hallucination, built on lies. It’s a bit disturbing. Not for what it says about the General, but for what it says about us.
There’s another (entirely different) version of this running in this week’s Sunday Leader.
First you say;
This is probably true and most people know it’s probably true, but there’s a huge fuss because he said it out loud.
Then;
Instead we don’t talk about it at all and assault anyone saying the truth as a traitor.
Which is it, exactly? In my opinion, there is a difference between probably true and true.
I asked the same question on your last post. What make you say things like this? People can write what ever they like. But, the timing and the way you put it is hurting my country . Specially when there are others waiting to take advantage of this. Please read my opinion on this if you read Sinhala.
Wars are bloody. But it’s over. Now we all have a place to put our feet on and work for the future of the country. (Isn’t that why you came down for in first place?) If what ever we do or say helps to worsen the situation. that’s a shame.
Just for a change, try studying agendas of people who backs up when ever an issue like this (an issue that’s generally harmful to SL) comes up. You’ll see if you are helping or not for your self.
You write:
“Wars are bloody. But it’s over. Now we all have a place to put our feet on and work for the future of the country. (Isn’t that why you came down for in first place?) If what ever we do or say helps to worsen the situation. that’s a shame.”
Maybe what betters the situation for those people whose families got killed, is the truth. It may be better for the majority to bury their heads in the sand, but aren’t the people in camps citizens too.
What is needed is for:
1. Someone to uncover what really happened. And probably get killed in the process.
2. Convince the govt to issue a comprehensive report. Which is going to be hard, to say the least.
As for hundreds of innocent people being killed, by both sides, during the war, can any sensible person doubt the veracity of this.
How do you explain that to people who got hit by shells or lost family? We have to move on with them, and that means acknowledging the truth, or probable truth as it were. You can’t build prosperity on other peoples suffering, and lies. At least you shouldn’t.
Truth is not treason; butt peddling ‘probable truth’ without having hard facts, hurting the country image may border on it
Well have you forgotten that LTTE was too involved in war?
Also, the point I wanted to make was that you start off by saying it’s probably true and ends by saying it is true. The distinction is large, is all I’m saying.
The difference between probable truth and truth would be fairly easily discernible – had outsiders, humanitarian workers been allowed in the war zone.
People must understand as to why they were kept out.
Where light does not shine, then what you see is what you think you see.
Why should we betray our own by assuming that terrible things were done at the end of the war? May have happened, may not have happened; if you don’t know, don’t assume.
The fact is, Sri Lanka is a small country, and we need to be careful because the big fish in international waters will eat us if we step out of line. Even the UN estimates of 6000 civilian casualties (which they don’t verify either) are about a tenth of the lives lost in Iraq after the first Gulf War (just ask Madeline Albright). But has anyone taken the US to task?
As for Fonseka, maybe the US and the UK will fund his campaign in return for him turning Judas. Regime change the easy way. Do you want to aid and abet?
“Why should we betray our own by assuming that terrible things were done at the end of the war?”
Aren’t the Tamil people also our own people? I think it’s pretty pathetic when people just try to brush it all under the carpet and say “Oh war is bloody, but let’s move on now”. I’d like to see if even a single one of these commentators would be of the same opinion if it was their family members who were bombed,killed and imprisoned in camps.
Like Indi said, you can’t build a mansion of peace and prosperity on the foundations of misery and heartache of others. Eventually the whole edifice will come tumbling down around our ears. This denial of the truth will always come back to haunt us, if not now, in generations to come.
I don’t agree with you that the “denial of the truth will always come back to haunt us”. Most probably it will not. And I don’t subscribe to the Karma poppycock either. The point is, can you as a decent civilized human being live with yourself, after knowing all of this. Most people will answer in the negative, but will jolly well live quite if they think that no one knows what they really think. The fact of the matter is, that people are brought up differently. The prime example of this being, Indi paying his taxes.
It’s your assumption that I was talking about Sinhala people; in fact, if you bothered to read the rest of my comment, you’ll see I’m talking about Sri Lanka v. the rest of the world, and in my definition that includes every Sri Lankan. You should revisit what your assumptions are before you get on your high horse.
Sagara,
“Don’t know, don’t assume”?
or
“Prefer not to know”?
or
“Lets pretend we don’t know”?
Its not that this says anything to the outside world. Its says something about us, and perhaps why we don’t understand the outside world?
Why do you want to talk about other countries. If I murder my brother can I say in my defense that citizen Silva murdered his, and got a way with it, so I should get away with it too.
No one cares about SL. The only thing that SL is good for, from an international perspective, is that it can be used to destabilize India.
And finally, I know that terrible things were done during the war, by both sides. For instance, the mother of a friend of mine was caught in mortar fire, and has little metal pieces embedded in her body.
One word to put things into prospective “HIROSHIMA”.
Ah yes. Nothing like perspective.
They did it, therefore we can do it. Lovely.
Lets take the logic a step further and do what Hitler did next, no problem no? Get rid of the buggers for good.
Had they not done it we will continue to see blown up body parts of innocent women and children on the streets of Colombo.
War is a terrible thing and many terrible things happen in wars but at the end if it is going to create a peaceful environment for generations to come it can be justified on that ground. That is the lesson we can learn from the Second World War.
I don’t say don’t do it. Just fess up. The fact is that Mahinda did it, not for the love of his country, but so that his family could stay and sponge off of the people of SL for generations to come.
Textbook example of cognitive dissonance – “This is probably true in the sense that it happened, and in the sense that Gotabaya did probably control the battlefield to that extent. The Geneva Conventions prescribes surrender under a white flag, but war is also war.” (Indi,ca – Sarath of Surrender) You’ve done a pretty lousy job of trying to justify war crimes with the “war is war” tripe Indi, so why this apparent change of heart. Gosh, don’t you have convictions any more?
Sarath’s so-called “truths” couldn’t have come at a worse time. The man is one of those guys who holds a grudge forever, and will do anything to bring down his enemy. His revelations AT THIS POINT IN TIME do a lot of damage to Sri Lanka. He should have waited for at least a year before coming out with such “revelations”, but the damage is already done. In my opinion he has betrayed both Sri Lanka and the army with his comments to The Sunday Leader.
BTW has anyone noticed that Mahinda’s campaign has stepped up a notch… with web advertisements on The Island, Daily Mirror, The Lanka Academic, Lanka Sri News websites.
Lie sincerely. It often works. Sometimes truth is not the basic compassion one can extend to another human, it is a sincere lie. Ask “how You doing?” but you don’t care how I doing really, and I know I’m not suppose to tell you how I really feeling either. Or say “how adorable bay he is”. Or act a sincere lie, slip an 200Rs note in to you driving license and hand it over to the cop, and cop will give you back your driving license without the note, he don’t know you know he took the money and you don’t know he knew you gave that. It is a mutual sincere lie. And those are weaved in to the fabrication of human society. And by doing so we maintain the hallucination we are good people because we both want to respect the idea people must be good while we are stuck in not so perfect world. When those sincere mutual lie exposed out loud, it creates awkwardness. Awkwardness is often funny. Ricky Gervais build most of his comedy on that. So does our General. We can just tell the cop “take my bribe and let me continue my high speed driving” and the cop can say “I just took your bribe so drive fast away faster” and he can even tell his superiors “I let him go because he bribe me”. A drama like that indeed would be very funny.
We did lot of dirty things during the war and we can bring all of them to open as Indi suggest. If we do, what is your plan to address the awkwardness it creates? There are three ways I can think of top of my head.
1) Violently and voluntarily doing the correct thing, so we can still accept the concept people have to be good. We can find all the war criminals still alive and punish them. Since the nature of the war only leave victors live, declare war is null and void or something similar to that and starts a new conflict. Don’t you think it bit costly? Even for UNP? Even for Tamils in Sri Lanka?
2). Bring everything to open and stopping the correct thing happening violently. Sort of like in Zimbabwe. That will creates what I call, Mervin Silva situation (I killed him, so what), you get to be openly bad and continue bad things openly.
3) Third option is going back to glorified mutual sincere lie call forgiveness and still maintains the concept people have to be good. But this is impossible since entities involved in the conflict have no legal or emotional capacity for such.
Absolute truth is so fragile. Anything more than a whisper can make that vanish forver.
I would be OK with a more sincere and bit less insulting lie. Saying that ‘not a drop of civilian blood was shed’, for example is insincere. Saying that we were ruthless to end this war but are not war criminals would be closer to the truth. Still probably technically a lie, but I’m pretty sure all wars are criminal.
Don’t you have to do what you have to do? How many times we tried to negotiate? How sincere Ranil was? How many times did the tigers violated the CFA? How many intelligence officers they killed during that time? The truth was that Prabhakaran wouldn’t have anything less than the Eelam. We couldn’t give them that of course. So we had to war, and war we did. Peopld who talk about the army shelling civilians must know that the LTTE used them as a human shield. If we did shell them, that was for the same reason israel had to shell the Gaza Strip and Beirut, the Lebonese capital. It isn’t terrorism. One should know what terrorism means before branding someone with it. Terrorists terrorise. That’s what they do. They use terror the same way they use guns & bombs. As for killing Prabha when he was ready to surrender, well, nobody knows what happened. But say (for the sake of the argument) that Gotabhaya ordered to have him killed. He did what he had to do. Imagine they had just arrested Prabha. Will India & America and everyone else except Pakistan let us execute him? Remember in the eighties, India captured him and let him go. Just before the war ended, India had said that they wanted the GoSL to hand Prabhakaran over to them to try him for the Rajiv Gandhi assassination. You have to remember who Prabhakaran was. This was the guy who murdered 140 buddhists worshipping in Anuradhapura. They say their white robes turned red. This is the guy who murdered 105 muslims in a mosque. There is no end to this list of atrocities. Prabha had it coming, I would say. Having said all that, I support Sarath Fonseka, not because I think he would make a great politician (hell no), but because the war has given Mahinda & the government too much power.
lefroy.wordpress.com
Thanks Sarath, you’re doing Sri Lanka real proud!
‘UN asks Sri Lanka to answer new war crime charges’
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j-Ve7ZwMMduQLC88El9Pmercyg7g