Sunday 05 February 2012 Now look who’s dividing the country!
In a most curious turn of events the military which battled to defeat the LTTE because of its separatist agenda is now the agency that is dividing Sri Lanka into two distinct portions. Persons who wish to travel to the north to campaign against the government are stopped, harassed and busloads are turned back. I ask you who is de facto dividing the country. What is wrong, in law, with holding meetings to raise public awareness and increase anger against abductions, killings and rights violations? If one can do it in the Sinhalese south but not in the Tamil north, well who has set up a two-state formula? This is not war time when, arguably, there were public security constraints; this is 
now-now when the Rajapaksas’ are on the run.Why is the New-JVP, harassed and blocked every step of the way to Jaffna, to join up with Tamils who share similar views, and to condemn the abduction of two of their members, Lalith Kumar Weeraraju and Kugan Muruganathan? These obstructions by the security establishment only raise further suspicions about who was behind the abductions. Where is the evidence that the law of the land was to be transgressed at a peaceful protest rally? No doubt the government and the security establishment would have been roundly condemned, and for me that’s just what makes the protest important in the public interest. It is only by raising our voices that we, the people, can salvage scraps of our eroding democracy. I am no member of the New-JVP, but I have not the slightest doubt that it is not just their freedom that is at stake, but my freedom too. That’s the reason I am making a fuss in this column today.
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