terrorists want a sports boycott, guess what peaceniks want?

yesterday (10th) ltte terrorists announced that they back the amnesty internationals disgusting campaign. they want a sports boycott in addition. local peaceniks always take their cue from pussy spin office. do this experiment : take any day, i mean any day, and compare the overt terrorist propaganda with what the peaceniks say, you will see they are the same. anyway let us see whether peaceniks will come out in support of the sports boycott.

initially local peaceniks, whose propagation of absurd 'white van conspiracy theories' dreamed up by the ltte spin office, form the basis of ai campaign, ran for cover when faced with the public fury against the campaign, disclaiming responsibility. some fell over themselves in an effort to distance themselves from it, most notably the joker from free media movement.

their confusion was no doubt due to the ltte's initial lack of leadership on the issue (pussies responsible for spin were probably busy spinning the results of their latest handiwork; the bus bombs targeting civilians). peaceniks have a history of going silent when ltte decides to stay silent on an issue. moment the tigers decide on the line to take, peaceniks follow suit faithfully. this happened with regard to mavil aru incident for instance, when peaceniks stayed silent during the whole time when the water was held hostage ignoring people's suffering, but started protesting when the military tried to force the pussies out in order to free the water.

so expect the peaceniks to crawl out of their hiding places to write articles or give sound bites, defending and justifying ai's campaign and called for the sports boycott against sri lanka, now that they have got the 'all clear'. expect peacenik bloggers to write posts with the same purpose.

they are of course free to do that, since in spite of their claims to the contrary sri lanka is a democracy with freedom of expression. in fact it is the peaceniks that actually practice censorship.

however they and their actions should be exposed for what they are; people who propagate (and have consistently propagated in the past) ltte's position in the same way ltte's 'official ' propaganda do.

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after yesterday's ltte's announcement backing the amnesty international's disgusting campaign, at least three blog posts have appeared supporting it. while i dealt earlier with why sri lankans should condemn the ai's tactics, today i thought it would be useful set out the arguments i used to counter peaceniks trying to defend it. as such i give below one of my comments submitted to the blog maintained by the so called 'galle blogger', a peacenik. galle blogger was one of the people who published after the ltte announcement. he in fact came out with two posts one yesterday evening or one this morning. this is my comment on the second post (still not published there, as comment moderation is on, it is up to him to decide whether to publish or not. i will link to the comment when it is published). i also posted a similar comment in reply to the other post published yesterday as well.

comment :
(some formating was changed)

your posts published on the day ltte backed this campaign, continue to miss what is wrong about this ai campaign.
it is disgusting bc it targets sri lankan team. as i said in a comment to your previous post it is naive to think this campaign is not against the team, when it is conducted in a cricket world cup in the other side of the world, where just about the only sri lankans are the team. they are after all not asking sri lankans (the ppl who can really put pressure on government) to sign cricket balls here, they are asking foreigners.
it applies double standard bc it singles out sri lankan team, ai has campaigns against england etc. all the more reason to include them i would have thought. so why leave them out?
it is futile bc it will only alienate the sri lankan public against ai. that is not the way to influence policy in a democracy
it is hypocritical bc it is in fact a fund raising publicity stunt .( which explains why they adopted such futile as to supposed aims, and double standard laid, tactics. ) .

you are of course free to support ai after all that, this being a free country. :-)

if you or ai or anyone is really concerned about human rights here they would give support (moral or otherwise) to the government's crack down on convicted human right violators like the ltte terrorists and their leader the convicted mass murderer prabahakaran. one of the reasons why this has gone on for so long, is precisely bc such ppl have been allowed be behave with impunity. as i asked you before, do you agree? pl do give a clear answer.

you also seem to believe the unsubstantiated 'white van conspiracy theory’ type allegations against security forces without evidence. as i asked before, please do provide such evidence to public scrutiny if you have them. mere personal allegations and anecdotes do not count. nor does ai link you provide (updated last in 2002) give any such evidence it merely restates similar allegations or give details of cases where right violators were prosecuted and says such things are not 'systemic'. so far there is no evidence for involvement of security forces (not one or two rogue individuals) in human rights violations. do you think it is right to issue blanket accusations without such evidence against the forces? as before do give a clear answer

if nothing has resulted from all these campaigns of peaceniks and others, ask yourself why? if i fail, i take responsibility for my failure. most ppl in real world do. may be its time peaceniks took some responsibility instead of blaming others.
do they really have the evidence needed to convince the sri lankan public? will the data and cues supplied by the ltte spin office as evidence really believable to independent minded ppl as opposed to naive and biased? are the peaceniks canvassing the sri lankan public using evidence, to convince them to put pressure on government as is proper in a democracy? or are they living off foreign donors while spreading ltte propaganda?

in my experience peaceniks have followed the ltte spin office directives to the letter and have helped spread their ideology and their propaganda without questioning their credibility. faced with the consequence of such all too clear pro terrorist bias, (if the bias is not clear there are lots of ppl who will point that out, as happens in country like sri lanka with freedom of expression) they have been unable to canvas (let alone convince) the public support, which is essential for a sustainable policy change in a democracy. as a result some of the peaceniks opinions and actions have a distinctly anti democratic and anti freedom of expression direction.

if you think this ai campaign is not a just another step (though esp nauseating one) in the same wrong direction that has increasingly alienated them from sri lankan public, do support it. you may also start supporting the sport boycott called for by the terrorists. :-)