World socialists condemn war as Co-chairs’ machination

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 February 2009, 02:32 GMT]
The Co-Chairs have not been helpless, passive bystanders, but active participants who bear political responsibility for the Sri Lankan government's war and the humanitarian disaster now unfolding in northern Sri Lanka, writes K.Ratnayake, tracing the history of Co-chairs involvement in the island, in an article ‘The end of the Sri Lankan Peace Process’, appeared in World Socialist Web Site, Monday.

"The (Co-chair) statement is just as notable for what it does not say. It does not call for an immediate end to the fighting, for the withdrawal of all Sri Lankan troops to the 2002 ceasefire lines, and for a return to the internationally-sponsored negotiations of 2002-03. In other words, the co-chairs no longer observe even the diplomatic niceties of the so-called peace process that they once sponsored", the article said.

The views of the Sri Lanka’s Socialist Equality Party writer, even though looking at the liberation struggle of the Tamils as 'representing the interests of the Tamil bourgeoisie', bring to light how war is imposed on Sri Lanka by powers considering only economic and strategic interests.

While attributing LTTE's setbacks to misplaced trust with imperialist powers, the writer advocates a working class approach and initiative to end the root cause of war, the profit system.

Commenting on the article by Ratnayake, an academic of the socialist camp said: "However, a practical prerequisite in the case of the island of Sri Lanka is achieving a political equilibrium to the long legacy of the Tamil and Sinhala ethnic divide, to envisage any progressive social change. Supporting and shaping a liberation struggle is a better platform to achieve this than buttressing the oppressors."

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External Links:

WSWS:

The end of the Sri Lankan “peace process”