The "Outlook of Lanka Outlook" Number 1

The "Outlook of Lanka Outlook" Number 1
20th July1999

By Susantha Goonatilake

Jehan Perera: A Primer to the Attitudes and Ideas of a Key Contributor to Lanka Outlook

To illustrate the extent of Jehan Perera's commitment to having Sri Lanka's interests at heart, one could give a set of Perera's exultant remarks when the Indians came. This was shortly after the Indian Accord which was forced on Sri Lanka by the literal presence of Indian gun boats and a large number of troops, in the face of massive popular opposition to the loss of sovereignty that it entailed. The opposition included also J.R.J. who admitted in an interview before he died that his arms were twisted.

The Accord we should remember was seen in the "Western Mind",- apart from its other characteristics-, as a crude projection of Indian power. Thus the British Guardian newspaper put it as "India's pact with Sri Lanka is the most infamous contract imposed on a small country - short of military occupation - since the Munich Agreement of 1938.

The Island's ethnic conflict and her relations with India have drawn comparisons with many post- war situations. There are no more striking parallels, however, to the course of events in Sri Lanka than those which preceded the Sudeten-German crisis of the 1930's". The London Evening Standard said "India ... is a colonial power in the region today." The leading US newspaper New York Times, editorialized about "Mr. Gandhi's .... big-stick diplomacy in Sri Lanka". Another leading American newspaper Wall Street Journal said India was "a rogue elephant trampling upon its neighbors"

Jehan Perera was of a different mind. He wrote in the government newspaper Ceylon Daily News that it was now time "to tell Sri Lankans some hard truths about their Island, its geography, its multi ethnic population and its limitations......". He said that any government will now have "to confront the reality of the Indo-Lanka Accord and the presence of the Indian army in the North and East.....[They] are unlikely to leave should the Accord be dishonored by Sri Lanka... [our] governments have been presented with a fait accompli... [They have no ] choice but to honor the Accord. Given the Indian presence in Sri Lanka, it would be reckless not to do so" ((Jehan Perera "The Turning Point - Facing the Reality of the Indo-Lanka Accord" Daily News August 26, 1987).). Clearly here is a man who looks at the world with Sri Lanka's best interests at heart..

Jehan Perera has become more peaceful now after the belligerence at the time of the Accord. He is now the Media Director (read propaganda chief) of the self-styled National Peace Council. , He went to the defense of Kenneth Fernando the Tiger apologist when the latter was being attacked in the press for his statement that Prabhakaran was a humanist (Island 7/12/93). He is also a member of the local "Sasakawa Peace Foundation", as the latter's letter head informs us. This is a contradiction in terms as Sasakawa was a Japanese war criminal. Having done some of the most atrocious war crimes, Sasakawa built his financial empire on casino money.

Jehan Perera has also questioned the need for our sovereignty and has made the case for what he has called "shared sovereignty " (January 12, 1997, The Island.) More recently, he has called for two near-states, one for the North East and one for the South West (Sunday Observer May 1998). But the greatest indictment against the Media Director, Jehan Perera who writes regularly was his strange inability to inform Sri Lankan readers that Kumar Rupasignhe's International Alert was being charged at the highest international level of coup plotting and diamond smuggling.

In the US, the Logan Act prohibits U.S. citizens from interfering with foreign policy, which is the prerogative of the government. After the Indian proxy invasion of Sri Lanka culminating in the Accord, the American Ambassador to Sri Lanka, James Spain told a reporter on the issue of the IPKF "We [meaning Americans]`still blame the Japanese, but ironically in Sri Lanka, the people do not blame India" (Rohan Gunaratne 1993: 210). We do not have to go far to seek for an answer. The Sri Lankan public is being continuously brain washed to accept a loss of sovereignty. Jehan Perera's NPC is fully involved in this exercise.

The report into the International Alert chicanery in Sierra Leone by the Christian Michelson Institute (December 1997) has something very interesting to say. It says that International Alert type exercises in so called conflict resolution are "by definition" ... interference in the internal affairs of sovereign nations (p. 5). By this means diplomacy and conflict resolution "has now been privatized" (p81). This interference erodes "national independence and autonomy" (p.82) and that "there is a growing number of critics of conflict resolution ...... [who consider this] as a new form of imperialism." (p 6.) The National Peace Council is in the forefront of these new imperialists. Let us recapitulate.

Jehan Perera's National Peace Council members have justified at several fora both local and international the fictitious traditional homelands of Tamils as Lebensraum for Prahabhakaran. The direct parallel is to Hitler's declaration of the Sudetenland as part of his natural Reich. The NPC propaganda chief (Media Director) in the manner of Goebbels threatened Sri Lanka in 1987 and later calls for shared sovereignty. The National Peace Council's chief organizer, Ajit Rupasinghe, has marched with the Tiger butchers' band singing their war cry, directly reminiscent of the march of Hitler's youth in Nuremberg. Jehan Perera's National Peace Council is very plainly a War Council aimed at Sri Lanka's sovereignty. It speaks of Peace in the South but psychologically prepares the enemy for war. It is this type of double speak where peace means and war means peace, that Orwell caricatured in his frightful novel "1984". In any other sovereign country his Council would be investigated for aiding the enemy. The law for espousing and helping separatism as well as the LTTE if implemented is very severe.

Jehan Perera has spelled out the NPC strategy of reaching the Sri Lankan population for their particular brand of "peace" . This strategy is ambitious, targeting the total population of the country through a societal pyramid from the top political hierarchy to grass roots for comprehensive propaganda for their brand of "peace".

The NPC tell us that their "main targets ..... are grassroots organizations, NGO networks and sectoral organizations, political elites, religious leaders and communities and cultural agents. ... The people's organizations are the base of this NPC's strategic pyramid. ....... At the middle are the various sectoral networks of professional associations, trade unions, peasant organizations, women and youth organizations. At the very top are the political, cultural and religious elites and power structure primarily in Sri Lanka but also internationally". There is thus a carefully laid out propaganda action aimed at the country.

In addition to these top to bottom workshops their "peace education" is also provided the NPC tells us to "people on a mass scale through high visibility and high impact multi-media campaigns, utilizing television, radio, newspaper and wall posters which have supported the peace process and opposed the use of violence at crucial moments. Some examples of the themes that have been publicized are "Divided by war, united by the cry Don't wage war on my behalf", "Give a hand to peace", and "Bullets don't give a people's mandate." Very ominous as these slogans equate the Tigers with the government.

As NPC influences on part of the top of the pyramid, two MPs Dulles Alahapperuma (PA) and Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena (UNP) from the Matara District had gone on International Alert trips associated with NPC. Mr. Alahapperuma said that on these tours he was "exposed to new thinking". Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena said he found it "extremely positive".

The NPC operates at the middle level through partner organizations. These include workshops held at Ampara with Seva Lanka, Polonnaruwa with INSHA, Nuwara Eliya with the Sinhala-Tamil Women's Forum, Puttalam with the Rural Development Foundation, Matara with the Hakmana Buddhist temple and Galle with the Marga Institute.

The NPC mass propaganda program included the December 1996 one where "around 10,000 people from all over the country participated in the performances by grassroots groups and several of the country's leading professional artists." In January 4, 1998 the NPC exults "More than 1700 participants, delegated by communities in all 25 districts in the country, met at the National Peace Delegates Convention held at the BMICH and passed a resolution calling for an immediate end to the war". The NPC also tells us that approximately 1200 of the delegates were Sinhalese, while 350 were Tamil and 150 were Muslim. More than half were from conflict-affected districts of the north-east and bordering districts. 50 disabled soldiers also participated and approved the resolution." By targeting the so called border areas and the soldiers the NPC propaganda was targeting the major victims of the Tigers and psychologically disarming them. By getting to stop the war against the Tigers, they were inviting their own death. But the NPC says that this "resolution was formulated after extensive discussion at workshops held over a 5-month period at the district level with the delegates and their communities." Now what is the message that is done through this sophisticated propaganda machine. At the grass roots it is given by a man called Mr. S. Balakrishnan of MIRJE , which organization has on several occasions espoused the traditional homelands hoax. He is apparently often asked skeptically of the problems Tamil people have today. So he gives his skewed reasons.

His version of history is divided into three phases. They are 1930-1956, 1956-1973 and since 1978 . In the process this great NPC "expert" distorts history and fact. He deliberately misleads on the comical 50-50 demand saying that its point "was to avoid passing any bill that was unfair to minorities without getting their consent.". He completely ignores the connections of Sri Lankan Tamil separatism to South Indian Tamil separatism with its beginnings in the 19th century and the pre and post Independence periods till Indian Tamil separatism was banned by the 6th amendment to the Indian constitution. He also ignores the Indian proxy invasion of the country. Hitler's propaganda chief Goebbels would have been proud of Balakrishnan. Prabhakaran must surely be exultant.

The Newsletter of the Jehan Perera's National Peace Council also reports of a "bipartisan consensus of PA and UNP politicians" in a NPC programme in Matara and again propagates their biased views. This was through a workshop which among others had the NPC versions of "historical analyses" on the ethnic issue. As part of an NPC effort Dulles Alahapperuma and Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena later spoke on "peace" at Matara. Alahapperuma NPC informs us "explained the futility of trying to weaken LTTE by providing more government support to the other Tamil parties". He said " it .. simply would not work" . He explained the repeated failure of peace talks, not on the LTTE murderers but because "the government had missed an opportunity for peace by sending persons who were not experienced in political negotiations to discuss the problem with the Tigers. Also the government had made a mistake by nurturing the other Tamil parties at the same time as the peace talks were going on".

These biased views of history is challenged even in the NPC propaganda meetings. Thus a so called "conflict resolution workshop" of the NPC in the Puttalam District for about 20 community leaders consisting of school teachers, government servants, Buddhist monks and village notables aroused keen dissent. The first was the NPC version of "History of the conflict" presented by the NPC's programme officer, S. P. Nathan, which gave a breakdown of the various acts of the Sri Lankan government that allegedly had led to the progressive alienation of the Tamil Community.

But some participants objected to this NPC brand of biased history as it did not contain the acts of the Tamil political parties and militant organizations. But rest assured. The Ven. Buddiyagama Chandraratne, chief incumbent of a temple in the district, who was the organizer of this NPC meeting, rebutted these allegations. He said that the Sinhalese people should be prepared to admit the wrongs that their political leaders had committed in their name and which had led to the ethnic conflict. Blaming only one side was classical Hitler propaganda of the Big Lie.

The most far reaching to accommodate LTTE perspectives was the NPC resolution at their 1998 convention . It "called for a radical restructuring of the state along lines that could permit a form of self-government for all "nationalities and communities" within one country. The NPC propagandist position that the civil war was "a result of a majoritarian state structure which has given rise to a demand for self-determination by the Tamil people." was accepted by this meeting. The resolution also called for "a just and honorable peace" and urged that negotiations between the government and LTTE should be conducted with parity of status and without preconditions on either side. The Tigers were already given equality of status by the NPC.

How effective is this massive proTiger propaganda? One politician at a NPC meeting said afterwards that he learnt about "new concepts" but he had only obtained a taste of them. Other participants we are told say that the NPC did not attempt to force its views on them. "No one brainwashed us, we did it ourselves", one said admitting that prior to the workshop he had thought the NPC propagated the LTTE point of view. One is reminded of the Nurenburg rallies where the youth gladly accepted the Big Lie as correct.

In the published views of the leading lights of Jehan Perera's NPC, both the ones that I collected from their offices and I have come across elsewhere, there is enough evidence that this organization and its leading lights have stood against fact, falsified history and have taken stands against the country's integrity. I posses published evidence that their leading lights collaborated with LTTE front organizations even after it was banned.

There is evidence that this National Peace Council has in effect become a psychological war front for the Tigers. Its tactics evoke the tradition of the propaganda of Hitler and Stalin. Its convention reminds one directly of Hitler's Nurenburg rallies because of the carefully planted falsities. These lies also evoke what was called Lysenkoism under Stalin. The local victims of this carefully targeted propaganda would not know of Hitler's big lies or Stalin's crimes. Both Tiger ideologues as well as International Alert and its local partner the National Peace Council of Jehan Perera have claimed publicly the so called border areas in the North and East as well as the central hills as part of their separate land.

Heil Hitler! (Prabhakaran)