COLOMBO: C.V.Wigneswaran ,the controversial Chief Minister of Sri Lanka’s Tamil-majority Northern Province, said on Sunday that the Tamils need not praise the Sri Lankan armed forces for their post-war development work in the North because these are only “reparations” for what they did during the 30 year conflict, the Tamil daily ,Thinakkural reported.
He was commenting on Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera’s statement in Keerimalai in Jaffna last weekend, that the Tamils should praise the armed forces for the many good deeds they are doing after the war.
The Security Forces are building houses for the displaced and giving back lands which they had taken during the war. “The people should be grateful to them for all this,” Samaraweera said.
Wigneswaran said that the Tamils should accept what the armed forces are now giving them, but they need not feel “grateful” because these are only “reparations” for the damage inflicted on the Tamil civilians for years.
“There is no need to praise the army for what they are doing.”
Commenting on the demand to encourage civil-military cooperation to develop the Tamil areas, Wigneswaran said that military involvement with civilians is both unnecessary and unhealthy.
“Like the judiciary, the armed forces should keep away from civilians,” he said.
If civilians mix with armed forces personnel, the former will get into undesirable ways, he added.
Wigneswaran, like other Tamil politicians, blames the army and the police for rising drink and drug addiction among Tamil youth in the post-war era.
He has also alleged that the Security Forces are behind the rising crime in the North. The army ,of course, denies this stoutly.