I can’t understand this, so will someone explain it –please.
It is being reported in the local press and local electronic media that the Rajapakses have gained popularity among Sinhala voters in recent days because the UN Special Reporter Philip Alston, the UN Secretary General, and the Western press, have reinforced their accusations of human rights violations and war crimes against the Rajapakse regime. UN and other agencies and officials, and the press, in many countries, now say that the Channel-4 execution video is authentic, and that it conforms to a larger pattern of violations.
The accusers are not LTTE extremists and only the mentally retarded will suggest that these parties and persons are in the pay of the LTTE, or that they are motivated and impelled by the Tamil diaspora.
I just don’t get it! The world seems to be standing on its head! How do you become more popular when criminal accusations against you are reinforced? Shouldn’t it be the other way round? Shouldn’t decent people become cautious, if not sickened, and demand investigation?
Indeed this goes for Fonseka too, if investigations reveal an involvement; and of course it goes for the LTTE leaders as well. This was my reaction upon reading the UTHR(J)’s recent report about the horrors the LTTE committed in the closing months of the war.
There are two possible explanations for this weird display of public sentiments.
These reports of enhanced popularity of alleged war criminals are false; actually people are sickened, but a biased media paints a false picture.
Alternatively, this is a psycho-pathological phenomenon, a case of mass neurosis, what Freud called the madness of mobs, sweeping across sections of our society. Germany in the 1930s during the rise of fascism was a previous example. I hope the former explanantion is truer; otherwise my confusion will need to turn to dismay