you’ve already suggested that DJ may not have known of alleged crimes. i notice you backtracking on that in order to salvage your argument.

unfortunately, most of your comments on world history makes it clear you have very little understanding of liberalism.

precisely.

so for all your claimed liberalism you are unable to look beyond narrow ethnic confines to dismiss the Marga Institute as “Sinhala”? similarly i question your worship of the People’s Tribunal when you’re so ready to dismiss international legal experts who actually sit participate in international war crimes investigations who have contributed to the Marga Publications.

i didn’t say that external pressure has no effect. Indian intervention created the 13th Amendment for example. my point is i don’t see anything useful happening from external pressure beyond expediting certain things that were anyway on the cards. for instance no amount of pressure has been able to bring forth an articulated political plan for the NE. as soon as the pressure is removed the motivations change as they have on 13A. i think there’s a difference between international outrage and external intervention, don’t you? there’s a lot of international outrage over Guantanamo Bay, but no external intervention. try and stay focused on what your argument is.

if you had in fact read what i had said in previous years — including what was published by Marga (not me alone) — what i was against was an external criminal investigation which had the objective of prosecuting someone for a crime. i wasn’t against an investigation itself, and i believe the GoSL should have established a credible investigation mechanism to establish whether a crime had been in fact committed. world opinion is in a significantly different place because the GoSL has shown itself uninterested in engaging with the allegations and dealing with them, so the continuously repeated mantra of the allegations have now become de facto reality in spite of there being no evidence whatsoever. your claim as fact that rape was used as a weapon of war is a good example of repeating a lie until it is accepted as fact. the steadily and randomly increasing civilian casualty figures are another. what’s the latest fantasy — 140, 000? it started at 40k — itself a figure with no real basis in reality — and has been adjusted upwards without any new evidence coming to light.

the evidence i ask for doesn’t require an investigation; one needs proof — or at least strong suspicion — that a crime has been committed before one sets out to investigate and gather evidence of a culprit. right now, there is no evidence of a crime having been committed, but you are insistent that one has occurred and needs to be investigated.

with regard to Balkanization, you are now saying that there’s a fifty-fifty chance that it might work so let’s try it. that’s not good enough a reason to fragment my country, sorry, just because you want a quick fix.

but the state is a manifestation of the people, Alex. the state did not drop down from heaven. it was created by an electorate that is racist. the Tigers were similarly a manifestation of the NE Tamils who created a constitution — the Vaddukoddai Resolution — that was just as mono-ethnic and racist as the Sinhalese one.

the state, and its government, the BBS, the Tigers, are the factories created by the system of racism within the people. you cannot reform or tear down any of those — especially not externally — unless you first deal with the system. i will leave it there for now since we are both just repeating our arguments and not making any headway. i do hope you will eventually grasp the factory/system theory before you attempt to argue against it.

Haha – interesting analogy. I have to admit I like the liberal frame-work as it is the idealogy of compromise that accommodates and is open, however it is uncompromising where it matters – the rights of people. My point above is that the individuals you highlight had a liberal space to work with (albeit relative). There isn’t a lack of liberals amongst Sri Lanka’s nations, there is a lack of space for them to work out a solution.