I do hope that at least these two chapters of Gunaratne's book would be translated and published in Sinhala newspapers. This is extremely important as there are many millions in the south, particularly among the Buddhist clergy whose ignorance of the problem and of the LTTE could be described as astounding. They seem to be depending on their imagination for their facts. This is not entirely correct. Those who have not followed closely events during the period between 1983 and '87, mistakenly believe that we had left the field open to the anti Sri Lanka Tamil groups and the LTTE in particular.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
In the period immediately after 1983, the then government poured in resources which later dried up without any understanding as to how best to deal with the external situation. It must be remembered that our image was tainted after the atrocities of 1983. The International community believed that the Human Rights situation in Sri Lanka was bad and the world was prepared to believe any report about atrocities real or fictitious, which our detractors claimed the armed forces had committed. Isolated incidents were lashed together into one damning indictment. The much-maligned officers of the ministry of foreign Affairs can take justifiable pride in the fact it was they who were able to head off sanctions and intervention on humanitarian grounds.