Rajiva Wijesinha

“ Sadly one gets the impression that, when faced with terror, some elements of the Catholic hierarchy can only try to drive home points in class. One hopes they will read the words of His Holiness the Pope who, in addressing the new Sri Lankan ambassador to the Vatican, noted that acts of terror are never justifiable, who raised questions in a spirit of understanding, who did not condemn a government struggling against terror but reminded it of its own continuing obligations. ”

“ But no, in a search for balance, as a Norwegian politician now in opposition put it cynically, those who have not suffered the corrosive effects of totalitarian terror put an elected government and a terrorist movement on a par, they condemn in the same breath both what is obviously collateral damage and also deliberate targeting of civilians, they belittle the human rights abuses that occur by refusing to seek specific remedies for them but instead lump them together in a persistent desire to impose external solutions upon a sovereign country. ”

“ So too the Religious Superiors make a request, obviously from the government, to ‘Remove the existing embargo on travel and transport on humanitarian aid workers and allow relief items to reach the displaced in the camps’, obviously not aware that there is no such embargo, and that relief items do reach the displaced. There are certainly limitations on travel and transport, but these are essential in a context in which instruments of terror are cunningly transported, even in the vehicles of ecclesiastics. ”