Rajiva Wijesinha

“ The saddest aspect of the war of attrition that some prospective donors are conducting against the Sri Lankan government is that its main victims will be the poor civilians who were rescued from the Tigers. ”

“ They make a virtue of this by claiming that they are protecting the poor suffering people from what they call protracted internment, but they seem to me to be succumbing to the temptation of many of those clothed in brief authority, which is to engage in as much construction as possible, and give out as many contracts as you possibly can. So there will be new toilets every few months, and they will disintegrate well before they are expected to, and then the humanitarian community can exult at the squalor they themselves have precipitated, and issue contracts for more short term toilets. ”

“ Though the Ministry of Resettlement has actually issued a notice about the standards required as to toilets, our Western decision makers, with no idea about how Asians use toilets, continue to provide rubbish, on occasion using wooden structures which may survive a few months when water is not used, but which will rot swiftly in Sri Lanka. ”

“ While some Europeans were busily cultivating Mr Pathmanathan, in spite of his being wanted by Interpol, and others were trying to collect signatures to put Sri Lanka into the dock before the Tigers were destroyed, the Sri Lankan forces destroyed the Tigers, or rather those who were not in safety amongst their European cash cows. ”

“ The strategy now is to make sure that they suffer in the camps, put into tents in which they cannot stand, that they do not have enough to eat, that they have to endure squalid toilets and perhaps suffer the epidemics that were predicted so confidently month after month over the last year, and which the sustained work of our Ministry of Health so skilfully avoided. ”

“ Nor can we point out that it is obviously wasteful to deliberately provide stuff that cannot last more than three months, and then spend more on replacing it, when much better longer lasting stuff can be provided for not much more than the initial cost. ”

“ How wicked some of these people are can be seen in the intensity with which they objected to the cheap and simple and durable toilets constructed by the Confidence Building and Stabilization Measures Project in the more civilized part of Menik Farm way back in December. ”