Something surprised me a few days ago. See, the BBC reported that the Uthayan paper (the biggest selling Tamil paper in the Jaffna region) had received death threats from a shadow group.

This shadow group is/was called the Tamil Alliance to Protect the Country. They have apparently accused the paper of being a mouthpiece for terrorists and of undermining the peace process. They claimed that if people associated with the paper did not quit, they would take action in the form of capital punishment.

So let me get this straight, you accuse someone of being linked to terrorists and yet your solution to the matter is to dole out capital punishment as you see fit without the jurisdiction to do so, thereby becoming one of the terrorists that you seem to hate so much.

Logically speaking, you realise, that would mean that if you were firm in your convictions, you’d have to kill yourself too if you made good on your threats.

Capital punishment? Yes, the threats are serious and the paper’s employees would have every right to be freaked out and attempting to protect themselves. No one has that right to be threatened.

But honestly? The first thing I wanted to do was to laugh at the Alliance. You’re not cowboy vigilantes, you’re not. You cannot accuse others of undermining peace and then state that you will solve the issue by non peaceful methods.

Look, if you want to protect the country from terrorists, then do so by peaceful means. Check your facts, go through the proper systems and whatever your opinion of how efficient the government is, let the government deal directly with any terrorists that do come to fore. If you have helped uncover a few who do pose a valid threat, then great. If they do not deal with them to your satisfaction, you can do nothing but protest peacefully in hopes that law or practice of the law will change both here and internationally.

Of course, it seems like you will get what you want via violence and intimidation much faster. If you believe that, then that is sad because you aren’t protecting the country at all, you’re just helping perpetuate a cycle and system of violence.

Which makes me wonder if you really are so keen to protect the country? Are you dogmatic enough in your beliefs to have your blinkers on? Or are you someone hiding your deeply ingrained racist beliefs behind the idea of being a vigilante group fighting for peace? Or are you someone egoistic enough to get a thrill out of feeling like you have scared someone? Heck, I wonder if you are Tamil or an Alliance, really?

I pity you if you feel violence (whether you justify it as being a vigilante or ‘cause you are labeling people so freely as terrorists) is the only way forward. I genuinely believe we are, as a country, at the point where, guess what, we’re not going to put up with that anymore. No. You may scare people but they are not going to back down so easily. We’ve had a taste of something we haven’t had for 26 years, and I am sure there are lots of people who will feel as strongly towards you making any moves to disrupt any sort of peace (fragile or stable) as you feel about "terrorists."

So if you start the violence, then I am sure other groups will follow your example and you as someone who started disrupting the peace with your capital punishment will be the target instead. Then we will end up with this damn cycle of violence starting all over again. Now if you are paying attention, that is what is called following a logical progression of thought through.

We don’t need more violence. We ceased the war and the hostilities: there is still work to be done, we need to rebuild the country, get through the global financial crisis and start working on our human rights and all those other wonderful ideals we like to think we have full access to.