Responding to a piece written by Sri Lanka’s Consul General in Sydney Bandula Jayasekara, former Australian diplomat Bruce Haigh has called on the Commonwealth to “take a stand against rampant abuses”. 

Extracts of his piece “Diplomats paint one-sided picture of Sri Lanka” have been reproduced below. See the full piece here.

“It is interesting that Jayasekara is being put forward as the Sri Lankan representative in Australia to defend the indefensible, an acknowledgement that the Sri Lankan high commissioner, Thisara Samarasinghe, has singularly failed to get his message across.”

”Australians are quite used to weighing the facts, they saw through the propaganda of the South African apartheid regime, the lies over East Timor and weapons of mass destruction and it is only a matter of time before the truth will out on the treatment of Tamils and the political enemies of the corrupt Rajapaksa regime.”

”The Sri Lankan flag has a sword-bearing Sinhalese lion. Attempts, after independence, to adopt a flag with neutral symbols were rejected by the Sinhalese majority. Instead two ribbons were added to represent minority Tamils and Muslims. With the advent of the civil war the Tamils adopted a tiger as their symbol and the Sinhalese army, the lion.”

“Jayasekara would have us believe that Tamils fought (as terrorists) to divide Sri Lanka. What he conveniently fails to mention is that what occurred was a civil war fought because the Sinhalese refused to share power on the departure of the British. Tamil protest eventually turned Sinhalese exclusionary policies into genocide, which erupted in a blood bath in Colombo in 1983.”

“Many fled to the north and were subsequently forced to defend themselves from the army. The Sinhalese fear and hate the Tamils, hence the belief that Tamils are reorganising overseas for another civil war. It may well become a self-fulfilling prophecy if the Sinhalese continue to deny their rights.”

”What Jayasakera does not mention is Sri Lanka's appalling human rights record, where young Tamils have been abducted and murdered. Forty Sri Lankan journalists have been murdered over the past 10 years for reporting state-sponsored corruption and abuse of human rights.”

“The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs is well aware of the nature of government in Sri Lanka. However the Australian government has been prepared to gloss over these abuses and in its own treatment of Tamil asylum seekers has now transgressed accepted human rights.”

“In September 2012, the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, warned that he may refuse to attend the November 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo, unless the Rajapaksa government addresses allegations of Sinhalese atrocities during the closing stages of the civil war.”

”Jayasekara seeks to deceive because, with hubris and ignorance, he thinks we know little beyond what he writes. He should take pause and think again.”