Former Chief Minister of the Northern Province, CV Wigneswaran, has written in response to the recent arrests of suspected LTTE sympathisers in Malaysia and Sri Lanka, concluding that he expects said arrests are but “political antics and/or electoral gimmicks!”
Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister CV Wigneswaran speaking at the International Association of Tamil Journalists annual lecture in the London, UK. I am meeting you today in the context of exactly thirty years this week since the Thimbu talks and thirty two years since the Black July riots next week. Although all of you fall within the term “diaspora”, many of you did not come here rejecting your birth place. You came here wounded in body and in mind. In spite of this you foster and safeguard a connection between yourselves and your homeland. Some still have land there. Many have...
Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister CV Wigneswaran writing in The Hill, a major Washington DC-based newspaper which focuses on politics and international relations. Come September, the United Nations Human Rights Council will assemble in Geneva for its 30th session. This session marks an important date for Sri Lanka, the United States and the international community: the long-awaited release of the UN report on war crimes committed during Sri Lanka’s civil war. Secretary of State John Kerry in May urged Sri Lanka to launch a credible investigation into human rights abuses and to release remaining political prisoners, and added that the U.S. is willing to support these developments with legal and technical assistance. This U.S. political will, ready to support justice and reconciliation in Sri Lanka, and the upcoming release of the UN report on war crimes, which disproportionately affected the ethnic Tamil population, mean the next few months are crucial for pursuing true reform in Sri Lanka. U.S. leaders have praised progress from newly elected President Maithripala Sirisena, like passing the 19th Amendment that limits the presidency to two terms, but the country’s Tamil population in the North and East remains disempowered and displaced. Slow reforms, the delayed release of the UN report and proposed accountability mechanisms that don’t meet international standards fuel the growing feeling that genuine justice and reform, a cause long-backed by the U.S. and multilateral organizations, is being sacrificed for domestic political maneuvering.
Following is the address by the Chief Minister of the Northern Province, CV Wigneswaran, given at a conference in Colombo. Honourable Chairperson, distinguished guests, my dear brothers and sisters! I am indeed flattered that the Sri Lankan academia, under the leadership provided by the University Grants Commission, has thought it fit to invite me today to deliver the keynote address on “Accelerated Provincial Development – The Way Forward”. I am mindful that there is probably more value ascribed to my career of barely half a year as a politician than my career of half a century in the legal...