ALMOST FOUR years ago, the Sri Lankan government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa won a decisive victory in a 26-year-long civil war with rebels from the island’s minority Tamil community. The cost was horrific: A United Nations investigation subsequently found that up to 40,000 civilians may have died in the government's final offensive. But the triumph made Mr. Rajapaksa a hero among the majority Sinhalese community and gave him an opportunity to modernize his country while healing its ethnic rift. Unfortunately, the president and his family — two brothers hold cabinet positions — have...
Sir Ronald Sanders, former senior Caribbean Ambassador and member of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group, has called for the suspension of Sri Lanka from the Commonwealth and called for an urgent change in venue for this year’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. Extracts from his piece “Save the Commonwealth brand: Tell Sri Lanka “enough”” have been reproduced below. See his full piece here. “It is time for the Commonwealth of Nations to suspend Sri Lanka from its councils.” “In doing so, the Commonwealth would restore confidence in its 2.1 billion people that it is not a hypocritical association that claims to stand for values, including democracy, human rights and the rule of law but fails to act to discipline governments that violate these values.” " The Sri Lanka government has now seriously and persistently violated the principles to which every Commonwealth country has declared itself to be committed, and, according to the Commonwealth’s rules this is ground for suspension from its councils as a first step.”
See below a blog post by Simon Danczuk, Labour MP for Rochdale as published on the Huffington Post. As temperatures plummet and winter starts to bite, I'm sure many people will be reaching for holiday brochures and thinking of escaping to warmer climes. For those contemplating an escape to Sri Lanka, I'd like to offer a cautionary tale about one of my constituents. Rochdale Red Cross worker Khuram Shaikh was brutally murdered on Christmas Day on a Sri Lankan holiday just over 12 months ago. Khuram was used to working in some of the most dangerous places on earth. He worked in prosthetics and...
Former chief cricket writer at The Age (Australia), Trevor Grant has written on his experiences protesting against Sri Lanka and the intimidation tied with it. See here for full article. Extracts reproduced below: "As I was... handing out leaflets to the crowd on the opening day of the Test match, I noticed a... man of Sri Lankan or Indian appearance... taking photographs of me." "I was curious because it was obvious he wasn't a press photographer... because when I moved towards him, he ran away and tried to hide..." "My Australian-Tamil friend, Kartheeban Arul, from the Sydney branch of the Tamil Youth Organisation, tells me that this is a regular occurrence whenever Tamils attend a protest in Australia that is directed at the Sri Lankan government. He says the Tamil community is convinced these men work for the Sri Lankan embassy. Their job is to provide identification of Tamil protesters, which is used by government security agents to harass friends and relatives back in Sri Lanka."
The former chief cricket writer for Australia’s The Age newspaper Trevor Grant has slammed leading Sri Lankan cricket player Kumar Sangakkara for his continued efforts to paint Sri Lanka as a ‘haven of peace and tranquility’. See below for selected extracts of his article ‘Sangakkara, batsman and propagandist extraordinaire’ . Leading Sri Lankan batsman Kumar Sangakkara is currently in Australia to play cricket but he also appears to be auditioning for a job in Mahinda Rajapaksa’s propaganda unit. As he did on the England tour last year, Sangakkara takes every opportunity in Australia to suggest that his homeland has become a haven of peace and tranquility. He did so again this week when sending a message to the protesters who plan to gather at the MCG on Boxing Day, calling for an Australian cricket boycott on future tours and matches against Sri Lanka.
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.”
Bruce Haigh, a former Australian diplomat who served in Sri Lanka and a member of the Refugee Review Tribunal, has written, slamming Australia for being complicit in the genocide of Tamils and called for the country to cut sporting ties with the country. His comments come as the Sri Lankan cricket team begin their tour of Australia. Extracts have been reproduced below. See the full piece here . "Who would have thought that in 17 years, Australia could have gone from being a leading champion in the global fight to end the racial discrimination of apartheid to siding with the corrupt and venal government of Sri Lanka in the genocide of Tamils." "Australia has become complicit in the genocide of Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. Asylum seekers that arrive in Australia are being given no opportunity to make a statement of claims. Acting on the advice of the Sri Lankan government, they are being returned to Sri Lanka on the basis that they have no claims. Any claim they make is regarded as spurious."
Speaking at the recently held " Y o uth Maaveerar Naal " in London, Imperial College London s tudent Visakan Balakumar called on his fellow university students to intensify the struggle against genocide during a speech on behal f of his university's Tamil Society. The speech has been reproduced in full bel ow. " Dear ladies and gentleman. We gather here today to remember those brave souls who gave their lives. Those brave souls who gave their lives for us, for our homeland and our nation. Their selfless acts of bravery in the line of duty mark some of the greatest achievements in the history of the Eelam Tamil nation, our Eelam Tamil nation.
The full script of the address by the Tamil Youth Organisation UK, at 2012 Maaveerar Naal remembrance event held at the Excel Centre, London. The address was made by Mario Arulthas of TYO UK. "Vannakkam, On this day each year, the 27th of November, we the Eelam Tamil nation come together in an act of remembrance. Today, our nation - in the homeland, here in the UK, and right across the world - remember our brave young men and women who gave their lives to the struggle for Tamil Eelam. Who, when faced with a Sinhala Buddhist state, unleashing a brutal genocide upon our nation, rose up and...
"Maaveerar naal serves not only as a reminder for us to call for the end of oppression of Eelam Tamils, but for us, as a Tamil nation, to stand strong and united as we always have to commemorate our brothers and sisters who have sacrificed their lives, their youths and their ambitions for our homeland. Today, we students have once again reunited to honour thousands of our fallen heroes who have sacrificed their lives for the freedom of Tamil Eelam. It’s heartbreaking to say that all of their graves have now been desecrated and destroyed by the Sri Lankan state. However, our maaveerar will never remain unmarked pages in our history. Each one of these courageous men and women will remain forever engraved in our hearts, serving as pillars of our nation.