Camouflaged with the provincial elections in Sri Lanka’s East, under military and paramilitary terror, is the Sri Lanka (SL) government’s agenda to dismember the homeland of Tamil speakers that include Tamils and Tamil Muslims, says TamilNet.
The elections with a possible boycott of TNA, as a result of the intimidation of main Tamil opinion, is going to confer ‘unholy legitimacy’ to the government to complete its genocide and subordination of Tamil speakers in the East.
It is unfortunate that the British provide a ‘tacit assent’ to this agenda, by discussing the elections rather than condemning it, writes a reader from UK, responding to a British press release on a meeting between British and Lankan foreign ministers.
The concerned press release of the British High Commission, Colombo, said that the two foreign ministers discussed ‘the importance of ensuring that the forthcoming provincial elections are credible and conducted in a secure environment’.
‘Sometimes back (August 2007), a British policy outline, probably drafted by one of the novices in the British Foreign Office, was harping on the theme of simultaneous strengthening of Sri Lanka’s military and “development” in the East to resolve the Tamil question in Sri Lanka, without heeding to any of the fundamental issues,’ the feedback further said.
Such approaches show how shallow and casual the thinking in the British Foreign Office circles. The giants who once planned for the whole world now don’t think for themselves in humanitarian perspectives, but uphold only petty policies of fishing in troubled waters, commented the reader.
Feedback from another reader, Sam Thambipillai, originating from South Africa, brings out how the provincial council elections under controversy is a unilateral violation of democracy, long established norms and hardly achieved aspiration of the people of the North and East:
‘Hounds cannot handle holy things. A unilateral logic cannot bring out reason.
‘This is what one would observe if he or she were to analyse the statement of Keheliya Rambukwela, the spokesman of the government of Sri Lanka (GoSL), on the proposed elections for the Provincial Council in the East.
‘This week, we were told two things by Rambukwela, about Indo Lanka Accord (ILA) and the merger of North and East provinces. Firstly, he said that the merger of North East (NE) was temporary.
‘When the GoSL went ahead with the Unilateral Declaration of Republic (UDR) in 1972, the people of NE, by a self referendum as a single unit, decided to form the sovereign state of Tamil Eelam.
‘Having democratically done at the appropriate time, NE will remain as one unit forever (the reader was referring to 1976 Vaddukkoaddai Declaration and the 1977 mandate of the people of North and East).
‘When the contents of the ILA were discussed in India, the Tamil leaders knew full well that they had no mandate to go against the unit of NE, and they stood firmly for it.
‘India agreed to this stand. J.R.Jeyawardene, the then president of SL, also knew that it was unavoidable.
‘However, he openly expressed clearly to India that the criminality of the Sinhala nation would assassinate him if he consented for NE as one unit.
‘Therefore, there was a provision included in the ILA for “temporary merger” of Northern and Eastern provinces and a referendum was to be held in the East, unfairly without the North. It was definitely an inappropriate action against the mandate given by the people of NE in 1970s.
‘The GoSL was asked in the ILA to prove as to why the “temporary merger” should not be a permanent merger, by a referendum in the East, within one year of signing the accord.
‘Referendum was a challenge to the GoSL to prove a point. And the GoSL failed to prove it within the stipulated time. The idea of referendum was thus not to split the NE.
‘Rambukwela does not seem to understand the circumstances leading to the inclusion of referendum in the ILA. Probably, unilateral Sinhala logic has not made him to ask the simple question “how could anything be temporary for so long as 20 years?”.
‘Secondly, he said that the referendum was to be held after disarming the militants. Not only referendum but even the first elections to the NE provincial council was to be held after disarming the militants.
‘The fact that NE was conducive for Provincial Council elections shows that it was also equally conducive for a referendum in the East, but it was not held.
‘The referendum was not held deliberately by GoSL because it knew that it would lose the referendum. Therefore, the GoSL lost in its challenge in the ILA to de-link NE.
‘The present provincial council elections is therefore a unilateral violation of the ILA let alone democracy.’
British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, David Miliband, and Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister, Rohitha Bogollagama, on Tuesday discussed the ‘recent political developments’ in the Eastern province, including the ‘importance of ensuring that the forthcoming provincial elections are credible,’ and conducted in a ‘secure environment,’ according to a press release issued on Wednesday by the British High Commission in Colombo.
The full text of the press release issued by the British High Commission in Colombo follows:
British and Sri Lankan Foreign Ministers meet in London
‘Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband met at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on 1 April.
‘In a cordial and frank exchange of views on the situation in Sri Lanka, the Foreign Ministers discussed the recent political developments in the Eastern province, including the importance of ensuring that the forthcoming provincial elections are credible and conducted in a secure environment.
‘The Foreign Ministers exchanged views on the Commonwealth and discussed human rights as well as other issues of bilateral importance.
‘The Foreign Ministers recognised the importance of continued close engagement and regular high level contact.’
• More than 10 million Rupees donated by United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for educational projects in the Jaffna peninsula is being held back by Central Treasury since December 2007, seriously hampering a number of developmental projects, officials from the Department of Education in Jaffna said.
The Education Department of Jaffna is unable to make the payments for the building contractors as the second instalment of UNICEF funds due three months ago for constructing new school buildings as well as repairing damaged classrooms have not been released.
The Directors of Education and Principals of schools in the peninsula have been exerting pressure on the UNICEF officials to have the funds released.
Diani Araki, the resident representative for UNICEF in the North has already sent letters to the Directors of Education stating that UNICEF will be compelled to withdraw the funds if the Treasury in Colombo continued to withhold funds.
New directives issued by the Government of Sri Lanka mandated UNICEF to hand over the funds to the Treasury, which in turn is supposed to release the funds through the Department of Education after ‘review’.
But, Sri Lanka’s Treasury, as a temporary measure to manage cash liquidity, routinely holds back funds released by organisations such as UNICEF as long as possible and release them only when pressure is exerted, sources close to the Department of Education in Jaffna added.
