Comments on: Post-conflict Transition and Aid Effectiveness: Reconstruction and Reconciliation in Sri Lanka – Part 2

By: Mawatha Silva

Mawatha Silva — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:50:58 +0000

Four months after the war ended, Sri Lanka is in transition. The challenge of winning the peace, demilitarising democracy and governance, and integrating the minority communities to ensure reconciliation and lasting peace remains.

Do you think the Rajapkses regime would like to attain these challenges ?

Reconciliation, demilitarization, democracy, good governance??

I doubt, they aspire to..

They have perfected the art of double-speak: on the one hand they have suave, western educated mouthpieces who put an attractive spin on their repression and, on the other, depend on good old fashioned enforcers who stifle lawful dissent by violent means.

Sri Lanka President Rajapakse said in his speech on 19 May, ….In the past several decades those (Tamils) people wrought to development. I shall give all of that to those people. All should live with equal rights. They should live without any fear. I accept that responsibility.

Empty promises !!

These words have no meaning other than for international publicity. It is shameful that a government, which claims to respect democracy, exists in 21st century and has these dreadful Nazi-like concentration camps!!

Sri Lanka regime brutal form of terror still permeates SL Island.

a) So called democratic elections are conducted with armed, government proxies roaming freely and intimidating voters at will. Independent journalists are prevented from access to these areas. One cannot think of any better definition of a rigged election!

b) Lawyers decline to defend their clients because they fear being labeled as traitors by government organs.

c) Unelected members of the Presidents family function as arbiters of what may or may not be published in the press. They have even gone as far as to threaten journalists who do not relent.

d) The judicial system is overwhelmed by the huge number of manifestly unjust prosecutions that are intended solely as a means of cowing anyone who dares oppose the government. Any impartial judge is rendered impotent in the face of government delaying tactics that are designed to prolong unjust imprisonments under draconian laws.

e) Any impartial journalist who dares to highlight government injustice is subjected to White vanning or disappearance. Appeals for police protection fall on deaf ears. Moreover, the majority of such acts of terror take place in so called High security zones that are crawling with armed forces personnel.

Whilst recognizing that Mahinda Rajapakse was a doughty defender of human rights in the 80s, however, today, he is responsible for the breakdown of civil society in Sri Lanka.

Mawatha Silva

By: punitham

punitham — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 07:15:37 +0000

1.Chelvanayagam formed the Federal Party opposing the disenranchisement of Tamils in the upcountry.
Till 1976 Chelvanayagam opposed separation – some Sinhalese have even stated that in this website earlier.

US Congress Committee on International Relations, Hearing on Sri Lanka – November 14, 1995 Statement by Prof Marshall R Singer:
” One of the essential elements that must be kept in mind in understanding the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict is that, since 1958 at least, every time Tamil politicians negotiated some sort of power-sharing deal with a Sinhalese government – regardless of which party was in power – the opposition Sinhalese party always claimed that the party in power had negotiated away too much. In almost every case – sometimes within days – the party in power backed down on the agreement.”

Looking back now, the Federal Party should have explained what Federalism is to the Southern masses as well as to the Sinhalese politticians.

But then Sinhalese politicians were not ignorant of what federalism is. SWRD Bandaranaike suggested federalism in the early 30s but when he found that political power is going to go down the FAMILY in UNP, he formed the SLFP and started ‘Sinhala Only’ (against his conscience) to get to power.

2.“Sri Lanka was once recognized as a leader in the developing world in the decades following independence in 1948â€³

Paradise Poisoned, Prof Richardson(2005):
”In international setting, Mrs. Bandaranaike could speak movingly of oppression and its costs and of the feelings of oppressed people. Her words were not so different from those of Tamil leaders expressing their aspirations for political freedom. Has Sirimavo Bandaranaike brought the brilliance and the energy to domestic communal problems that she brought to international affairs, relations between Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese and Tamil communities might have followed a different path.”
Mrs Bandaranaike was much worse than SWRD Bandaranaike towards Tamils.
In 1960 she shelved the Tamil Special Provisions introduced by SWRD Bandaranaike and it was Dudly Senanayake in 1965 to try to do something about it. She refused to investigate the 9 deaths at the Tamil Conference at jaffna Esplanade in 1974. …. ….. ……..

3. ”First step\ towards the reconciliation” is to adopt the recommendations in the reports by UN, ICJ, ICG, IBA, AI,….in the last few decades.

4.At this juncture of Sri Lankan history we cannot afford to have RACISM and LIES oozing from Sri Lankans. We must have TRUTH, LOGIC and REASON.flooding Sri Lanka.

By: nadesan

nadesan — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 02:13:58 +0000

The author says “Sri Lanka was once recognized as a leader in the developing world in the decades following independence in 1948″. Why did that fall apart?
How did Singapore forge ahead?
In 1949 SJV Chelvanayagam and others made the “Arasu Kadchi” declaration in Maradana, where the concept of
exclusive Tamil Homelands was presented. Chelvanayagam declared that the Sinhala and Muslim invaders must be driven out of the hoelands, just as the british were driven out of India. From then on, goading and cajoling the Sinhala extremists and inflaming them, the Thamil Arasu Kadchi took up the process of polarizing this society which had begun to develop a multicultural society. While talking of Federalism in English, they talked of sessesion and separation even in the 1952 election. No meetings were held in the Sinhala areas or in the Hills to explain federalism. Instead, the exclusive homeland was pushed forward in the North and the East. They rejected the Upcountry Tamils as being low-caste. Having successfully polarized the “Ceylonese” society to two warring Tamil and Sinhala societies, we got the Vaddukkoddei doctrine, and Prabhakaran.
The First step\ towards the reconciliation is
for us Tamils to recognize the “exclusive Tamil homeland concept” as an odious Apartheid concept, and move forward with a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic agenda.
A new Vaddukkkodei resolution declaring the need for multi-ethnic coexistence and
free habitation of people every where in the country , irrespective of “hereditary homelands” is NOW NEEDED.

By: punitham

punitham — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 07:26:26 +0000

”Aid Effectiveness” is diametrically opposite the discriminatory policies and practice of the last 61+ years.

It is thwarted by the expert damage control the successive Sri Lankan governments have been doing at the UN and other intergovernmental bodies for decades. This will go on as long as there are oppressive governments that gang up together in the international arena.
Hence the much-talked about ‘UN Reform’ may not materialise for a long time to come. There needs to be an international mechanism for the representation of the oppressed(worldwide) at intergovernmental bodies. This will happen when man civilises to a higher plane of emotional(?) intelligence.

OR rather when religious philosophies are actually practised and not just talked about.

By: punitham

punitham — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:03:44 +0000

Hope this falls on the ears of the Rajapakses.