India conveys concern at China presence in Sri Lanka
Posted on October 26th, 2014
Courtesy The Hindu
India has expressed serious concern to Sri Lanka over China’s increasing military presence on the island, it is reliably learnt.
Official sources in New Delhi told The Hindu that Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s India visit last week was for a meeting in this connection. The Defence Secretary, who is the brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, met National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval and Defence Minister Arun Jaitley. The meeting was held to raise the issue of a Chinese submarine calling at a Sri Lankan port last month. It is of serious concern to India’s national security,” said a senior official, who requested anonymity.
Changzheng 2, a nuclear-powered submarine, docked at the Colombo International Container Terminals Ltd on September 15. It was the first such submarine to visit Sri Lanka, the Sunday Times reported. Before its arrival, two Chinese naval vessels had docked in Colombo from September 7 to 13, it said.
China and Sri Lanka have strong ties, with China investing heavily in infrastructure projects on the island. China is also its vocal supporter at the Human Rights Council, where 23 countries voted in favour of an international inquiry into Sri Lanka’s rights record in 2014. India had abstained.
October 26th, 2014 at 11:28 am
It is beginning to be very clear that Sri Lanka has a much larger role to play than was estimated. India’s role in the region has been over inflated. India’s “concern” of Chinese presence in Sri Lanka never stopped her from the 30 year proxy war with Colombo using the Tamil Tigers to attempt at dividing Sri Lanka and forming Elam
When that that military campaign failed in a loss for India (the 2nd military loss India faced after the 1962 Indo Chinese war) India then bullied Sri Lanka using the UN. She unashamedly used whatever is in her means to realize Elam using whatever other methods available to her especially trumped up charges of human rights violations only on the end of the war. Again she lost.
Now this rather self interested nation with a massive social problem on so many levels that the term “crimes against humanity” fail to even grasp (caste system, slavery at an epic level, Asia’s largest slums, Some of the world’s highest beggar population, etc) is “concerned” about what an independent nation does with another independent nation. Now that is a laugh.
If any nation should be genuinely concerned it should be Sri Lanka about India and her open blatant support of Pro LTTE NGO’s in Tamil Nadu such as TESO, TELO, PLOT and so many others. India should BACK OFF regarding Sri Lanka if she does not even have the common decency to shut down these pro LTTE NGO’s on her land.
How would India feel if Sri Lanka played host to all the separatist movements currently going on in India?