Dr. Daya Hewapathirane

If our motherland is fortunate to have a government in future, with leaders who are upright and patriotic, it should, as a priority, take action to inquire into human rights violations and economic devastation caused to our people and our motherland during the British colonial rule.

Based upon findings, the government should call upon the Government of the United Kingdom to pay compensation for atrocities committed by the British during their rule in Sri Lanka, then Ceylon.

There is ample documentary and other evidence available that vividly reveal the most barbaric manner in which our people were treated by the racist British.

In addition, the Sri Lankan Government should call upon the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom to initiate such an inquiry and display their genuineness on accountability in such matters.

British War Crimes In Sri Lanka

All colonial powers associated with our motherland, in the past, are guilty of serious war crimes of acute proportions. The British were the worst of them all. The British occupation of Sri Lanka was not only gravely crime-prone, but one of sheer treachery, exploitation and devastation of our country and people.

Their motive was the exploitation of the country’s natural and human resources to the fullest, in order to reap benefits for the British government. They installed a well-planned program of activities in Sri Lanka, for a continuous period of about 150 years, which led to the greatest damage to the country’s social cohesion, unity and dignity.

Their ‘divide and rule’ policy of providing special privileges to Tamils and setting the Tamils against the Sinhala people was definitely the beginning of racist Tamil ethnic and terrorist problems in Sri Lanka.

Perhaps there was no other time in the long history of Sri Lanka that so much of blood was shed by the Sinhala people to free the country from British crime and oppression.

Prior to the Kandyan Convention of 1815, thousands upon thousands of Sinhala people sacrificed their lives to free the country from colonial repression. More were killed by the British during the rebellion of 1818 and 1848. During the Kandyan rebellion of 1818, every man over 14 years was ordered by the British to be killed and some sixty thousand Sinhala people were massacred.

Among the large number of local leaders annihilated by the British, the better known were Veera Keppetipola, Veera Puran Appu and Veera Gongalegoda Banda.

This is the story of war crimes of the British in Sri Lanka, but similar or much worse war crimes have been committed by this monstrous nation globally – in Africa, South and North Americas and other Asian countries in the past.