Mahinda Gunasekera Toronto, Canada

UNHRC Resolution Number 30/1 of October 2015 introduced by the USA, UK and other Western powers to get Sri Lanka to revise her constitution, scale back the armed forces, establish a Hybrid Court with foreign judges, prosecutors, and investigators to try members of Sri Lanka’s armed forces alleged to have committed war crimes and International HR violations, establish a Reparations Office to compensate members of the Tamil community alleged to be missing after surrender to the armed forces as contained in the report of UNSG’s panel of experts published in April 2011 where the panel recommended that the information provided by
members of the Tamil community supportive of the internationally designated Terrorist Group known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) be locked away for a period of 20 years till the year 2031. These measures were prescribed by the western powers to bring about reconciliation amongst the Tamil people and members of Sri Lanka’s other communities from the Sinhalese, Moor, Malay, Burgher, etc. following the conflict between the state and the LTTE which waged armed warfare to create a separate mono-ethnic state in the northern and eastern parts of the island exclusively for members of the Tamil community.  The charges against Sri Lanka were based on unsubstantiated allegations put forward by supporters of the terror group called the LTTE.

Sri Lanka has on her own without outside prompting carried out a homegrown reconciliation program of providing care including all meals, medical services, education, psychological care, vocational training to provide livelihood skills to the internally displaced Tamils till such time as the nearly 1.5 million anti-personal landmines were removed and the region made safe for resettlement in their former places of residence in the north. Former Tamil Tiger cadres too were rehabilitated with new skills and released to society. A massive development program too was carried out in the north allocating between 85-90 percent of the development budget to speedily improve the economy which resulted in the north recording GDP growth of as much as 20-27 percent. 

Please see the news report carried in Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror wherein it is reported that the hospital in the cultural capital of predominantly Tamil city of Jaffna is unable to carry out life-saving surgeries as blood available in the blood bank cannot be used due to the Caste differences amongst members of the Tamil community necessitating the supply of blood from hospitals in the south mainly inhabited by the majority Sinhalese community. 

Sincerely,

Mahinda Gunasekera
Toronto, Canada