BANDULA JAYASEKERA – AN APPRECIATION
Posted on June 2nd, 2021
Asoka Yapa
As a resident of Canada for over 50 years I have seen perhaps more than my share of Ceylon/Sri Lanka diplomatic representation in Ottawa and Toronto. It is said that career officers make better envoys than political appointees but, in my experience, this is not always the case. Vernon Mendis, part of the ‘old guard’ of the Ceylon diplomatic corps, had formidable gravitas and was a highly successful high commissioner in Ottawa. But so was Ernest Corea, eminent newspaperman, a political appointee who was named H.C. by the J. R. Jayawardena government. His networking skills and public speaking facility are legendary. More recently, Geetha de Silva and Chitranganee Wagiswara, career officers, graced the post and served with distinction.
The late Bandula Jayasekera, another newspaperman, was appointed Consul General in Toronto by the Mahinda Rajapakse government around 2007, if memory serves. This was a time of great ructions by the Eelam-supporting Tamils in Canada, most of whom lived in the Toronto. The LTTE’s glory days were long over and the Sri Lanka Army’s brilliant tactical decisions and battlefield successes were chasing the LTTE leadership and thousands of human shields into smaller and smaller cordons. In Toronto, the focus of LTTE activism was to take the military pressure off of Prabhakaran and his terrorists and the Toronto supporters stopped at nothing to effect that.
They gathered in their thousands on the streets displaying Tiger flags, spewing forth propaganda at full volume, the goal being to bring political pressure on Canada’s famously corruptible politicians to call off the Sri Lanka Army. I remember returning home from work and trying to make my way through myriads of Eelamists gathered at the entrance to transport hubs. On TV and Canadian radio there was a constant barrage of anti-Sri Lanka propaganda by well trained Tamil and local ‘hired guns’ to smear the Sri Lankan govt. (an effort that continues to this day). Poor communications strategies of the Sri Lankan govt. made things worse. Eelamist argy-bargy culminated in their halting all traffic on the Gardiner Expressway, the major highway into and out of Toronto.
In the midst of all this mayhem stood Bandula Jayasekera. But he hardly stood still. Death threats he got many, right from the start of his tenure. Those seem only to encourage his fighting spirit. Bomb threats accompanied every event Bandula organized. TV interviews here, radio interviews there; he got so many of these media requests that he asked some of us in the Sri Lankan community to speak on his behalf — which we did happily. Assailed as Bandula was and fighting resolutely like Macaulay’s Horatius at the bridge his only help came from the patriotic community; the diplomatic fort in Ottawa, helmed by a man who told the Toronto Star newspaper that he got the plum so that he could be ‘close to his family’ in Canada offered not a whit of help.
We have had excellent diplomats serve Sri Lanka in Ottawa. But in the five decades I have lived in Canada, our motherland never had such a lionhearted defender at her service as Bandula Jayasekera. It was fortuitous that Bandula served when he did because the challenges Sri Lanka faced in Toronto were monumental. Sri Lanka’s reputation was being shredded by Eelam propagandists, past masters at ‘fake news’. Tamils who opposed Eelam — there were thousands — were being attacked physically, financially, and psychologically. Sinhalese children were targeted at Toronto schools. A Sinhalese-owned restaurant in Brampton was bombed. None of this fazed Bandula the Brave Fighter.
I think I speak for tens of thousands of patriotic Sri Lankans in Toronto when I say that we are so glad that this courageous young man was there to assist us at the moment we needed him. His bravery ran deep. The way he faced death amazed all of us. It was truly exemplary. My wife Fiona and I are truly privileged to have been his friends, sometimes confidantes even. How cruel it is that this accomplished warrior was cut down in the prime of his life. With his many talents — writer, television broadcaster, scholar, diplomat — what more he could have achieved had he got more time! We in Canada mourn him.
June 2nd, 2021 at 5:11 pm
To me Bandula Jayasekara was the best diplomat we had in Sydney for a long time. He was courageous and defended Sri Lanka. Since he left we had a few Consul Generals who only pushed their own agendas.
June 2nd, 2021 at 7:24 pm
It was a treat to watch this warrior in action on Sirasa. But he didn’t know that a brave man’s life is always in danger unless of course his stars are really strong. There are many soft approaches to get people like him. And that is by poisoning. This is what might have ended his life prematurely.
This is exactly what is happening to Sinhalas on a much larger scale. There are factories sometimes the largest in Asia on our own soil. These are always run by Indians or our own traitorous Sinhalese with help of minorities of a certain kind. So, I take this opportunity to tell Sinhalas to beware. Their products may be packed in very attractive covers with nice looking graphic arts, and displayed in high level supermarkets. It is the cream of our society that consume them. I myself have fallen ill by consuming them, but cannot stop others from doing so.
We are considered ‘Modayas’ – average IQ only 79.
June 3rd, 2021 at 4:54 am
I fully endorse what my friend Asoka Yapa had written. I am proud to state, that along with Asoka Yapa and his wife Fiona, I could be included as having been one of Bandula’s most confidantes during his tenure in Toronto, thank god AllMighty, because we were only a handfull of patriots who did what we could do to defend the soveriegnty of our “maathruboomiya’ supporting Bandula the Brave Fighter, as expressed by Asoka Yapa, an appreciation of Bandula which will go down in the history of the diplomatic missions of Sri Lanka in Toronto and Ottawa. Mya God AllMighty bless him the best in the heareafter or Nirvana as the Buddhists believe.
Noor Nizam – Dundas, Ontario.
June 3rd, 2021 at 6:55 am
I agree with above comments on late Bandula Jayasekara, whom I knew very well.
He was a brave man who appeared on mainstream media in Toronto during the final phase of the war, countering sea of anti-SL propaganda generated by the Eelamists in Toronto.
Unfortunately, the SL missions in Ottawa has been totally useless as they were sleeping at the wheel while the Eelamists were going all out with their genocide and war crimes propaganda.
One of the reasons LTTE is so strong in Canada is due to utter failure of GOSL and its diplomatic missions in Ottawa. They failed miserably in Canada and elsewhere.
June 4th, 2021 at 8:35 pm
I also agree with all the kindhearted valedictory sentiments expressed above, appreciative of the late Bandula Jayasekera, the veteran journalist and diplomat. The third month remembrance day (BJ died on March 5, 2021) is a fitting occasion to reflect on the loss the country has suffered on account of his premature death (at 60) and on the positive legacy he has left us through his daring journalism and dedicated diplomacy.
Bandula would have recovered from the type of blood cancer he had, and lived longer, had he been able to travel abroad for timely medical treatment (blood marrow transfusion) which, was, unfortunately, not available in SL. He couldn’t leave SL for the urgent medical attention that was necessary because of air travel restrictions imposed due to the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic. He had made a public appeal for funds to meet the expenses to be incurred, which, there’s no doubt, received the response expected from sympathetic Sri Lankans around the world. The prolonged delay in getting treatment proved fatal for him. It hastened his death. BJ was admitted to the Karapitiya hospital, where he was placed under palliative care, as could be understood, awaiting departure abroad. But he succumbed to his illness before his transfer out of the country was possible. The fact that he had to ask for financial assistance from fellow Sri Lankans to meet the costs of hospital treatment overseas suggests that he had not focused on earning much money throughout his working life, which he had devoted for serving the country.
Incidentally, I remember him mentioning in an article he wrote to The Island that his brother was an officer in the army. BJ was from Kurunegala, a district that provided a large number of war heroes for the humanitarian military campaign that liberated the country from separatist terrorism.
MAY HE ATTAIN THE SUPREME BLISS OF NIBBANA!