23rd January 2000

Dear Mr. Wickremasinghe,

It is high time for you to understand the reality and get out of politics that you practice for your own sake not for the good of the country. You were a part of a regime which killed 60,000 innocent civillians in the name of JVP. You yourself were involved in such a dehumanizing campaign of the entire Sri Lankan society.

If it were a free and democratic country you should have resigned when J.R. and Premadasa helped LTTE terrorists to get established as a credible threat to the society. Your leadership is not a real leadership which is thrusted upon you by historical coincidence. It is not easy to maintain and live upto such a leadership standard as you are striving for because you lack those qualties such as tolerence of alternative ideas, vision, mission or purpose. A true leader does not seek personal glofications over dead bodies of people. They resort to violence as a last resort.

I am still confused as to what ethnic problem that we are trying to solve for. What discrimination there exists other than psedo-discrminatory cry of group of people who want to get ahead by all undue menas available to them on earth.

Let me begin with the most recent history of this discriminatory cry. Let's start from the British Colonial period. Up until the signing of Up-country convnetion in 1815, Sinhalese leaders fiercely fought the foreign invadors while Tamils became subservient and obedient lot for this invadors.

After signing of the above convention, Britishers identified Sinhalese majority as hard nose people who are not ready to coorperate with invadors. The first strategy of the Colonials was to create a massive state sector that collected taxes from every villager.

When they failed to pay the taxes, property was confiscated and auctioned publicly. This spead all over the Island until they robbed the up country Sinhalese of their last parcel of land. Those land were then converted into Tea Plantations. When self-respecting Sinhalese refused to work as laborers on their own land which were robbed from them, more land were confiscated. Finally, realizing the unsustainability of the white elephants (Tea Plantaions) created by Colonials, they turned to neighboring India for indentured labor.

They were broght in herds and huddled into line rooms in abject conditions. They were asked to breed like lemmings to create a labor market for Tea Plantations. While this was going on one side, on the otherside, they tried a more subtle method of social transformations to curb intermittent civil disobedience created by Sinhalese. It was Christianity. They tried to convert Sinhalese dignatories first. Some cases they succeeded. For the most part this strategy also failed due to Buddhist temples and deep rooted culture of Sinhalese (Wewa, Dagaba, Gama and Pansala association).

Majority refuted the proselytizing process and forceful conversion. Moslems too being a religious community refuted conversion. However, Jaffana and Batticoloa became the hot bed of conversions. Low cast Tamils who were not entertained in Kovils flocked in hundreds of thousands to marble floored churches. Since Buddhist Temples were open equally for low cast as well as high cast people this strategy utterly failed in Sinhalese communities.

With the acceptance of Christianity by low cast Tamils, missionary education was given to them as a reward. Temple education was not funded by Colonials and left to disrepair. However, determined clergy maintain the education with village donations. As a punishment to these acts, even Temple properties were confiscated. Entire plantations near Kandy, Uduwela, Hantana and surrounding areas belonged to Temples previously. They were taken over and Temples were looted. Even ancient palaces were looted their property, gems, jewels and gold taken over to England. They are now decorating Queen Elizabeths Throne and some are still lying in British Museum under different names. At the same time Village Irrigation Tanks were abandoned and paddy cultivation which was the life blood of Sinhalese were ruined.

Elite Tamils (Vellalas') seeing the benefit of conversion jumped in the band wagon and got the best missionary education. Colleges like Hartly, St Patrick, St. Micheals came up in East and North of the Island. With this developments whatever the little resistance movement were there in Tamil ares died down. Those who received missionary education were sent to England on government expenses to create a local civil service cadre. As such Ceylon Civil Service was created which later extended to professsional services such as Irrigation Engineering, Surveying, Public Transportation, and Health Care Administration etc.

There was not much of a private sector except trading of plantaion and agricultural commodities which were carried out by Brokerage houses like Brook Bond, and Lipton etc.

After 1948 independence, Tamils disproporationately represented Ceylon Civil Services due to discriminatory treatments of Colonial masters who made favors to their new found obedient and loyal tribe-Tamils. With independence, Sinhalese political leaders gave the prominance to renovation of Village Irrigaton Tanks, and revamping of National Education System. This was done under leadership D.S. Senanayake and C.W.W. Kanangara.

National education system surpassed the missionary education opening the door for Sinhalese, Moslems, Tamils, and Burghers alike. Expanding education system were not coupled with equally expanding commercial sector. Due to these reasons Government Sector remained the main employer of educated youth of all communities. The government sector expanded only slightly but not enough to absorb all educated youth coming out of universities technical colleges, and other secondary education institutions.

Discriminatory Cry.

With increasing educated labor force, Tamils felt the greatest pinch because their emplyment base came under competition from educated Moslems and Sinhalese. Now there were no favorations. Everybody was on a equally level playing field. Traditional Civil Service employment base was equally shared by Sinhalese and Moslems. This was felt by Tamils as discrimination. How come a fair competition become a discrimination.

Though it was not discrimination in reality it was felt as such because only Tamils were given the opportunity under colonial regime. Now everybody was on a equally level playing field only what Tamils lost was a favoritism. Their political leaders wanting a manifesto for campaigns wrongly interptreted this to be majority discrimination beacuse the democratically elected government was dominated by Sinhalese.

These political misinterpretations, and arousing of Tamil youth for a electoral gains initaited the discriminatory cry. Other strategies were tried on their part to get ahead in the society. They even resorted to cheating National Examinations to get into Universities. Still they are practicing it in Carlton University. With this came the label of hard working brilliant Tamils. Any body who wants proof can read Sri Lankan Hansard reports and recent Carlton University concern on examination cheating by Sri Lankan Tamils in Canada.

Interestingly enough, the same discrimination was felt by Sinhalese youth in a different light. Because the government was by the majority Sinhalese youth saw this as a class discrimination. It was Colombo base city elites' discrimination of rural youth in education, employment and other areas. This was attributed to the Government rightfully beacuse most political leaders' kith and kin were in Colombo. These political leaders thought that development of country meant development of city of Colombo ( Schools, Roads, Hospitals). This urban rural discrimination gave birth to JVP and its uprisings in 1971 and 1988-90.

Actual discrimination that Tamils were subjected to was Sinhala Language only policy by S.W.R.D. s regime. Apart from that these discriminations cries are psedo cries and political slogans of despotic leaders who misguided Tamils as well as Sinhalese.

As a person who was educated in North America, I have seen real discriminations of one community by others which still exist in full blown level despite numerous psychic laws to rectify these social evils. In a given higher education institution (University or Colleges) in U.S.A. or Canada, we can only count African American with fingers in one hand. In most gradaute classes they are virtually absent. Such is the level of discrimination. Even laws are not color blind, a balck person gets a longer jail term for the same crime than their white counterparts. A Black population of 12 % represent 80% of jail occupants.

In contrast in Sri Lanka, every class I attended had at least 30-42 % Tamils. Sometimes Tamils were majority in some areas. Someone might bring forth the hard working and brilliant argument again ( I refer you to Carlton University again).

So what is the problem that we are trying to solve. A bogus political claim of Tamil politicians who mislead Tamil youth who have now taken arms. However, these terrorists were created by both Sinhalese leaders as well as Tamil leaders due to their wrong political and economics policies. Division is larger. By reading all Tamil Web-Sites one can see the amount of hatred run in their blood against Sinhalese. That may be the reason why Prbakarn has committed far more Black July's than so called Black July in 1983.

All villagers nearing east and north were decimated. Infants were killed by dashing them on the ground, preganant mothers were cut open. Does it worth talking to such a murderous gang?

Think about this Mr. Wickremasinghe. Your government has supported 17 long years these murderers. Now what problem are you trying to solve. Why could not you solve the problem then or how can you expect present government to solve the problem within 4 years which you created over a 17 period?

To rectify that psuedo-discriminatiory claim you want to give the leader of the murderous gang a part of the Island which is 25000 square miles. Would it be a viable economic unit after that. Why did land reform in Sri Lanka prevented fragmentation of 2-5 acre paddy lands?

Were you aware of these facts. I invite you to go to a library and educate yourself about these things. Then perhaps your leadership might improve. But to improve it to a considerable degree you have to shed your selfish goals.

D.K.W DIAS.

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