Employment and ethnicity

By Paul Perera

As a loyal Sri Lankan expatriate I regularly read your pages on the web for news about Sri Lanka. I'm writing to you because there's something that has bothered me for a long time and I feel the time has come for me to try and do something about it.
Many foreign newspapers carry the following paragraph or similar words: "The Tamil Tigers have fought for 17 years to create a Tamil homeland in the east and northeast, saying they are widely discriminated against by the majority Sinhalese in education and jobs." I have known or heard of isolated cases of discrimination many years ago but it worked both ways. Indeed there were many instances when Sinhalese people claimed that they were discriminated against by Tamil educationalists or employers.
Short-sighted politicians made gross errors in the 50's and 60's for which we are still paying today. In the modern era when injustices towards the Tamil community have been eradicated, e.g. the national language act, it is important to debunk statements such as those made above by influential European and American sources.
Are there any reports on ethnicity surveys in the private sector, public sector and the educational sector? It would be interesting to see employment figures broken down by ethnic origin, especially with regard to senior posts in the public sector. If there are any figures available I would be interested in making a study of them. I'll be happy to write up a report for Lankaweb on my findings. As I live in the UK, I will need access to electronic copies of any documents.