Indian parliamentarians in Sri Lanka
Posted on April 9th, 2013
Special Correspondent Courtesy the Hindu
Five parliamentarians from India, who arrived here Monday night, met Speaker of the Sri Lankan Parliament Chamal Rajapaksa and External Affairs Minister of Sri Lanka G.L. Peiris on Tuesday, it is reliably learnt.
However, sources with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬‚ which organized the trip ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬‚ refused to divulge details of the agenda or the outcome of the meetings.
After spending the morning at the Parliament, the delegation proceeded to Jaffna to review ongoing projects supported by the Indian government, particularly the housing initiative.
The delegation includes Saugata Roy (Trinamool Congress), Sandeep Dikshit (Congress), Anurag Thakur (BJP), Dhananjay Singh (BSP) and Prakash Javadekar (BJP). However, Madhu Goud Yaskhi (Congress), who was also supposed to come, could not make it. FICCI sources attributed the cancellation of his trip to ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-party work ahead of Karnataka Assemly electionsƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚.
The delegation is here to participate in ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”Track Two political dialogueƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢ between parliamentarians of the two countries, an initiative of FICCI.
April 10th, 2013 at 1:28 am
We have always said that a Tamil Dominated Northern Provincial Council was the FIRST STEP to an independent Tamils-only Eelam.
Well, here is the PROOF: TNA says a Provincial Council under the 13th Amendment IS NOT ENOUGH for them! Nothing will EVER BE ENOUGH!
Are we still supposed to PARLEY with UNREPENTANT SEPARATISTS, or should we SCRAP the 13th Amendment, draw up the drawbridges and PREPARE TO DEFEND the Integrity of the Motherland?
There is NO OTHER CHOICE!
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Sri Lanka Tamil leaders demand an interim self-government
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Apr 10, Colombo: The Tamil people in Sri Lanka can find solutions to their grievances only through an interim self-government, Tamil political leaders have told the visiting Indian joint parliamentary delegation.
Demanding an interim administration, Tamil representatives who met the Indian MPs in Jaffna had told the Indian delegation that the Provincial Council system under the 13th Amendment to the Constitution are inadequate to solve their problems, BBC Sinhala Service reported.
Quoting the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP E. Sarawanabawan, the BBC said that all Tamil MPs belonged to several parties and the religious and civil society leaders asked the delegation for an interim self-government.
“We all said we wanted an interim self-government,” the MP was quoted as saying.
The TNA MP has said that the Indian parliamentary delegation did not respond to their request.
A five-member joint parliamentary delegation comprising delegates from all Indian political parties arrived in Sri Lanka Monday night for a for a five-day tour from April 8-12. The visit, organized by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), is aimed at enhancing the relationship between the two countries.
The delegation comprises Saugata Roy (Trinamool Congress), Sandeep Dikshit (Congress), Anurag Thakur (BJP), Dhananjay Singh (BSP), and Prakash Javadekar (BJP) accompanied by two FICCI representatives.
April 10th, 2013 at 1:58 am
India has NEVER ACTED RESPONSIBLY with regard to Sri Lanka.
First, it implanted terrorism, training, delivering, funding and supporting them.
Second, India violated Sri Lanka’s sovereignty dropping food and supplies to the Tamil terrorists on the verge of defeat.
Third, India military invaded Sri Lanka under the guise of “Peacekeeping” to protect its separatist clients, partition Sri Lanka and carve out an independent state for them.
Fourth, India threatened Sri Lanka with permanent occupation and forced the 13th Amendment to the Constitution on Sri Lanka,
Fifth, when India realized the Pan-Tamil agenda threatened its own integrity, it turned on its surrogates, and backed out of Sri Lanka when it could not cope with the Tamil rebels it had heavily armed, leaving Sri Lanka to cope with a much bigger terrorist problem.
Sixth, when Sri Lanka was struggling against the well armed LTTE, it refused the Government of Sri Lanka arms to defend itself, and even prevented Sri Lanka from acquiring Chinese 3D radar systems to protect its air space.
Seventh, after Sri Lanka Defence Forces finally eradicated the LTTE in May 2009, India re-launched its efforts to create a captive Tamil constituency in Sri Lanka, collaborating with Western Powers, and Tamils in India, Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora to DEMONIZE & LABEL Sri Lanka as guilty of war crimes.
All of this is designed to REIPOSE Indian CONTROL over Sri Lanka, and forestall its RAPID POST-WAR DEVELOPMENT.
INDIA is NO FRIEND of Sri Lanka …. during the last 30 years, and NOW!
Sri Lanka should SCRAP the 13th Amendment, limit Indian involvement in Sri Lanka’s economy, trade, politics, and defense.
GOSL: Get Sri Lanka out of India’s DEADLY EMBRACE NOW ….before it is TOO LATE!
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Gotabhaya reminds former Indian UN rep of his role in Colombo during 80s
By Shamindra Ferdinando
April 10, 2013, 9:16 am
Had the then Indian government acted with responsibility, Sri Lanka wouldn’t have experienced a 30-year war, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said yesterday.
People of all communities would have been still suffering horrors of war, if not for the eradication of terrorism in May 2009, following a three-year combined security forces campaign, the Defence Secretary said, noting that India could never absolve itself of the responsibility for creating terrorism here, though some of those directly involved in subverting Sri Lanka were blaming the Rajapaksa administration for the plight of Tamil speaking people here.
He was responding to former Indian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Hardeep Singh Puri.
Puri had been directly involved in the Indian operation against the then JRJ government in the run-up to the July 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord, Rajapaksa said, alleging that he was one of those aware of the Indian operations here.
The Defence Secretary said that both Hardeep S. Puri and his wife, Lakshmi had been attached to India’s mission in Colombo during the tenure of J. N. Dixit as India’s High Commissioner here.
Puri had now called for an investigation into what he called specific allegations of war crimes during the last 100 days of military operations. Those demanding accountability on Sri Lanka’s part for alleged atrocities committed during the last 100 days of the conflict were silent on the origin of terrorism here, the Defence Secretary said.
Rajapaksa said that Puri should realize that the Indian intervention here had caused a major regional crisis, when Indian trained Sri Lankan terrorists raided the Maldives in early November 1988. The international community should consider a comprehensive investigation into the issue beginning with the Indian intervention, he added. India’s former Permanent Representative could help the investigation by revealing what was going on at that time.
The defence Secretary pointed out that Dixit, in his memoirs published during his tenure as the Foreign Secretary, had acknowledged that arming Sri Lankan Tamil youth was one of the two major policy blunders of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Commenting on Puri’s allegation that he (Rajapaksa) wanted to do away with the provincial council system and criticism on recent attacks on Muslims in Colombo, the Defence Secretary said that the Indian official couldn’t be unaware of what the Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik had said before he slaughtered 70 men, women and children. Breivik declared that he wanted the drive out Muslims out of Europe the way northern Sri Lanka was cleansed of Muslims during 1990. The Norwegian was referring to massacres carried out by the LTTE during President Premadasa’s administration.
The Defence Secretary said that those critical of the Sri Lankan government should peruse former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal’s recent piece to India Today.
The LTTE had used children as cannon fodder and Prabhakaran had forced the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to recognize the LTTE as the sole representative of Tamil speaking people. The TNA couldn’t even finalize its candidates’ list for parliamentary polls without Prabhakaran’s approval, the Defence Secretary said, alleging some interested parties were reluctant to acknowledge the fact that Sri Lanka was a much better place today without the LTTE.
April 10th, 2013 at 2:12 am
India need to look inward
Apr 10 (The Nation) India has made it manifest that it is not happy in the way the Sri Lankan government of President Mahindra Rajapaksa is treating the Tamil minority, following the defeat of one of the most virulent strain of terror-laced insurgency.
The insurgency ended four years ago with the death of the deadliest terrorist of his times – Thiruvenkadam Velupillai Prabhakaran – at the hands of the Sri Lankan security forces.
To castigate Sri Lanka, India is using the platform of UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva and the lead provided by a US sponsored resolution condemning it for committing anti-Tamil atrocities during and following the anti-insurgency operations.
Brazenly interfering in its internal affairs, the Indian leadership at the Universal Periodic Review of Human Rights Group in Geneva, said that it hoped “for an early progress towards reconciliation (between majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils), the reduction of high security zones and the return of private land by the military.”
India, nevertheless, has a long history of playing a double game of supporting the LTTE terrorists and then coming around to lend a helping hand to the counterinsurgency efforts by the Sri Lankan government to find strategic leverage to check the country’s pro- China leanings.
Another factor that played out significantly in this charade is the strident Tamil nationalism in India’s southern states. It raked up separatism among the Tamils in Sri Lanka, who inhabit the northern and eastern parts of the island nation.
Prabhakaran, the moving spirit behind Tamil separatism, remained the darling of India’s establishment, as well as the Tamil regional parties in the Indian south. In a close parallel to the manner of raising Mukti Bahini for operations in East Pakistan, India provided him with the space among the Tamil-dominated south along with ample material support to organise LTTE as a feared force, which turned the north and east of the country into no-go areas for the Lankan security forces.
As the menace of separatism grew, New Delhi offered Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte an accord that allow the landing of Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) under General Harkirat Singh to quell the insurgency. The accord signed in Colombo by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Prime Minister Junius Richard Jayewardene in July 1987 led to large-scale protests and the event acquired an iconic touch with the snapshot of a Sri Lankan naval rating, Rohana de Silva, attacking the Indian VIP with his rifle, while his companions in the honour guard stood at present arms.
New Delhi’s ambitions to find a military toehold in Sri Lanka failed to materialise as the LTTE turned out to be a hard nut to crack, stretching the Indian expeditionary force to the limits of its endurance. The mission was called off in 1990 and when the last ship carrying the IPKF sailed from Trincomalee, the Indians had 1,555 men killed, 2,987 injured and had spent Rs 10 billion in the jungles of northern Sri Lanka on a pain-ridden wild goose chase. As a postscript, it should be pertinent to recollect that in May 1991, Rajiv, the mentor of Indian military misadventure in Sri Lanka, who was then on the verge of reclaiming his prime ministerial office was assassinated in a suicide attack by a LTTE suicide bomber in Tamil Nadu.
No appraisal of Indo-Sri Lanka equation can be complete without bringing into reckoning the separatist ambitions of Tamil politicians of the Indian south, who harbour the ambition of returning to the grandeur of a Tamil nation state.
Since the late 1800s, the history of Tamil Nadu is driven by an ambition among the Tamil people for self-rule over a state comprising Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra, Karnataka, and the proposed states of Eelam in northeastern Sri Lanka and Malaya Nadu in plantation areas of central Sri Lanka.
The strident political clout of the Tamil regional parties in the overall coalition based political scenario in India has given added weightage to the Tamil Nadu factor, which carries with it a history of campaigning for separatism and an impulse to interfere in the internal matters of Sri Lanka concerning the Tamil minority.
Many analysts believe that the Indian accommodation of the Tamil card in the realm of local and regional politics has widened the fissures of separatism within India; many prophesying that Tamil Nadu could well turn out to be “Kashmir of the south”.
Anyway, India played an active role in supporting and directing the operations of LTTE cadres, who have finally been tamed through a determined and bloody military campaign by the Sri Lankan Army. The Indian advisories to Sri Lanka, from the podium of international human rights watch organisations to conduct independent and credible investigation into allegations of civilian deaths during the period of counterinsurgency campaigning is totally uncalled for.
Likewise its pontification to Sri Lanka to ensure welfare of the Tamils, which comprise 12 percent of the island’s population on the basis that they share close cultural and familial links with 62 million strong Tamils community in south India, is manifestly stepping on the toes of its small neighbour and a brazen violation of its national sovereignty.
On its part, however, India has yet to come clean with its sponsorship of the LTTE terrorists and the grave human rights violations they perpetrated on innocent Sri Lankans. New Delhi also needs to acknowledge the role played by its intelligence agencies and the “Kazagham” parties that have embraced the separatist elements from Sri Lanka with open arms, providing them with logistics, weapons and safe sanctuaries to bleed their native land.
On such occasions India also needs to look inwards and pledge to conduct transparent investigations into the human rights abuses in the Indian Held Kashmir (IHK). For one, numerous mass graves that dot the IHK landscape need to be forensically investigated to determine the identities of luckless individuals that were summarily disposed of by India’s armed forces, operating with impunity under the overarching umbrella of draconian laws.
April 10th, 2013 at 2:32 am
Why on earthl are we still debating or dragging our feet on chucking out the !3A?? This should have been voted out with a 2/3 majority as an irrelevant amendment imposed on Sri Lanka by India under duress and not acceptable to the people of Sri Lanka – Can anyone including the GoSL give a single reason for not doing so? – S de Silva – London
April 10th, 2013 at 3:24 am
“Sandeep Dikshit”
Is this a real name?
April 10th, 2013 at 5:49 am
I cannot understand why we worry about these Indian shitters. Sampanthan can go to hell and dream about EELAM.It will never ever happen while we Sri Lankan Sinhalese Buddhist live in our Motherland. All Ghandhis has to answer for the crimes of humanity occured during thirty years of war in Sri Lanka. Dick Shit their Ambassodor was one shit diplomat who created so much confusion while he was in my country.
Let all the InDIANS visit our beautiful country “EVA BALAWA” as our President said. They will realize that Sri Lanka is the most cleanest,Beautiful country on earth not like their shir country with largest toilet in the world.
We don’t need Indians. We have our good honest friends like China, Russia, Iran and our closest friend Pakistan. They love us,They help us, They stand by us always. Must ban everything Indian. We dont need them. Sri Lanka is for ever.
April 10th, 2013 at 11:10 am
voice 123
may be some govt people like these DIk – Shits. Let them enjoy
April 10th, 2013 at 12:36 pm
Bloody US Hypocrites!
The US keesp digging up and ORCHESTRATING “human rights” issues and leveling fabricated “war crimes” charges against Sri Lanka, plotting and scheming hand-in-glove with Eelamists and the Tamil Nadu Racists, PRECISELY TO INCITE COMMUNAL DIVISIONSD and COMMUNAL VIOLENCE within Sri Lanka.
And… shamelessly … here they are piously pontificating on the “need to reconcile and move beyond” … blah blah blah !!!!!
We would have complete peace in Sri Lanka by now … if they had stopped stirring the COMMUNAL WITCHES BREW pursuing their own global politics!
Bah!
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US Navy commander says Sri Lanka needs to reconcile divided nation
Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 11:46 am SL Time, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Apr 10, Washington, DC: The commander of United States Pacific Command (USPACOM), Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Sri Lanka needs to move on and reconcile after the three-decade long war that divided the nation.
“Sri Lanka needs to work to move past its recent history and reconcile a nation divided by many years of civil war,” Admiral Locklear said in a prepared statement.
Admiral Locklear was presenting an update on the U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) to the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday.
Speaking of South Asia, the USPACOM Commander said although India’s relationship with Pakistan has gradually improved in recent years, US remains concerned as the progress could be quickly undone by a major terrorist attack.
He also noted that India’s unresolved border disputes with China remains a source of friction in the region.
Elsewhere, South Asia is mostly free from direct conflict, but various, mostly internal, challenges remain, the Commander said.
Speaking of USPACOM operations in the region, Admiral Locklear highlighted that Operation PACIFIC ANGEL and Pacific Fleet’s PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP bring joint, combined and non-governmental organizations together to deliver cooperative health engagements, engineering civic action programs and subject matter expert exchanges to many nations including Sri Lanka. Such operations open doors that would otherwise be closed to a U.S. military presence in those nations, he added.
Through U.S. Pacific Command, the U.S. has contributed US$9 million since 2009 toward projects such as renovating and rebuilding hospitals and schools in communities across Sri Lanka.
April 10th, 2013 at 12:57 pm
Comments by a reader on “Messing with Sri Lanka” article at newindianexpress.com:
*India is our neighbour that violated our sovereign airspace by giving Colombo a bare 35 minute notice and sending four Mirage 2000 fighter jet planes screaming over Northern Sri Lankan skies for their Anatov-32 Transport planes to drop 25 tons of parippu to feed 800,000 Tamil peoples in Jaffna peninsula. And we still call India our friendly neighbour!; *India is our neighbour, whose Prime Minister Indira Gandhi summoned a high powered meeting in August 1984 to discuss invasion plans of Sri Lanka. Indian troops were moved from Agra to Thivandrum. And in September plans to invade Sri Lanka was shelved. And we still call India our friendly neighbour!;
Posted by Donga-The-Bonga at 04/05/2013 17:42
The truth – India cannot be trusted! They have played the role of dividing countries from their independence. Sri Lanka will stand fast. Sri Lanka will NEVER be divided….. read on *India is our neighbour, who in1987 threatened to militarily intervene if the Sri Lankan Government end the Tamil Tiger separatist war when they were cornered by the military, navy and airforce in the Vadamarachchi region, a strategic area for traffic between India and the Jaffna peninsula. And New Delhi informed through private sources and through diplomatic channels that India will not allow Jaffna to be captured by the Sri Lankan forces. Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the Tamil Tigers admitted that the Tamil Tigers would have been wiped out within four hours at Vadamarachchi if not for the timely intervention by India. India’s RAW shipped fresh arm to the beleaguered Tamil Tigers. And the war lasted another 22 years which killed scores of thousands of innocent Sri Lankans.
Posted by Donga-The-Bonga at 04/05/2013 17:44
April 10th, 2013 at 8:12 pm
Dick Shit must be an Anglicised name for the Indian.