{"id":114819,"date":"2021-06-02T16:22:23","date_gmt":"2021-06-02T23:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=114819"},"modified":"2021-06-02T16:22:23","modified_gmt":"2021-06-02T23:22:23","slug":"bandula-jayasekera-an-appreciation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/06\/02\/bandula-jayasekera-an-appreciation\/","title":{"rendered":"BANDULA JAYASEKERA – AN APPRECIATION"},"content":{"rendered":"

Asoka Yapa<\/em>\u00a0 <\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

As a resident of Canada for over 50 years I have seen\nperhaps more than my share of Ceylon\/Sri Lanka diplomatic representation in\nOttawa and Toronto. It is said that career officers make better envoys than\npolitical appointees but, in my experience, this is not always the case. Vernon\nMendis, part of the ‘old guard’ of the Ceylon diplomatic corps, had formidable\ngravitas and was a highly successful high commissioner in Ottawa. But so was\nErnest Corea, eminent newspaperman, a political appointee who was named H.C. by\nthe J. R. Jayawardena government. His networking skills and public speaking\nfacility are legendary. More recently, Geetha de Silva and Chitranganee\nWagiswara, career officers, graced the post and served with distinction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The late Bandula Jayasekera, another newspaperman, was\nappointed Consul General in Toronto by the Mahinda Rajapakse government around\n2007, if memory serves. This was a time of great ructions by the\nEelam-supporting Tamils in Canada, most of whom lived in the Toronto. The\nLTTE’s glory days were long over and the Sri Lanka Army’s brilliant tactical\ndecisions and battlefield successes were chasing the LTTE leadership and\nthousands of human shields into smaller and smaller cordons. In Toronto, the\nfocus of LTTE activism was to take the military pressure off of Prabhakaran and\nhis terrorists and the Toronto supporters stopped at nothing to effect that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They gathered in their thousands on the streets\ndisplaying Tiger flags, spewing forth propaganda at full volume, the goal being\nto bring political pressure on Canada’s famously corruptible politicians to\ncall off the Sri Lanka Army. I remember returning home from work and trying to\nmake my way through myriads of Eelamists gathered at the entrance to transport\nhubs. On TV and Canadian radio there was a constant barrage of anti-Sri Lanka\npropaganda by well trained Tamil and local ‘hired guns’ to smear the Sri Lankan\ngovt. (an effort that continues to this day). Poor communications strategies of\nthe Sri Lankan govt. made things worse. Eelamist argy-bargy culminated in their\nhalting all traffic on the Gardiner Expressway, the major highway into and out\nof Toronto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the midst of all this mayhem stood Bandula\nJayasekera. But he hardly stood still. Death threats he got many, right from\nthe start of his tenure. Those seem only to encourage his fighting spirit. Bomb\nthreats accompanied every event Bandula organized. TV interviews here, radio\ninterviews there; he got so many of these media requests that he asked some of\nus in the Sri Lankan community to speak on his behalf \u2014 which we did happily.\nAssailed as Bandula was and fighting resolutely like Macaulay’s Horatius at the\nbridge his only help came from the patriotic community; the diplomatic fort in\nOttawa, helmed by a man who told the Toronto Star newspaper that he got the\nplum so that he could be ‘close to his family’ in Canada offered not a whit of\nhelp. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have had excellent diplomats serve Sri Lanka in\nOttawa. But in the five decades I have lived in Canada, our motherland never\nhad such a lionhearted defender at her service as Bandula Jayasekera. It was\nfortuitous that Bandula served when he did because the challenges Sri Lanka\nfaced in Toronto were monumental. Sri Lanka’s reputation was being shredded by\nEelam propagandists, past masters at ‘fake news’. Tamils who opposed Eelam \u2014\nthere were thousands \u2014 were being attacked physically, financially, and\npsychologically. Sinhalese children were targeted at Toronto schools. A\nSinhalese-owned restaurant in Brampton was bombed. None of this fazed Bandula\nthe Brave Fighter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2014 writer, television broadcaster, scholar, diplomat \u2014 what more he could have achieved had he got more time! We in Canada mourn him. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Asoka Yapa\u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}