{"id":42741,"date":"2015-03-30T21:48:10","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T03:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=42741"},"modified":"2015-03-29T04:43:09","modified_gmt":"2015-03-29T11:43:09","slug":"sri-lankas-my3-palanaya-bilingual-policy-a-warning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/03\/30\/sri-lankas-my3-palanaya-bilingual-policy-a-warning\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka\u2019s My3 palanaya Bilingual Policy \u2013 A Warning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Ottawa . Ontario \u00a0. Canada<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

28 March 2015<\/p>\n

Your Excellency\u00a0 Maithripala Sirisena
\nPresident of Sri Lanka
\nPresidential Secretariat
\nGalle Face
\nColombo 1, Sri Lanka<\/p>\n

Copy to
\nPrime Minister of Sri Lanka
\nMinister of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka<\/p>\n

Your Excellency:<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka\u2019s\u00a0 My3 palanaya Bilingual Policy \u2013 A Warning<\/strong><\/p>\n

I feel honoured to take this opportunity to write you as a concerned Sri Lankan Sinhalese-Canadian, now domiciled in the capital city of Canada, Ottawa, to express a warning on your government\u2019s bilingual policy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is unequivocally apparent that according to your government\u2019s good governance \u2018Reconciliation\u2019 policy, that it has made you bend your back to satisfy the Tamil community, especially those in the North and East.\u00a0 This is a community who for over 131 years lived as the \u2018privileged\u2019<\/strong> Minority overriding the \u2018wronged\u2019 <\/strong>Sinhalese Majority in every sphere of life, enjoying the privileges that came with divide-and-rule policy of the British colonial masters.\u00a0 And not once saying, This is not right, we shouldn\u2019t be doing this to our Sinhalese brothers and sisters\u201d.<\/p>\n

With your good governance \u2018reconciliation\u2019 policy, I have the gut feeling that the majority Sinhalese community is getting the short end of the stick, even though the Sinhalese too have their own aspirations and not too different from the Tamils.<\/p>\n

Trying to right what you think has been wronged and now working towards \u2018reconciliation\u2019 with the Tamil community; I hope your knife will cut both ways as does mine.\u00a0\u00a0 It is time that your government recognize that \u2018reconciliation\u2019 with the minority Tamil community is a two way street, and that it is impossible to clap with one hand, and that it takes two to Tango.<\/p>\n

Adopting a bilingual policy –\u00a0 Sinhalese<\/strong> spoken by the majority community, and Tamil<\/strong> spoken by the minority community, and having granted the Tamil community to sing the National Anthem in Tamil which was originally sung in Sinhalese, let you be warned that such a policy has created problems in Canada who quite proudly, yet disingenuously\u00a0 will tell you, follow our Canadian bilingual policy of our two solitudes, Anglophones and Francophones as ours is a success story.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 And I tell you and the Canadian government, Oh No, not so!\u201d\u00a0 And that\u2019s a lie which is not worth two prairie straws waving in the chilling wind or two masala wade\u2019s sizzling in a pan of hot cooking oil.<\/p>\n

Your Excellency,, watch out for this possibility happening in the North, as I have heard Chief Minister Wigneswaran loud and clearly, and I do not trust this man who breathes the words even in his dreams \u2013it is all about us\u2026us\u2026us\u2026 Tamils,\u00a0 and not\u00a0 about you\u2026you\u2026 you\u2026 Sinhalese\u201d.<\/p>\n

Here is a Canadian Fact that the Canadian Mission in Colombo may not admit nor relate to you and so be warned!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Your Excellency, can you believe that there is segregation in Canada, a creation by their bilingual policy?<\/strong>\u00a0 What\u2026this must be a joke!\u201d, you might say.\u00a0\u00a0 And I tell you, No actually, it isn\u2019t!\u201d<\/p>\n

This is happening in the Province of New Brunswick in the east of Canada, the only officially bilingual province.\u00a0 This province has sanctioned the policy of segregation in the name of bilingualism, English and French.<\/p>\n

Here is their philosophy and logic.\u00a0 The French speaking children are so fragile\u201d in their struggle to retain their French language and culture that any contact with English speaking children is considered bad.\u00a0\u00a0 If by chance they might get assimilated, that\u2019s considered unconstitutional and against their charter rights\u201d, according to the Provincial government under Brian Gallant.\u00a0 So there you are and be warned,\u00a0 Your Excellency, of such an eventuality happening in Sri Lanka, and you as the Head of your island nation will live with guilt for the rest of your life and cursed by your peoples and\u00a0 by the next generation and the next.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The\u00a0 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (part of the very flawed 1982 Constitution), is invoked as the reason why French-speaking children must not travel in the same school buses as English-speaking children.\u00a0\u00a0 Never mind that it will cost more to have half-empty school buses going the same direction.\u00a0 It does seem that segregation is more important and entrenched in their bilingual policy.\u00a0 It does seem that to preserve the French language and their culture is more important and should over ride economics of New Brunswick.\u00a0\u00a0 This bilingual bus spat comes just as the Province of New Brunswick is planning drastic cuts to education to patch a $500-million hole in its budget, which could\u00a0mean laying off teachers.<\/p>\n

There was a time when segregation\u201d was a bad word.\u00a0 It kept races apart by denying one group access to public services.\u00a0 And now it is apparently to be promoted because the all powerful\u201d English language might contaminate the vey fragile French language!!\u00a0\u00a0 Ha! This is happening in a cultured Canada. Can you believe it!<\/p>\n

Your Excellency, so be WARNED!<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you ask me, What makes you think that we in Sri Lanka will take that route?\u201d\u00a0 My response is:<\/p>\n

You cannot ignore the fact that you are dealing with a Tamil community who are maestros of ethnic cleansing.\u00a0 That they kicked out 27,000 Sinhalese terrorizing them from the North between 1971 and 1981 where they lived for generations;<\/p>\n

You cannot ignore the fact that this is the community that stoned and chased 400 Sinhalese undergraduates and lecturers from the Jaffna campus in 1977, who were brought south in buses escorted by the army and police;<\/p>\n

You cannot ignore the fact that this is the community that gave 100,000 Muslims 24 hours to get out of the North in 1990,\u00a0 making Uganda\u2019s Idi Amin look like an angel.\u00a0 He at least gave the Ugandan-Indians three months to get out.<\/p>\n

You cannot ignore the fact that you are dealing with a Chief Minister Wigneswaran, a member of the elitist \u2018privileged\u2019 Tamil minority, who was educated at Royal College, the University of Ceylon and Ceylon Law College,\u00a0 and ended up as a Supreme Court Judge, who told the world\u00a0 a few weeks ago that his Tamil community was subjected to genocide\u201d since independence, and you were soft on this guy with a dangerous looking red-third-eye between his two eye-brows, and did not rap his knuckles\u2019. Why?<\/p>\n

So, tread softly on your bilingual policy, and watch out for what is happening in Canada.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t look good.\u00a0\u00a0 Sri Lanka is too precious to go that route, and the 21 million Sinhalese community is a\u00a0 pristine treasure in the world, while the Tamils have their 70 million brothers and sisters waiting \u00a0to embrace them just 24 salt water miles away.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s hope that you will not have to deal with the likes of\u00a0the\u00a0 1965 incident at Montgomery, Alabama\u2019s,\u00a0 a Rosa Parks like defiance incident\u00a0 down the road, of a Podi Appuhamy and\u00a0 a Sudhu Manike refusing to go to the back of the bus plying North along A9, because Sellamuttu, the Tamil bus conductor and Thangavelu, the bus driver, wanted them to do so, in a Tamil crowded bus.\u00a0 And all hell will grumble then\u00a0with anger spewing fire.<\/p>\n

And remember Your Excellency, that\u00a0 Asoka Weerasinghe of Ottawa, Canada, warned you of what might happen and\u00a0 that he was almost a soothsayer as has been in the past on this Tamil Eelam file.<\/p>\n

Yours sincerely,<\/p>\n

Asoka Weerasinghe (Mr.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Ottawa . Ontario \u00a0. Canada 28 March 2015 Your Excellency\u00a0 Maithripala Sirisena President of Sri Lanka Presidential Secretariat Galle Face Colombo 1, Sri Lanka Copy to Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka Your Excellency: Sri Lanka\u2019s\u00a0 My3 palanaya Bilingual Policy \u2013 A Warning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asoka-weerasinghe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42741","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=42741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}