{"id":43460,"date":"2015-04-27T22:38:22","date_gmt":"2015-04-28T04:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=43460"},"modified":"2015-04-27T15:28:40","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T22:28:40","slug":"petition-%c2%b7-urge-secretary-kerry-to-retract-distorted-statement-on-sri-lanka-%c2%b7-change-org","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/04\/27\/petition-%c2%b7-urge-secretary-kerry-to-retract-distorted-statement-on-sri-lanka-%c2%b7-change-org\/","title":{"rendered":"Petition \u00b7 Urge Secretary Kerry to Retract Distorted Statement on Sri Lanka \u00b7 Change.org"},"content":{"rendered":"

Signed by 972\u00a0citizens, diaspora and supporters of Sri Lanka<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

In remarks made February 12, 2015, welcoming Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera to\u00a0Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry referred to a war that never took place: Sri Lanka\u2019s 30-years of war with the Tamils.\u201d Regretfully, Minister Samaraweera failed to point out this distortion\u00a0and we, the undersigned, hasten to request that it be corrected.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka\u2019s 30-year turmoil can best be summed up using President Obama\u2019s ISIS analogy: it was a war\u00a0on a terrorist group, not on the people it claimed to represent.<\/p>\n

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) waged a brutal and lengthy armed campaign for a separate\u00a0state, and the Sri Lankan government responded with military force, eventually eliminating it.<\/p>\n

Any serious effort by the US or others to help Sri Lanka on its path to further reconciliation must\u00a0start with this recognition: Sri Lanka was no more at war with its Tamil population than the American\u00a0people with Muslims. The distinction is fundamental to the narratives of both nations.<\/p>\n

In the case of Sri Lanka, especially the Sinhalese ethnic majority, separating a terrorist group from\u00a0the broader religious\/ethnic community it claims to represent, went beyond the realm of rhetoric and\u00a0gruesome pictures of beheadings in a far off place. For Sri Lankans, it was a daily test of resolve\u00a0in their very homes, streets, and work places as the LTTE carried out suicide bombings targeted at\u00a0civilians, assassination of government ministers and political leaders (even a Sri Lankan President),\u00a0killings of at least 400 Buddhist monks, and destruction of property, including sacred religious\u00a0sites.<\/p>\n

That 60% of Sri Lanka\u2019s Tamil population lived, worked, and engaged in business among the Sinhalese\u00a0in the south, away from the LTTE-controlled North, is testimony to that resolve. Additionally,\u00a0upholding a policy unprecedented in a war situation anywhere in the world, successive Sri Lankan\u00a0governments continued to send food supplies to the LTTE for the benefit of the civilian population in\u00a0areas under its control. Does that sound like a war on the Tamil people?<\/p>\n

We respectfully urge Secretary Kerry to retract the reference from his statement and substitute it\u00a0with fact, viz., that Sri Lanka waged 30-years of war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a\u00a0ruthless terrorist group.<\/p>\n

Signed by 972\u00a0citizens, diaspora and supporters of Sri Lanka<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Signed by 972\u00a0citizens, diaspora and supporters of Sri Lanka In remarks made February 12, 2015, welcoming Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera to\u00a0Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry referred to a war that never took place: Sri Lanka\u2019s 30-years of war with the Tamils.\u201d Regretfully, Minister Samaraweera failed to point out this distortion\u00a0and we, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43460","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=43460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}