{"id":50986,"date":"2016-01-11T14:58:22","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T21:58:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=50986"},"modified":"2016-01-11T14:58:22","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T21:58:22","slug":"patriotism-does-depend-on-where-you-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/01\/11\/patriotism-does-depend-on-where-you-live\/","title":{"rendered":"Patriotism does depend on where you live"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><strong>Ranjit Weerasinghe Toronto\u00a0Courtesy The Island<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>I read with interest, the series of articles written by former Consul-General of Toronto, Bandula Jayasekara, regarding the L.T.T.E. activity in Canada during the war in Sri Lanka. He, quite rightly commended the invaluable contribution made by SLUNA and a few Sri Lankans domiciled in Canada who provided leadership to it. It\u2019s never too late to appreciate and pay tribute to them, who boldly fought against all odds, to defend Sri Lanka against the formidable propaganda machinery of the diaspora in Canada. SLUNA was no match numerically, politically or financially for the diaspora which commanded massive resources of every type. Yet SLUNA fought valiantly.<\/p>\n<p>I wish to single out one individual who, according to most Sri Lankans in Toronto, was the real live wire behind the resistance movement among that illustrious group of Sri Lankans.<\/p>\n<p>He had been in Canada for some forty years. He was the man who, using his innate leadership skills and indefatigable energy, initiated the movement in the mid eighties to clear the badly tarnished name of Sri Lanka. With his untiring support and guidance the Sri Lanka United National Association of Canada was established. For the past twenty years or so, I was witness to the heroic struggle he sometimes single \u2013handedly conducted to defend the Sri Lankan cause. Lal, one of my friends in Toronto referred to him as the &#8220;one man battalion fighting for Sri Lanka&#8221;. He was neither scared, nor deterred by various threats, including a law suit brought against him.<\/p>\n<p>But, please don\u2019t get me wrong. He was never against the Tamils nor their rightful place in unitary Sri Lanka. I learnt that, as a young Socialist in Sri Lanka, he joined the ranks of N.M and Colvin and championed the concept of &#8220;One Nation, two languages&#8221;, as against &#8220;One Language two Nations&#8221;. He treats every Tamil as his friend.<\/p>\n<p>Now living in retirement, this wonderful son of Sri Lanka deserves the admiration of every Sri Lankan. Daya Hettiarachchi is his name.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ranjit Weerasinghe Toronto<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ranjit Weerasinghe Toronto\u00a0Courtesy The Island I read with interest, the series of articles written by former Consul-General of Toronto, Bandula Jayasekara, regarding the L.T.T.E. activity in Canada during the war in Sri Lanka. He, quite rightly commended the invaluable contribution made by SLUNA and a few Sri Lankans domiciled in Canada who provided leadership to [&hellip;]<\/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-50986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50986","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=50986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}