{"id":59304,"date":"2016-10-02T09:59:52","date_gmt":"2016-10-02T15:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=59304"},"modified":"2016-10-02T02:39:05","modified_gmt":"2016-10-02T09:39:05","slug":"press-briefing-sat-11016-new-zealand-and-sri-lankan-prime-ministers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/10\/02\/press-briefing-sat-11016-new-zealand-and-sri-lankan-prime-ministers\/","title":{"rendered":"Press Briefing Sat 1\/10\/16 New Zealand and Sri Lankan Prime Ministers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Chula Rajapakse MNZM\u00a0FRCP\/FRACP\u00a0Spokesperson,\u00a0United Sri Lanka Association<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Rt Hon. John Key MP,<\/p>\n

The Prime Minister of New Zealand.<\/p>\n

Dear Mr Key,<\/p>\n

I write to thank you very much indeed \u00a0 for your tempered and supportive response to the provocative questions raised regarding human rights issues in Sri Lanka , at the joint press briefing that was shown on TV1 6pm News \u00a0today.<\/p>\n

In this regard, I wish to recall some of the quite extraordinary measures the current administration has taken on this issue \u00a0and \u00a0in their efforts at ethnic reconciliation in Sri Lanka as follows;<\/p>\n

    \n
  • President Sirisena was sworn into his office following his election on the 8th of January 2015 by the then Supreme Court Judge K Sripavan, an ethnic Tamil, by passing the incumbent Sinhalese Chief Justice, who was replaced almost immediately by Justice Sripavan as Chief Justice.<\/li>\n
  • The governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka who was an ethnic Sinhalese at the time of this administration taking office was replaced almost immediately \u00a0by an ethnic Tamil \u00a0Mr. C Mahendran. He was succeeded an year later by the present incumbent , an another ethnic Tamil, the much acclaimed Mr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy<\/li>\n
  • The leader of the opposition of Sri Lanka, since this administration assumed office has been Mr R Sampanthan, an ethnic Tamil. He has received all the support and encouragement from the current administration to pursue the requirements of his office and to further ethnic reconciliation.<\/li>\n
  • The entire parliament has also been functioning as a constitutional assembly,, now drafting a new constitution with the active participation of all the parties and MP\u2019s including the Tamil parties and Tamil MP’s . It is this assembly that is considering an MMP system to ensure the inclusion of the Tamil community at the very heart of \u00a0the process of governing the country, that you commented on favourably , at the press briefing .<\/li>\n
  • The present cabinet has a number of members drawn from the Tamil community holding very senior rankings including one member of the current delegation.<\/li>\n
  • Vast tracks of land in the northern province that were occupied by the military have been handed back to the former civilian owners of the Tamil community \u00a0that has also resulted in \u00a0the closure of a large number of army camps in this region . This is \u00a0despite many questioning it\u2019s wisdom given that it is only few years after the end of the 3 decade long brutal terrorist war and despite the international diaspora that \u00a0sustained the terrorists with funds and propaganda being largely intact and being as vociferous as ever, even now.<\/li>\n
  • The national anthem was sung in tamil \u00a0for the first time , at the national day celebrations this year on the 4th of February , despite the constitutionality of doing so not being clarified.<\/li>\n
  • The annual commemoration of the sacrifices of life and limb of the security forces who secured liberation of Sri Lanka from three decades of terror on the 19th of May 2009, was cancelled this year through fear of injuring\u201d Tamil Susceptibilities\u201d. \u00a0To those of us living in New Zealand that still commemorates the sacrifices of the New Zealand security forces in Gallipoli even a century later, the omission of the commemoration in Sri Lanka 7 years after the event , makes a stark and sad contrast.<\/li>\n
  • The setting up of an Office of Missing Persons (OMP) in Sri Lanka, with wide ranging judicial and punitive powers, despite very limited consultation and wide spread opposition from the Sinhalese community and ignoring completely the report of a commission on missing persons appointed by the previous administration , \u00a0whose work \u00a0was overseen \u00a0by three international legal luminaries . However, as expected the creation of the OMP \u00a0have won \u00a0vociferous acclaim from the \u00a0Tiger Diaspora,the very diaspora that sustained three decades of terror in Sri Lanka.<\/li>\n
  • Bowing to US led pressure through UNHCR , this administration has agreed to set up special courts with participation \u00a0of international judges with special powers, again despite opposition from many in the Sinhalese community.<\/li>\n
  • There is considerable and widespread fear among the Sinhalese that the well funded Tiger Diaspora could use their funds and international influence garnered through the use of these funds and their prowess at disseminating mis-information, could hijack both the OMP and the special courts to their advantage ,as they did with the UNSG appointed Darusman Commission, leaving the Sinhalese with no such international influence or finances , to once again become the victims as they were under Tiger Terror and \u00a0under British Colonial Rule as the victimised majority of their divide and rule policies,\u00a0\u00a0for a century and half.<\/li>\n
  • The absence of any call from any international agencies or human rights groups to inquire into who, how and where from the international funding for three decades of Tiger Terror in Sri Lanka came, and the role India in training the Tigers in the initial stages of the these three decades, leaves large sections of the Sinhalese, feeling truly hopeless.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Against these extraordinary efforts of the current \u00a0Sri Lankan administration among others, at bending over backwards to please a vociferous Tiger diaspora \u00a0, that is the main obstacle to \u00a0ethnic reconciliation in Sri Lanka today, the likes of the person who raised this issue at todays press briefing and the green party and amnesty international , the other prominent groups in NZ to peddle this line, should update their script \u00a0given to them presumably \u00a0by the \u00a0international Tiger Diaspora, to include todays realities, before firing unhelpful questions and statements.<\/p>\n

    Thank you once again for your understanding and permit me to say how lucky we \u00a0in NZ are to have you as our Prime Minister.<\/p>\n

    Yours Sincerely,<\/p>\n

    Dr. Chula Rajapakse MNZM<\/p>\n

    FRCP\/FRACP<\/p>\n

    Spokesperson,<\/p>\n

    United Sri Lanka Association<\/p>\n

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

    Dr. Chula Rajapakse MNZM\u00a0FRCP\/FRACP\u00a0Spokesperson,\u00a0United Sri Lanka Association Rt Hon. John Key MP, The Prime Minister of New Zealand. Dear Mr Key, I write to thank you very much indeed \u00a0 for your tempered and supportive response to the provocative questions raised regarding human rights issues in Sri Lanka , at the joint press briefing that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59304","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=59304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}