{"id":59837,"date":"2016-10-16T17:45:47","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T00:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=59837"},"modified":"2016-10-16T17:45:47","modified_gmt":"2016-10-17T00:45:47","slug":"heed-the-voice-from-the-north-and-answer-allegations-sept-282016-media-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/10\/16\/heed-the-voice-from-the-north-and-answer-allegations-sept-282016-media-release\/","title":{"rendered":"Heed the Voice From The North and Answer Allegations – Sept.28,2016 Media Release"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ira de Silva\u00a0Canada<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

National Peace Council of Sri Lanka
\n12\/14 Purana Vihara Road
\nColombo 6<\/p>\n

TO:\u00a0 Mr. Jehan Perera & Others of Governing Board<\/p>\n

I am writing to you regarding your latest Media Release of September 29,2016. While you claim that your vision is\u00a0 “a vision of a peaceful and prosperous Sri Lanka in which the freedom, human rights and democratic rights of all the communities are respected”, <\/em>it is obvious that your organization, which was at the forefront of supporting the LTTE during the war by advocating the division of Sri Lanka to appease\u201d Prabhakaran, has not changed it’s goal and are continuing to promote Eelam, by NOT respecting freedom, human rights and democratic rights of the population outside of the north, primarily the Sinhalese and to a lesser extent, those of the Muslims, other non-Tamil minorities and those Tamils who do not support Eelam.<\/p>\n

You state that the issues highlighted at events, such as the Eluga Thamil – Rise Up Tamils” meeting headed by Wigneswaram, who is the avatar of Prabhakaran,\u00a0 “reflect long standing Tamil grievances, aspirations and fears.” In spite of your organization having received millions of dollars from Norway and other western countries, to support the Tamil\u00a0 terrorist\/ separatist movement in Sri Lanka, while at the same time providing you with millions for a very comfortable life,\u00a0 you have never answered the question of what these so-called “Tamil grievances” are. Before you call for these “grievances” to be remedied, is it not essential that you define\/list them? If you can not list these grievances in your next media release, stop making these vague, unsubstantiated statements as they are patently false.<\/p>\n

Further, throughout the war on\u00a0 LTTE\u00a0 terrorism, you advocated, perhaps at the command of your donors, that the LTTE be given their demand for Eelam claiming that it was the only solution. Your workshops which you held in the south, not the north, tried to sell\u00a0 Eelam demanded by the LTTE, which the whole world recognized as terrorist, fascist and\u00a0 undemocratic which, far from respecting the rights of all communities, murdered all communities. This media release indicates that you are back on track, perhaps at the demand of your donors, with this same theme supportive of Tamil rights and demands at the expense of all the other communities in the name of peace building. Is it only the voice from the North that must be heard? What about the vast majority outside the north? What about their freedom to live anywhere in Sri Lanka, their human rights and democratic rights, which you seem to have no respect for in your enthusiasm for only hearing the voice from the north?<\/p>\n

Why should Tamil aspirations translate into a federal solution in the new constitution after this “Rise up Tamils” meeting which is the embodiment of the Eelam demand for a separate state? That meeting was a showcase of Tamil racist\/fascist demands, no different to those of Prabhakaran prior to 2009. It demands the removal of Buddhist sites in the north. Do you consider that democratic? Do you support the demand that no Sinhalese should be allowed to live in the north? Is that not undemocratic but fascist?\u00a0 Is Sri Lanka not for all Sri Lankans? Do you not believe that Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims have the right to live anywhere in the island? To demarcate the north for Tamils only is not just undemocratic, it is the goal of fascist Eelam which Sri Lankans thought ended in 2009. Obviously you believe otherwise because you support the exclusion of non-Tamils from the north. Was all the death and destruction by Tamil terrorism which endangered the lives of all Sri Lankans insufficient for you or do you believe that by supporting the demands made in September 2016 in Jaffna you can get more millions from your foreign backers? If Sinhalese are to be excluded from the north, by the same logic do you support the exclusion of Tamils from the rest of the island? Also, are all the kovils to be removed from outside the north? Since you claim that these demands should be entertained in the constitution, is it not logical that there should also be a provision to exclude the Tamils in other areas of Sri Lanka?<\/p>\n

It is ironic that you believe that ” Sri Lanka has entered into a period of conflict transformation”. Since\u00a0 May 2009 there has been no conflict.\u00a0 Since the “transformation” in January 2015, there has been a continuous effort by the current government to appease the TNA which incidentally was and is the voice of Tamil Eelam.\u00a0 If a Canadian judge, who is not involved in Sri Lankan politics, can recognize that the TNA was the voice of the LTTE terrorist movement, (quote – the “TNA was subservient” to the rebels ..membership in the party was tantamount to membership in the Tamil Tigers”),\u00a0 it is a joke that you, the other foreign funded NGO’s and the ignorant in Sri Lanka are unaware that there can be no reconciliation when one side does not believe in it, in this case the representatives of the Tamils of the north,\u00a0 but just uses it to further their demands and promote that the north must be “heeded, not ignored or rejected” at the expense of all others. So far the people of the north and their leaders, although they are also stakeholders in a peaceful and reconciled country, have not made any statement or effort at reconciliation but are promoting not peace but a division of Sri Lanka. The resurrection of the LTTE is now accelerating, funding from overseas is continuing, political demands via the western countries that supported the LTTE are gaining momentum.\u00a0 You obviously do not have any interest in the news items that prove this is taking place and dismiss it as propaganda which it is not.<\/p>\n

You “call on the government to answer each and every one of the allegations made against its reconciliation process and to take this message to the people through an effective communication strategy”. The government can not and will not be able to answer these allegations because they know that these are not mere “allegations” but facts. The government hopes that the public will do as they do and hide their heads in the sand believing that the people will be fooled into believing them and support the denigration of the security forces, collude with the pro Eelam forces in the international community to try the armed forces in kangaroo courts as their reward for eliminating the hierarchy of the LTTE, remove them from the north to facilitate the Tamil only policy you and Rise Up Tamils” are advocating to exclude non-Tamils\u00a0 from exercising their freedom of movement in the island which, in case you are ignorant of it, is a fundamental right. It is hoped that the “effective communication strategy” you are calling for will be based on facts and evidence because the “people” having suffered for so long by the actions of groups such as yours which are of no benefit to them or Sri Lanka. Can the government disregard the voice of the people who are not from the north when they are the majority?<\/p>\n

In conclusion, perhaps as a first step to aid reconciliation, foreign funded NGO’s such as yours should be barred as it is obvious that your overriding interest is money, not the country.<\/p>\n

Yours truly,<\/p>\n

Ira de Silva
\nCanada<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ira de Silva\u00a0Canada National Peace Council of Sri Lanka 12\/14 Purana Vihara Road Colombo 6 TO:\u00a0 Mr. Jehan Perera & Others of Governing Board I am writing to you regarding your latest Media Release of September 29,2016. While you claim that your vision is\u00a0 “a vision of a peaceful and prosperous Sri Lanka in which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ira-de-silva"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59837","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=59837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}