{"id":60224,"date":"2016-10-30T09:16:43","date_gmt":"2016-10-30T15:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=60224"},"modified":"2016-10-29T16:27:39","modified_gmt":"2016-10-29T23:27:39","slug":"un-special-rapporteur-on-minority-issues-statement-on-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/10\/30\/un-special-rapporteur-on-minority-issues-statement-on-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues Statement on Sri Lanka"},"content":{"rendered":"

Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . K1J 6G1 . Canada<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

28 October 2016<\/p>\n

Rita Izsak-Ndiaya<\/p>\n

U.N.Rapporteur on Minorities<\/p>\n

United Nations<\/p>\n

New York. US<\/p>\n

Dear Rita Izsak-Ndiaya\u00a0:<\/p>\n

You people at the UN keep foxing me as your \u2018we-are-the-Masters-of-your-destiny\u2019 arrogance and stupidity have no bounds.\u00a0 You bunch go around the world as if \u00a0you people own it, poking your noses at internal affairs of nations as if you lot are a bunch of Tin-Gods and Tin-Goddesses with moral-wands in your hands to sweep across the lands, and say \u2013 Whooopsy\u2026 A-B-R-A-C-A-D-A-B-R-A\u2026you better fall in line with our thinking as we rule your world\u201d.\u00a0 Right, Rita?\u00a0\u00a0 That stupid arrogance is a bit too much to swallow.<\/p>\n

So you go to Sri Lanka for 10 days, the care taker of Theravadha Buddhism , which has a history that goes back to over 2,600 years, believing that you have the moral right to restructure, dismantle and downgrade its value, its harmonious spirituality, its sanctity, its piety, and in your Statement on Sri Lanka of October 20, 2016, you say that \u2018Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian leadership\u2019 as the main reason behind minority grievances and Sri Lanka\u2019s long civil war\u2019.\u00a0 And you expressed your fears that keeping Article 9 of the Sri Lankan Constitution which refers to the primacy of Buddhism \u2018could lead to further suppression of and discrimination against minority religions and communities.\u201d \u00a0Holy Cow!\u2026how wrong you are, Rita.\u00a0 You are now being silly and bullish. \u00a0Let me introduce myself to you that I am a Sinhalese and a Buddhist, the former President of the Ottawa Buddhist Association, the present Director of Outreach Programs at the Center for Inner Peace, an auxiliary of a Theravadha Buddhist Temple in Ottawa, Canada, and a leader of Buddhist Meditation at the temple. And now you see why you got my goat.<\/p>\n

Your statement suggests that you have not done your homework on Buddhist-Sri Lanka before you set foot on the red kabook soil of that beautiful island nation of pious peoples who hate violence and are reluctant to slap and kill even a mosquito that has landed on their arms to suck their blood.\u00a0 And you know nothing about us Sinhalese people.<\/p>\n

Did you know, or did you think that it didn\u2019t matter a tuppence that you should know that, according to traditional Sri Lankan chronicles, as the Dipavamsa, Buddhism was introduced to Sri Lanka in the 3rd<\/sup> century BC, after the Third Buddhist Council, by Mahinda Bhikku, the son of Emperor Asoka of India, during the reign of Devanampiyatissa of Anuradhapura.\u00a0 Theravadha Buddhism is the religion of 70.1% of the population of Sri Lanka, and this island has been the center of Buddhist scholarship and learning.<\/p>\n

And you come to come to Colombo, presenting yourself as UN\u2019s Tin-Goddess Rita, to disavow that long Buddhist history of Sri Lanka and wanting to change for the sake of Sri Lanka\u2019s minorities, especially the Tamils\u00a0\u00a0 Ha\u2026.what stupidity!\u00a0 That is asinine, isn\u2019t it!<\/p>\n

And did you not know, or does your arrogance say, \u2018No, I couldn\u2019t care two prairie straws whether I knew it or not\u2019 that Article 9, \u00a0of the Sri Lanka Constitution gives foremost place\u2019 to Buddhism (the religion of 70.1% of the island\u2019s population) and refers to the duty of the state to protect and foster Buddhism.\u00a0\u00a0 And Article 10 of the Constitution asserts that Every person is entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the freedom to have or adopt a religion of belief of his choice\u201d.\u00a0 So all Sri Lanka\u2019s governments since Independence let the Tamil Hindu\u2019s celebrate Thai Pongal on a day every January, Maha Sivarathri Day in February, Tamil New Year on an auspicious day in April, Deepavali on a day in November and they could play their tomtoms,miruthangams,nathaaswarams and shehnais, and perform their molasse-slow moving Kavadi dancers along the streets of the island to their hearts content. \u00a0\u00a0Nor would pet dogs in Buddhist homes be allowed to bark at them allowing them to celebrate their spiritual pride and their Tamilian-dignity, So what the heck have these Tamils, as a minority community got to grieve about?\u00a0 You tell me!<\/p>\n

I notice that you have a certain \u00a0bleeding-heart-bias for the minority Tamils in the North, who claim that it is their \u2018Homeland\u2019.\u00a0 Do you know something, Rita, if you had done your homework properly you may have found out that the Tamils sanitized the North sans all other communities by ethnic-cleansing by terrorizing, stoning and kicking them out of that chunk of toddy-palm dotted arid land. That between 1971 and 1981, the Tamils terrorized and chased out 27,000<\/p>\n

Sinhalese who had lived in the North for generations.\u00a0 That stinks, isn\u2019t it!\u00a0 The Tamils kicked out 90,000 Muslims in October 1990 giving them 48 hours to get out leaving their<\/p>\n

Gold, jewellery and other valuables at the nearest Mosque, making Idi Amin of Uganda look like an angel having given the Ugandan-Indians three months to get out.\u00a0 You didn\u2019t know that did you?\u00a0 Here\u2019s more incidents for your knowledge-archives how the Tamils purified the North which they call their \u2018Homeland\u2019 now.\u00a0 What hogs-wash, Rita, and you believed their \u2018Homeland\u2019 concept as they got you hook-line-and-sinker on that lie.\u00a0 I really don\u2019t blame you as there have been other bleeding-hearts-for-Tamils-westerners who have been gullible as you have been.<\/p>\n

It was on August 17, 1977, that 400 Sinhalese University undergraduates and lecturers who were stoned at the Jaffna campus and chased out of Jaffna.\u00a0 They were brought south in a convoy of buses escorted by the police and army while they were lying prostrate on the floor ducking the rock and stone missiles thrown at them.\u00a0 My nephew was one of the undergraduates. Brutal, nasty and despicable, isn\u2019t it. Ha\u2026.. these are the Tamils who claim the North as their \u2018Homeland\u2019 when they have been staking that real-estate as theirs fraudulently through ethnic cleansing.<\/p>\n

Well\u2026.well\u2026.well\u2026Rita, you have ignored the grievances of the Sinhalese, the minority among the majority Tamils in the North.\u00a0 How come?\u00a0 Your Statement on Sri\u00a0 Lanka do not address the Tamil students attacking the Sinhalese students at the Jaffna campus a few months ago for \u00a0having included a Sinhala dance at a campus ceremony, and \u00a0being forced, to get out.\u00a0 Nor have you pointed the grievances of Buddhist monks who have been ordered to remove their temples from the Northern Province by Tamil politicians, the North\u00a0 that was polka-dotted with Buddhist temples in the ancient days of yore.\u00a0 You know what Rita?\u00a0 You are guilty of bias in my eyes, and I question your veracity of being an honest UN Rapporteur who would guarantee us that you will provide a balanced and an honest\u00a0 account in your Statement on Sri Lanka, if your intention was to build unity and harmony between the majority community and the minority \u00a0communities in Sri Lanka. \u00a0\u00a0Ummm\u2026not good.\u00a0 You are suspect.<\/p>\n

Rita, make a note of this Fact and store it in your memory bank for future use,\u00a0 Sri Lanka faced 17 invasions since 230 BC from South India, the \u2018Homeland\u2019 of these Tamil forces who entered Sri Lanka to plunder and pillage.\u00a0 While almost all were pushed back by the indigenous Sinhalese to their \u2018Home Land\u201d, Tamil Nadu, where they came from like a black cloud of starlings.\u00a0 Some stayed back who now call the North their \u2018Homeland\u2019.\u00a0 So there are two Home Lands\u201d: for the Tamils, while the Sinhalese have just one, the only one which is Sri Lanka which they will guard jealously, and you bet, whether there is a Tin-Goddess Rita or no Rita from the UN coming to Sri Lanka to poke her nose into Sri Lanka\u2019s internal affairs, and to downgrade Theravadha Buddhism in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

To share my observation on your insipid comment in your Statement on Sri Lanka as\u00a0 the Tin-Goddess Rita Izsak-Ndiaya of the United Nations, who has an official title as the UN Rapporteur on Minorities \u2013 Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian leadership\u2019 as the main reason behind minority grievances and Sri Lanka\u2019s long civil war\u201d, if I were you, not withstanding my Job Description, I would do nothing to be an architect to \u00a0be accountable for being the Destroyer of the core values of Sri Lanka\u2019s religion, Buddhism.\u00a0 If the Tamils are grieving about putting up Buddhist structures in the so called Tamil Homeland\u201d thereby sowing seeds of disharmony, I would remind them not to try to change the<\/p>\n

Historic presence of Buddhism in \u00a0the North, as ancient archaeology attests of that fact, and the Sinhalese-Buddhist will not accept that crassness as it is their heritage.\u00a0 The western bleeding hearts can go on bleeding for the Tamils, as that would not make much of a difference, and let us be judicious about it.\u00a0 Rita, that is how the cookie crumbles.<\/p>\n

You are better off trying to convince these Tamils to wipe out their mindset that says We,Tamils a minority will lead the majority Sinhalese one day\u201d, as their foxy-cunning Tamil political leader G.G. Ponnambalam wanted to and \u00a0tried\u00a0 to sneak in the 50-50 policy to govern Sri Lanka into the\u00a0 Constitution only to be said No\u201d by the Soulsbury Commission before Independence in 1948.\u00a0 That the Tamils live as good citizens as a minority community and try to live harmoniously with the majority Buddhist-Sinhalese and not pretend that they are the majority of the island. \u00a0If they really need their mono-ethnic, racist, Tamil state, Eelam, encourage them to get on a fast moving fiber glass motorized boat and cross the 18 mile saltwater divide between South India and North Sri Lanka and join their 72 million kith and kin in Tamil Nadu in just a few minutes, \u00a0And I would wish that you live an exemplary life as a good citizen of the world and mind your own business and keep your hands off Sri Lanka\u2019s internal affairs,\u00a0 and respect the land that Theravadha Buddhism has had a\u00a0 permanent home for over 2600 years and not be a catalyst for another armed conflict in the North of Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

Sincerely<\/p>\n

Asoka Weerasinghe<\/p>\n

(a Sinhala-Buddhist)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . K1J 6G1 . Canada 28 October 2016 Rita Izsak-Ndiaya U.N.Rapporteur on Minorities United Nations New York. US Dear Rita Izsak-Ndiaya\u00a0: You people at the UN keep foxing me as your \u2018we-are-the-Masters-of-your-destiny\u2019 arrogance and stupidity have no bounds.\u00a0 You bunch go around the world as if […]<\/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-60224","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\/60224","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=60224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}