{"id":64017,"date":"2017-03-07T16:54:53","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T23:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=64017"},"modified":"2017-03-07T16:54:53","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T23:54:53","slug":"sri-lankas-president-maithripala-sirisena-declares-sinhala-warriors-dubbed-traitors-by-the-british-as-national-heroes-and-patriots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/03\/07\/sri-lankas-president-maithripala-sirisena-declares-sinhala-warriors-dubbed-traitors-by-the-british-as-national-heroes-and-patriots\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka\u2019s President Maithripala Sirisena declares Sinhala Warriors dubbed Traitors by the British as National Heroes and Patriots"},"content":{"rendered":"

Media Release \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Society for Peace, Unity and Human Rights in Sri Lanka (SPUR) NSW Inc.\u00a0<\/strong>NSW 1730, Australia<\/em><\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/span> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Sri Lanka\u2019s President Maithripala Sirisena declares Sinhala Warriors dubbed Traitors by the British as National Heroes and Patriots <\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

President Maithripala Sirisena took steps in December 2016 to expunge a previous British Colonial Government gazette notification that listed 19 national leaders of the Uva-Wellassa Sinhala Rebellion of 1818 as Traitors and recognised them as National Heroes.\u00a0 On March 1 2017, again the President has officiated in a function to name a further 82 leaders of the same Sinhala rebellion as patriots.<\/p>\n

Our Society, takes this opportunity to thank President Sirisena for granting recognition to the long forgotten Sinhala national heroes. These are the greatest of our heroes who sacrificed all they had for the good of the future generations. The members of our Society have always had these patriots in their own hearts.<\/p>\n

There is a saying that the \u2018proof of the pudding is in the eating\u2019. Therefore, symbolic gestures need to be qualified with real deeds, else they remain forever hollow.<\/p>\n

Today, in Sri Lanka there are dozens of severely disabled ex-servicemen who faced terrorism head-on on a death fast on the steps of Colombo City\u2019s main railway station. They are pleading their disability entitlements and pensions be paid. At a time symbolism is reigning high, what moral right do we have in staging these symbolic gestures when we ignore the pleadings of these ex-servicemen?<\/p>\n

These patriots and national heroes have been agitating in this manner for over four years. As a compassionate Buddhist Nation, shouldn\u2019t we hang our heads in absolute shame?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t it the time we reassess our Buddhist values of truth, justice, and compassion ?<\/p>\n

This is a horrific and a putrid state of affairs in comparison to the entitlements and the increasing plunder of self-serving parliamentarians. Those in positions of authority do not even deserve their next meal without first meeting the just rights of these disabled heroes, and releasing them from their death fast. These are the real heroes who were in the front line defending our freedoms against abject terrorism, just as those heroes of the Uva-Wellassa Rebellion have done. We are a failed nation at the highest grade no doubt, when hypocrisy, propaganda and symbolism rule the roost.<\/p>\n

The families of those who fled Britain\u2019s dastardly and murderous scorched earth policy of 1818 and Governor Brownrigg\u2019s edict to slaughter every male Sinhalese over the age of 14 , settled in Sri Lanka\u2019s east coast in and around Paa-nama.\u00a0 To add insult to injury, these remnant population is being hounded out today from their meagre and subsistence living by powerful property developer politicians who are on a tourism resort hotel building spree.<\/p>\n

We also appeal to President Maithripala, if such the information is currently being hidden from him, to restore the ancestral lands of the Kandyan Sinhalese, where 400,000 acres\u00a0 were robbed by the British to set up vast plantations. The Kandyan Peasantry Commission Report of the 1950\u2019s elaborates the destitution of the Sinhalese whose lands were thus robbed.<\/p>\n

Today, we need to stop pandering to the preoccupation of the nagging neighbours of Sri Lanka, and a few westerners who poke their noses in wrong places, about a few acres of land that were acquired by the Sri Lankan\u00a0 defence forces on defeating\u00a0 an overseas funded\u00a0 30 year brutal separatist terrorism in the north.<\/p>\n

To meet national priorities, land is acquired from time to time, be they in the north, south, east or the west. Square kilometre upon square kilometre of private land had been acquired in the past decades for hydro dams and reservoirs in the hills, express-ways in the south and the mid country, for rail tracks in the deep-south, defence force camps around the island, and for our largest port and the new international airport located in Hambantota.\u00a0 Public property is for public use, and is meant for the good of all citizens.\u00a0 The agitation of those families evicted to build the world war time air field in Koggala by the British Empire in the south still rings in our minds.<\/p>\n

The claim that is being peddled as occupied Tamil land was never an identified land of today\u2019s Tamil speaking people of the north. They were indeed the lands of the Sinhalese who withdrew on the face of the western colonial onslaughts. The Dutch and the British settled the land so robbed, with South Indians over the years.<\/p>\n

Further, the Tamil historian Mudaliyar Rasanayagam says in 1926 of the northern warlord Sankili in his book \u2018Ancient Jaffna\u2019 as follows;<\/p>\n

Quote:\u00a0 \u2018he fell upon the Buddhists of Jaffna who were all Sinhalese, and expelled them beyond the limits of the country and destroyed their numerous places of worship\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026… That Jaffna was occupied by the Sinhalese earlier than by the Tamils is seen not only in the place names but also in some of the habits and customs of the people\u2019. <\/em>\u00a0Unquote.<\/p>\n

So much for the extremist racist agitation to re-claim the so-called \u2018Tamil land\u2019 even after a decisive, comprehensive, and a sobering a military defeat.\u00a0 The attempt to achieve same by internationally sponsored terrorism in Sri Lanka was an abject failure.\u00a0 It is now the rotten and a spurious attempt to call it a Tamil homeland.\u00a0 As with land used for public purposes elsewhere in the island, it is the land occupied by the defence forces for the protection of all citizens of this island nation.<\/p>\n

We appeal to President Sirisena to move away from pacification and appeasement of racist northern and eastern extremists, and to do much further than the display of symbolism towards the patriots of this Nation.<\/p>\n

As a national priority, we strongly appeal to the President to take urgent steps to establish a comprehensive national policy framework to re-settle sparsely populated lands of this island nation in an equitable manner, for the common good of all citizens.<\/p>\n

Nimal Liyanage\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Dudley Upasiri \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Secretary and Spokesperson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Presid<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Media Release \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Society for Peace, Unity and Human Rights in Sri Lanka (SPUR) NSW Inc.\u00a0NSW 1730, Australia\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 Sri Lanka\u2019s President Maithripala Sirisena declares Sinhala Warriors dubbed […]<\/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-64017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64017","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=64017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}