{"id":75124,"date":"2018-02-26T13:39:41","date_gmt":"2018-02-26T20:39:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=75124"},"modified":"2018-02-26T13:39:41","modified_gmt":"2018-02-26T20:39:41","slug":"london-rally-and-the-sri-lankan-flag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/02\/26\/london-rally-and-the-sri-lankan-flag\/","title":{"rendered":"London rally and the Sri Lankan flag"},"content":{"rendered":"

P.A.Samaraweera<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The media\u00a0reported that due to pressure from the UK, military attache Brigadier Fernando had been recalled to Sri Lanka. During the last few weeks a lot had been written about the gesture made by Brig Fernando. As an Officer who fought the LTTE\u00a0\u00a0he should have avoided confronting the demonstrators. But, of course he had that patriotic feeling.<\/p>\n

Then, what about the pro-LTTE demonstrators who insulted the Sri Lankan flag right in front of the High Commissioner’s office? Brandishing LTTE flags,\u00a0<\/span>they had\u00a0<\/span>put the\u00a0Sri Lankan flag on the road and stepped on it. This is an insult to the country.\u00a0They had been carrying cut-outs of the terrorist leader Prabhakaran and chanting anti-govt slogans and so on. Did our High Commissioner in the UK made representations about this rally, promoting a terrorist organisation banned in the UK, and insulting the Sri Lanka flag,\u00a0to the Minister for South Asia, South Asia Dept, Commonwealth Office, UK? \u00a0There had been no such representation made either\u00a0by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,\u00a0or the High Commissioner in the UK regarding this. It appears that\u00a0they were more concerned in suspending the Brigadier and keeping the Global Tamil Forum\u00a0happy. The GTF had made protests against the Brigadier to the Minister for South Asia.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not the least surprising.\u00a0During the 30 year war, heavy propaganda carried out by the LTTE were never counter acted by\u00a0High Commissioners. It was the Office bearers of Sri Lankan societies in western countries who confronted them and replied to their propaganda. I can vouch for this because I was the President of a Sri Lankan society for a few years.\u00a0Whenever, we presented anti-govt propaganda by the LTTE to the High Commissioners,\u00a0the reply was they were too busy or that they were\u00a0not important. Too busy doing ‘business’, attending functions\/dinners, or busy with their children’s education.Therefore for them,\u00a0no time to attend to LTTE propaganda.<\/p>\n

So it is not surprising, that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the High Commissioner had done nothing about the Sri Lankan flag being trampled right in front of the High Commissioner’s office. For them, an insult to the Sri Lankan flag by the pro-LTTE demonstrators had been considered not ‘very serious’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

P.A.Samaraweera The media\u00a0reported that due to pressure from the UK, military attache Brigadier Fernando had been recalled to Sri Lanka. During the last few weeks a lot had been written about the gesture made by Brig Fernando. As an Officer who fought the LTTE\u00a0\u00a0he should have avoided confronting the demonstrators. But, of course he had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drpasamaraweera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75124","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=75124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}