The British High Commissioner here has stirred a controversy by stating that Sri Lanka was maintaining an inappropriately high military presence in the Tamil-dominated former battle zones of the north and the east.
John Rankin
British envoy John Rankin appears to have caught the wrong attention of officials here over his statement recorded in a High Commission video wherein he had said: “We hope the military presence in the north and east can resemble the level of the military presence in other parts of the country, rather than the very large military presence we continue to have at the moment”.
The English language ‘Daily Mirror’ and ‘The Island’ this morning quoted senior External Affairs Ministry officials as saying that comments made by Rankin had been taken note of.
The British envoy’s comments came only a few days after President Mahinda Rajapaksa said that withdrawal of the troops just to please foreign powers was not possible as there were security needs which warranted military deployment in all parts of the island.
The international community including Rajapaksa’s own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) had called for reduction of the military presence in the north as a means of achieving reconciliation.
PTI
Rory Winter / May 26, 2012
With a standing army of over 300 thousand SL has an army three times the size of that in the UK. This indicates how deep the militarisation of SL society has become since pre-war days. Deploying huge numbers of troops to the Tamil homelands in a permanent occupation seems to provide a neat political solution. Moreover the SL Army has begun to take an significant part in the economy by sequestering the properties previously confiscated from the citizenry by the LTTE.
Who needs a coup d’etat of the generals in Sri Lanka when the army can quietly take over the island in this manner?
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Customer Support System / November 28, 2012
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