By Dayan Jayatilleka –
“Makes me sick, motherf*****, how far we done fell.” – Detective ‘Bunk’ Moreland to Omar in ‘The Wire’
UN Human Rights High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein, referring to the Report on Sri Lanka which he plans to release on Wednesday, made comments which are dangerous, saying:
“…Its findings are of the most serious nature. I welcome the vision shown by President Sirisena since his election in January 2015, and the commitments made by the new Government under his leadership. But this Council owes it to Sri Lankans – and to its own credibility – to ensure an accountability process that produces results, decisively moves beyond the failures of the past, and brings the deep institutional changes needed to guarantee non-recurrence”.
What Mangala Samaraweera and this government must remember is that the UN Human Rights Council is not the government or State of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is governed primarily by its own Constitution. In the absence of an international government, international law is subordinate and secondary to a country’s Constitution. The main duty and responsibility of the Sri Lankan government, state and armed forces were and are the defense of its citizens from an armed enemy and the defense of its sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and unity—then, during the war, and now, in peacetime. That is the Social Contract. The UN Human Rights Council and most certainly the Office of the High Commissioner do not constitute a world government or state! There is no such entity! Therefore, neither the Council nor the Office of the High Commissioner have either a right or mandate to “ensure an accountability process that produces results…and deep institutional changes” in any sovereign country. That is primarily an internal matter, and in a country like Sri Lanka which is at peace and does not constitute a threat to regional still less international peace, it is a purely internal matter.
Meanwhile Mr. Mangala Samaraweera seemed to forget where he was when he addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva today, September 14th. He seemed to have woken up and thought he was in the Sri Lankan parliament. I say this because he spoke so much about Sri Lanka’s domestic political and electoral events and processes in his address to the UN HRC, where no one, especially not distinguished visiting speakers at Ministerial level, talks at any length or any degree of concrete detail, about local politics and electoral outcomes.
In short, Mangala made a blatantly partisan political speech, which is in violation of the norms of discourse at the UN HRC. But that was the very least of his transgressions.
The word ‘Tamil” appears four times in Mangala’s speech. Now that in and of itself is unexceptionable, but a non-Sri Lankan child listening to his speech would think that there were only Tamil people in Sri Lanka, because he made no reference to any other community living here— the words Sinhala or Muslim never appear in Mangala’s discourse.
He talked twice in his speech of “the necessity of reaching a political settlement that addresses the grievances of the Tamil people” (paragraph 6) and “a political settlement that addresses the grievances of the Tamil people (paragraph 16). He pledged a new constitution through a constituent assembly, in the near future, in order to address the grievances of the Tamil people, which indicates that it is only the Tamil people who have grievances worth addressing; that Sri Lanka’s ethnic problem can be resolved by addressing only the grievances of the Tamil ethnic community; that it is not incumbent upon the Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim peoples to arrive at consensus through compromise (above all which reflects the demographic realities of the island). We seemed to have moved from the deplorable formula of “Sinhala Only” to the no less deplorable one of “Tamil Only”!
His pledge also reveals that the primary aim of the new constitution is to address Tamil political grievances, and that logically, the proposed solution would be one that cannot be accommodated within the existing Constitution, even by serious reform such as the 19th amendment. So what could be the change that requires a brand new constitution to address Tamil grievances and aspirations but one that goes qualitatively beyond the parameters of the existing solution, namely the 13th amendment?
I say ‘qualitatively’ because a mere adjustment to the 13th amendment would only require an amendment. Whatever lies beyond the 13th amendment, also resides—if one is to go by the Supreme Court’s determination of 1987 on the 13th amendment—outside the framework of the unitary state.
One must recall that the unitary state was deemed necessary for Sri Lanka by two stellar legal intellects during the Constitutional debate of 1972 with Mr. SJV Chelvanayakam, and none of the two were Sinhala Buddhist chauvinists: Dr. Colvin R de Silva and Mr. Felix Dias Bandaranaike. Dr. de Silva, a Marxist of Trotskyist persuasion, argued from his scholarly vantage point as the winner of the prize for the best results for the subject of History in the British Empire, that given Sri Lanka’s history and geography, a unitary state was imperative to maintain its unity.
For him, in other words, in the concrete case of Sri Lanka, there could be no daylight between ‘unitary’ and ‘ united’; united and unitary were coterminous; ‘unitary’ was the condition, indeed the precondition, of unity and territorial integrity.
Mr. Samaraweera made certain other dangerous promises with regard to accountability, a concept which he uncritically embraced. He indicated that there would be new laws to create new legal mechanisms, which he attempted to justify and cover up by a reference to the special legislation which set up the Criminal Justice Commission in the early 1970s.
This undemocratic piece of retroactive legislation was severely criticized at the time by the Civil Rights Movement and it led to a split initiated in the government’s ranks, by Dr. SA Wickramasinghe and Sarath Muttetuwegama of the Communist Party.
More importantly, Mangala is being manifestly dishonest because that new legislation was deemed necessary for a very simple reason—the JVP rebels of April 1971 had to be prosecuted for the offense of “bearing arms against the Queen”, which was highly anomalous. There was no law on the books under which they could be prosecuted. Under such highly exceptional circumstances, exceptional laws were arguable necessary.
What on earth could be the need for such new laws and new mechanisms today, when there is manifestly no such exceptional situation? Any wrongdoing during or after the war can be investigated and prosecuted under existing laws and by existing institutions which have been rendered more independent by the 19th amendment. What is it that cannot be done under the normal law and by the existing framework? What is the need for new laws and institutional mechanisms, except to initiate a witch-hunt, with foreign involvement and participation?
Mangala also pledged a Truth and Reconciliation Commission with the involvement of South Africa. South Africa’s TRC was in lieu of punitive, lacerating prosecutions. It was itself an accountability mechanism, not an addition to another one. Mangala has just pledged a South African type TRC, not in lieu of but together with a new, special mechanism for accountability!
Sri Lanka’s Minister of External Affairs took a sideswipe in his speech at the concept of “sovereignty”. It would have been alright to criticize an erroneous use or even an erroneous notion of sovereignty while simultaneously reiterating one’s own commitment to the concept and its defense, in keeping with the use of that concept in the founding Charter of the United Nations and the platform of the Non Aligned Movement to which Sri Lanka belongs. Significantly Mangala did no such thing.
Quite significant was the fact that the full text of Mangala written speech (doubtless distributed to the Council) contained pledges which his spoken address omitted. In it he pledges “security sector reform”, “the repeal of the PTA” and the review of the Public Security Ordnance– which dates back to 1947. The full text reads: “Additionally, Mr. President, the Government is committed to … disengagement of the military from commercial activities; undertake security sector reform …review and repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act and replace it with anti-terrorism legislation in line with contemporary international best practices; review the Public Security Ordinance Act…” (https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/sri-lankas-response-to-unhrc-the-full-text-of-foreign-affairs-ministers-speech-today/)
Listening to Zeid Al Hussein and Mangala Samaraweera, I was reminded of the Special Session of May 2009 in which Sri Lanka earned the support of a near two-thirds majority of the Council’s members for our defense of our sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity. During the war years we had successfully fended off, with the support of the Council, two High Commissioners for Human Rights— Louise Arbour and Navi Pillay. Today I was struck by the difference between Sri Lanka—and Sri Lanka’s UN diplomacy– then and now. What immediately sprang to mind were the lines of the character Detective ‘Bunk’ Moreland (modeled on a real veteran of the Baltimore Police Force) talking to the criminal anti-hero Omar, the favorite character of President Obama, in what was his favorite TV series at that time, The Wire: “…As rough as that neighborhood could be, we had us a community…Makes me sick, mother******, how far we done fell.”
*Dayan Jayatilleka, PhD, was Ambassador/Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations Geneva 207-2009 and a vice President of the UN Human Rights Council 2007-2008
BBS Rep / September 15, 2015
DJ,
There are blatent untruths in your piece. Sri Lanka is part and parcel of the international community and we hare signatories to many international covenents on human rights. Indeed we can be held accountable by such organisations that we are part of. On what basis does the War Crimes Tribunal sit in the Hague, Netherlands? To educate you Dayan this tribunal is an intergovernmental organization and Sri Lankan is part of this as well. The International Criminal Court has the jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. As we speak there are over 30 active investigations and prosecutions that the ICC is engaged in. Your hero Mahinda et al can also be easily prosecuted by the ICC. What occurred in 2009 is war crimes and crimes against humanity, no matter what kind of paint brush you use trying to whitewash it.
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Funlover / September 26, 2015
Any chance a barbed wire spiral can be inserted through the posterior orifice? The hysterical shreiks will be fun to listen to.
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James / September 15, 2015
Dear Shadow External Minister (Dayan) in Dictator Rajapaksa’s dream government
I heard people saying that Dayan Jayatilleka is a Doctor!!
Is your thesis on “Hypocrisy”?
Can’t you see in Mangala’s speech that he used “Sri Lankan” more frequently than refering to any community.
Dayan you should go back to Primary school to learn counting.
There is no reference to Tamils four times in Mangala’s speech.
His reference to Tamil only when he spoke about the TNA.
Were you after a heavy booze when you wrote this article?
Good luck with your dream Ministrial post under Hitler Rajapaksa:
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Saman Fernando / September 17, 2015
Hypocracy and Paranoia for no reasons is his thesis
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Socrates III / September 15, 2015
This man Mr D.J. is upset.
He was in the Human Rights Council, even as an ambassador. He knows how things should be done in the [Edited out]council, if I can use a word that came across his mind. I wonder what actually goes on in there…
“Don’t care what the rest of the world says. We can do what we want on our Island”, is how this man Mr. D.J. seem to reason. “Because we have a constitution. Our own law. We don’t need international law. That’s dangerous stuff.”
“We can shoot whoever we want, whenever we want. Bomb them to smithereens for Lord Buddha’s sake. I don’t mind if our soldiers rape prisoners (and don’t stop after the war, because in the [Edited out] council we can say that all the Tamils are lying). Torture them to death. Robb their family members. That’s human rights for ya in my hood.”
“Too bad my main man, the Big man, MR, is out of office. He was a mean [Edited out], if you know what I mean. He killed a hell of a lot of people, or Tamils. We know how to treat those people were I come from. We started with beating, looting and riots. We burned their library, only Tamil books. Burned those people. Were we punished? No. Respect to all of us who used to save eachothers asses. We stood up for the other man, no matter what. Never would we say anything about obvious war crimes or crimes against humanity. We defended our holy unity.”
“Where is this human rights business heading? Justice. Truth. Bullshit. It’s all about doing the worst, evil things and getting away with it. I can teach you. Tamils will always be nothing more than just Tamils. Did I btw mention Tamils four times yet?”
“I should mention the other people also. We are Sinhalese (the Supreme) and there are some Muslims as well, a bit too many if you ask me. Thanks for the word. And we, even if we are the Superior, also have grievances; Oh holy unity, we want to be united to ourselves only. This Island is ours, don’t you [Edited out] forget that!”
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Sanja / September 15, 2015
Dayan J in cuckooland.The mess he created kept hitting the fan from2009 May to January 8th 2015.Poor Mangala has now to do a clean up operation and he is doing it with aplomb.
Incidentally where is Dayan’s alter ego Rajeeva Wijesinhe?Poor fellow has his hands full in fighting his own Liberal Party boss to have any time to lend DJ a helping hand.
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Fazeel / September 15, 2015
Dayan, the Mahinda [Edited out]. Why does the CT give him so much exposure? The readership should ignore him TOTALLY
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Sylvia Haik / September 29, 2015
Fazeel. That is what’s called Free Speech. If we begin to censor these idiots however nasty they are, we would be no better than the Rajapakses.
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Mallaiyuran / September 15, 2015
“One must recall that the unitary state was deemed necessary for Sri Lanka by two stellar legal intellects during the Constitutional debate of 1972 with Mr. SJV Chelvanayakam, and none of the two were Sinhala Buddhist chauvinists: Dr. Colvin R de Silva and Mr. Felix Dias Bandaranaike. Dr. de Silva, a Marxist of Trotskyist persuasion, argued from his scholarly vantage point as the winner of the prize for the best results for the subject of History in the British Empire, that given Sri Lanka’s history and geography, a unitary state was imperative to maintain its unity.”
SWRD is the one made Pact with SJV. Bandaranaike is the one suggested Federalism for Lanka. Bandaranaike is the started SLFP, Filix and Colvin were under the SLFP without ever renouncing SWRD for that suggestion. Has done that they might have been sent by Sirima to plough paddy fields instead of stepping on the parliament floor and entering into it. Unlike you. they are smart enough to not lose the job. You preached to Old King after doing a service like a home dog, in UNHRC and got kicked out of Paris.
After 1972, in 1976, at Vaddukkodai SJV clearly establish that self determination is the Tamils’ request. Further, he challenged Sirima on that and defeated her candidate in KKS.
You and Varather, were ruling the North- Eart with India’s help. You two found it was not enough rights to run a procial council and declared Independence.
Felix’s and Colin’s constitution was not suitable to Lankave. So you prefered an EP based constitution. You were dead against that was being modified by 19th amendment.
You have a little bit of Amnesia. Then what made you to suddenly remember that Colvin alose a rotten Lankve’s failed left like you?
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Jim softy / September 15, 2015
MAngala Samraweera, the satupid idiot, is wrecking the country
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Harry Hatton / September 15, 2015
There are two people who know it all and know how to do anything and every thing.
1) Mervyn Silva
2) Dayan Jayatilleka nee Silva ( why did this man change his sir name ?)
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Ravi / September 15, 2015
Do not insult Mervyn Silva. He must be rolling in is grave with severe doubt and confusion.
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whatsinaname / September 16, 2015
Because Mervyn Silva disowned dayan when he found out that the DNA didnot match.
The rest is history.
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Big daddy / September 15, 2015
Dr Evil, Reincarnation or Resurrected ?Where were you all these years? Hibernation.
What a opportunist ? Got booted out of geneva for talking sh..t about human rights violation by Israeli govt, then about his own master” MaRa” Lost his diplomatic posting. During the parliamentary elections joined hand with rest of the axis of evil wimal,vasu,dinesh & gaman giving speech to the spineless masses of srilanka supporting MaRa !
During his days in Geneva one of the official srilanka pimp to N… Siripala,ETC ETC ETC too. Zero achievements, Zero diplomacy wasted $$$$millions in the name of UNHCR.
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Gramberg / September 15, 2015
Dayan, get lost and stay lost. You are a spent force and your punditry is not needed anymore.
You barged into the Rajapakse bandwagon of unskilled and uncouth men and got noticed. Times have changed. Your time is OVER, do you hear? IT’S NOW OVER!
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gramberg / September 15, 2015
Dayan Jayatilleka, PhD, was Ambassador/Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations Geneva and a vice President of the UN Human Rights Council during the Rajapakse era. Therefore it is a great disqualification.
Buffoons then ruled, while other buffoons served the rulers and sang hosannas in Nugegoda and suchlike places…..
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Vanguard / September 15, 2015
Dayan is not a racist. He is a nationalist, like some of our other fellow citizens in parliament. They do not like Sri Lanka to be divided into five regions. Dayan does not like centrifugal forces. Perhaps he has never been on a merry-go-round, although the diplomatic service would have been a good analog.
If a democratically elected government decides to go for a 13+ solution or more, there is nothing that the minority (minority being the Sinhala nationalists) can do. In a strange twist of fate, now the Sinhala nationalists are a minority.
In a good democracy, then, you have to take care of your minorities and make sure their aspirations are heeded, and acted on as far as possible.
I hope someone poses the question to the nationalists in parliament – there is a democracy on, you know, and you are outvoted. Violence is not an option. Do you have anything constructive to add?
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EDWIN RODRIGO / September 15, 2015
I suggest that we change Dayan’s statement to read: The main duty and responsibility of the Sri Lankan government, state and armed forces were and are the defense of its Sinhala citizens from an armed Tamil enemy (who are also citizens) blah… blah…
I say this because we are talking here rightly or wrongly about our own citizens who were not armed combatants but were killed. Their race, religion, caste, political affiliations etc. do not matter to me.
1-Who killed them?
2-What were the circumstances under which they died?
3-Were they intentionally targetted for attack?
4-If not, was it due to callousness on the part of the atatcker?
5-How many of this category died in the last days of the war?
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vichara / September 15, 2015
Dayan has cautioned the nation on the perils the country may have to face in the future.
Is the statement made by Mangala has the approval of the President?
In which case it is the President who has to take the responsibility.
This speech should be debated in the Parliament.
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Jeff / September 15, 2015
One should look at how the Israelist never get punished nor bother about anyone and are continueing the genoside against the Palestinians, or what the Indian forces does to the Kashmiris, or the Americans and British against the Iraqis, the UN and the international community is biased and toothless and cannot punish or do anything to the big powers, but wants to show their commitment to human rights only towards a tiny country like Sri Lanka. This is total hypocracy.
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maalumiris / September 17, 2015
Totally agree. NONE of the western powers currently engaged in bombing the heck out of various countries around the world, creating millions of refugees and hundreds of thousands of dead will EVER be called up to defend themselves by these same institutions.
Some of them don’t even acknowledge the validity or jurisdiction of these bodies. They even go to the extent of signing agreements ensuring that none of their people will EVER be prosecuted by a foreign nation (look at the case of Japan where multiple rapes of Japanese women by US personnel gets dealt with)
None of the weeping HR organizations will ever challenge them either (HRW, AI etc will NEVER challenge the West with similar issues except in a very small and obscure manner. Certainly no in the way that they doggedly pursue the poorer countries
Can anyone tell me why, in this climate of impunity of our accusers, Sri Lanka should be held accountable ?
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Sam Silva / September 15, 2015
Dayan Jayatilake talks about right and wrong. He does not no the difference. During the Presidential election campaign he broke all ethical and financial rules. He monopolised the state media to make one sided interviews supporting MR. Then the temple trees Dansala- where professionals such as doctors were forced to attend- Dayan made one sided after dinner speeches supporting MR. These are blatant violations of election laws- using state resources. Dayan willingly participated in such activities supporting MR.
Dayan why not comment on this?
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Jones / September 16, 2015
Tamils have Tamilnadu!!!!!!!!
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AshyD / September 16, 2015
Just cannot imagine what has gotten into the so called intellect Mr.Dayan Jayatilleke’s head. Our constitution is for us to do what is right and live as human beings, BUT when we act as animals or non-human beings then the World has the R2P(Right to Protect) those affected.
We are part of the World community and we have to live with respect and earn the respect of the other countries. If we think that we can live without the other countries Mr.Dayan has to get his head examined. We need to trade with and live in harmony with other countries, for one thing among many more.
We are a responsible member of the United nations and have to act as one, too.
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Ebola da Silava / October 3, 2015
dayan [ Edited out]
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berty / September 17, 2015
There’re fools among degrees. Dj is one of them. by berty.
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kali / September 18, 2015
Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka
Zeid Al-Hussein’s Remarks & Mangala’s Geneva Speech
***“Makes me sick, motherf*****, how far we done fell.” – Detective ‘Bunk’ Moreland to Omar in ‘The Wire’
Makes me sick, motherf*****.
The choice of the above words makes me wonder whether you are a born Bas****.
As for the rest let me deal with your usual rubbish not worthy of a Doctorate.
1) UN Human Rights High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein, referring to the Report on Sri Lanka which he plans to release on Wednesday, made comments which are dangerous, saying:
“…Its findings are of the most serious nature. I welcome the vision shown by President Sirisena since his election in January 2015, and the commitments made by the new Government under his leadership. But this Council owes it to Sri Lankans – and to its own credibility – to ensure an accountability process that produces results, decisively moves beyond the failures of the past, and brings the deep institutional changes needed to guarantee non-recurrence”.
*** The word Accountability is a dirty word in Sinhala Lanka and to his credit Prince Al- Hussein is trying to undo the damage caused by his Boss the Buddhist Monk Banki Moon.
2) What Mangala Samaraweera and this government must remember is that the UN Human Rights Council is not the government or State of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is governed primarily by its own Constitution. In the absence of an international government, international law is subordinate and secondary to a country’s Constitution.
*** With your knowledge of what the UN was set up for , how it functions I am at a loss to understand how you represented Sinhala Lanka at the UN. Not worthy of your Doctorate.
3) The main duty and responsibility of the Sri Lankan government, state and armed forces were and are the defense of its citizens from an armed enemy and the defense of its sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and unity—then, during the war, and now, in peacetime.
*** You are right is one sense. The responsibility of GOSL is to keep alive the hope of Sinhalamisation and the extension of the territories and they are doing it admirably.
4) The UN Human Rights Council and most certainly the Office of the High Commissioner do not constitute a world government or state! There is no such entity! Therefore, neither the Council nor the Office of the High Commissioner have either a right or mandate to “ensure an accountability process that produces results…and deep institutional changes” in any sovereign country. That is primarily an internal matter, and in a country like Sri Lanka which is at peace and does not constitute a threat to regional still less international peace, it is a purely internal matter.
*** What rubbish are you talking about. Go and wake Milosevic up from his GRAVE and he will tell you all about standing up to bullies. There are World Bullies , Regional Bullies and formerly Hambanthotta and then Kurunagale THUGS.
5) Meanwhile Mr. Mangala Samaraweera seemed to forget where he was when he addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva today, September 14th. He seemed to have woken up and thought he was in the Sri Lankan parliament. I say this because he spoke so much about Sri Lanka’s domestic political and electoral events and processes in his address to the UN HRC, where no one, especially not distinguished visiting speakers at Ministerial level, talks at any length or any degree of concrete detail, about local politics and electoral outcomes.
*** He was trying to impress his audience that Sinhala Lanka has changed from an Animal Kingdom to a Human Kingdom. Can you blame him it is a huge transition.
6) The word ‘Tamil” appears four times in Mangala’s speech. Now that in and of itself is unexceptionable, but a non-Sri Lankan child listening to his speech would think that there were only Tamil people in Sri Lanka, because he made no reference to any other community living here— the words Sinhala or Muslim never appear in Mangala’s discourse.
*** The reason for that is it is a fight for ” SURVIVAL” for Sinkalams.
7) He talked twice in his speech of “the necessity of reaching a political settlement that addresses the grievances of the Tamil people” (paragraph 6) and “a political settlement that addresses the grievances of the Tamil people (paragraph 16). He pledged a new constitution through a constituent assembly, in the near future, in order to address the grievances of the Tamil people, which indicates that it is only the Tamil people who have grievances worth addressing; that Sri Lanka’s ethnic problem can be resolved by addressing only the grievances of the Tamil ethnic community; that it is not incumbent upon the Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim peoples to arrive at consensus through compromise (above all which reflects the demographic realities of the island). We seemed to have moved from the deplorable formula of “Sinhala Only” to the no less deplorable one of “Tamil Only”!
*** Man the topic for discussion was the Tamil ” GENOCIDE”. It is a bit like sitting for History exam and expecting questions about Buddhism.
8) I say ‘qualitatively’ because a mere adjustment to the 13th amendment would only require an amendment. Whatever lies beyond the 13th amendment, also resides—if one is to go by the Supreme Court’s determination of 1987 on the 13th amendment—outside the framework of the unitary state.
*** The Supreme Courts decision was an asshole in my view ignoring the Supremacy of the Indo Sri Lankan Agreement.
9) One must recall that the unitary state was deemed necessary for Sri Lanka by two stellar legal intellects during the Constitutional debate of 1972 with Mr. SJV Chelvanayakam, and none of the two were Sinhala Buddhist chauvinists: Dr. Colvin R de Silva and Mr. Felix Dias Bandaranaike. Dr. de Silva, a Marxist of Trotskyist persuasion, argued from his scholarly vantage point as the winner of the prize for the best results for the subject of History in the British Empire, that given Sri Lanka’s history and geography, a unitary state was imperative to maintain its unity.
*** Chelvanaygam had too much to drink and Colvin was too high on Nrcotics. Blurred Vision.
10) For him, in other words, in the concrete case of Sri Lanka, there could be no daylight between ‘unitary’ and ‘ united’; united and unitary were coterminous; ‘unitary’ was the condition, indeed the precondition, of unity and territorial integrity.
*** For Tamil Self Determination first and Unitary 2nd and that is how the World sees it and you are yesterdays man. So rest in PIECE.
11) Mr. Samaraweera made certain other dangerous promises with regard to accountability, a concept which he uncritically embraced. He indicated that there would be new laws to create new legal mechanisms, which he attempted to justify and cover up by a reference to the special legislation which set up the Criminal Justice Commission in the early 1970s.
*** He was only reading the Script that was written for him.
12)Mangala also pledged a Truth and Reconciliation Commission with the involvement of South Africa. South Africa’s TRC was in lieu of punitive, lacerating prosecutions. It was itself an accountability mechanism, not an addition to another one. Mangala has just pledged a South African type TRC, not in lieu of but together with a new, special mechanism for accountability!
*** He was only joking.
13) Sri Lanka’s Minister of External Affairs took a sideswipe in his speech at the concept of “sovereignty”. It would have been alright to criticize an erroneous use or even an erroneous notion of sovereignty while simultaneously reiterating one’s own commitment to the concept and its defense, in keeping with the use of that concept in the founding Charter of the United Nations and the platform of the Non Aligned Movement to which Sri Lanka belongs. Significantly Mangala did no such thing.
*** Let me tell you this; Sovereignty in the Sri Lanka context is limited to Indias Security. It must be obvious to even a Toddler like you from the number of visits made by RW, CBK and Mangala post August Election to Delhi and none to Worlds dodgy dealer China.
14) Listening to Zeid Al Hussein and Mangala Samaraweera, I was reminded of the Special Session of May 2009 in which Sri Lanka earned the support of a near two-thirds majority of the Council’s members for our defense of our sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity. During the war years we had successfully fended off, with the support of the Council, two High Commissioners for Human Rights— Louise Arbour and Navi Pillay. Today I was struck by the difference between Sri Lanka—and Sri Lanka’s UN diplomacy– then and now.
*** Sri Lanka is now a Pariah State. Accept defeat and move on. We have come of age after NANTHIKADAL. You have come a cropper.
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Karthigesu M. Nirmalan-Nathan. / September 26, 2015
Dr. Dayan Jayatillaeka an undisputed scholar and an intellectual of high standing in Sri Lanka who defended the actions of then President Megalomaniac is full of criticism of the submission Made by Mangala Samaraweera Hon. Foreign Minister.
The way I read it Sir your main concern was the overused word Tamil in the report. In case you’ve forgotten the whole sordid business was about the gang rape and murder of Tamils. A massacre that crosses the threshold of Genocide by any conceivable definition. Just because you and the Megalomaniac was successful in pulling wool over the eyes of nations during your tenure truth does not go away. It always comes back to bite you in the butt.
Don’t worry sir the current administration, though they are making reconciliatory noises I feel nothing of any significance will come to pass for your Favorite word the “Tamils”
They fill in the blanks in the “Fill in the blank constitution” which I presume your compatriot in your JVP days turned a Dictatorial Megalomaniac with his chinthanawa made such a mockery of. [Edited out]
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Native Vedda / September 26, 2015
Karthigesu M. Nirmalan-Nathan.
“Dr. Dayan Jayatillaeka an undisputed scholar and an intellectual of high standing in Sri Lanka”
Are you sure about what you think he is?
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