The Complex Challenges Our Society Now Faces
JC Weliamuna
Ven Sirs, Excellencies, friends, ladies and gentlemen
It’s with mixed feelings that I have got up to speak. I am pleased, honored and humbled to accept this award and to join the long admired and respected past recipients. Let me at the very outset thank the board & the Governing Council of the National Peace Council and its staff, in particular its Chairman Mr. Tony Senewiratne and the Executive Director Dr. Jehan Perera, for selecting me for this award. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised with the award. I am so pleased that some very special persons were able to come and share this evening with me. I greatly appreciate presence of all of you.
With my somewhat unsafe and challenging experience for half a century, I thought of using this opportunity to share with you some of my observations on the complex challenges our society now faces, and offering my thoughts on them.
To go back to a few decades, I was in primary school when the 1971 insurrection struck the South, when we saw dead bodies floating in rivers. I recall very well the 1983 July riots, which I witnessed in Colombo, where a large number of Tamils were killed and their property destroyed, followed by the notorious 6th Amendment, chasing the Tamil political leadership away from the main stream of politics. Disappearances, dead bodies and destruction continued in late 1980s and beyond. Then, we saw bloodshed all over the country – mainly in the North and East – in a bloody conflict, where thousands died, disappeared, tortured and imprisoned. This is what my generation witness in our youth.Read More
