Peace for the World

Peace for the World
First democratic leader of Justice the Godfather of the Sri Lankan Tamil Struggle: Honourable Samuel James Veluppillai Chelvanayakam

Monday, February 4, 2013


FCO Minister to answer questions on Sri Lanka via Twitter




Alistair Burt GOV.UK

There will be considerable international interest in Sri Lanka in 2013. In March, there will be a significant report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on promoting reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka at the Human Rights Council in Geneva. The spotlight will also be on Sri Lanka later in the year as hosts of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in November. The UK Parliament continues to follow events in Sri Lanka closely, with debates in Westminster Hall and the House of Lords having already taken place this year.
Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt will answer your questions on the UK’s policy towards Sri Lanka live via Twitter on Tuesday 5th February from 11.15am-12.00pm GMT. Questions can be submitted using the hashtag#askFCO.
Mr Burt will have recently returned from an official visit to Sri Lanka when the Twitter Q&A takes place. He has up to date and first-hand knowledge of the progress that has been made – and the challenges that remain – following the end of the civil war in 2009. A key aim of Mr Burt’s visit to Sri Lanka was to examine the progress towards an inclusive political solution that addresses the underlying causes of the conflict and takes into account the legitimate grievances and aspirations of all Sri Lankans. Mr Burt welcomes questions/suggestions on this and other issues during the Twitter Q&A.
You can watch a video recorded by Mr Burt during his visit to Sri Lanka below.

The timeline slider below uses WAI ARIA. Please use the documentation for your screen reader to find out more.
00:02:5300:05:29

Follow Mr Burt on Twitter @AlistairBurtFCO
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“We will be looking to Sri Lanka to demonstrate its commitment to Commonwealth Values” – Minister Alistair Burt

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The State Of The Left, Post Independence: They Can Still Act

By H.L.Seneviratne -February 4, 2013
Prof.H.L. Seneviratne
Colombo TelegraphThe decline of the Left is one of the many dark chapters of post independence Sri Lanka. This is especially so because the people had the distinct faith that the Left would deliver a prosperous, happy and just society. The failures of the Left are both political and moral. They are perpetuating these failures to this day, and are unwilling to take the steps they readily can, even at this late hour, for the good of the people who placed infinite trust in them. The Left parties have, instead, chosen to enjoy the perks that accompany political or related office.
The Left had heroic, even romantic beginnings. The founders of the first Left party the LSSP, were educated, capable, unblemished, honest and principled. They were nationalists without being tribal chauvinists. They were cosmopolitan in their nationalism, and dreamed of an inclusive nation with a diverse tapestry of citizens: Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Christians and all other (numerically minor) groups. They were anti-imperialists, but not cultural purists. They were modernists and were going to keep, indeed nurture, the good things the country got from the west, like modern rational ideas of society and polity, and democratic institutions. The society they were dreaming of was not a carbon copy of the totalitarian state of the then existing socialist world, the East Bloc, and later China. Their ideal instead was closer to the social democratic society of the type we have today in the Scandinavian countries. The Bracegirdle incident demonstrated their resourcefulness and their willingness to take on the highest of powers when their ideas of justice and fair play were encroached upon.
Their finest hour was 1947 when they, with their breakaway groups and other small parties as partners, became the official opposition. The LSSP would have done even better if not for the splitting of the Left vote by the inability of the LSSP and the Communist Party (CP) to come to a no-contest agreement. For example in the Horana electorate, the UNP candidate A.P.Jayasuriya won by a majority of some 600 votes, whereas the Communist candidate Anagarika Dharmapriya polled some 2000. The CP candidate was a real spoiler, because the LSSP candidate M.T.Pieris polled an impressive 14,000 votes. Had the CP the sense to withdrew its candidate in favour of the clearly more popular LSSP candidate, he would have won by a comfortable majority of some 1500 votes over the UNP candidate. This same pattern occurred in several other electorates as well.
Among their ardent supporters in their heyday were radical, mostly young, Buddhist monks, especially those affiliated with the Vidyalankara monastic college. The support of these monks however, later turned out to be rooted in narrow Sinhala chauvinism, and, as soon as SWRD Bandaranaike formed the SLFP, these monks abandoned the LSSP and defected to Bandaranaike’s chauvinist camp. But while it lasted, the connection between the monks and the LSSP was fruitful. The monks acted as “cultural brokers” for the LSSP leadership who were largely westernized. Even more important, these monks were the translators of Marxist terms for these leaders. These terms have come to stay, and form part of the technical vocabulary of our Political Sociology as practised in Sinhala today. Even though it was the pre-existing Labour Party that first used the public demonstration and the strike as instruments to further worker welfare, it was the LSSP that brought these to the centre of political protest. Being the oldest political party, the LSSP also made a significant contribution to the growth of party based democratic politics. Among their other achievements is their support for the Free Education Act that enabled its passage despite strong conservative opposition, although in the view of the LSSP, it didn’t go anywhere far enough.
Philip Gunawardena is rightly considered the “father of socialism” in Sri Lanka. He more than anyone else among the LSSP founders had active, hands on experience in labour organization in England and elsewhere. Unfortunately and ironically, it is Philip who took the fateful step that destroyed not only the LSSP but as we can now see, the entire socialist movement, and laid the foundation for their more serious problem, moral decay. This is the decision Philip took to join the MEP coalition formed by SWRD Bandaranaike to launch the election campaign of 1956. As a device of coming to power Bandaranaike had accepted lock stock and barrel the narrow Sinhala Buddhist chauvinist platform of the Buddhist monks of Vidyalankara and elsewhere, and the Sinhala educated elite of the countryside.
Such a narrow programme was contrary to the principles of Marxism that Philip Gunawardena supposedly professed, and to the inclusive policy that was fundamental to the LSSP. But to see him in the best light, he may have thought, however naively, that he was strategically “infiltrating” a nationalist capitalist party that would ultimately give him and opportunity to capture state power. To once more see him in the best light, and give him the credit he deserves, during his tenure as a member of the MEP cabinet, he was able to get into the law books a radical piece of legislation that ensured a fair share and security of tenure for tenant peasant farmers (The Paddy Lands Act). But far reaching as this was, it was too little a reward for so massive a sacrifice, that of derailing the entire socialist movement that his defection signified.
The Communist Party joined the MEP coalition too, but they were numerically negligible and discredited anyway as puppets of the Soviet Union, as demonstrated, for example, in the overnight change of their view of World War II from an “imperialist war” to a “people’s war” when the USSR got into the war as a partner of the “allies”. In contrast, the blow that Philip dealt was severe. It not only deprived the LSSP of his rich and valued experience, but more than that, it lent the chauvinist SLFP an entirely undeserved aura of “socialism” at a time socialism meant something, both in world history and the history of Ceylon. Neither Philip, nor the LSSP nor the socialist movement, nor indeed the country as a whole was to ever recover from the injury of this betrayal of the movement by its own “father”. This paradigmatic capitulation to the schemes of wily politicians bent on coming to power by hook or crook was to be repeated by the socialists many times over, with disastrous consequences to themselves and the nation, as is perfectly obvious today to all except the present leadership of the “Traditional Left”.
We can only speculate as to what would have happened had the father of socialism never joined the MEP coalition, and the Left remained united. It is however a reasonable speculation that the MEP would never have got the label “socialist”. They would have tried, but a strong and united LSSP with Philip and others to lead it would have made that claim hollow. The MEP had no rational economic programme, its power-mongering project being largely religio-cultural, and meant to appease the “indigenous elite” that brought it to power. The economy stagnated, and there was widespread unemployment, especially of the educated youth. Thus, conditions were ripe for the entry of a party with credible potential for meaningful economic development and social justice. No party would have so perfectly better fitted that bill than the Left. As we now know, this scenario, with a failing economy and rising educated unemployment as its centrepiece, in fact came into being, but an intelligent and effective agency to give it leadership was missing. Thus by default, that leadership fell into the lap of a pseudo-Marxist adventurer, who went on to form a chauvinist party called the JVP. Had Philip never broke away, and the rest of the LSSP never joined hands with the SLFP as it did in 1965, it’s they, the Left, that would have given leadership to the forces arising out of the failure of the SLFP. That would have been an able and cosmopolitan leadership that could, among other successes, have helped build an inclusive nation. JVP, LTTE and State terror would never have raised their ugly heads in such an inclusive nation, and that nation, with its mosaic of ethnicities and religions and equal citizenship, would never have had to endure the mass suffering and large scale destruction inflicted by these three monsters.
For the sceptical reader who might consider the above as mere speculation, my answer is that it indeed is. But I speculate responsibly, with a clear and positive purpose, however unrealistic it may be. That purpose is to point out that even at this late stage, and after all the colossal damage done since Philip joined hands with the reactionaries in 1956, the Left can still act. They can still demonstrate that they have a modicum of concern for the people, and a modicum of substance as moral beings. They can still demonstrate that they have a modicum of concern for the future of the country as a democracy based on equal rights and the rule of law. To do so, they must resign their ministerial and other positions forthwith, and join the Opposition. They must sit down with all opposition parties with a view to building a common opposition to the present misrule by (1) an energetic programme, by means of frequent mass rallies all over the country, of making the people aware of the extent of the present misrule, and the depths to which it is leading the country, and (2) by staging relentless public protest at incidents of impunity, corruption, crime, discrimination and nepotism. When elections draw near, they should as the common opposition, map out a manifesto, a rational and humanist Cintanaya, stating the ingredients of a methodical programme of economic development with social justice. They should use the privilege of speech they enjoy in Parliament and use every minute of allotted time, every day the Parliament meets, to expose the present regime’s abysmal record. These actions will constitute a better exercise for the Left leadership than enjoying laid back the luxury and perks of office that ultimately derive from the sweat and blood of the very working people for whom they are supposed to give theirsweat and blood; and than bringing daily disgrace to their founders who dedicated themselves to the task of ameliorating the conditions of the people. Taking this step is also more honourable than to practice the logic of the Left’s “firebrand” Vasudeva Nanayakkara who reportedly said he is opposed to the 18th amendment, but was voting for it.
Tissa Vitarana, DEW Gunasekera and other Left leaders, I am not holding my breath. But I chide you. I accuse you. I challenge you to summon your conscience, and to live up to the ideals of your founders. In the unlikely event you act on what I suggest, there is a whole nation waiting to salute you, and golden letters waiting to be written about you in history books. Or you can continue in fealty and disgrace. The choice is yours.
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Sri Lanka slams moves to interfere in its internal affairs

COLOMBO, Feb. 4 (Xinhua) --  2013-02-04 
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Monday criticized attempts by some countries to interfere in the internal affairs of his country.President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Monday criticized attempts by some countries to interfere in the internal affairs of his country.
He made the remarks in a speech to the nation while marking the 65th Independence Day celebrations in eastern Trincomalee.
Reading out from the UN Charter, President Rajapaksa said that every nation has a right to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
He also said that the best way his government responds to allegations from some countries is to invite their leaders to visit Sri Lanka and see firsthand the post war situation.
Sri Lanka has been criticized by some countries over its alleged human rights abuses during the war.
Sri Lanka is expected to face pressure during the UN Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva which will begin at the end of this month with the U.S. already saying that it will put forward a resolution against the country.
The government has been accused of failing to address alleged human rights abuses believed to have been committed by the military during the final stages of the war against the Tamil Tiger rebels.
Later, speaking in Tamil, the president urged Tamils not to fall prey to the false propaganda of the Tamil Diaspora.
He also assured that he will not leave room for the country to be divided by creating a religious or racial rift, calling on all communities to live together with equal rights.
He also said that the opposition in Sri Lanka has a responsibility to protect the independence of the nation.
However, Sri Lanka's main opposition party, the United National Party (UNP) boycotted the government's Independence Day celebrations and decided to hold their own celebrations instead.
"We decided to hold our own celebrations in Galle this year. Therefore none of our members attended the government's celebrations," UNP MP Ravi Karunanayaka told Xinhua.
President Rajapaksa, meanwhile, said the country will continue with its non-aligned foreign policy and strengthen it's ties with non-aligned nations.
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Delegates from 15 countries invited for the Sri Lanka Independence Day celebration


Monday , 04 February 2013
A reports state, delegates from 15 countries operating from New Delhi was invited to attend the Sri Lanka's 65th Independence Day celebration.
They were invited as state invitees to attend the celebration which is held at Trincomalee today.
Ambassadors from 11 countries, High Commissioners from three countries and one official in charge of diplomatic affairs were among the invitees.
Ambassadors  from Afghanistan, Azerbaijani, kacakstan, Peru, Culoveniya, Sweden, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Ukraine and High Commissioners from Rwanda, Papua New guinea and Uganda and official in charge of diplomatic affairs from Lesotho were invited to Sri Lanka.
Approximately 40 countries embassies located in Sri Lanka.  In New Delhi about 80 countries embassies are rendering diplomatic service to Sri Lanka.  Out of these countries, only 15 delegates  from the respective countries, were invited to Colombo.
Kacakstan, Venezuela,  Burkina Faso, Uganda and Peru are membership countries of United Nation Human Rights Council. 

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He’d Nail The Coffin So We Could Create A New Lanka – Post 2013

By Kusal Perera -February 4, 2013
Kusal Perera
Colombo TelegraphI was born to independent “Ceylon”. Never ever migrated to any country and never lived outside this country, even for a short spell. Now I sit reading about last minute preparations for the 65th Independence Day celebrations of “Sri Lanka”. This time in the Eastern port city of Trincomalee. Looking back, I wonder if this is the same country, we grew up in.
In early post independent Ceylon, we went to school, played and fought together while growing up together, with Susils and Upuls, Sivams and Eswarans, Brians and Marios. Didn’t bother which language one spoke and what temple, kovil or church the other went to. I was admitted to Greenlands College, down Greenlands Road adjoining Havelock Park, but left Isipathana Maha Vidyalaya, on Isipathana Mawatha, now adjoining Sir Henry Pedris Udyanaya. Yet, I never changed schools.
While in primary school, we were rushed home once through Galle Road, with burning boutiques and goons going down lanes, leaving houses going up in smoke. Next morning we woke up to see the military patrolling our road, while two small khaki tents were being erected in the esplanade, next to our lane. Still growing up together as before, we did not notice “Allan Avenue” becoming “Dharmapala Mawatha”, some who wore white drill long trousers, changing to white poplin “redda – baniyama” called the “national” dress and vehicle number plates changing from “EY” and “EN” to “1 Sri” to “2 Sri” and then to “3 Sri”.
It took a little longer to understand what all that meant to post independent Ceylon, later turned into the “independent and sovereign” State called, Republic of Sri Lanka. It took even longer time to understand, what it would all mean for present day little kids, Sinhala, Tamil or Muslim (no more Burghers here) who would not know how rich a kid’s life is, playing and growing together in a tri lingual, multi religious and multi cultural neighbourhood. A dynamic milieu that does not stop to question diversity but moves along, living the benefits of that diverse milieu. One that allows a larger life than what their young parents would applaud for, when President Rajapaksa promises “post war” comfort without “terrorism”, from the independence day podium in Trincomalee, celebrating 65 years of independence from British colonial rule.
We’ve not gained anything better or more, than what was offered to us as “independence”. Sixty five years ago, the first elected government, hastily moved to disfranchise over half a million people from a population of almost 07 million. The single, largest contributor to our economy, made “Stateless” overnight on a soil, they were required to toil for a measly daily wage to eke out a living, but contribute as before to an economy of a country, they were aliens to. Fifty seven years ago, from a total population of about 8.5 million, around 2.6 million were dislodged from the State and its effective functions, with Sinhala language made the ONLY official language of the State.
With two gaping holes made in the fabric of our society within 08 years from Independence, the majority Sinhala constituency travelled along regardless. We’ve now come to what is called a “post war” era. Sinhala extremism wanted to believe and they learnt to believe, the LTTE could only be defeated militarily. Theorists for this ‘Sinhala school of thought’ argued, no political solution could be negotiated, with the LTTE around. Therefore, no social mindset was allowed in the Sinhala South that would accommodate a political solution and that to be negotiated. It was all “gung ho” for a war, its brutality never talked of. Yet, this post war era, is not what the Sinhala majority said it would be, after the “Tamil Tigers” are defeated.
The LTTE was not seen and accepted as the outgrowth of “majoritarian extremism” that sabotaged the political compromise for independence, 65 years ago. The list of broken promises and agreements, marginalising from the State that was taken over by Sinhala political extremism, communal thuggery let loose on life, repression ordered against Tamil civil rights campaigns, a long history of almost two and a half decades of political uprooting till the 1972 Republican Constitution, was comfortably forgotten as the ground which created and nurtured the radicalising of Tamil politics and its transformation from democratic agitations to armed insurgency.
The period from there to the next “Republican Constitution” in 1978 with an Executive Presidency, made it far worse. With an unprecedented majority in the history of post independent parliamentary elections that in 1977 gave President Jayawardne 140 MPs in a 168 seat parliament, 1983 was turned Black, with politically jealous scheming, after the referendum in December 1982 that postponed elections for six more years.
There was nothing spontaneous in that July pogrom against Tamil people. Hardly a fortnight before the pogrom, President Jayawardne was quoted by Ian Ward in the “London Daily Telegraph” of 11 July as saying, “… I am not worried about the opinion of the Jaffna people now… Now we cannot think of them. Not about their lives or of their opinion about us… The more you put pressure in the north, the happier the Sinhala people will be here… really, if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy…”
After the pogrom that devastated the lives of many thousand Tamil people and the reputation of Sinhala Buddhists as compassionate and hospitable set of people, Gamini Dissanayake, Minister of Land and Land Development and also the President of the Lanka Jathika Estate
Workers’ Union, told its Ex-co on 05 September the same year, “….We have decided to colonise four districts including Mannar with Sinhalese people by destroying forests. A majority of Sinhalese will be settled there. If you like you also can migrate there.” [“Sri Lanka: the story of the holocaust.” N. Shanmugathasan. (1984). p.74]
This war by the Rajapaksas was ideologically and politically the continuation of President Jayawardne’s Sinhala supremacist approach to the Tamil political conflict. If it wasn’t for such powerful executive power with overall control over a huge majority in parliament, Jayawardne would not have treaded such a blatantly racist path. Almost a quarter century later, it was that same executive power in the hands of President Rajapaksa and a far more subordinate parliament, which helped the war and then helps everything else that comes after war. Everything the Sinhala South thought would not be their lot in post war Sri Lanka, is now theirs to stay.
The war has only made the Rajapaksas “great”. Its euphoria, hyped and cultivated by the Rajapaksa regime helped it to shelve the 17 Amendment and install the 18 Amendment to the Constitution. That left two major aberrations. One, a totally politicised State allowing for politically calculated heavy corruption and two, a presidency that now can be extended to unlimited terms. Such heavy usurping and accruing of political power, has been used to militarise the Tamil North and politicise the Sinhala village. Most violence and crimes in Sinhala rural life thus have two very conspicuous factors. One, the ruling political party agents like Pradeshiya Sabha members and organisers committing most crimes and two, the war making weapons available in plenty, for easy money. A reflection of total breakdown of law and order in a heavily corrupt society, contradicting the post war expectations of the Sinhala people.
With such arrogant and corrupt power, this regime is on no road to economic stability and growth. Numericals arranged in glittering formations to the liking of the Central Bank boss does not say how the people live in this economy. Its the Census & Statistics Department that would tell one, the minimum monthly cost required for a family of four to just “exist” with bare minimum necessities and food that provides the minimum calories necessary. The latest available “Survey on Household Incomes & Expenditures – 2009/2010” by the C&S department reveals, the monthly cost of food alone for a family in Colombo district as Rs. 16,121 and the same in Jaffna district as Rs. 14,878. That gives an average of Rs. 15,500 as necessary for food alone which is said to be only 35% of the family requirement for a whole month. Thus the minimum “living cost” in SL in 2010 at an average was Rs. 44,500. With an inflation of 9.8 percent recorded this January, any family would now need a minimum “living cost” of Rs.50,000 per month and going up.
Nothing more needs to be said about this economy, which is being plundered right royally. IMF has never helped any country to get back to saner economic management and out of catastrophe. The next negotiated IMF loan by this Rajapaksa regime would therefore not help the SL people. It may help this regime to hold on to a declining economy managed by wholly corrupt men in right places, in a fast collapsing law and order situation. The North and Tamil life is being finely meshed in, within military control. President’s own LLRCRecommendations are rubbished by a military report on war. But, the usual ploy in hoisting a demon in waiting at the Sinhala gate, this time “Halal” and the Muslims, would not work as the previous demon did. Legitimising a rogue organisation by giving them an audience at Temple Trees, would not also work that fast and that surreptitiously.
For a person with over 04 decades of popular politics in him, no expert is necessary to tell him, its now time to tighten the screws on every aspect of decent human living. The apex Courts thus came under the Rajapaksa regime with an impeachment in parliament ousting the 43rd Chief Justice (CJ) to install a much corroded personality as the 44th CJ. If, yes IF, the tide goes beyond that of a normal swell, the Rajapaksas are now all set to drive the last nail on a fast decaying democratic life. The elections, one to elect the next parliament is at stake and would stand threatened, with a CJ who would interpret the Constitution without any bias to the people.
What and where could the answer be ? The alternative ? The two main players to date, those who have been working hard with the International Community (IC) and those in the Sinhala Opposition working hard to out do Rajapaksa as a Sinhala leader, would never help produce an alternative to Rajapaksa. The IC would not go beyond a carefully worded statement that could satisfy their own pressure groups and human rights lobbies. Next March and the UNHRC would once again extend its right to review SL, till the next UNHRC. May be with another resolution and their HR lobbies told, all’s under control. The Rajapaksas would tell their Sinhala constituency the same. All’s under control. IC is now well understood by President Rajapaksa as a spent cartridge. With the other player, none could outfox a scheming Sinhala leader holding onto power, from the Opposition that does not even have Sinhala trader backing. But, that said, lets not forget, with Rajapaksas working overtime to drive the final nail on the coffin of democratic and economic life in this country, that is what allows for an alternative to be debated within that brewing political crisis. Sixty five years after independence, that could be the Rajapaksa contribution, in getting out of a total mess.
Human societies just don’t give in. There is always a fight back, I believe, for the better.
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Rule of law, institutional integrity crucial to attract investment

Economic development necessary but not exclusive, LLRC must be implemented, says visiting UK minister

article_imageFebruary 3, 2013
Visiting British Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Alistair Burt (right), at a discussion with Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa last week.

As Sri Lanka celebrates its 65 year of independence from British colonial rule, a visiting UK Minister Alistair Burt says he has encouraged the Sri Lankan government to cut red tape, to address corruption and to set up an effective co-ordinating mechanisms for investment – each of which would make Sri Lanka a more attractive market for investors.  

"I have again welcomed the end of the war, and the end of horrific LTTE terrorism in Sri Lanka.  But I have also called on all parties to uphold civil and political freedoms, and for the government to set an example. We believe in maintaining independent institutions, in encouraging individuals to speak out and engage constructively in debate.  The rule of law is crucial to long-term prosperity. Respect for our legal systems is part of the cultural heritage of both the UK and Sri Lanka.  As a lawyer myself it is a principle I feel particularly strongly about," Burt said, delivering a guest lecture last week on "Sri Lanka: 2013 and beyond" at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute for International Relations and Strategic Studies.

"For businesses, as well as individuals, knowing that there are fair, transparent and independent mechanisms for resolving disputes is essential.  And the concepts found within our legal systems – certainty of contract, non-retroactivity and the equal application of laws – are the foundation for business and growth.

"This is why judicial independence is a core principle in free countries; why justice must not only be done, but also be seen to be done.  It is why we and others, such as the International Commission of Jurists and the UN, have expressed deep concern at the recent impeachment and dismissal of Sri Lanka’s Chief Justice.  And it is why we are so concerned to make sure individuals are brought to justice.  In particular in cases of violent attack, it simply cannot be right for the accused to be walking free.  As the LLRC said, the rule of law must prevail regardless of the political links of alleged wrongdoers.

"But the golden thread is not about individual cases or issues; it is about institutions, about embedding cultures of transparency and consistency and fairness into the very way in which we operate.  

"And we can all improve on this.  Sri Lanka, coming out of 30 years of conflict, has a particularly difficult, and particularly important, job.  Re-embedding a culture of peaceful settlement of differences and adherence to due process will strengthen your institutions and your economy for future generations.

"I am frequently reminded – by the government here, by victims of the conflict and independent observers – that war only ended in Sri Lanka in 2009.  Less than four years ago this country was in the throes of a hugely violent conflict that claimed thousands of lives on all sides.  

" We are, without question, happy to see the end of LTTE terrorism, and the end of war, in Sri Lanka.

" The UK has also suffered at the hands of terrorists.  In 1973 alone, over 30 bombs exploded in London as a result of the Irish Republican Army’s campaign of terrorism.

" So we know that dealing with the results of conflict takes time.  And we know that Sri Lanka has done much already – not least resettling internally displaced persons, demining huge areas and committing to reforms that allow all citizens to communicate in their preferred language.  

" But our experience in Northern Ireland tells us that long-term peace can only be achieved through an inclusive political settlement that addresses the underlying causes of the conflict.  We learnt hard lessons from Northern Ireland.  Because of the time it took to reach a political settlement, more lives were lost than should have been.

" As I made clear to ministers here earlier today, more work is needed to deliver the path to reconciliation that the President has frequently and sincerely advocated.  The Government must ensure that all citizens can benefit more fully from the peace dividend and that peace is embedded for the long term.

" And as I have said before, the LLRC report contains many constructive recommendations for action on post-conflict reconciliation and a political settlement. If the report is implemented in full, we believe it would go a long way to achieving lasting peace. Economic development is a necessary, but not exclusive, answer to these challenges.  

"The actions suggested by the LLRC include a national day of remembrance for all victims of the conflict, closure for the families of missing persons through access to detainee lists, returning IDPs back to their homes, a political settlement which protects minority rights. These are sensible recommendations, coming from Sri Lanka’s own reconciliation commission, which will accelerate Sri Lanka’s recovery from conflict.

" The LLRC rightly pointed to the need for political institutions which give all communities a voice, and the need for steps to recognise, remember and reconcile the divisions of war.  Part of this must also include accountability before the law for those on all sides accused of human rights abuses during the conflict. And that applies equally to investigating and prosecuting disappearances and abductions that have happened since 2009, as well as answering allegations of crimes committed during the war.

"We applaud the establishment of the Commission. Now is the time for implementation," Burt said.

Development....

"Since my visit to Sri Lanka in 2011, I have indeed been struck by the development that has taken place here.  The absence of conflict has brought greater security and opened up opportunities throughout Sri Lanka," Burt said. 

"During uncertain economic times your economy has continued to experience high levels of growth – which is something we are seeing across the country.  On my visit to the North yesterday I saw firsthand the changes that are taking place there, with much-needed economic development.

" Your infrastructure has developed rapidly, with new roads and bridges opening up the North and East.  This is making it easier for businesses to expand throughout the island, and helping to reconnect communities.

"But it is much more than new roads and bridges.  You only have to look around Colombo to see quite how much things are changing here – construction work is everywhere you look.  There are new homes, offices, hotels, hospitals.  The Colombo Lotus Tower, whose foundation stone was laid just over a year ago, will be among the tallest structures in the world when it is completed."

A strong bilateral
relationship…

"I am pleased that the UK continues to play a strong role in supporting Sri Lanka’s development. One crucial element of this is helping Sri Lanka to recover from decades of conflict.  The Department for International Development has contributed £3 million for demining work, much of which has been carried out by British charities.  The UK has also provided extensive funding through the European Union for the re-housing of those displaced by war, and for the reintegration of former combatants.  

" But, of course, our relationship goes still deeper. There are over 100 British companies operating in Sri Lanka, including familiar names such as HSBC, Unilever and Standard Chartered.  I understand that British Airways is returning later this year, reflecting the fact that British tourists continue to visit Sri Lanka in large numbers.  

" Indeed, over 100,000 UK citizens visited last year, accounting for more than 10 percent of the total number of tourists visiting your country, and they are making a significant contribution to the Sri Lankan economy.  

" The UK is your second-largest trading partner after India.  

" Our links on education are strong too.  Each year, around 8,000 young Sri Lankans choose to study in the UK.  In addition, 27 UK colleges and universities offer British-accredited education here in Sri Lanka.  And we are excited by plans for one British university to open up the first in-country foreign campus next year.  

"Our British Council also plays a key role in ensuring current and future workforces continue to have excellent English language skills.  I am delighted that they are planning to open a third branch in Jaffna later this year, to complement those in Colombo and Kandy.

"So Britain and Sri Lanka continue to enjoy a close and mutually-beneficial relationship covering a whole range of areas and built on our long history and mutual interest," Burt said.
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