Mahindapala tells Diaspora: Forget returning to post-Nanthikadal situ

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Mahindapala tells Diaspora: Forget returning to post-Nanthikadal situNovember 30, 2010, 9:46 pm
By Shamindra Ferdinando
H. L. D. Mahindapala, former editor of The Sunday Observer, says the Tamil Diaspora and the LTTE rump should be made to understand that a separate State in the Northern and Eastern Provinces would never be a reality. The Australia-based activist insists that those who still harbour separatist sentiments should realise a post-Nanthikadal scenario isn’t realistic. The LTTE collapsed on May 19, last year on the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon.
Testifying before the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) on Monday (Nov. 29) Mahindapala, who represented the World Alliance of Peace in Sri Lanka, discussed several issues, including the pivotal importance of engaging the Tamil Diaspora and meeting the threat posed by foreign funded NGO/INGOs.
Referring to the Vadukkoddai Resolution of May 14, 1976, Mahindapala asserted that the country wouldn’t revert to that situation. The veteran journalist said that with the collapse of the LTTE the entire political landscape had changed. The Vadukoddai Resolution had lost its political rationale and its power to spawn violence, he said. Responding to a query by LLRC member Mrs. Mano Ramanathan, Mahindapala said the Tamil Diaspora and the LTTE rump had been split into three sections, with two of them headquartered in Oslo and Germany still advocating violence.
But the New York-based group led by lawyer V. Rudrakumarana, which recently formed a ‘provisional transnational government of Tamil Eelam’, could be a bit more amenable to a settlement, he asserted.
Asked by LLRC member Dr. Rohan Perera whether failures on the part of the traditional Tamil political leadership as well as the southern political leadership had contributed to the rise of Tamil terrorism, Mahindapala said that the Sinhalese were willing to accommodate the Tamils. Unfortunately, some Tamil leaders, particularly G. G. Ponnambalam and S. J. V. Chelvanayagam had pursued separatist policy at the expense of the national interest.
Mahindapala alleged that their policy of seeking territory and political power had caused mayhem. He accused the Tamil political leaders of triggering ethnic riots way back in 1939, whereas many tend to believe everything started after Black July of 1983.
Supporting what he called a trilingual government, Mahindapala said that Chinese would be the language of the future. He stressed the importance of ensuring that all communities deal with government offices in their languages. He went on to cite an incident in a court to show how people had been at the mercy of translators, with former Attorney General C. R. de Silva, who heads the LLRC listening to him attentively.
Responding to LLRC member H. M. G. S. Palihakkara, Mahindapala described the Diaspora as solid powerful political block, which could interfere in both foreign and domestic policies in Sri Lanka. In the wake of the LTTE’s defeat, the government had to launch a special effort to win over the Diaspora, Mahindapala said.
Unlike in the past, the Diaspora had indicated its readiness to change, though the new generation of Tamils could pose a serious problem due their ignorance of the situation back at home, he said.
Citing the international media focus on some 300,000 IDPs at the end of the war against the LTTE in May last year, Mahindapala said that wouldn’t have been possible without lobbying by the Diaspora. In the post-LTTE era one of the most important issues was a strategy to tackle the Diaspora, he said, adding that the government should set up a special unit within the External Affairs Ministry or the Presidential Secretariat to deal with the situation.
Mahindapala emphasised the importance of all communities contributing to national reconciliation. He said that unlike the conflict between the Jews and Arabs, here in Sri Lanka Sinhalese and Tamils could reach a settlement.
Commenting on UN panel inquiring investigating alleged war crimes during the Eelam war IV, Mahindapala said that the UN was trying to discount Sri Lanka’s greatest achievement in the living memory of Sri Lankans.
Mahindapala lashed out at NGOs and their funding agencies for undermining less developed countries like Sri Lanka. In his written submissions to the LLRC, Mahindapala said: "To the West it is cheaper to outsource their foreign policy agenda to hired hands in local NGOs because they have proved to be highly sophisticated agents who can push the Western political agenda at a cheaper rate than their costly career diplomats posted in Adis Ababa, Islamabad or Colombo."
Mahindapala said: "When we talk of reconciliation, we mean essentially the reconciliation of the Sinhalese with the Tamil speaking community that took up arms demanding a separate State. What has been ignored is that the majority community’s relations with the other two Tamil speaking communities, the Muslims and the Indian Tamils, have remained undisturbed. This single political statistic is revealing because the Sinhalese who have been denigrated as extremists, chauvinists, anti-Tamil racists could never have succeeded in co-existing peacefully with two Tamil speaking communities if they are bad as they are painted to be."