Neglect Of The Tamil Community: Time For NPP To Take Note & Change Course

By S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole 

Tamils in Government? Who?

We who inhabit the North and East, Tamils in particular, have been habitually neglected by all governments. When a Tamil was included in the cabinet, it was a stooge to say that Tamils had representation and in exchange the Minister was allowed to distribute jobs for a bribe and even take over other people’s property with impunity, and kill opponents.

After such neglect under various governments that came to power on grandiose promises – especially the government of Maithripala Sirisena – that were never kept, we thought may be the NPP would be better. Many Tamils gave it our support. I am writing this to urge the government to adhere to its promises and shore up the support that the Tamils gave it. This is in the same spirit in which I published on Sunday my piece “Meandering Lenten Thoughts From Nallur Bhavan Restaurant. However, it does not seem to have gone well with the government and a friend of almost 15 years in a personal communication called parts of it “third class fake,” adding, “Publishing or using these [kinds] of utterly low level stuff ‘as Ur evidence’ isn’t good for Ur reputation.” He asked me to check with the Chinese as if they would agree it is their letter.

I do not think the government quite realizes how precarious its support among Tamils is to dismiss benign advice and serious charges that demand thorough investigation. It is the easy but suicidal way out of the dilemma that deemands leadership. As I said, the government must not fail and we cannot afford to let it fail. For, the alternative, as Paikiasothi Saravanamuttu astutely points out, is Namal Kumaraya. That would be a disaster for not only Tamils but also the Sinhalese and Muslims as well.

The Law on Local Government Nominations

The law does not seem to matter in Sri Lanka. What matters is whether you know the AG, the police, the judges and the JSC as I found many of these players saving their errant friends on the wrong side of the law. Showing how inadequately the law is studied in these times of election, a published note from the Election Commission of Sri Lanka says non-citizens cannot contest at the local authority elections.

A note from IFES says likewise: “According to Articles 88 and 89 of the constitution on citizens of Sri Lanka who are: 1) 18 years of age or older; 2) registered in the appropriate register of electors; and 3) are not subject to any of the disqualifications identified in the law are eligible to vote in the election.” This needs reexamination especially after a German citizen was disqualified this time.

The Constitutional prohibitions on dual- and non-citizens in Articles 88-91 are only for voting for President and for MPs and at Referenda; not for local authority elections. However, there is a clause on not having fealty to foreign powers which can be taken to disqualify a dual citizen.

What is clear is that to be a candidate, one must be registered as an elector in the appropriate register. So if you are contesting in Jaffna for example, you ought to be a registered voter in Jaffna.

Such lack of or carelessness with the rule of law is what has allowed the Sinhalese to undermine minorities. To start with, there are already allegations that the NPP Mayoral candidate Suntharamoorthy Kapilan is not resident in Jaffna as he claimed in his nomination papers. He has listed the NPP Office as his actual residential address whereas his alleged address given by Aingaran Kugathasan is far out of Jaffna. His workplace, University of Jaffna is not a part of the Jaffna Municipality. What will the NPP do if Kapilan’s candidature is challenged?

Recall 2018 when according to Court of Appeal filings reported by  K. Sivapakiam, V. Manivannan, the leader of the opposition in Jaffna, was allegedly involved in a case that involved untrue addresses and even forgery of deeds to prove a municipal address. Just a day or two before judgement, the Plaintiff withdrew his case in supposed intrigues among lawyers who even complained recently to the AG against the police investigating Jaffna’s leading legal luminaries including a law Dean for forging deeds and defrauding ordinary folk. Such is the state of the law here. The NPP  must fight this, not join forces with the fraudsters. Minimally the NPP must review Kapilan’s cadidature. Its interest in upholding the law ought to be higher than safeguarding a potentially illegal candidature.

Fake Report

I will also touch briefly on matters concerning the NPP in my article from Sunday. Annexed is the radar station deep inside the Velanai Navy Base that was acquired after great difficulty – through a party headed by GA/Mannar that went to an islet in the seas between Velanai and India. The photo can be dismissed as a “third class fake” for party purposes, or better tell us why there is a need for a radar now with no war after the LTTE was decimated.

Crimes Against Humanity

At Batalanda may be a few hundred were tortured. Terrible though it was, what happened to the 1983 riots in Jaffna was far more terrible. Who has been punished? Hundreds of Tamils lost homes and houses but when Sinhalese MPs lost houses during Aragalya, they were compensated far more than their houses were worth. That is Sri Lankan justice. Jaffna alone saw 2000 killed as I heard Mr. A. Amirthalingam testify in New York carefully enumerating how many were killed where.

What happened to the Truth Commission report, by a Commission appointed by Chandrika in 2001 and headed by retired chief justice S Sharvananda,  working with MM Zuhair, a lawyer and former ruling party legislator, and SS Sahabandu, a lawyer? Is parliament not interested? Where is their report? Is the JVP interested or not? Why the interest in Batalanda but not in the Tamils killed brutally in the streets of Colombo before international media? Is there no shame? No pride in our country as a place where justice prevails?

That brings us to war crimes. I recall with some glee the Batalanda Commission Report being dissected in parliament as the NPP promised to bring crime to heel. But why bring to heel only your political enemies? Why the deafening silence over other reports buried in dark rooms? What happened to the Truth Commission report? I doubt that Justice Sharvananda would have helped bury it.

Kris Thomas, a Colombo-based journalist writing for Pan Jordon OP (30 April 2024) details so many uninvestigated deaths. About Mahinda Rajapakse, says Kris Thomas,

Rajapaksa’s own brother, Gotabaya, was accused of obstructing investigations into mass graves discovered in Matale when he was a military officer at the height of the JVP armed insurrection in 1989. Later, when Gotabaya was the secretary to the Ministry of Defense from 2005 to 2015 in his brother Rajapaksa’s government, in 2013 he ordered the destruction of all police records older than five years after mass graves were discovered in the Matale district of central Sri Lanka, which yielded over 150 human remains that are yet to be identified. Atop the location of the site now stands a state hospital.

Today we find President Dissanayake, Gotabaya and Ranil falling before and worshipping Buddhist prelates in a strange world I do not understand. Two of these three Presidents to our shame as a country,  have been sanctioned by Canada for “gross and systematic violations of human rights” committed during the civil war. The US too. And people like Shavendra Silva go about strutting like peacocks with their medals which really are a dishonour to all of us that we should honour such people. But they trot around Sri Lanka as great men, shameless that many of us care two hoots for them.  Another perfidious soldier sanctioned is staff sergeant Sunil Ratnayake of Mirusivil massacre fame and pardoned by Gota even though Sirisena’s pardon to Jude Shramantha Jayamaha of Royal Park fame was ruled uinconstitutional by the supreme court. Tamil-killers are safe. I believe that our legal system is a sham and a show.

Adds Thomas

The scope of these commissions was limited to particular periods or areas. For instance, the Commissions of Inquiry into the Involuntary Removal or Disappearance of Persons, known locally as the B.G. De Silva Commission, was tasked to investigate only disappearances that took place after January 1991. However, it has been said that disappearances reached their peak in 1989, so a critical period fell outside the commission’s purview. In another example, the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Involuntary Removal or Disappearance of Persons, established in 1994, was limited to reviewing disappearances that took place after 1988 and only in certain areas. Significantly, this commission did not have the authority to investigate disappearances in the Tamil-majority northern and eastern regions. Do Tamil lives matter in Sri Lanka?

Will the NPP government reopen investigations? Will it investigate Shavendra de Silva? The US and Canada have plenty of evidence on which these sanctions are imposed and will share it. The Department of State has designated Lieutenant General Shavendra Silva based on credible information of his involvement, through command responsibility, in gross violations of human rights, namely extrajudicial killings

Corruption by the Federal Party with the NPP as Accessory after the fact

In the little law I was taught as an undergraduate while studying Industrial Law, I was taught that if I steal/murder and someone helps me later to coverup, he too is a thief/murderer – an accessory after the fact. Similarly, every President since JR, as noted above, covered up murder and all of them are accessories to murder – some even before the fact. According to the Serious Crimes Act of 2007 (UK), following common law principles, the maximum sentence is the same as for committing the actual offence, which in the case of murder is life (section 58(2)).

So if there is any semblance of law in this country, all our Presidents deserve the death penalty (effectively life in prison although like Ratnayake of Mirusuvil fame, they will get pardons).

Since my accounts from Sunday have been accused of fakery by a Minister, let me begin with the corruption by GA/Jaffna, Mr. M. Piratheepan. There is no fakery in this account which is based on an RTI report and an inquiry report by former Mullaithivu GA Uma Maheswaran.

At the time, about the period 1994, Piratheepan was the Pradeshya Sabai Secretary. Under a government land alienation scheme in the village of Suthanthirapuram in Udayarkattu North an award of 21 acres of land was made to one G.S. Emmanuel on 20.04.1968. Since this permit land  is not transferable, the land was transferred briefly on 23.03.1994 from G.S. Emmanuel to one Sellaiah Aarai and then quickly on 06.02.1995 to one by the same surname but different initials – namely Robert Nelson Emmanuel. The same surname hid the transaction from immediate notice. In that battle period, since documents got lost, it is not known on what basis the transfer was made. But on the basis of the lost permit in battle times, a 2nd copy of the permit was issued validating the ownership.

Such permit-land ownership cannot be transferred. Such permits being for people below a stipulated salary, an officer grade District Secretary earning about Rs. 150,000 a month, declared his designation as ADP and his salary as Rs. 32,000 a month. He gave his name as Sivajeyanthan of presumed initial S. not given in the report commissioned in 2024/25 by Governor/North N. Vedanayahan. It was an assigned task to GA/Mullaitivu Uma Umamaheswaran when all these shenanigans occurred. Two acres of land were assigned to Sivajeyanthan and an additional acre to the mother of the latter, Mrs.T. Rohini (resident in Puthukudiyiruppu Ward 2, Combavil). Umamaheswran also pointed out that a wrong identity card number had been used for the new Emmanuel. These land transactions are under the Chairmanship and purview of District Secretary and Provincial Commission Coordinator, S. Sivamohan, who also was former MP for Vavuniya and former NPC Member, both on Federal Party tickets.

Sivamohan was denied nomination by the Federal Party in 2023 and has filed a case against the Federal Party. This long ignored corruption in the party explains why it fared so badly in the elections.

Governor Vedanayahan, together with two more damning reports against Piratheepan, has handed them over to the President and another copy to someone else I cannot identify.

And who is this federalist stalwart Sivamohan who sanctioned these transactions with Piratheepan according to the Umakanthan report? It is none other than the former Federal Party MP for Vavuniya and elder brother of his helpmeet in crime Sivjeyanthan who got 2 acres unlawfully and son of Mrs. Rohini who got 1 acre.

Now why is President AK Dissanayake sitting on the damning reports? Is it to gain something from him? Perhasps to get some dirty work done by him as quid pro quo? The President surely is an accessory to theft by safeguarding Piratheepan. A clean Sri Lank means cleaning up Jaffna of undesirables like Piratheepan.  We want more than swept roads.

Holding up Investments in Mannar

Six months after the NPP government took office, a viable boat service to the small islets off Mannar has not taken off even after the Ministry of Defence urged approval on 29 Nov. 2023. Although not awarded, the project has a tail called big money wagging dog called the state and I dare say filling the pockets of some people.

Without approval, greenlights have been given by the corpulent Navy Commaders like in how pilots’ fees are put into the private bank accounts of the Navy High Command. The project involves Rs. 250 million in Stage I and Rs. 195 million in Stage II for a total expense of Rs. 445 million. That sum probably ensured an unofficial green light without calling for competitive bids. It is by a dual citizens’ group called Sanctum. It seems that people in the smaller ministries absent themselves from meetings as they see their duty is to save us from Terrorism! India too has not given its greenlight as the project involves cross-border traffic.

Tamil Votes: As Easily Won as Lost

I think that the Tamil vote is as easily won as it is lost in the upoming local government elections. The government, except for Vadanayaham, is yet to appoint a Tamil of substance and integrity and seems to be listening a little too much to China. Pictures like on the right where the President is hobnobbing with people who want no  devolution and to celebrate as heroes those who murdered Tamils, are anathema to us. Pictures like this will garner no NPP votes.

These policy changes and a bold stand to go beyond the NPP Manifesto that promised us devolution, are important to aggrandize on the present weaknesses of Tamil parties. Is there leadership for this? I hope so. I believe so.

Colombo Telegraph – March 26, 2025