Gajalakshmi Paramasivam

13 March 2018

                                                              

Australia Telling Sri Lanka?

 

As per Daily Mirror report - the Australian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, Mr Bryce Hutchesson today said it was time to lift the ban imposed on social media in the country.

SBS News report brings us the parallel news under the heading ‘Sri Lankan asylum seeker family 'given 10 minutes' to leave in Border Force raid’:

[At 5am on the morning of Monday March 5, a contingent of police, Australian Border Force officers and Serco guards arrived at the central Queensland home of Nadesalingam and Priya, and ordered them and their two daughters, nine-month-old Dharuniga and two-year-old Kopiga- both born in Australia - to leave.

Their visa had expired by a single day and it's claimed the family were forcibly taken without warning to an immigration centre in Melbourne, more than 1500km away. 

The Tamil Refugee Council said the family was given just 10 minutes to gather belongings from their home in Biloela, Queensland. ]

The reliability of Mr Hutchesson’s feelings about Sri Lanka is highly questionable. I have been going  to Sri Lanka regularly since 2003 and I rely on my intuition as a Sri Lankan – be it in Colombo in West, Batticaloa in East, Kathirgamam in South or Jaffna in North, to remain protected. In a country  where law and order has become ‘foreign language’ to a good proportion of citizens, one has to rely on one’s own Truth. Sri Lanka is driven more by emotions and less by discriminative thinking. The recent riots between Muslims and Buddhists have confirmed this yet again. Militant groups both in North and South ‘catch’ gullible Sri Lankans when the citizens are in the one-way emotional path and do so before the gullible  reach the two-way path to see how the other side of their actions would be received.

As a person common to both nations, I interpret the High Commissioner’s statement to mean that Sri Lanka is ‘normal’ now. It may be normal to Mr Hutchesson living within his protected circle and it may be normal to many of us. But is it normal to those on the one way path of emotions? The call is on the Politicians to make that decision.

Deporting a young family at this time is cruel. As per SBS news report:

‘The federal government said the family's asylum status had been under investigation for "many years", and was ultimately found to "not to meet Australia's protection obligations".]

Asylum assessments are strongly  subjective in terms of the applicability of the law on the side of the assessor as well as ‘facts’ on the side of the applicant. Expressions by Government representatives therefore play an important role when assessments are made. To an independent observer, the recent riots would strongly indicate the risk of Sri Lanka returning to war unless there is continuous, stable and reliable government.

Daily Mirror for example, reports that ‘Former defense secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa said yesterday the main reason for most of the issues in the country was the result of following the advice of NGOs rather than seeking advice of the Maha Sanga.’

That confirms the promotion of one-way emotional path. The report presents the following picture by the former regime:

[“The government has forgotten religious values, our culture and sovereignty and this has resulted in various issues within different sections of society, “he said and added that that during his time, they invited religious leaders to the defense ministry and sought their advice when the country faced serious issues like today.

Mr. Rajapaksa said it was pointless giving priority to Buddhism only in the Constitution.]

 One could conclude that the decisions made during the war against Tamils, were based on Buddhist leaders who carry the karma of one of their own killing a former Prime Minister of Sri Lanka.

Yesterday I received an article headed ‘Rahul Gandhi says he, his sister have ‘completely forgiven’ father’s killers’.

But until we as Independent thinkers know ‘why?’ we would not develop preventive measures to such killings, abusing the emotions of gullible citizens. Many of us know within ourselves that it was wrong of the LTTE to kill any unarmed  Leader, leave alone an Indian Political Leader. That is not different to the Buddhist monk killing the Sri Lankan Prime Minister. One who recommends that very leadership is promising another war.  Those who use religion  for their selfish reasons are making the religion their  servant. They would naturally need the letter of the law to ‘show’ their voters that they are committed to Buddhism.  

Mr Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s response to the question regarding Dual Citizenship is interesting:

[Ceylon Today -Q : However, you are a dual citizen and our law doesn't provide for such individuals to contest. Are you willing to give up your American citizenship?

Mr Rajapaksa - A: I have to give that up.]

If I were American I would strongly reject such a person. Likewise, if Mr Rajapaksa were Australian, I would mentally deport him to Sri Lanka where he has birth-rights. Instead, our officials are deporting members of a community who suffered untold suffering due to government forces headed by Rajapaksa family, wanting to ‘win’ against its own citizens and win by use of stronger armed power.  One side to the armed war is becoming restless and it would not take long for the other side to mobilize its own forces. This risk will remain so long as minorities – especially Tamils are also fooled by heroic talks of ‘freedom’.  Freedom at the cost of Independence of even one individual is ‘freedom lost’ to the Independent part of the group.