No police, land powers to PCs

By Ananda-USA
June 11, 2011

I applaud the Government of Sri Lanka for courageously resisting pressure from the Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka and abroad, and from the Indian Government attempting to placate India's Tamil citizens at Sri Lanka's expense, to grant Police and Land powers to the Provincial Councils of the Nothern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka  identified ethnic bases.

Provincial Councils should not be accorded Police and Land powers in any part of Sri Lanka, for that is a prescription for the creation of ethnic, religious and provincials fiefdoms in the country that will deny the rights of all citizens of the country to an equal right to settle in and enjoy the resources of any and all parts of their motherland in equal measure. It is a recipe for the eventual disintegration of Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka recently emerged from a devastating ethnic conflict waged by Tamil separatists who sought to create a separate nation exclusively for their own community, by ethnically cleansing all other communities from the Northern and Eastern provinces that they claimed solely for themselves, even as the great majority of Tamils lived among the Sinhala majority in a bid to escape the murder and mayhem inflicted upon them by their self-proclaimed saviours.

During a period spanning nearly 30 years, the LTTE separatist terrorists in fact exercised de-facto control of police and land powers in the Northern and Eastern provinces. They  exercised dictatorial control over the population, most of whom either fled their grasp to live among the demonized Sinhala majority, or were manipulated into becoming refugees and transported in other countries illegally to form their tax base for funding their terrorist separatist activities in Sri Lanka. Those illegal refugees, who now form the bulk of the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora controlled by the LTTE terrorist mafia network, continues to undermine and wage war against Sri Lanka internationally.

If Police and Land powers are granted to the Northern and Eastern Provinces, racist policies will be enacted by the Tamil majority Provincial Government ... dominated by the Tamil National Alliance that was the political arm of the LTTE ... to solidify the results of the ethnic cleansing operations of the LTTE that eradicated the Sinhala and Moslem communities in those areas. They will implement policies ... both overt and covert  ... to prevent the emergence of a truly multi-ethnic society in that part of the country. With Police power in their hands, the extensive coastal border of that part of the country will again revert to large scale smuggling of arms, drugs, and trained terrorists from abroad that was commonplace during LTTE's control of the area. Expecting the fox to mind the henhouse is foolish in the extreme.

Given these undeniable facts, it would be completely unreasonable and foolish, for Sri Lanka to accede to these demands, by those very same separatists hoping to win by subterfuge in peace the same separatist goals they failed win through 30 years of unremitting terrorism and open warfare.

India, attempting to placate its incurably racist and communal Tamil citizens at Sri Lanka's expense, continues along the same foolish path they pursued in the past in promoting provincial Police and Land powers for the North and the East of Sri Lanka. Clearly, the old objectives of the LTTE in gaining uninhibited access to Tamil Nadu and foreign suppliers of arms, would reemerge by granting these powers. Given the separatist tendencies, and racial demonization of non-Tamils that persist to this day in Tamil Nadu, that would guarantee the growth of a violent separatist movement in Tamil Nadu. This is something that no Indian Government should promote if they care about the integrity and national security of India.

The 13th Amendment in the Sri Lanka's Constitution, was an amendment that India ILLEGALLY forced upon Sri Lanka at the point of a gun. In international law, as well as in national laws, agreements enforced through blackmail are INVALID, and are usually repudiated as soon as the aggressive parties are defeated. For example, all international agreements imposed by Hitler's Nazi Germany upon neighboring nations, such as the annexation of the Sudentenland and the partition of Poland, were repudiated upon the defeat of Nazi Germany.

The 13th Amendment imposed upon sovereign Sri Lanka by India is no different: it should be declared an ILLEGAL ACT and be repudiated in its entirety as fundamentally inimical to the integrity and long term survival of Sri Lanka.

Instead, India should offer Sri Lanka an abject apology for this criminal act against an innocent sovereign nation. This is not the way to win friends among neighboring countries; peaceful co-existence among neighboring nations demands non-inteference in their internal affairs.

Ethnic Integration of the people of Sri Lanka, devoid of barriers based upon race, religion, language, sex, caste or wealth, is the

The sovereign People of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka are completely capable of deciding what serves their own interest, and of formulating their own policies and laws to govern themselves.

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No police, land powers to PCs


President conveys decision to Indian officials, collision course feared

By Our Diplomatic Editor

President Mahinda Rajapaksa told a high-powered Indian delegation yesterday his government was not able to concede land and police powers to provincial councils in accordance with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.
The move, the Sunday Times learns, follows strong opposition from constituent partners of the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA). On Friday, President Rajapaksa drove to the parliamentary complex in Sri Jayawardhanapura-Kotte for a meeting with the leaders of political parties that constitute the UPFA. They are said to have expressed strong objections.
One of the primary purposes of the visit to Colombo by a three-member Indian delegation was to urge the government to fully enforce the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. The fact that India urged that such a step be taken by the government was reported exclusively in the Sunday Times of May 15.
The Indian delegation comprised National Security Advisor Shiv Shanker Menon, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and Defence Secretary Pradeep Kumar. India’s High Commissioner Ashok Kanth was also associated with yesterday’s talks.
The government’s tough stance in not giving land and police powers to provincial councils is expected to pitch Colombo and New Delhi on a collision course diplomatically. This is particularly in the light of talks in the Indian capital between Indian External Affairs Minister S.M.Krishna and his Sri Lankan counterpart G.L. Peiris when he visited India.
Dr. Peiris had agreed that a “devolution package, building upon the 13th Amendment, would contribute towards creating the necessary conditions for such reconciliation”. The move, Indian officials argue, was the latest commitment given by a Sri Lanka Minister and was thus incorporated in an official joint statement.
However, President Rajapaksa is learnt to have told the Indian delegation that his government would concede many other subjects that are incorporated in the Concurrent List that accompanies the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. He has also told the Indian delegation that his government will withdraw Emergency Regulations with regard to terrorist activities in the North and East since there was no more war in these two regions.
The issue of both Indian and Sri Lankan fishermen poaching in each other's waters also figured extensively during yesterday's talks.
With regard to actions against fishermen who poached within Sri Lanka's territorial waters, the government side explained that they were enforcing the law without the use of any undue force on Indian fishermen.
The Indian side was to point out that poaching by Sri Lankan fishermen in Indian waters did not cover only their southern seas. They claimed there were instances where Sri Lankan fishermen were found poaching in the waters off the states of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh.
Tensions in the high seas between both sides have eased in the past weeks due to the spawning season. However, this season ended last week and fishermen were due to resume fishing activity.

Meanwhile the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is expected to issue a statement saying it is not happy with the progress made in the dialogue with the Government on how to address grievances of the Tamil people.
Mr. Menon told Colombo-based Indian journalists yesterday that India had conveyed to Sri Lanka that it was left to Sri Lanka’s government to change the 13th Amendment to bring in a suitable political resolution that would enable all communities in the country to live together.

“If they think, they want to do better than the 13th Amendment as many of them do including the government (which) also speaks of 13th Amendment-plus …they want to do different…whatever…that’s for them but they all must feel comfortable,’’ Mr. Menon said.He said the goal was a political arrangement under which all communities in Sri Lanka would be comfortable. “We naturally feel (that) the quicker they themselves come to a political arrangement within which all communities are comfortable, works for all of them, the better. We will do whatever we can to help,’’ he said.

Mr. Menon said that the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987 had provided an enabling environment for the Amendment. “It was their amendment, not our amendment by the way,” he said.