Written by Dr Muralidaran Ramesh Somasunderam. Willetton, Australia.

Sri Lanka and its majority people must not be looked upon as a country that perpetrated human rights abuses when the USA and the current Trump Administration are worse.

Every country in the world has and continues to perpetrate human rights abuses based on majority dominance and prejudices.  The present Untied States of America President and his Admiration does not want to recognize citizenship of asylum seekers to America even if one is born in the USA as they are brown or black skinned people. If they were white skinned asylum seekers to the USA Trump and his current Administration would have accepted with open arms and given them citizenship straight away. So what is the difference when Sinhalese Sri Lankans wants to keep Sri Lanka as a predominantly Buddhist Sinhala Nation. I am sure that if Sri Lankan Tamils were given Tamil Elam they would have kept it predominantly as a Hindu Tamil Nation. So primordial and race politics operates all over the world. Based on this it is not fair to single out Sri Lanka as a nation which committed human rights abuses as it was a civil war and in war innocent people along with the perpetrators get killed. Look at the Middle East and Israel for example as no western nation, including USA which helped arm the present Israeli government and its soldiers when everyone knows that apart from HAMAS that innocent people are targeted every day in Gaza and its occupied areas. Is this not human rights abuse if ever there was one?  The point is Sri Lanka is a small island nation in comparison with Israel or USA, which is the leading Super Power in the World and Western World in particular at present. 

Australia for example the country, which I have called home since December 1984 had the famous Dictation Test” and even today want to keep Australia as a White Nation even if they may state that their migration polices are non-discriminatory and open to all the same way. Please ask asylum seekers to Australia how they were treated when they first arrived to Australia based on Mandatory Detention and thereafter when released to work within the community based on Temporary Visas. In this regard white migrants from the UK and South Africa are requested to stay and seek Permanent Residential Status in Australia and thereafter become citizens of Australia where else asylum seekers from Asia and the Middle East who come to Australia via the sea cannot get Permanent Residential Status even if they are refugees coming from war torn countries and are displaced. So what does this mean? It means that race and to a great deal religion and skin colour matter a great deal in Western Countries.  So why is this different when Sinhala Buddhist Sri Lankans the majority people in Sri Lanka want to keep Sri Lanka predominantly Sinhala by ethnicity or race and Buddhist religion wise. In my view there is no difference at all. The manner to achieve this may have differed, but the intention and reasons are the same.  

In convulsion, I don’t condone racism and primordial politics but it is more in existence today than the past based on globalization and migration from all parts of the world especially to the developed nations from the developing nations.