By IFP Media Wire

April 25, 2024

President Ebrahim Raisi has stated improved relations between Iran and Sri Lanka in various fields would benefit the two countries and the Indian Ocean region.

Raisi made the remarks in a joint press conference with Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe in the Island nation’s capital of Colombo on Wednesday.

He said that Iran is ready to supply technical and engineering services to Sri Lanka to help the country boost its economic and industrial infrastructure.

The president made the comments hours after he opened a large hydroelectric project in Badulla, located some 230 kilometers to the east of Colombo. The Uma Oya Multipurpose Development Project, which is worth over $500 million, has been largely designed and built by Iranian companies to help Sri Lanka overcome its electricity and irrigation problems.

He stated Iran had progressed in various fields of technology over the past years despite being subject to a harsh regime of foreign sanctions.

He added that Iran and Sri Lanka will soon form an intergovernmental committee to significantly boost their trade and economic ties.

The Sri Lanka president, for his part, said in the joint press conference with Raeisi that his country has relied on Iran’s support to weather a major economic crisis in recent years.

Wickremesinghe stressed that Sri Lanka and Iran had agreed during Raeisi’s visit to teh country to cooperate more on issues related to the Indian Ocean and on joint initiatives in the United Nations.

He added that five memorandums of understanding signed earlier in the day between Sri Lankan and Iranian government ministers would lead to a further expansion in relations between the two countries.

Raisi arrived in Colombo early on Wednesday after a three-day visit to Pakistan and as part of his administration’s drive to boost ties with Asian countries. The short visit to Sri Lanka is the first by an Iranian president in 16 years.

Courtesy Adaderana

Chinese state energy giant Sinopec is pushing for greater access to Sri Lanka’s market, where rival India is also seeking to expand its presence, as it looks to build its first fully-controlled overseas refinery, reflecting a change in the firm’s global strategy to compensate for slowing demand growth at home.

Sinopec, the world’s largest oil refiner, is expected to complete a feasibility study by June for a plant at the Chinese-run Hambantota port, after winning Colombo’s approval last November, two senior industry sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

While the China-based sources say the investment, which Colombo pegged at $4.5 billion as the country’s largest-ever foreign investment, is commercially driven, neighbouring India is pushing a rival plan to build a fuel products pipeline to the island nation southeast of the subcontinent.

Sinopec’s effort to build a refinery with a more domestic orientation rather than the export-focused project sought by Sri Lanka, which has not previously been reported, puts it in direct competition with India’s interests in expanding its role as an energy supplier to the country. New Delhi-run Indian Oil Corp is the No.2 fuel supplier to the country, after Sri Lankan government-owned Ceylon Petroleum Corp.

India’s foreign ministry and Indian Oil Corp did not respond to requests for comment.

Sinopec, which has not publicly spelled out its strategy, is prioritising the Sri Lanka investment and another in Saudi Arabia under a newly launched investment arm, in an effort to leverage its expertise and deep pockets to expand globally as oil demand nears its peak in China as economic growth slows and electric vehicle adoption widens, the sources said.

Sinopec’s efforts mark a new trend in Chinese oil and gas investments abroad after mergers and acquisitions dried up to just $344 million in 2023, a fraction of the record $31 billion in 2012, according to LSEG data, following the 2014/15 oil price collapse and as Beijing tightened scrutiny over the finances of its national oil giants.

Sinopec is working to finalise details including the plant’s size and product configuration, while negotiating with Colombo over terms including greater access to the import-reliant Sri Lankan market, an element key for its final investment call, the sources said.

The south Asian nation, grappling with a dearth of foreign exchange, has sought a refinery that would deliver 20% of its fuel domestically and export the rest to generate much-needed hard currency.

Sri Lanka’s power and energy minister, Kanchana Wijesekera, told Reuters on Friday that the government is sticking to that requirement.

Sinopec, however, believes domestic sales would be more profitable, the two sources said, declining to be identified as the matter is not public.

The company is considering either a 160,000 barrel per day (bpd) plant or two 100,000-bpd plants built in phases, which in either case would be geared towards gasoline and diesel fuel, the sources said.

Sinopec declined comment.

FULL CONTROL

Sinopec sees Hambantota as among its top-priority projects, alongside a multi-billion-dollar plan to expand a refinery into a petrochemical complex at the Red Sea port of Yanbu in a joint venture with state-run Saudi Aramco, the two sources said.

Compared to its half-owned, higher-cost Yanbu plant built a decade ago and designed to supply the U.S. market, Sinopec could fully leverage its expertise in refinery design, engineering and operation in the Hambantota venture and thus cap overall costs.

Sinopec has in recent months sought more flexible terms for the project’s domestic marketing share but Colombo has not budged.

Sri Lanka’s only existing refinery, the 38,000 bpd Sapugaskanda plant commissioned in 1969, supplies less than 30% of its fuel needs.

Minister Kanchana told Reuters he expects Sinopec to sign an investment agreement by June.

CHINA VS INDIA

China and India are increasingly vying for influence in Sri Lanka.

In 2022, India funnelled in about $4 billion of assistance during Sri Lanka’s worst financial crisis in decades.

Since last year, New Delhi has proposed various energy connectivity” projects including a $1.2 billion subsea power line and a fuel pipeline linking India with Sri Lanka’s Trincomalee port on the east coast, Sri Lanka Power and Energy Ministry Secretary Sulakshana Jayawardena said in late February.

India is also deepening its involvement in Sri Lanka’s power sector with solar projects and grid connectivity.

Their dependency on China is not there in energy supplies,” said an Indian official directly aware of the pipeline discussions, declining to be identified because he is not authorised to speak with media on the subject.

That is a sector where we have a significant stake. That will increase with the pipeline,” the Indian official said, adding that there has been significant progress on discussions for the multi-product pipeline, with the two sides seeking to formalise the arrangement as soon as possible”.

China is a comparative latecomer to Sri Lanka but has since 2010 ploughed $6.7 billion into building the Hambantota port, highways and the country’s only coal power plant in Norochcholai.
At Hambantota, state-owned China Merchants Group owns 85% of port operator Hambantota International Port Group under a 99-year lease and earlier this year agreed a $392 million deal to build a logistics and storage hub in Colombo port under Beijing’s sprawling Belt & Road Initiative.

Last September, Sinopec started a fuel import and distribution business in Sri Lanka with 150 petrol stations, sourcing fuel mostly from Singapore, which Colombo expected to save the government about $500 million in foreign exchange over the next two years.

Source – Reuters
–Agencies

Prime Minister’s Media Division

Today (25.04.2024), a significant meeting took place between Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena and representatives from the China Association of Small and Medium Commercial Enterprises (CASMCE) at the Temple Trees.

The meeting focused on discussions surrounding the expansion and trade investments in various sectors, particularly renewable energy, vehicle manufacturing, agricultural technology, as well as paper and printing-related fields.

Mr Ren Xinglei, President of CASMCE, said that the Chinese people are very happy about the Prime Minister’s visit to China and expressed his heartfelt gratitude for the visit.

Mr Xu Xiang, Vice President of CASMCE said that there is potential to invest in the development of industries related to solar power, wind power and biomass energy in Sri Lanka.

The Prime Minister pointed out the possibility of exporting high quality cinnamon to China and the possibility of giving priority to the import of electronic vehicles.

MP Yadamini Gunawardena, Secretary to the Prime Minister Anura Dissanayake, and many Chinese entrepreneurs including officials of the Small and Medium Commercial Enterprises and a group of officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and Plantation Industries, the Ministry of Industry and Sri Lanka Board of Investment also participated in this event.

Hiru News

In a bid to bolster their respective boating and yachting sectors, Sri Lanka and Singapore have inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Chamber of Marine Industries of Sri Lanka (CMISL) and the Singapore Boating Industry Association (SBIA).

The signing ceremony, held on April 22, saw Indhra Kaushal Rajapaksa, Chairman of CMISL and Vice President of Sri Lanka Singapore Business Council, and Y.P. Loke, Chairman of SBIA, formalizing the agreement. Witnessing the signing were notable figures including Senarath Dissanayake, Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Singapore; Arthur Tay, Chairman of One 15 Marina; Darren Vaux, President of International Council of Marine Industry (ICOMIA); and, Yasantha Yaddehi, Minister (Commercial) of the High Commission of Sri Lanka.

Facilitated by the High Commission of Sri Lanka in Singapore, the negotiations culminated in both parties acknowledging the MoU as an initial stride toward fostering collaboration and positive relations in the boating sector.

Speaking on the occasion, the High Commissioner of Sri Lanka in Singapore emphasized that the partnership between CMISL and SBIA sets the stage for a dynamic and thriving business environment, promising mutual growth and prosperity.

Courtesy The Daily Mirror

In a scathing rebuttal of allegations by Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith regarding the Easter Sunday attacks, former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said Cardinal Ranjith either glosses over the responsibility of, or expressly absolves the two parties actually involved in the terrorist strikes.  

Cardinal Ranjith made the following allegations against former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa at a recent media conference:

• That the day after the report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry on the Easter Sunday attacks was handed over to me, I had spoken to the Cardinal over the phone and said that I had difficulties in implementing the recommendations in that report as it would entail the arrest of individuals and even the banning of organisations that were supportive of me. 

• That I had delayed giving the Cardinal a copy of the first volume of the Presidential Commission report and that I had not given him the remaining volumes.

• That I had appointed a six-member cabinet sub-committee to selectively implement only a few of the recommendations made by the various Committees and Commissions appointed to inquire into the Easter Sunday attacks. 

• That I had transferred the CID officers investigating the Easter Sunday attacks and even imprisoned one such senior officer in order to sabotage the investigation.

In response, Mr. Rajapaksa said, With regard to the first allegation, I categorically state that I did NOT speak to the Cardinal over the phone after the Presidential Commission report was submitted to me and tell him that the recommendations of the Presidential Commission could not be implemented because that would entail the arrest of people and even the banning of organisations allied with me. It is a well-known fact that the Muslim community in general did not vote for me or support my candidacy at the Presidential election, so I cannot possibly have had any allies in any organisation that would need to be banned over complicity in the Easter Sunday attacks. 

As for the second allegation, the report of the Presidential Commission was handed over to me on 1 February 2021. Having studied it myself and referred it to the Attorney General, it was handed over to the Speaker of Parliament on 23 February 2021 and by 1 March 2021 copies had been given to the Venerable Mahanayaka Theras, the Cardinal and the Catholic Bishops. There was no delay in handing over the report to the Cardinal. 

After the Presidential Commission of Inquiry submitted its report, I appointed a six-member Cabinet Sub-committee to prioritize and apportion to the relevant government departments and agencies the task of implementing the recommendations in the reports of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry and the Select Committee of Parliament on the Easter Sunday attacks. Those familiar with public administration will know that the departments and agencies of the government cannot act without such instructions from the Cabinet.

In November 2019 the then Director of the CID was transferred by the Police Commission on the recommendation of the then IGP. That was by the Police Commission appointed under the 19th Amendment by the previous government. A few weeks later this officer was interdicted by the Police Commission over an investigation into the leaked recordings of his telephone conversations with the then Deputy Minister Ranjan Ramanayake regarding the influencing of judges in an ongoing High Court case. Several months later, he was remanded by the Courts over an investigation into the alleged fabrication of evidence in a criminal case concerning a former police DIG. Hence, I reject the allegation that I transferred the CID Director and even placed him in remand custody in order to sabotage the Easter Sunday investigation.

This particular CID Director had been appointed to that office in 2017 and he continued to hold that position for over seven months after the Easter Sunday attacks. In the months prior to the Easter Sunday attacks, it was the CID that investigated the Vavunativu murders, the vandalizing of Buddha statues in Mawanella and the discovery of explosives in Wanathavilluwa involving the very same individuals and groups that perpetrated the Easter Sunday attacks. The Presidential Commission has observed that if the law enforcement authorities had been more vigilant, Zaharan and his group could have been apprehended before the Easter Sunday attacks took place. The failure to prevent the attack was a failure of the CID under that Director. 

In his speech mentioned above, the Cardinal accused me of not having brought the perpetrators of the Easter Sunday bombings to justice. However, criminals have to be brought to justice not by politicians but by the police, the Attorney General’s Department and the Courts system working together. That process is now ongoing and according to the media, 93 persons are now facing legal proceedings in court for offences relating to those suicide bombings. 

The Easter Sunday attacks were perpetrated by a group of Islamic extremists. The highest investigative arm of the then government – the CID – had for several months prior to the attacks, been investigating the activities of the very same individuals and groups that carried out the suicide bombings but failed to apprehend the terrorists before they struck. The public should take good note of the fact that His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith either glosses over the responsibility of, or expressly absolves the two parties mentioned above, while continuing to relentlessly attack and criticize me over the Easter Sunday suicide bombings,”

By P.K.Balachandran Courtesy NewsIn.Asia

Dr. Ebrahim Raisi

Colombo, April 24: The one-day visit of the Iranian President Dr.Ebrahim Raisi to Sri Lanka on Wednesday, brief though it may be,  has great economic, political and, most importantly, strategic significance.

The primary purpose of Dr.Raisi’s visit is to sign five Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs). Dr. Raisi and the Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe will also participate in a public ceremony to mark the inauguration of the Uma Oya Multipurpose Development Project (UOMDP), a joint venture.

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But since 2013, Iran has been subtly using its economic ties with Sri Lanka to build a strategic partnership with the island nation.

According to Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Sri Lanka and Iran could be strategic partners, with Iran wanting its navy to have a wider reach since 2011.

Iranian outreach to Sri Lanka took advantage of Sri Lanka’s frustration with the West, Rubin explains in his piece on Iran-Sri Lanka relations published in 2016.

Between 1983 and 2009 Sri Lankan forces fought a war against the Tamil Tiger separatists, a war which the West opposed. But Iran supported the Sri Lankan government’s military operations. 

Rubin points out that when the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon agreed to appoint a special panel to investigate human rights violations by Sri Lanka during its final military drive to eradicate the Tamil Tigers, Iranian Minister of Transportation Ali Nikzad lambasted the UN panel, describing it as a paper tiger” and a pet of the Western nations.”

Nikzad further said: If any organization or country takes action that will harm Sri Lanka, Iran will always very strongly oppose such a move.”

The then Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki called his Sri Lankan counterpart to congratulate him on successfully ending the war sand remind him that Iran had always supported Sri Lanka’s unity.

Mottakki also said: Iran is sincerely committed to the development of Sri Lanka, whom we consider to be a true friend.”

In April 2008 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Colombo and declared that Iran and Sri Lanka both sought justice and fair play in the world,” and pledged further cooperation

Military Ties

Rubin said in his article in the American Enterprise Institute that the first Iranian flotilla docked in Colombo in February 2013. Then, on 20 December 2013 Iran’s 28th Naval Flotilla, comprising two warships, a submarine, and a combat helicopter, arrived in Colombo.

The Iranian submarine commander Rear Admiral Siavash Jareh said that one of the goals of the deployment was to show the Islamic Republic’s power and wave its flag in the southern hemisphere and to prepare for forthcoming operations to secure sea lanes in critical regions, especially the Strait of Malacca and Bay of Bengal.”

In 2015 Iran sent a destroyer and an auxiliary ship to Sri Lanka. Iran also offered to train Sri Lankan naval cadets in Iran. 

Adm.Jayantha Perera, the then Commander of Sri Lanka’s Navy, reportedly said that Sri Lanka’s relationship with Iran is not just military but also political,” and said that the Iranian port visit at Colombo would strengthen the bilateral partnership.

According to Rubin, in 2005, just weeks after the tsunami struck the island, Iran supplied USD 150 million worth of weaponry to Sri Lanka.

On February 21 this year, Iran’s Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, held talks with the President of Sri Lanka, Ranil Wickremesinghe in Colombo. Abdollahian stated that Iran’s economic and industrial sectors, including the Ministry of Energy, are prepared to develop cooperation with Sri Lanka.

Referring to Iran’s strategic position, the Sri Lankan President said that Sri Lanka considers Iran as a gateway to Central Asia and called for increasing economic interactions with Iran.

Growing Economic Ties

The political and strategic ties between Iran and Sri Lanka are founded on fruitful economic cooperation.

The Iranian-Lankan Uma Oya Multipurpose Development Project (UOMDP) which is to be inaugurated by Dr.Raisi and the Sri Lankan President on Wednesday, is one of the largest irrigation projects in Sri Lanka and the largest Iranian-Lankan project in the island.  

UOMPD’s primary objective is to alleviate water scarcity in the south-eastern dry region by redirecting an annual average of 145 million cubic meters (MCM) of excess water from the Uma Oya basin to the Kirindi Oya basin. About 4,500 hectares of new land and 1,500 hectares of existing agricultural land in the dry Monaragala District will receive irrigation water.

Parts of Badulla, Monaragala, and Hambantota districts will also benefit from 39 million cubic meters (MCM) of water for drinking and industrial purposes, while generating and adding 290 GWh of electrical energy annually to the National Grid.

The project encompasses the construction of two reservoirs at Puhulpola and Dyraaba, and a conveyance tunnel spanning 3.98 kilometers to connect the two reservoirs.

In 2007, the then Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa made an epoch-making visit to Iran and signed MoUs on development projects worth more than US$ 1.9 billion. The following year Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Sri Lanka and inaugurated a US$ 750 million project to upgrade Sri Lanka’s Sapugaskanda petroleum refinery.  

Iran had agreed to provide no interest credit terms for petroleum purchases (approximately USD 700 million) and stated that it would finance the Uma Oya Project (USD 450Mn).

When Ahmadinejad became President of Iran, Sri Lanka was the first country he visited on his inaugural Asian tour. Alarmed, the US State Department expressed concern over the growing economic relationship between Colombo and Tehran.

Iran’s Deputy Oil Minister Roknoddin Javadi said that Iran was prepared to provide 40,000 to 45,000 barrels per day, enough oil to supply Sri Lanka’s main oil refinery.

The Sri Lanka and Iran epoch-making ‘tea-for-oil’ barter agreement is now making strong progress and Sri Lanka has already settled payments to the tune of over USD 20 million to Iran.

This agreement was to settle a total of USD 250 million for purchases made by Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) for oil imported from Iran in 2012”, said Chairman Sri Lanka Tea Board (SLTB) Niraj de Mel in a special interview with ‘Daily News Business’.

Since then we have made very strong progress and up to December 2023 we have settled around USD 20 million,” de Mel said.

In 2016 Iran used some of its hard currency windfall to lease Sri Lankan Airlines airplanes, effectively helping Sri Lanka’s national carrier to reduce its US$ 1 billion debt, Rubin said in his article. Institute.

Courtesy Adaderana

Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe and Iranian President Dr. Ebrahim Raisi jointly inaugurated the Uma Oya Multipurpose Development Project (UOMDP) on Wednesday (24).

Dr. Raisi arrived on the island nation on Wednesday morning via the Mattala International Airport, where he was accorded a warm welcome by Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena.

His visit comes after a special invitation extended by his Sri Lankan counterpart, marking the first visit of an Iranian President to Sri Lanka since former President Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit in April 2008.

Shortly after his arrival, President Raisi participated in the public ceremony marking the inauguration of the UOMDP which aims to alleviate water scarcity in the southeastern dry region of the country by redirecting an annual average of 145 million cubic meters (MCM) of excess water from the Uma Oya basin to the Kirindi Oya basin.

Owing to this project, approximately 4,500 hectares of new land and 1,500 hectares of existing agricultural land in the Monaragala district will receive irrigation water, the government said in an earlier statement.

Moreover, the areas of Badulla, Monaragala, and Hambantota will benefit from 39 million cubic meters (MCM) of water for drinking and industrial purposes, while generating and adding 290 GWh of electrical energy annually to the National Grid.

Thanks to the UOMDP, approximately 4,500 hectares of new land and 1,500 hectares of existing agricultural land in the Monaragala District will receive irrigation water. Moreover, the areas of Badulla, Monaragala, and Hambantota will benefit from 39 million cubic meters (MCM) of water for drinking and industrial purposes, while generating and adding 290 GWh of electrical energy annually to the National Grid.

The project encompasses the construction of two reservoirs at Puhulpola and Dyraaba, a conveyance tunnel (Link Tunnel) spanning 3.98 kilometers to connect the two reservoirs, a 15.2-kilometer-long Head Race Tunnel, Surge Shaft, Pressure Shaft, Underground Powerhouse, Switchyard, Transmission line, Tailrace Tunnel, and related infrastructure.

Pursuant to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) executed between Sri Lanka and Iran on 27 November 2007, the Cabinet of Ministers had approved the execution of the contract agreement between the executing agency, Ministry of Irrigation and Water Management of Sri Lanka and Farab Energy and Water Projects (Farab Company) of Iran dated 28 April 2008 to implement the UOMDP by Farab Company, as an Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract.

The total contract sums amount to USD 514 million and the contract became effective on 15 March 2010. Initially, the Export Development Bank of Iran (EDBI) funded USD 50 million until 2013. However, due to international sanctions on Iran, they were unable to continue providing funds for the project. Therefore, the Sri Lankan government decided to proceed with the project using government funds while continuing with the same contractor, Farab Company.

When UOMDP commenced on 15 March 2010, its scheduled completion date was 15 March 2015. However, due to various factors such as technical issues, particularly unexpected water ingress into the Headrace Tunnel (HRT), social impacts, financial challenges, and disruptions caused by the global Covid-19 pandemic during the construction period, the completion date has been extended to 31 March 2024.

Additionally, the overall duration of the project, including the defect and liability period, has been extended to 31 March 2025.

The project completed its commissioning phase in February and March 2024, successfully synchronizing Units 01 and 02 with the national grid. It then proceeded to complete its trial operations on 1 April 2024.

The UOMDP involves significant engineering challenges, particularly due to the 700-meter difference in height between Bandarawela and Wellawaya. Adjusting the tunnel route at such a height is a complex task. Additionally, the construction of a deep pressure shaft to channel water onto turbines is an unprecedented feat.

Following the completion of the UOMDP, the project components will be transferred to the operating authorities, namely the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) and the Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka (MASL). This transition will occur after the Ministry of Irrigation takes over the project components from the contractor.

Once electricity is generated, the water is directed through a tunnel to the Alikota Ara Reservoir, built across a tributary of the Kirindi Oya. From there, it is further diverted to the Handapanagala Reservoir, which has been expanded threefold as part of the project.

Additionally, water is channelled to the new Kuda Oya Reservoir, currently under construction on the right bank. These reservoirs facilitate irrigation in areas such as Wellawaya, Maharagama, Thanamalvila, and Balaharutha in the Monaragala District.

An irrigation system spanning over 60 meters in length is currently being constructed. It is anticipated that this system will supply irrigation water to 1,500 hectares of already cultivated land and an additional 4,500 hectares of newly developed land, supporting agricultural activities in both the Yala and Maha seasons.

The Uma Oya Downstream Development Project, facilitated directly by the Irrigation Department, is poised to alleviate the longstanding water scarcity issues in the Kirindi Oya Basin. Under the guidance of the government, officials have been directed to execute an integrated agricultural development initiative leveraging modern technology to optimize water utilization.

Additionally, the UOMDP has effectively addressed the challenge of supplying water for both domestic and industrial purposes in the Bandarawela and Wellawaya regions.

Ashifa Kassam European community affairs correspondent Courtesy The Guardian

Critics of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa say behind remarks is lack of national recognition that slavery should be discussed in schools

Portugal needs to pay the costs” of slavery and other colonial-era crimes, the country’s president has said, in a rare instance of a European leader seemingly backing the need for reparations.

Portugal has long grappled with calls by campaigners to address its legacy as the European country with the longest historical involvement in the slave trade. During the span of four centuries, nearly 6 million Africans were kidnapped and forcibly transported across the Atlantic by Portuguese vessels.

Those who managed to survive the voyage were enslaved and forced to toil on plantations in the Americas, mostly in Brazil, while Portugal and its institutions profited from their labour.

The country’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said at an event with foreign journalists on Tuesday that Portugal takes full responsibility” for the wrongs of the past and that those crimes, including colonial massacres, had costs”.

We have to pay the costs,” he said. Are there actions that were not punished and those responsible were not arrested? Are there goods that were looted and not returned? Let’s see how we can repair this.”

The remarks came one year after Rebelo de Sousa said Portugal should apologise and assume responsibility” for its role in the transatlantic slave trade, though he stopped short of providing any concrete details or a full apology.

In both instances, the president’s remarks were made primarily to international audiences, said Paula Cardoso, the founder of the Afrolink online platform for Black professionals in Portugal.

Behind this international strategy is the lack of national recognition that this topic should be discussed,” Cardoso said in an email. Kids are still learning at schools that Portugal was an excellent coloniser, that the country ‘discovered’ other countries, and that Portuguese people are so unique that they mixed with different cultures as if no violations occurred.”

She agreed on the need for reparations, arguing that Portugal must pay the costs of being the creator of the transatlantic slave trade, of a culture of dehumanisation of Black bodies”.

She said practical actions to fight the systemic and structural racism that arose from this and that continued to colour the country today were also needed.

We don’t even collect data on ethnicity to start with,” said Cardoso. We are not even discussing the past, accepting that we must confront different historical narratives to consider the negative impact of the so-called Discoveries Age. So, how is Portugal taking full responsibility?”

The Portuguese president’s remarks come after the United Nations human rights chief added his voice to the African and Caribbean countries calling for amends to be made over slavery and colonisation.skip

On reparations, we must finally enter a new era,” the high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, said last week at a UN forum on people of African descent. Governments must step up to show true leadership with genuine commitments to move swiftly from words to action that will adequately address the wrongs of the past.”

Between the 15th and 19th centuries, at least 12.5 million Africans were kidnapped into slavery and forcibly transported long distances by mainly European ships and merchants.

European leaders for the most part have sought to steer clear of meaningfully addressing the call for reparations. When the government of the Netherlands apologised for its role in the transatlantic slave trade in 2022, it said a €200m (£172m) fund to address this past would not be used to compensate descendants but instead spent on initiatives such as education and addressing the present-day impacts of slavery. Germany has been chastised for excluding the ethnic minorities who were murdered by the tens of thousands from talks over reparations.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Rebelo de Sousa said he believed that acknowledging the past and taking responsibility for it was more important than apologising. Apologising is the easy part,” he said.

News

In continuation of his association with the National University of Singapore’s Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), Former Cabinet Minister, Ambassador and Founder of the Pathfinder Foundation, Milinda Moragoda, has been recently designated as a Honorary Senior Fellow by the institution. 

The ISAS was established in 2004 as an autonomous research institute at the National University of Singapore. Its establishment reflects the increasing economic and political importance of South Asia and the strong historical links between South Asia and Southeast Asia. The institution, dedicated to research on contemporary South Asia, seeks to promote understanding of this vital region and to communicate knowledge and insights about it to policy makers, the business community, academia, and civil society in Singapore and beyond.

Ministry of Defence  – Media Centre

High-ranking officials from around the world gathered in Saint Petersburg for the 12^th International Meeting on Security Matters from April 22^nd to 25^th, 2024. This prestigious event serves as a platform for global leaders to discuss and address pressing security challenges facing nations today.

One notable highlight of the meeting was a bilateral discussion between the Secretary Defence of Sri Lanka General Kamal Gunaratne and Mr. Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. The meeting underscored the importance of fostering international cooperation and collaboration in addressing security threats and promoting peace and stability in the region.

The discussions covered a wide range of topics, including counterterrorism efforts, cyber security and defence cooperation. Both parties expressed their commitment to strengthening bilateral ties and exploring avenues for enhanced cooperation in the security domain.

The 12^th International Meeting of High-Ranking Officials Responsible for Security Matters provided a valuable opportunity for participants to exchange insights, share best practices and forge partnerships aimed at addressing common security challenges facing the global community.

Ministry of Defence  – Media Centre

The exposition of the Sacred Omniscient Relics of Deegawapiya Stupa and the Crest-Gem takes place at Sri Lanka Army Infantry Training Centre, Minneriya for public veneration. These revered articles will be on public display there until the morning on April 27.

Subsequently, these revered articles will be on display at the Hingurakgoda Buddhist Centre from April 27 to 29, at Hingurakgoda Jayamaha Pirivena from April 29 to May 1, at Polonnaruwa Medamaluwa Monastery from May 1 to 3 and at Polonnaruwa Gal Vihara from May 3 to 5.

Devotees have the opportunity to witness and worship the Sacred Omniscient Relics and Crest-Gem at these locations on the mentioned dates. They also can support this meritorious act by making financial contributions to the restoration project.

Hiru News

Iranian President Dr. Ebrahim Raisi and President Ranil Wickremesinghe engaged in one-on-one discussions followed by a bilateral meeting between representatives of both nations at the Presidential Secretariat. The discussions culminated in the signing of five memorandums of understanding (MoUs) aimed at enhancing bilateral relations.

These MoUs cover various sectors including film, media, tourism, cooperatives, libraries, and cultural, scientific, technical, and sports fields, signaling a commitment to comprehensive cooperation between Iran and Sri Lanka.

The agreements include:

Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation between the National Library of Sri Lanka and the National Library and Archives of Iran

Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in the film industry between the National Film Corporation of Sri Lanka and the Ministry of Cultural and Islamic Guidance of Iran

Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in the field of media and tourism between Sri Lanka and Iran

Agreement on a program of cultural, scientific, and technical cooperation, mass media, youth, and sports between Sri Lanka and Iran

Memorandum of Understanding between the National Co-Operative Council of Sri Lanka and the Iran Chamber of Cooperatives

Additionally, both nations shared positions on two crucial issues during their discussions. Firstly, they called for an immediate cessation of bombings by the Zionist Israeli regime against the innocent people of Gaza. Secondly, they pledged to promptly provide humanitarian assistance to the affected individuals in Gaza, underlining their commitment to humanitarian principles.

This collaborative effort highlights the deepening ties and mutual cooperation between Iran and Sri Lanka, paving the way for enhanced diplomatic relations and solidarity in addressing pressing global issues.

Lankadeepa

Prime Minister’s Media

Under the leadership of Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena, the rice distribution program for the beneficiary families that belong to the Colombo Divisional Secretariat division was held on 22.04.2024 at Sri Wickramarama, Mattakkuliya, symbolizing the national program of providing rice to low income-earning families.
The Prime Minister addressing the event commented …

“The necessary environment is being created to build a future where the people and children of Colombo can live confidently. As the first step, we have started programs to ensure their food safety.”

Colombo District Secretary Mr. K.A. Wijesiri mentioned that…

“Under this program, implemented nationwide at the Grama Niladhari division level, Aswesuma beneficiaries, kidney aid recipients, recipients of allowance for disabilities, Samurdhi beneficiaries, elderly allowance recipients and other beneficiaries for various illnesses are qualified for this. The government is spending 126.1 billion rupees to distribute rice to 3.9 million families. One hundred and eighty three thousand selected families in Colombo district alone are entitled to this benefit.”

Colombo Development Committee Chairman, MP Yadamini Gunawardena stated at the event that…

“When we started this program last year, there were various obstacles and problems. When we came forward hurdling those obstacles, we have identified an important piece of information. More than ten thousand families in the city of Colombo, who has benefitted by all the financial systems of our country, do not have any bank accounts. In the main commercial city of Sri Lanka, the main city where Sri Lanka deals with the world, the city with a history going back thousands of years, the fact revealed that more than ten thousand families in that city do not engage with any bank, is an achievement of this program.

Every time the Prime Minister was elected to the Parliament, he came to this area from time to time and worked to provide relief and benefit to the public for various work. When he was the Minister of Urban Development and Water Supply, he provided housing, housing construction concessions, and water. In this way he did a great service to the people of Colombo. When the Ministry of Public Administration was taken over, the Food Security Program was started. It is with the hope of ending the era of huge queues in our country. At that time, we went to every district of Sri Lanka to ensure providing nutrition of everyone from small children to adults in our country. It is an honor to visit this area without forgetting it, which has the highest poverty statistics in the Colombo district. Another step in the program, starting to secure food for the people who lived from house to house during the epidemic, and it is being implemented today in Samitpura area, north of Colombo. Samitpura was formed by resettlement during the non-aligned summit. That was fifty years ago. Today, fifty years later, we are working to bring these areas back to a winning goal.”

Anu Nayaka of Ramanna Maha Nikaya Ven. Matale Kusaladhamma Thera, Chief Incumbent of Sri Vikramaramaya, Colombo Divisional Secretary Sandaruwan Anuruddha, government officials, beneficiaries and residents participated in this event.

Prime Minister’s Media

by Nick Turse Courtesy Counterpunch.org

Dressed in green military fatigues and a blue garrison cap, Colonel Major Amadou Abdramane, a spokesperson for Niger’s ruling junta, took to local television last month to criticize the United States and sever the long-standing military partnership between the two countries. The government of Niger, taking into account the aspirations and interests of its people, revokes, with immediate effect, the agreement concerning the status of United States military personnel and civilian Defense Department employees,” he said, insisting that their 12-year-old security pact violated Niger’s constitution.

Another sometime Nigerien spokesperson, Insa Garba Saidou, put it in blunter terms: The American bases and civilian personnel cannot stay on Nigerien soil any longer.”

The announcements came as terrorism in the West African Sahel has spiked and in the wake of a visit to Niger by a high-level American delegation, including Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee and General Michael Langley, chief of U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM. Niger’s repudiation of its ally is just the latest blow to Washington’s sputtering counterterrorism efforts in the region. In recent years, longstanding U.S. military partnerships with Burkina Faso and Mali have also been curtailed following coups by U.S.-trained officers. Niger was, in fact, the last major bastion of American military influence in the West African Sahel.

Such setbacks there are just the latest in a series of stalemates, fiascos, or outright defeats that have come to typify America’s Global War on Terror. During 20-plus years of armed interventions, U.S. military missions have been repeatedly upended across Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, including a sputtering stalemate in Somalia, an intervention-turned-blowback-engine in Libya, and outright implosions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This maelstrom of U.S. defeat and retreat has left at least 4.5 million people dead, including an estimated 940,000 from direct violence, more than 432,000 of them civilians, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project. As many as 60 million people have also been displaced due to the violence stoked by America’s forever wars.”

President Biden has both claimed that he’s ended those wars and that the United States will continue to fight them for the foreseeable future — possibly forever — to protect the people and interests of the United States.” The toll has been devastating, particularly in the Sahel, but Washington has largely ignored the costs borne by the people most affected by its failing counterterrorism efforts.

Reducing Terrorism” Leads to a 50,000% Increase in… Yes!… Terrorism

Roughly 1,000 U.S. military personnel and civilian contractors are deployed to Niger, most of them near the town of Agadez at Air Base 201 on the southern edge of the Sahara desert. Known to locals as Base Americaine,” that outpost has been the cornerstone of an archipelago of U.S. military bases in the region and is the key to America’s military power projection and surveillance efforts in North and West Africa. Since the 2010s, the U.S. has sunk roughly a quarter-billion dollars into that outpost alone.

Washington has been focused on Niger and its neighbors since the opening days of the Global War on Terror, pouring military aid into the nations of West Africa through dozens of security cooperation” efforts, among them the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership, a program designed to counter and prevent violent extremism” in the region. Training and assistance to local militaries offered through that partnership has alone cost America more than $1 billion.

Just prior to his recent visit to Niger, AFRICOM’s General Langley went before the Senate Armed Services Committee to rebuke America’s longtime West African partners. During the past three years, national defense forces turned their guns against their own elected governments in Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, and Niger,” he said. These juntas avoid accountability to the peoples they claim to serve.”

Langley did not mention, however, that at least 15 officers who benefited from American security cooperation have been involved in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the Global War on Terror. They include the very nations he named: Burkina Faso (2014, 2015, and twice in 2022); Guinea (2021); Mali (2012, 2020, and 2021); and Niger (2023). In fact, at least five leaders of a July coup in Niger received U.S. assistance, according to an American official. When they overthrew that country’s democratically elected president, they, in turn, appointed five U.S.-trained members of the Nigerien security forces to serve as governors.

Langley went on to lament that, while coup leaders invariably promise to defeat terrorist threats, they fail to do so and then turn to partners who lack restrictions in dealing with coup governments… particularly Russia.” But he also failed to lay out America’s direct responsibility for the security freefall in the Sahel, despite more than a decade of expensive efforts to remedy the situation.

We came, we saw, he died,” then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joked after a U.S.-led NATO air campaign helped overthrow Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, the longtime Libyan dictator, in 2011. President Barack Obama hailed the intervention as a success, even as Libya began to slip into near-failed-state status. Obama would later admit that failing to plan for the day after” Qaddafi’s defeat was the worst mistake” of his presidency.

As the Libyan leader fell, Tuareg fighters in his service looted his regime’s weapons caches, returned to their native Mali, and began to take over the northern part of that nation. Anger in Mali’s armed forces over the government’s ineffective response resulted in a 2012 military coup led by Amadou Sanogo, an officer who learned English in Texas, and underwent infantry-officer basic training in Georgia, military-intelligence instruction in Arizona, and mentorship by Marines in Virginia.

Having overthrown Mali’s democratic government, Sanogo proved hapless in battling local militants who had also benefitted from the arms flowing out of Libya. With Mali in chaos, those Tuareg fighters declared their own independent state, only to be pushed aside by heavily armed Islamist militants who instituted a harsh brand of Shariah law, causing a humanitarian crisis. A joint French, American, and African mission prevented Mali’s complete collapse but pushed the Islamists to the borders of both Burkina Faso and Niger, spreading terror and chaos to those countries.

Since then, the nations of the West African Sahel have been plagued by terrorist groups that have evolved, splintered, and reconstituted themselves. Under the black banners of jihadist militancy, men on motorcycles armed with Kalashnikov rifles regularly roar into villages to impose zakat (an Islamic tax) and terrorize and kill civilians. Relentless attacks by such armed groups have not only destabilized Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, prompting coups and political instability, but have spread south to countries along the Gulf of Guinea. Violence has, for example, spiked in Togo (633%) and Benin (718%), according to Pentagon statistics.

American officials have often turned a blind eye to the carnage. Asked about the devolving situation in Niger, for instance, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel recently insisted that security partnerships in West Africa are mutually beneficial and are intended to achieve what we believe to be shared goals of detecting, deterring, and reducing terrorist violence.”  His pronouncement is either an outright lie or a total fantasy.

After 20 years, it’s clear that America’s Sahelian partnerships aren’t reducing terrorist violence” at all. Even the Pentagon tacitly admits this. Despite U.S. troop strength in Niger growing by more than 900% in the last decade and American commandos training local counterparts, while fighting and even dying there; despite hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into Burkina Faso in the form of training as well as equipment like armored personnel carriers, body armor, communications gear, machine guns, night-vision equipment, and rifles; and despite U.S. security assistance pouring into Mali and its military officers receiving training from the United States, terrorist violence in the Sahel has in no way been reduced. In 2002 and 2003, according to State Department statistics, terrorists caused 23 casualties in all of Africa. Last year, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution, attacks by Islamist militants in the Sahel alone resulted in 11,643 deaths – an increase of more than 50,000%.

Pack Up Your War

In January 2021, President Biden entered the White House promising to end his country’s forever wars.  He quickly claimed to have kept his pledge. I stand here today for the first time in 20 years with the United States not at war,” Biden announced months later. We’ve turned the page.”

Late last year, however, in one of his periodic war powers” missives to Congress, detailing publicly acknowledged U.S. military operations around the world, Biden said just the opposite. In fact, he left open the possibility that America’s forever wars might, indeed, go on forever. It is not possible,” he wrote, to know at this time the precise scope or the duration of the deployments of United States Armed Forces that are or will be necessary to counter terrorist threats to the United States.”

Niger’s U.S.-trained junta has made it clear that it wants America’s forever war there to end. That would assumedly mean the closing of Air Base 201 and the withdrawal of about 1,000 American military personnel and contractors. So far, however, Washington shows no signs of acceding to their wishes. We are aware of the March 16th statement… announcing an end to the status of forces agreement between Niger and the United States,” said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh. We are working through diplomatic channels to seek clarification… I don’t have a timeframe of any withdrawal of forces.”

The U.S. military is in Niger at the request of the Government of Niger,” said AFRICOM spokesperson Kelly Cahalan last year. Now that the junta has told AFRICOM to leave, the command has little to say. Email return receipts show that TomDispatch’s questions about developments in Niger sent to AFRICOM’s press office were read by a raft of personnel including Cahalan, Zack Frank, Joshua Frey, Yvonne Levardi, Rebekah Clark Mattes, Christopher Meade, Takisha Miller, Alvin Phillips, Robert Dixon, Lennea Montandon, and Courtney Dock, AFRICOM’s deputy director of public affairs, but none of them answered any of the questions posed. Cahalan instead referred TomDispatch to the State Department. The State Department, in turn, directed TomDispatch to the transcript of a press conference dealing primarily with U.S. diplomatic efforts in the Philippines.

USAFRICOM needs to stay in West Africa… to limit the spread of terrorism across the region and beyond,” General Langley told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March.  But Niger’s junta insists that AFRICOM needs to go and U.S. failures to limit the spread of terrorism” in Niger and beyond are a key reason why.  This security cooperation did not live up to the expectations of Nigeriens — all the massacres committed by the jihadists were carried out while the Americans were here,” said a Nigerien security analyst who has worked with U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

America’s forever wars, including the battle for the Sahel, have ground on through the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden with failure the defining storyline and catastrophic results the norm. From the Islamic State routing the U.S.-trained Iraqi army in 2014 to the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan in 2021, from the forever stalemate in Somalia to the 2011 destabilization of Libya that plunged the Sahel into chaos and now threatens the littoral states along the Gulf of Guinea, the Global War on Terror has been responsible for the deaths, wounding, or displacement of tens of millions of people.

Carnage, stalemate, and failure seem to have had remarkably little effect on Washington’s desire to continue funding and fighting such wars, but facts on the ground like the Taliban’s triumph in Afghanistan have sometimes forced Washington’s hand. Niger’s junta is pursuing another such path, attempting to end an American forever war in one small corner of the world — doing what President Biden pledged but failed to do. Still, the question remains: Will the Biden administration reverse a course that the U.S. has been on since the early 2000s?  Will it agree to set a date for withdrawal? Will Washington finally pack up its disastrous war and go home?

This column is distributed by TomDispatch.

Kautiliya Pundit

The US has more than 750 military bases around the world and it may be time for the rest of the world to follow the example of the Niger Junta and call for an end to environmentally destructive military bases and war games, and declare the Indian Ocean a ‘Zone of Peace’.

As the US CARAT war games and US marines training of the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN), unfold off the strategic Trincomallee deep sea habour this week, some lessons from the Sahel region of Africa regarding foreign military training for coups and other operations to destabilize countries that have received such ‘military aid’ countries would certainly be appropriate for Sri Lanka, caught in a US Dollar Eurobond Debt trap and the IMF Bailout Business, all part of a hybrid economic proxy war and geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China in the Indian Ocean where Sri Lanka occupies a prime location.

The last time that the Malabar Exercises or War games took place in the Seas of Sri Lanka hundreds of Pilot Whales and some Dolphins beached and many died due to the sonar systems of the massive aircraft carriers and submarines disorienting the sea animals.

The last time that similar US War games happened off Trincomallee in 2020, Covid-19 spread through the SLN precipitating a second economically devastating Lockdown of the country in 2020.

U.S.-Sri Lankan military training had continued despite travel sanctions due to Coronavirus spreading during March and April 2020 at the Navy’s Special Boat Squadron Training School in Trincomalee Sri Lanka. [1] https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/us-sri-lankan-military-training-continues-despite-travel-sanctions

Meanwhile in an article titled: Time to End the COVID-19 Fear Psychosis & Militarized Curfews’ published at InDepthNews on 2020-05-04 Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake noted:

Theodore Roosevelt, militarization and Coronavirus in the Indian Ocean region

In the first week of May 2020 in Sri Lanka Covid-19 infections doubled just when the Rajapaksa regime was set to lift its 6 week-long militarized curfew, as there was a spike in cases, ironically, among some of armed custodians of the curfew – the Sri Lanka Navy and Army. Almost half of all infections in the strategically Indian Ocean island nation, 256 cases, were detected among sailors with several cases in the Army also reported at the end of April. About 4,000 navy troops are being quarantined inside the camp while 242 relatives have been taken to four quarantine centres run by the navy.

It appears that the Sri Lanka navy caught Covid-19 as part of a trend in the increasingly militarized Indian Ocean region: The U.S. Navy’s Aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt led the way with 900 plus Covid-19 cases on board in Guam, followed by France’s Charles de Gaulle Aircraft carrier. At this time Covid-19 has also spread to the Indian Navy camp in Mumbai and Sri Lanka’s Welisarra Navy camp and from there to many sailors and their families all over the country.

U.S.-Sri Lankan military training in Sri Lanka had continued despite travel sanctions due to Coronavirus spread globally, during March and April 2020 at the Navy’s Special Boat Squadron Training School in Trincomalee Sri Lanka.[1]

Time to End the COVID-19 Fear Psychosis & Militarized Curfews

From spreading Covid-19 to Islamist terror, Sri Lanka has had its fair share of mysterious IS terror attacks as well.

Courtesy The Daily Mirror

---

Colombo, April 23 (Daily Mirror)-A top delegation of the Chinese Communist Party headed by Vice Minister of the International Department, Sun Haiyan met National People’s Power (NPP) leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake at the JVP head office today.

The delegation included head of the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party Liu Jianchao and Political Counsellor of the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka Chen Xiang Yuan.

They discussed matters related to the current political situation in the country and upcoming elections.

The NPP representatives briefed the delegation about the NPP’s preparation for the election and the need to create political stability to rescue the country from the crisis situation.

NPP MPs Vijitha Herath, Harini Amarasuriya, NPP members Sunil Hadunnetti and Prof. Anil Jayantha participated in the discussion.

Vichara

The country is aware of several mafiosi like the diesel mafia, rice mill mafia and the drugs mafia which are a curse on the country. But it is very rare that people refer to the Pettah mafia which is the mother of all mafiosi. This mafia has existed from colonial times and grown in strength. Most members of this mafia have non-national roots but have captured the native bureaucracy and politicians. Today they lead a cabal consisting of Customs, Banks, Import Control and Consumer Affairs. The strength and influence of the Pettah Mafia was demonstrated during the Black July 1983 when Pettah was not touched by rioters although the neighboring Fort area was devastated. The secret is that Pettah was under the protection of highest-level political powers.

No government has been concerned about the control by the Pettah mafia on wholesale trade of commodities, particularly on their trade with India.  This in addition to their control on gold and jewelry trade in Sea Street.

During the foreign exchange crisis, it was believed that they operated and controlled the ‘Undial’ system with impunity. They are suspected to be the major culprits of misinvoicing at the customs with the connivance of customs and commercial bank personnel.

Sugar scam was one of the recent operations of the Pettah Mafia. It was evident that they had prior information of the substantial reduction of customs duty. The Consumer Affairs Authority could have entered into a binding agreement in terms of CA Act Section 14 with the traders on the sale price. But they did not and allowed the traders to make exorbitant profits. The Finance ministry is splitting hairs that there was no loss to the government and does not consider the imposition of a windfall tax as done in other countries.

The Pettah mafia has had no competition. D.S Senanayake established the Cooperative Wholesale Establishment (CWE) to cater to the cooperatives sector. During the time of Philip Gunawardena CWE was linked with the Multi-Purpose Cooperative scheme. It was the CWE and the cooperatives which served the nation during the 1983 riots when the private trade did hardly function. But surprisingly during the Yahapalana regime the whole sale function of the CWE was banned. This unwise and irrational move gave the Pettah mafia a free run in the import trade particularly with India. It has become a profitable haven.

Politicians and civil society organizations are concerned about the growing Indian influence with the proposed Indian investments like that of Adani and Amul and their impact on the economy and security of the country. But no mention is made of the long standing Indian enclave in Pettah.

It is deplorable that while India has made inroads or in the process of making inroads into strategic economic spheres of the country, they are griping over a barren piece of land in the Kacchativu. Sri Lanka may have to consider ceding Kacchativu Island to India regardless of the good will agreement the country had with PM Indira Gandhi and invite a foreign power to take over Trincomalee on our terms.

It is proposed that the government appoints a Commission with clear terms of reference to investigate and report on the structure, role and the impact on the economy of this non-national/ acquired national enclave.

The original role of the CWE should be restored and given the power and funds to engage in the wholesale import, storage and distribution of essential commodities. One of the advantages that Pettah traders have is their well-established network of trade contacts in India. CWE should establish a branch in India to create such an effective network.

Vichara

e-Con e-News

‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’

e-Con e-News 14-20 April 2024

*

‘Firstly, the political parties & party politics,

and secondly the Executive Presidency;

both these structures should be abolished.

Thirdly, the independence of the judiciary

should be maintained. Fourthly all the appointments

in ministries & government institutions

such as Central Bank, Treasury, etc, should be managed

by non-political, non-partisan persons,

and all political appointees should be sent home.

Lastly, the religious institutions headed by Buddhist Sangha

should undergo a radical change’. – AT Ariyaratne, Sarvodaya’s Supreme Leader

92-year-old Ahangamage Tudor Ariyaratne, controverted founder of the Lanka Jathika Sarvodhaya Shramadana Movement has made the transition – into samsara; others suggest he may have exited samsara. ee is not qualified to pass judgement.

     US envoy Julie Chung’s media twit machine immediately twittered, that she was ‘grateful to the just deceased… for the ‘opportunities to partner with Sarvodhaya over many years’, having ‘supported his efforts to uplift the lives of countless…’ etc., etc. , You know the yankee prattle. Fill in the blanks!

     Then there’s the head of USAID’s National Peace Council of Sri Lanka, Jehan Perera, gushing: ‘Dr AT Ariyaratne, the most important person for all time!’

     Others point to Ariyaratne’s more honorable role as a young man in the Bauddha Jathika Balavegaya (BJB) formed following the abortive ‘Catholic Army Officers Coup in January 1962’.  They recall Ariyaratne speaking first at BJB meetings, always placing stress ‘on Ahimsa (non-violence) a cardinal tenet of Buddhism’. They recount Ariyaratne’s rendition of the proceedings of the Press Commission (1963-64), established by Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s Government ‘to highlight anti-Buddhist activities and focus attention on immoral acts treacherous to the nation’:

‘The Press is an instrument which is primarily meant to serve

the real interests of a country. It can also be misused. If we were not satisfied

that the newspapers of the Lake House & the Times groups were guilty

of anti-national & anti–Buddhist conduct on a large scale, we would not have recommended

a drastic change in the ownership of the newspapers belonging to these groups.

From the evidence placed before us, we are satisfied that the existing newspapers

did not hesitate to fabricate, suppress, slant, or distort news & views whenever it suited them.

They have been further guilty of anti-national & anti-Buddhist activities, which

are more serious than the earlier-mentioned lapses on their part. Indeed,

the most vehement critics of the present activities of the Press were the Buddhists

& some of their organizations, and we are satisfied that their grievances are genuine

& should be removed. Buddhist leaders have been falsely accused of being intolerant.

Their hopes & ambitions receive scant consideration, and their rightful place

due to their religion has been denied by the newspapers. This has been deliberately done

to help the minorities, in particular, the Christian minorities, to perpetuate

the unjust privileges acquired by them during the last 4 centuries

at the expense of the Buddhist Majority.

(Final Report of the Press Commission, 1964)

So why did Ariyaratne go where he went after that, and what made him go that way? Some are spreading gossip of his outré proclivities. Yet here are Ariyaratne’s own words:

‘I got disillusioned with politics. An idea was born in my mind

that a social revolution minus political colouring should be staged.

The Sarvodaya Shramadana movement was the outcome of this thinking’

– AT Ariyaratne

What matters to us at ee is that Ariyaratne’s Sarvodhaya has helped throw rural people (their proletarianization the cornerstone of any industrial modernity) into debt by getting them to buy imported Indian, Japanese & US agricultural machinery, rather than investing any profits they were allowed to make, investing in making those machines here, and upskilling rural people – developing a working class dedicated to capital accumulation:

     Instead, Sarvodhaya – now headed by Ariyaratne’s son Vinya (who this month was ‘judging’ corrupt public servants on behalf of Transparency International, and was also a guest speaker at Harvard Asia Pacific Regional Conference) – was turned into the country’s largest NGO (excluding private & multinational corporations, Unilever, Exxon, etc) – one of the oldest of the Rockefeller and US-government-funded NGOs (see Random Notes on Rockefeller & Ford Foundation).

     ‘Is Sarvodaya a credible NGO, being more or less a family-run organisation? asked The Island in August 2020, after the US government had announced another set of millions in funding some exercise in promoting those types of democracy and ‘free media’ that only dollars can buy.

     Sarvodhaya, in cahoots with the Norwegian government, had illegally settled in the Vanni those Indians being sent back to India under the 1964 Sirima-Shastri Pact. These later became ‘the last soldiers of the LTTE’… provisioning their ‘elite’ or hapless suicide bombers…

     ee also cannot forget Ex-JVPer & later-UNPer Victor Ivan’s Ravaya was started off with a nudge, elbow & heads-up from Sarvodhaya. Ariyaratne provided their ample printing facilities for Ravaya to print its weekly tabloid, on a pay-later basis. Ravaya was birthed along with the Canada-government-funded Yukthiya & Sarnihar, to attempt the impeachment of President R Premadasa. These tabloids were always one of the instruments used by their white masters, sotto-sotto on imperialism, enabled to disseminate their limited perspectives despite limited circulation and ads, which would have made any other papers collapse, unless funded ‘under the table’.

     Sarvodhaya also backed the allegedly nonpartisan General Mahesh Senanayake, linked to the US military, when he ran for President in 2019 against Gotabhaya Rajapakse. Senanayake as the topmost officer responsible for the Directorate of Military Intelligence, was accused of not preventing the Islamic attacks on churches, but gave no believable answers as to why he had not prevented them.

     During the so-called Aragalaya, which then led to the ousting of supposedly nepotistic Rajapakse, Sarvodhaya helped provide services for a 24/7 field hospital with St John’s Ambulance… (health facilities, which were not of much use, when he passed away at a private hospital). Perhaps it is such ‘opportunities’ engineered by Sarvodhaya, et al, that the US government’s Chung is so ‘grateful’ to Ariyaratne.

Sarvodaya has never challenged Sri Lanka’s big banks,

even the state-owned ones, who raise a significant portion

of their deposits at low cost from rural

& economically disadvantaged areas & grant most loans

in Colombo, to large businesses & the government.

Banks fund up to 90% of their business through

such rural customer deposits. Bank shareholders only fund around 10%.

Sarvodaya was ‘founded’ by the Rockefeller-funded and much-awarded Ariyaratne in 1958. Ariyaratne received the Jamnalal Bajaj Award in 1991, and was nominated to the US-installed Yahapalana government’s Constitutional Council as ‘a civil representative’ in 2015. Indeed, Ariyaratne and Sarvodhaya have earned their accolades: Ramon Magsaysay Award (Philippines) 1969, King Baudouin Award for International Development (Belgium) 1982, Niwano Peace Price (Japan) 1992, and Mahatma Gandhi Peace Prize (India)…

     By 1986 the import-export oligarchy were alerted to their failure yet again to fitfully employ yet another generation who had come of employable and martial age. The oilgarchy began stoking the great murderous war of terror on the South, and with another in progress in the north, Sarvodaya Economic Enterprise Development Services (SEEDS, a microcredit division of Sarvodaya) was thus licensed to entice rural consumption. Sarvodaya Development Finance (SDF) was formed in 2010 as the economic arm of Sarvodaya.

     52% of SDF is owned by SEEDS, 22% by Sarvodaya-related entities, and 13% by other shareholders.  Other investors ‘from Sri Lanka and overseas’ include Japan’s Gentosha Total Consulting, with its origins in paedophilic Manga magazines! There is no mention of who exactly owns which shares that have voting rights. This the media will not report!  SDF ‘debuted’ in Dec 2021 on the Colombo Stock Exchange, promising to use profits to develop villages. ‘Sarvodaya had committed over a billion rupees for development of 5,300 villages in which it operates. Though the company will be profitable, dividends from SDF will be put back into villages.’ The qualifier ‘though’ does seem curious.

     SDF now proudly proclaims that 80% of their multibillion+-rupee portfolio is lent (unlike the big banks) outside the Western province. Of this multibillion-rupee loan portfolio, several billion are for leases funding tractors. They’ve proudly noted: ‘None of its tractor loans [are] in the non-performing category’. So what is in the non-performing category? And what about harvesters too? We won’t ask what has happened to the buffalos, from whose milk Europeans make expensive artisanal cheese, and would like to export to Colombo’s.

     All SDF does is sell foreign (Indian, Japanese, US) machinery and goods to rural farmers (see ee Sept-Dec 2021). For Sarvodaya, whose figurehead leaders affect Gandhist simplisms and wear national couture, development is not investment in modern industry or upgrading technical (scientific & artistic) skills of villagers to make those machines they lease and sell.

     SDF’s deals with foreign ‘machinery retailers’are mainly Indian industrial fronts for imperialist industrial companies: (India’s Mahindra, Swaraj & TAFE, & US’ Massey Ferguson etc.) that ‘allow farmers to access modern farming machinery, such as tractors & harvesters… Leasing solutions are available for 2wheelers, 3wheelers, & other 4wheelers to enhance individual lifestyles.’

     Sarvodaya never demands that US Massey or India’s Mahindra or Japan’s Kubota build those machines here? His organization was an excuse for preventing actual agricultural policy to industrialize the rural so people coulda made the pencils and books and shoes and clothes their children needed …

     SDF is linked to US government media mouths (and they have many) in Sri Lanka like EconomyNext. SDF Chairman Channa de Silva is Founder Chairman of Capital Media, publishers of Echelon business magazine and web portal economynext.com. He previously served as a director of Summit Finance, Delmege, Pan Asia Bank, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) SL and the Board of Investments (BOI) SL!

     The autocratic Ariyaratne was incinerated with honors by state. Media reported that Sarvodhaya village upliftment program began in the Rodi village of Kanatholuwa in the Kurunegala district in 1958, and spread to 15,000 villages, praising Ariyaratne for freeing people from caste oppression. Researchers who have studied other ‘caste villages’ in Sri Lanka since the late 1970s, note that in the 20 years since Sarvodaya had started his ‘revolution’, the only difference that had taken place was that marriages had begun to be ‘mediated’ by government officials, who gave new birth certificates with surnames belonging to the govi (farming) caste. They note that the only decisive protest movements against casteism were organized by the scientific socialist movements. Sarvodhaya and other religious organizations only made caste divisions a ‘beggar’s wound’. Sarvodhaya and other non-governmental organizations [NGOs] went to caste villages only after these socialist movement were attacked and weakened. They have set up family corporations aka NGOs, which have ended up as colossal failures. The best examples of that can be found in Ariyaratne’s Sarvodhaya as well as his sister’s son, Harsha Kumara Navaratne’s Seva Lanka. Both those organizations are family companies, with the financial controllers also being close relatives of the family. Researchers ask how these the organizations that exist as clannish clubs can create any kind of a just society?

*

‘In virtually every colonial territory a certain number had to be killed

before the survivors would accept the new prospects.

This might even be said to introduce a new concept

into the study of political economy – the indispensable minimum of murder.’

S. B. D. de Silva, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment

The Emperor is not only naked, he & she and they & theirs are thoroughly enjoying their nakedness, in open broad televised daylight, exposing what was previously relegated to so-called snuff porn movies. The Emperor’s minions are now shown raping, dismembering & murdering whole masses of people as evident in US-occupied Palestine and occasionally disclosed in their old & new theatres of horror, horror, horror, from the fragmented Congo to divided Korea, from 1965 Indonesia to 2002 Guantanamo, but now available on media, social yet mostly anti-socialist (of the scientific kind, that is).

     The lesson they wish to teach us is that those who resort to armed self-defence against their military invasions & occupations will be exterminated – a lesson supposedly taught to and imbibed by the original peoples of the Americas, and those Africans kidnapped and sold as enslaved chattel for their American plantations, and their present-day colonies in Asia (Japan, South Korea) and Africa.

     And ringing & resounding through these centuries and over & under all their forever wars today is their thoroughly absurd sermons, echoed by their NGO boys & girls & in-betweens, about human rights and rule of law, etc. And so, with the annual meetings of the USA’s international financial institutions in Washington – where corporate lobbyists have assembled 1,000s of prostitutes, male and female, to teach central bankers and their delegations from around the world the other bondage and discipline and sado-masochism (BDSM) – their perpetual news blows fire and ice, one minute demanding submission to IMF dictat, the next minute lamenting the lot of those they are stealing from. And so…

     Into the middle of a smouldering bonfire about to be exploded in Sri Lanka again, their media this week continued tossing their combustible gunpowders, which promise more glorious fireworks, some LGBTQXYZ rights, some so-called ‘ethnic’, so-called ‘minority’ and ‘gender’ rights, then in jumps an estate workers’ strike, with their kangany-turned trade union leader, son of a son of a son, invited into that global brothel known as the World Economic Forum, all flung head first into the conflagration with the required fogs and smokes and minute-by-minute ‘mirrors’ all needed to sell off people’s right to labor and life, and related national resources, all for a song to international bondholders who are really North Atlantic mass murderers & extortionists, who can stand back as far as they can from whatever toxic shrapnel & noxious gases they explode & emanate… all so that the import-export plantation oligarchy ruling Sri Lanka can rescue itself out of the hangover from the orgy it has indulged in for the last decades and centuries (choose your frame: 1948, 1795, 1659, 1505, etc…)

*

This ee Focus looks at the role the JVP has been playing or has been asked to play, seemingly acceding to the selling of the country’s most treasured resources to USA & its chief colonies (EU, Japan, India. etc). ee also looks at the comparison made between Sri Lanka and Greece, in particular the Greek party Syriza, which once claimed to be ‘Radical Left’ and the JVP, once a cadre party that seems to have survived 2 annihilation campaigns, and still calls itself a Marxist-Leninist Party, which somehow got into a suicidal internecine war with other Marxist-Leninist Parties, leaving both sides open to infiltration by  ‘Third Forces’ – the Empire’s counter-insurgency political police… who create and run fake Leftists, socialists, communists, etc.

*

Stefanos Kasselakis, a candidate for President in Greece suddenly appeared, out of the blue. He vied for and took over the leadership of so-called ‘Radical Left’ Greek party Syriza and then split it into two. He had once volunteered for Joe Biden’s 2008 election campaign and for Wshington’s CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) foreign policy think tank, worked at Goldman Sachs and in the shipping industry. He then ran for the leadership of Syriza, whose state ballot he had joined, in a non-elected position, in 2023, as a representative of the Greek expatriate diaspora in the USA. Kasselakis lives within a same-sex marriage and helped to accelerate a division of Syriza into two components, weakening it rather than reinforcing it, as he had promised to do.

     ‘This saw a capture of Left ideology by the liberal Empire’: Imperialist ideology, because it is supposed to be pluralistic, ‘must create a semblance of pluralism, as long as this pluralism is under control. The Empire has its Right and its Left, which precisely do not question its essence and aims. Any other ‘Right’ is accused of being nostalgic of Hitler, and any other ‘Left’ of being nostalgic of Stalin – or at least of being merely backward, out of time, etc.’

     The party retains certain policies to prevent being cut off from its mass base, but then rather than leading, it ditches other more vital policies, basing leadership on so-called surveys and polls. In Sri Lanka, the latest ‘polls’ and ‘surveys’ promoting the JVP are funded by the CIA’s Asia Foundation, who is also tirelessly training Sri Lanka’s judiciary.

     These polls can pretend to be a more democratic way to govern, but they are a fake ‘democratic’ ruse to win elections. Some leaders given media coverage, start to feel vain, and come to be believe they are really talented and find themselves offered some ‘spontaneous’ help from those who have suddenly ‘recognized’ their talents. They then get easily manipulated, and are soon adjusting their positions to ‘electoral needs’ – which happen to be the needs of those who sponsor politicians… ahem… the ‘brought to you by’ folks. Guess who?     

     Societies of the past used to make warriors of the young people, and politicians of the old, who tempered the momentum of the younger. The warriors now are mostly traders and financiers, and the politicians do the biddings of traders and financiers. They are chosen, educated and sponsored by traders and financiers. And they sell out everything without any remorse of conscience… without even realizing what they are doing. They tend to believe that the only necessary qualification is intelligence. The neutralisation of all convictions and beliefs is pursued today in a very methodical way.

     The most powerful parties and manipulators of the establishment (Multinational Corporations and their boards of directors, the BJP’s RSS, Trump’s Bannon, etc) have justifiably adopted and distorted Lenin’s cadre-based political party, as the most efficient route to capturing power.

     The former leader of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, opened the door to Kasselakis’ leadership by allowing ‘the people’ – not tried and true dedicated cadre from the grassroots but astroturf – to nominate party candidates: ‘Isn’t it all the more democratic, if, instead of the party members, it is the people who decide?

     ‘Now, which people are we talking of? Well, the voters of the party, certainly, only we don’t know them, not before the elections, since they have not voted yet, not after, since the election is secret. How are we to distinguish them from others then? Well, let’s say they will be the ones willing to pay a fee in order to vote. But this fee cannot be very significant, for that would not be democratic. Result: by paying 2 euros anyone can vote. Let’s face it then: the leader of a party can be elected by supporters other than those of the party (under some critical mass of a party they can even be a majority)! It is important to understand how this was made possible, what the underlying presuppositions are. The word ‘party’ itself underlined the discontinuity as a characteristic of the electoral body, it is a word belonging to another era. There are no parts in our ‘liquid times’, only hydraulic pressures to be managed; imperial ideology wants continuity and for continuity’s sake it has to liquidate everything. In this context parties are no longer parties, they are variables of adjustment. In the process, liberal democracy first ceases to be a democracy, and manages to be liberal only as long as it can export illiberalism at the periphery of the Empire and blackmail its constituents to conformity….’ (crudely adapted from Christos Marsellos’s Golden Boys & ‘Young Leaders: Syriza in search of a New Leader, Sept 2023, see ee Politics)

*

________

Contents:
https://eesrilanka.wordpress.com/2024/04/20/the-naked-emperor-exxon-sarvodhaya-the-jvp/

The Naked Emperor – Exxon, Sarvodhaya & the JVP

by Tom Engelhardt courtesy counterpunch.com

I’ve been describing this world of ours, such as it is, for almost 23 years at TomDispatch. I’ve written my way through three-and-a-half presidencies — god save us, it could be four in November! I’ve viewed from a grave (and I mean that word!) distance America’s endlessly disastrous wars of this century. I’ve watched the latest military budget hit almost $900 billion, undoubtedly on its way toward a cool trillion in the years to come, while years ago the whole national security” budget (though insecurity” would be a better word) soared to well over the trillion-dollar mark.

I’ve lived my whole life in an imperial power. Once, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was even the lone superpower,” the last great power on planet Earth, or so its leaders believed. I then watched how, in a world without great-power dangers, it continued to invest ever more of our tax dollars in our military. A peace dividend? Who needed that? And yet, in the decades that followed, by far the most expensive military on planet Earth couldn’t manage to win a single war, no less its Global War on Terror. In fact, in this century, while fighting vain or losing conflicts across significant parts of the planet, it slowly but all too obviously began to go down the tubes, or perhaps I mean (if you don’t mind a few mixed metaphors) come apart at the seams?

And it never seems to end, does it? Imagine that 32 years after the U.S. became the last superpower on Planet Earth, in a devastating kind of political chaos, this country might indeed reelect a man who imagines himself running a future American dictatorship” — his very word for it! — even if, publicly at least, just for a single day.

And yes, in 2024, as chaos blooms on the American political scene, the world itself continues to be remarkably at war — think of war,” in fact, as humanity’s middle name — in both Ukraine and Gaza (with offshoots in Lebanon and Yemen). Meanwhile, this country’s now 22-year-old war on terror straggles on in its own devastating fashion, with threats of worse to come in plain sight.

After all, 88 years after two atomic bombs were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II, nukes seem to be making a comeback (not that they were ever truly gone, of course). Thank you, Kim and Vlad! I’m thinking of how North Korean leader Kim Jong-un implicitly threatened to nuke his nonnuclear southern neighbor recently. But also, far more significantly how, in his own version of a State of the Union address to his people, Russian President Vladimir Putin very publicly threatened to employ nukes from his country’s vast arsenal (assumedly tactical” ones, some of which are more powerful than the atomic bombs that ended World War II), should any European countries — think France — send their troops into Ukraine.

And don’t forget that, amid all of this, my own country’s military, eternally hiking its defense” budget, continues to prepare in a big-time fashion for a future war with — yes — China! Of course, that country is, in turn, rushing to upgrade its own nuclear arsenal and the rest of its military machine as well. Only recently, for instance, the U.S. and Japan held joint military maneuvers that, as they openly indicated for the first time, were aimed at preparing for just such a future conflict with China and you can’t get much more obvious than that.

Another World War?

Oh, and when it comes to war, I haven’t even mentioned, for instance, the devastating civil war in Sudan that has nothing to do with any of the major powers. Yes, we humans just can’t seem to stop making war while, to the tune of untold trillions of dollars globally, preparing for ever more of it. And the truly strange thing is this: it seems to matter not at all that the very world on which humanity has done so forever and a day is now itself being unsettled in a devastating way that no military of any sort, armed in any fashion, will ever be able to deal with.

Let’s admit it: we humans have always had a deep urge to make war. Of course, logically speaking, we shouldn’t continue to do so, and not just for all the obvious reasons but because we’re on a planet that can’t take it anymore. (Yes, making war or simply preparing for it means putting staggering amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and so, quite literally, making war on the planet itself.) But — as both history and the present moment seem to indicate all too decisively — we just can’t stop ourselves.

In the process, while hardly noticing, it seems as if we’ve become ever more intent on conducting a global war on this planet itself. Our weapons in that war — and in their own long-term fashion, they’re likely to prove no less devastating than nuclear arms — have been fossil fuels. I’m thinking, of course, of coal, oil, and natural gas and the greenhouse gases that drilling for them and the use of them emit in staggering quantities even in what passes for peacetime.

In the previous century, of course, there were two devastating world” wars, World War I and World War II. They were global events that, in total, killed more than a hundred million of us and devastated parts of the planet. But here’s the truly strange thing: while local and regional wars continue in this century in a striking fashion, few consider the way we’re loading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and methane while, in the process, heating this planet disastrously as a new kind of world war. Think of climate change, in fact, as a kind of slow-motion World War III. After all, it couldn’t be more global or, in the end, more destructive than a world war of the worst sort.

And unlike the present wars in Gaza and Ukraine, which, even thousands of miles away, continue to be headline-making events, the war on this planet normally gets surprisingly little attention in much of the media. In fact, in 2023, a year that set striking global heat records month by month from June to December and was also the hottest year ever recorded, the major TV news programs of ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox actually cut their coverage of global warming significantly, according to Media Matters for America.

If I Don’t Get Elected, It’s Going to Be a Blood Bath”

I live in New York City which, like much of the rest of the planet, set a heat record for 2023. In addition, the winter we just passed through was a record one for warmth. And I began writing this piece on a set of days in early March when the temperature in my city also hit records in the mid-60s, and when, on March 14th (not April 14th, May 14th, or even June 14th), it clocked 70-plus degrees. I was walking outside that afternoon with my shirtsleeves rolled up, my sweater in my backpack, and my spring jacket tied around my waist, feeling uncomfortably hot in my blue jeans even on the shadier side of the street.

And yes, if, as my wife and I did recently, you were to walk down to the park near where we live, you’d see that the daffodils are already blooming wildly as are other flowers, while the first trees are budding, including a fantastic all-purple one that’s burst out fully, all of this in a fashion that might once have seemed normal sometime in April. And yes, some of what I’m describing is certainly quite beautiful in the short run, but under it lies an increasingly grim reality when it comes to extreme (and extremely hot) weather.

While I was working on this piece, the largest Texas fires ever (yes, ever!), continued to burn, evidently barely contained, with far more than a million acres of that state’s panhandle already fried to a crisp. Oh, and those record-setting Canadian forest fires that scorched tens of millions of acres of that country, while turning distant U.S. cities like New York into smoke hells last June have, it turns out, festered underground all winter as zombie fires.” And they may burst out again in an even more devastating fashion this spring or summer. In fact, in 2023, from Hawaii to Chile to Europe, there were record wildfires of all sorts on our increasingly over-heated planet. And far worse is yet to come, something you could undoubtedly say as well about more intense flooding, more violent storms, and so on.

We are, in other words, increasingly on a different planet, though you would hardly know it amid the madness of our moment. I mean, imagine this: Russia, whose leader, Vladimir Putin, clearly doesn’t consider climate change a significant issue, is on pace to achieve an oil-drilling record for the second year in a row. China, despite installing far more green power than any other country, has also been using more coal than all other nations combined, and set global records for building new coal-fired power plants.

Meanwhile, the third great” power on this planet, despite having a president dedicated to doing something about climate change, is still the largest exporter of natural gas around and continues to produce oil at a distinctly record pace.

And don’t forget the five giant fossil-fuel companies, BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies, which in 2023 produced oil, made profits, and rewarded shareholders at — yes, you guessed it! — a record pace, while the major petrostates of our world are still, according to the Guardian, planning expansions that would blow the planet’s carbon budget twice over.”

In sum, then, this world of ours only grows more dangerous by the year. And I haven’t even mentioned artificial intelligence, have I? As Michael Klare has written in an analysis for the Arms Control Association, the dangers of AI and other emerging military technologies are likely to expand into the nuclear realm by running up the escalation ladder or by blurring the distinction between a conventional and nuclear attack.”

In other words, human war-making could become both more inhuman and worse at the same time. Now, add just one more factor into the global equation. America’s European and Asian allies see U.S. leadership, dominant since 1945, experiencing a potentially epoch-ending, terminal failure, as the global Pax Americana (that had all too little to do with peace”) is crumbling — or do I mean overheating?

What they see, in fact, is two elderly men locked in an ever more destructive, inward-looking electoral knife fight, with one of them warning ominously that if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath… for the country.” And if he isn’t victorious, here’s his further prediction: I don’t think you’re going to have another election, or certainly not an election that’s meaningful.” Of course, were he to be victorious the same could be true, especially since he’s promised from his first day in office to drill, drill, drill,” which, at this point in our history, is, by definition, to declare war on this planet!

Unfortunately, Donald Trump isn’t alone. All too sadly, we humans clearly have trouble focusing on the world we actually inhabit. We’d prefer to fight wars instead. Consider that the definition not just of imperial decline, but of decline period in the age of climate change.

And yet, it’s barely news.

This piece first appeared at TomDispatch.

උපුටා ගැන්ම  ලංකා ලීඩර්

වර්තමානයේ දී ලෝකයේ බොහෝ රටවල් අමෙරිකාව ප්‍රමුඛ බටහිර ආධිපත්‍යයෙන් මිදී බහුධ්‍රැවීය ලෝකය තුළට පිවිසෙමින් ඇති බව හා ගෝලීය මූල්‍ය ක්‍රමය බිඳවැටී නව මූල්‍ය පද්ධතියක් ලෝකය තුළ ස්ථාපනය වෙමින් පවතින බවත් රුසියානු ශ්‍රී ලංකා ව්‍යාපාරික සංසදයේ සභාපති ආචාර්ය ජගත් චන්ද්‍රවංශ මහතා අනාවරණය කරයි.

ඒ මහතා මේ බව අනාවරණය කළේ බිඳවැටෙන අධිරාජ්‍ය හමුවේ ගොඩනැගෙන බහුධ්‍රැවීය ලෝකය සහ ලෝකයේ නව ගමන්මග පිළිබඳව පැවති සංවාදයක දී පිළිතුරු ලබාදෙමිනි.

සංවාදය පහළින්…

* බටහිර බලවේග විසින් යුක්රේනය භාවිතා කරමින් රුසියාවට එරෙහිව අරඹා ඇති යුද්ධය, යුදමය වශයෙන් පරාජයකර අවසන් කිරීමට රුසියාව පමාකරමින් සිටින බවක් පෙනෙන්නට තිබෙනවා. මෙයට හේතුව විදිහට ඔබ දකින්නේ කුමක් ද?

ඇත්තටම රුසියාව යුද වදින්නේ යුක්රේනය සමග නොවෙයි. මේ යුද්ධය සිදු කරන්නේ යුක්රේනය සමග නොවන නිසා මෙය අවසන් කරන්න බැහැ. යුක්රේනයට තවත් යුද ආධාර පැකේජයක් ලබාදීමට බයිඩන් පරිපාලනය කටයුතු කරමින් සිටිනවා. මම හිතන්නෙ අමෙරිකාව යුක්රේනයට මුදල් ලබාදේවි. අමෙරිකාව පත්ව ඇති ආර්ථික අවපාතය හමුවේ තම ආර්ථික මොඩලය විනාශ වීමට නොදී රැකගැනීමට නම් ඔවුන්ට රුසියාව සහ චීනය වැනි දැවැන්ත රටවල් සමග යුද්ධයක් අවශ්‍යයි. ඒ නිසාම අමෙරිකාවට අවශ්‍ය නැහැ යුක්රේනය තුළ පවතින යුදමය තත්ත්වය අවසන් කර ගැනීමට. මැතිවරණයට පෙර යුක්රේනයේ යුද්ධය අවසන් කරන්න සිදුවුනොත් එය සිදුවන්නේ රුසියානු ජයග්‍රහණයක් එක්ක කියන කාරණය ඔවුන් දන්නවා. ඒ නිසා බයිඩන් පරිපාලනය කෙසේවත් එවැනි දේකට ඉඩ තබන්නේ නැහැ.

මේ යුද්ධය අවසන් කිරීමට හැකි තවත් ක්‍රමයක් තමයි සාකච්ඡා මාර්ගයෙන් යුද්ධය අවසන් කිරීම. ඒත් ඔවුන් යුක්රේනයට ඒ සඳහා කිසිසේත්ම ඉඩ දෙන්නේ නැහැ. CIA  ප්‍රධානියා වන විලියම් බර්න්ස් දින කිහිපයකට පෙර ප්‍රකාශයක් කරනවා ” අපි යුක්රේනයට ආයුද දෙන්නේ නැත්නම් යුක්රේනයට රුසියාව ඉදිරියේ විශාල පරාජයක් ලබන්න සිදු වෙනවා” කියලා. ඒ කියන්නේ අමෙරිකාවේ ඔත්තු සේවයම පිළිගන්නවා අමෙරිකානු ආධාර නැත්නම් යුක්රේනය පරාදයි කියලා.

යුක්රේනයට අද තිබෙන දැවැන්තම ප්‍රශ්නය තමයි මූල්‍යමය හා ද්‍රව්‍යමය අධාර ලැබුනත් පිරිස් බලයක් නොමැති වීම.  යුක්රේනයේ තිබෙන යුද්ධය බටහිර අවශ්‍යතාව අනුව සිදුවන දෙයක් බව මේ කාරණා මගින් පැහැදිලි වෙනවා.

නේටෝ සංවිධානයේ ලේකම්වරයා වන ස්ටෝලන් බර්ග් ගේ ප්‍රකාශ ගත්තත්, යුරෝපීය සංවිධානයේ විදේශකටයුතු ලේකම් ජෝශප් බ්‍රැරල් ගේ ප්‍රකාශ ගත්තත්, යුරෝපා කොමිසමේ සභාපතිගේ ප්‍රකාශ ගත්තත් ඒ හැම ප්‍රකාශයකින්ම පවසන්නේ යුක්රේනය රුසියාවට පරාජය වුනොත් නේටෝ සංවිධානයේ පරාජයක් ලෙස එය භාරගැනීමට සිදුවෙනවාය කියන කාරණය.

රුසියාව දන්නවා මේ සටන තියෙන්නේ බටහිරත් සමග කියන දේ. රුසියාවට වාසියි මේ සටන ඇදෙන්න දෙන එක. රුසියාව යුක්රේනයේ විශාල පරාසයක් තමන් යටතට එක්වරම ගත්තොත් බටහිර මාධ්‍ය විසින් රුසියාවට එරෙහිව දැවැන්ත මතයක් නිර්මාණය කරනවා. රුසියානු ජාතිකයන් වැඩිවශයෙන් ජීවත් වන යුක්රේනයේ ප්‍රදේශ රුසියාවේ පාලනයක් යටතට ගෙන මෙම තත්ත්වට දිගටම පවත්වාගෙන යෑම රුසියාවට වැඩි වාසියක් වෙනවා. මෙය භූ දේශපාලනික වාසියක් ලෙස හඳුන්වන්නත් පුලුවන්.

යුද්ධය දිගින් දිගටම ඇදීම නිසා සම්පත් අතින් බටහිර ක්‍රමයෙන් දුර්වල වෙනවා. ඉන්ධන හා බලශක්ති ගැටලුවක් මේ වනවිටත් බටහිරට මතුවී තිබෙනවා. බටහිර ක්‍රමයෙන් දුර්වල වීමේ වාසිය රුසියාවට තිබෙනවා.  බටහිරට අවශ්‍ය  දෙවන ලෝක යුද්ධය වගේ යුද්ධයක් ලෝකයේ මතුකරන්න. මුළු ලෝකයේම යුද්ධයක් මතුවෙනවා කියන්නේ ජර්මනිය, ප්‍රංශය, එංගලන්තය වැනි රටවල් පවා ආර්ථික වශයෙන් කඩාගෙන වැටෙන එක. මෙහිදී අමෙරිකාවට යළිත් නැගිටින්න සිද්ධවෙන්නේ වෙනම ආර්ථික මොඩලයකින්. මේ උපක්‍රම රුසියාව අධ්‍යයනය කරලා තමයි යුදමය තත්ත්වය දිගින් දිගටම ඇදගෙන යන්නේ.

* බහුධ්‍රැවීය ලෝකය කියන සංකල්පය ගැන ඔබේ විග්‍රහය මොනවගේ ද?

බහුධ්‍රැවීය ලෝකය ගැන කතාකරන්න පටන් ගත්තේ යුගොස්ලෝවියාවට නේටෝ සංවිධාන විසින් අමානුෂික ලෙස පහරදීමේ සිද්ධියෙන් පස්සේ. 1999 දී රුසියාවේ හිටපු අගමැති යෙව්ගිනි ප්‍රිමකොව් මැතිතුමාගේ සංකල්පයක් තමයි බහුධ්‍රැවීය ලෝකය කියන සංකල්පය. ද්වීධ්‍රැවීය ලෝකයේ සීතල යුද්ධය අවසන් වුනාට පස්සේ බලයන්ගේ සමතුලිතතාව පවත්වාගෙන යාම සඳහා ඔහු තමයි යෝජනා කළේ බහුධ්‍රැවීය ලෝකය. 

බහුධ්‍රැවීය ලෝකයේ පාදම වෙන්නේ ඉතිහාසය හා සම්බන්ධ සංස්කෘතික පසුබිම. එතුමා දැක්කා ලෝකයේ විවිධ කලාපවල ඉතිහාසය, ආගමික හා සංස්කෘතික පසුබිම් එකිනෙකට වෙනස්ය කියන එක. ඔහු දැක්කා මේ වෙනස් වෙනස් ජන සමාජවල ආර්ථික මොඩලය, සමාජීය පද්ධති සකස්වූ මොඩලය, ආගමික විශේෂතා වගේ වෙනස්කම් මත ලෝකය කොටස් 8කට වගේ බෙදන්න පුලුවන්ය කියලා. ඒ හරහා තමයි බහුධ්‍රැවීය ලෝකය කියන සංකල්පය එතුමා හඳුන්වා දුන්නේ.

බටහිර අධිරාජ්‍ය විසින් ආක්‍රමණ දියත් කරලා යටත් විජිත ලෙස ලෝකයේ රටවල් ඈඳාගෙන ඒවා ඔවුන්ගේ කොලණි ලෙස පවත්වාගනිමින් දැඩි තාඩන පීඩන යටතේ තමයි පාලනය කිරීම සිදු කළේ. සූරාකෑම් දරුණු ලෙස සිදුවුනා. ප්‍රංශ විප්ලවය සහ සෝවියට් සමාජවාදී විප්ලවයන්ගේ ප්‍රතිඵලයක් හැටියට තමයි බටහිර ආධිපත්‍යයෙන් ලෝකයේ රටවල් මුදාගැනීමට හැකි වුනේ. එහි දිගුවක් විදිහට දෙවන ලෝක යුද්ධය සෝවියට් දේශය ජයගැනීමත් සමගම සෝවියට් දේශයේ බලපෑම හා ඉල්ලීම මත එංගලන්තයට සිදුවුනා යටත් විජිත රටවල් ඔවුන්ගේ ග්‍රහණයෙන් නිදහස් කරන්න. මේ විදිහට නිදහස් වුනත් ඉන්පසුව බටහිර විසින් නව ආර්ථික මොඩලයක් නිර්මාණය කළා මුළු ලෝකයම නැවත තමන්ගේ ග්‍රහණයට නතුකර ගන්න. මේ ආර්ථික මොඩලය ඇතුළෙ තමයි අපි අදටත් ජීවත් වෙන්නේ.

බෙට්න්වුඩ් ගිවිසුම යටතේ ලෝකයේ ආර්ථිකය, මූල්‍ය අරමුදලත්, ලෝක බැංකුවත් හරහා අමෙරිකානු ඩොලරය ප්‍රධාන මුදල් ඒකකය කරගනිමින් ක්‍රියාත්මක වීම ඇරඹුනා. 90 දශකයේ අගභාගය වනතෙක්ම ලෝකයේ ජාත්‍යන්තර වෙළෙඳාම 90%කට වඩා වැඩි ප්‍රමාණයක් සිදුවුනේ අමෙරිකානු ඩොලරය හරහා. මෙමගින් ඔවුන් නව යටත්විජිතකරණය යටතේ ලෝකය නැවත බ්‍රිතාන්‍ය, අමෙරිකාව ප්‍රමුඛ කණ්ඩායම විසින් පාලනය කිරීම ඇරඹුවා.

90 දී සෝවියට් දේශය කඩාවැටුුනට පස්සෙ ගෝලීයකරණය නමින් මෙම නව යත්විජිතකරණයේ තවත් මුහුණුවරක් මතුවුනා. එම ගෝලීයකරණය යටතේ මෙම කණ්ඩායමට අයත් මූල්‍ය සමාගම්, ප්‍රවාහන හා රක්ෂණ ආයතන ලොක්යේ ධනය හා නිෂ්පාදන ආර්ථිකය ඔවුන්ගේ අතට ගත්තා. මේ නිසා මහා ධන කුවේරයන් විසින් ලෝකය පාලනය කරන තැනට පත්වුනා.

මේ සියල්ල දැකල තමයි මෙයින් මිදෙන්න බහුධ්‍රැවීය ලෝකය යටතේ බ්‍රික්ස් කියන සංවිධානය නිර්මාණය වන්නේ.

* බහුධ්‍රැවීය ලෝකය යටතේ කටයුතු කිරීමේ දී අපට බටහිරෙන් එල්ලවන බලපෑමෙන් මිදෙන්නේ කොහොම ද?

මේ කාරණයට හොඳම උදාහරණය තමයි අද බංග්ලාදේශය භූ දේශපාලනය හා භූ ආර්ථිකය සමතුලිත කරගනිමින් යන ගමන. බංග්ලාදේශය ජාත්‍යන්තර මූල්‍ය අරමුදලත් සමගත් වැඩ කරනවා. ඔවුන් චීනය හා රුසියාව සමගත් කටයුතු කරනවා. බංග්ලාදේශයේ දැවැන්ත ව්‍යාපෘති සඳහා චීනය ආයෝජනය කරලා තියෙනවා. රුසියානු ආධාර ඇතුව බංග්ලාදේශයේ න්‍යෂ්ඨික බලාගාරයක් නිර්මාණය වෙනවා. ඒ වගේම බංග්ලාදේශයේ දැවැන්ත පාලමක් සහ උමං දුම්රිය මාර්ගයක් රුසියාව විසින් හදනවා. බංග්ලාදේශයේ ඇඟළුම් නිෂ්පාදන වැඩි වශයෙන් විකුණන්නේ යු‍ෙරා්පයට සහ එක්සත් ජනපදයට. මේ අතින් බංග්ලාදේශය හරි ලස්සනට හැම දෙයක්ම සමතුලිත කරගන්නවා. ඉන්දියාවත් සමග ප්‍රශ්න තිබුනත් ඔවුන් හැම දෙයක්ම තුලනය කරගෙන කටයුතු කරනවා. භූ දේශපාලනය සමතුලිත කරගන්න ආකාරය ඔවුන් ඉගෙනගෙන තියෙනවා.

ලංකාව මෑත කාල සීමාවේ දී ඉන්දියාවටම තල්ලුවුනා. පාලක පක්ෂය, විපක්ෂය හැම පාර්ශ්වයක්ම මේ ඉන්දියාව පැත්තට තල්ලුවීම තමයි අපිට තියෙන ලොකුම තර්ජනය. චීනයේ පර්යේෂණ නෞකාවක් ලංකාවට පැමිණීම සඳහා අවසර නොදීම ගැන චීනය, ලංකාවේ අගමැතිවරයාගේ චීන සංචාරයේ දී කනස්සල්ල පළ කර තිබුනා. හැබැයි එවැනි ජර්මානු නෞකාවකට රටට එන්න අවසර දුන්නා කියලා මාධ්‍ය මගින් කරුණු අනාවරණය කරලා තිබුනා. අපේ රටේ විදේශ ප්‍රතිපත්තිය රටේ අවශ්‍යතාවයට, රටේ අනාගත දැක්ම අනුව සමතුලනය නොකිරීම තමයි මේ ගැටලුවලට හේතුව වෙලා තියෙන්නේ. 

දැන් ලෝකයේ නැගී එමින් පවතින කලාපීය සහ ජාත්‍යන්තර සහයෝගීතාවල ක්‍රියාකාරී සාමාජිකයකු වීම තමයි අප කළ යුතු දේ වන්නේ. බ්‍රික්ස් සංවිධානය වැනි සංවිධාන තුළ අපි ක්‍රියාකාරී වීම වැදගත්. ජාත්‍යන්තර හා කලාපීය දේශපාලන තලයන් සමතුලිත කර ගැනීමට අපි මැදිහත් විය යුතුය. එක් පාර්ශ්වයකට පමණක් මුලාවෙලා, බැගෑපත්වෙලා අපි ගමනක් ගියොත් අනිවාර්යෙන්ම අනතුරේ වැටෙනවා. 

* අපි යන ගමන කළමනාකරණය කරගතයුත්තේ කොහොම ද?… අපිට තියෙන අවාසි මොනවා ද?

අපි දැනට අමෙරිකානු තානාපති කාර්යාලයෙන් පාලනය වන අමෙරිකානු ගැති රාජ්‍යයක්. අපේ රටේ සිටින පාලකයන් අමෙරිකානු ගැත්තන්. රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ ගත්තත්, ඔහුවටේ සිටින පිරිස ගත්තත් අමෙරිකානු ගැත්තන් විදිහට තමයි පෙනෙන්නේ. මේ අයව පාලනය කරන්න අමෙරිකාවට හරි ලේසියි. අමෙරිකාව ඉන්දියාව යොදාගෙන මෙම කටයුත්ත සිදුකරනවා. ඉන්දියාවත් එමගින් ප්‍රයෝජන ගන්නවා. මෙම තත්ත්වය යටතේ අපව චීනයෙන් හා රුසියාවෙන් ඈත්කර තබන්න ඔවුන් කටයුතු කරනවා. මෙරට ක්‍රියාත්මක කිරීමට යෝජිත ඇතැම් රුසියානු ව්‍යාපෘතීන් ක්‍රියාත්මක කරන්න අමෙරිකාව ඉඩ දෙන්නේ නැහැ. ජාත්‍යන්තර බල තුලනයක් රට තුළ ඇතිකර ගැනීමට ඔවුන් කිසිම විටකදී ඉඩදෙන්නේ නැහැ. රට පුරා ක්‍රියාත්මක වන රාජ්‍ය නොවන සංවිධාන විශාල ප්‍රමාණයකුත් මේ තත්ත්වයට දායකත්වය දක්වනවා. අපේ රටේ ජනතාවත් මේ පිළිබඳව නොහිතන තත්ත්වයට පත්කරලා තියෙන්නේ. හිතන්න පුලුවන් මිනිසුන් නිර්මාණය කරන අධ්‍යාපන රටාව පවා මේ වන විට අහෝසිකරලා තියෙනවා. මේ හැම දෙයක්ම සිද්ධ වෙන්නේ සැලසුම් සහගතව.

* බහුධ්‍රැවීය ලෝකය ගැන අපිට බලාපොරොත්තු තියාගන්න පුලුවන් වෙයි ද?

බහුධ්‍රැවීය ලෝකය ගැන අපිට බලාපොරොත්තු තියාගන්න සිදුවෙනවා. බ්‍රික්ස් සංවිධානයේ සිටින රටවල් නවයම මේ පිළිබඳව හොඳින් තේරුම් අරන් තියෙනවා. අමෙරිකාවට නතුව තිබූ තෙල් තිබෙන රටවල් ඔවුන්ගේ තෙල් වෙනත් මුදල් ඒකක වලින් විකුණන්න අද පටන් අරගෙන තිබෙනවා. අමෙරිකාවට තිබෙන ලොකුම හයිය තමයි අමෙරිකානු ඩොලරය. ඩොලරය හරහා ලෝකයේ තෙල් වෙළෙඳාමට කරපු බලපෑම්වලින් ලෝකය ගැලවෙමින් තිබෙනවා. විශේෂයෙන් පෙට්‍රෝ ඩොලර් කියන එකෙන් බොහෝ රටවල් අයින් වෙලා එය පෙට්‍රෝ යුවාන් බවට පත්වෙලා තිබෙනවා. අමෙරිකානු ඩොලරයට තිබුණු ලෝක වෙළෙඳාම අද 95% සිට 60% ක් දක්වා අඩුවෙලා තිබෙනවා.

ලෝකයේ රටවල් තමන්ගේ අතිරික්ත සංචිතයන් හැටියට 75% කට වැඩි ප්‍රමාණයක් තියාගත්තේ අමෙරිකානු ඩොලර්. ඒ දැන් ඒ වෙනුවට රත්රන් සංචිතවලට හැරවිලා තිබෙනවා. තවත් රටවල් අමෙරිකානු ඩොලර් වෙනුවට යුවාන් වලින් සංචිත තබාගැනීම සිදුකරගෙන යනවා.

මේ වගේ ලෝකය අද දැවැන්ත පරිවර්තනයකට ලක්වෙමින් යනවා. බහුධ්‍රැවීය ලෝකයට දැන් ලෝකයේ රටවල් ගමන්කරමින් සිටිනවා. අවුරුදු 100කට වරක් ලෝකයේ අධිරාජ්‍ය බිඳවැටෙමින් අලුත් අධිරාජ්‍ය බිහිවෙනවා. ගෝලීය මූල්‍ය ක්‍රමය බිඳවැටෙමින් පවතින සංක්‍රමනික කාලයක් තමයි මේ ගතවෙන්නේ. අලුත් මූල්‍ය පද්ධතියක් නිර්මාණය වෙන්න ගතවන කාලය වැඩියි. බ්‍රික්ස් සංවිධානය ඇතුළෙ පසුගිය වසර හතර පහ ඇතුළත තමයි මේ ගැන වැඩිපුර කතාවෙන්න පටන් ගත්තේ. අපි බලාපොරොත්තු වෙනවා මේ වසරේ සැප්තැම්බර් මාසයේ දී රුසියාවේ පැවැත්වෙන බ්‍රික්ස් රාජ්‍ය නායක හමුවේ දී ලෝකයට අලුත් මූල්‍ය පද්ධතියක්, අලුත් මුදල් ඒකක ක්‍රමයක් එම සංවිධානයේ සාමාජිකයන් විසින් හඳුන්වා දෙයි කියලා. එමගින් ලෝකයේ ගමන් මග ඉතා සුබදායී ලෙස වෙනසකට ලක්වේවි කියල මම විශ්වාස කරනවා.

– සංවාද සටහන ජීවන්ත ජයතිස්ස විසිනි.

Courtesy The Daily Mirror

Colombo, April 22 (Daily Mirror) – President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Dr. Ebrahim Raisi is scheduled to make an official bilateral visit to Sri Lanka at the invitation of President Ranil Wickremesinghe to jointly declare open the Uma Oya Multipurpose Development Project on April 24, The Foreign Affairs Ministry said.

They said the Uma Oya Multipurpose Development Project, funded by Sri Lanka and Iran, is designed to generate and add 120 Megawatts of electricity to Sri Lanka’s national grid and provide irrigation to approximately 25,000 acres of paddy lands in the south-eastern part of Sri Lanka.

Courtesy Adaderana

The overall rate of inflation as measured by the National Consumer Price Index (NCPI) on Year-on-Year basis has been decreased to 2.5% in March 2024, compared to 5.1% in February 2024, the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) revealed in its latest report.

Meanwhile, the contributions to the inflation rate of March 2024 from the food group and non-food group are 2.1% and 0.4% respectively. 

On a monthly basis, the Year-on-Year inflation of the food group remained unchanged in March 2024 at 5.0% which was reported in February 2024 and the Year-on-Year inflation of the non-food group decreased to 0.7% in March 2024 from 5.1% in February 2024, according to the report.

The decreases in index values of non-food groups in March 2024 compared to the previous month was mainly due to the price decreases in groups of items ‘Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and Other fuels’ (Electricity bill) and ‘Clothing and Footwear’. However, price increase in groups of items were reported for ‘Alcoholic Beverages, Tobacco and Narcotics and Restaurants and Hotels. 

Core inflation, which reflects the underlying inflation by excluding volatile items of food, energy and transport groups in the economy as measured by the Year-on-Year change based on NCPI for the month of March 2024 has been increased to 3.4% from 2.7% reported in month of February 2024.

Courtesy Adaderana

April 22, 2024   09:42 pm

A historic milestone in the Indo-Sri Lankan cultural and religious bond was marked yesterday (21) with the official launch of the ‘Sri Ramayan Trails’ project at Taj Samudra in Colombo, the President’s Media Division (PMD) reported. 

This initiative aims to bolster the country’s tourism industry by leveraging cutting-edge technology and innovative tourism methodologies, it said.

Under the auspices of His Holiness Swami Govind Dev Giri Maharaj, the Chief Treasurer of the renowned Sri Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, and graced by Mr. Sagala Ratnayaka, Senior Advisor to the President on National Security and Chief of Presidential Staff, the launch event showcased a commitment to fostering deeper ties between the two nations, the PMD said.

The Sri Ramayan Trails seeks to highlight nine significant sites mentioned in the epic Ramayana, scattered across Sri Lanka. By offering a spiritual and cultural journey for Hindu pilgrims and travelers alike, the initiative aims to draw millions of Indian and international tourists to the country. Its overarching goal is to strengthen the nation’s spiritual and cultural heritage while also boosting its tourism sector.

In addition to offering access to these sacred sites, the project aims to provide visitors with an immersive experience by showcasing the ancient spiritual events associated with these revered shrines, brought to life through cutting-edge technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), and Virtual Reality (VR).

Spanning from Adam’s Bridge in the Mannar Basin to Seetha Eliya in Nuwara Eliya, every location mentioned in the epic Ramayana has been carefully chosen for inclusion in this pilgrimage endeavour.

Notable figures such as former Speaker Karu Jayasuriya, Indian High Commissioner HE Santosh Jha, former member of the European and British Parliament Niranjan Dev Adhitya, and other dignitaries graced the event with their presence.

–PMD

ආචාර්ය සුදත් ගුණසේකර මහනුවර

එහෙත් වැඩිම මැසිවිලි නගන්නේත්, ඊනියා ජාත්‍යන්තරය ලවා  මානව අයිතිවාසිකම් උල්ලන්ඝනය ගැන දොස් නගන්නේත් සිංහල බෞද්ධයින්ට, ඒ අනුව වැඩිම හානිය සිදු කරන්නේත් ඔවුන්, ඒත් ලෝක අනුකම්පාව ලබාගන්නේ ඔවුන්.ඒ ඇයි?

 මෙසේ වීමට හේතු රැසක් ඇත. මා දකින අන්දමට ඒවා පහතින් දක්වමි.

1.සිංහල රටේ සිංහල දේශපාලනඥයින්ට මේ රට, එහි   ඉතිහාසය, තම ජාතිය හෝ ජනතාව ගැන කිසිම අවභෝධයක්,හැඟීමක් හෝ ආදරයක් නොමැතිවීම

2 ඔවුන්ට රටට වඩා, සිංහල ජාතියට වඩා සුළුජන චන්ද වටිනාකමින් වැඩිවීම

3 මේ රටේ පෞරුෂත්වයක් සහ කොන්දක් නැති දේශපාලකයින් බටහිර රටවල් සහ ඉන්දියාව ඉදිරියේ නිවට වීම සහ බියගුළුවීම

4 මේ රටේ සිංහල බෞද්ධයින් විනාශ කිරීමේ සහ ඉන්දු-පැසිපික් කලාපයේ බටහිර ජාතීන්ගේ ආර්ථික සහ යුධමය බල තුලනය තහවුරු කර ගැනීම සඳහා ක්‍රියාහ්මක කෙරෙන කූටෝපායන් නොතේරීම සහ එයට මුහුණ දිය යුතු ආකාරය ගැන ඔවුන් තුල දැක්මක් හෝ  අවභෝධයක් නැති වීම

සහ

5.මේ රටේ සුළුජන කොටස් දෙමළ ඩයස්පෝරාව සහ මුස්ලිම් ඩය්ස්පෝරාවේ බලය සහ උපායන් අභිභවා යාමට ශ්‍රී ලංකා රජය අපොහොසත් වීම.

ලංකාවේ මානව අයිතිවාශිකම් උල්ලන්ඝණයගැන කතා කරණ සියළු දෙනාම ම්ධ්‍යස්ථව මේ ප්‍රහේලිකාව ගැන සිතා බැළිය යුතුයි.

සිංහලයෝ

මානවයාට පමණක් නොව සියලුම සත්වයන්ට මෛත්‍රීය, මුදිතාව, කරුණාව සහ උපේක්ඛාව පතූරුවන එකම ආගමවු බුද්ධාගම මුල්බැස වසර 2328 ජනතා හදවත් වල තැන්පත් වී ඇති මේ රටේ මානව අයිතීන්  උල්ලන්ඝනය වනවායයි කීම අමු මුසාවකි. ළෝකය පුරා සිටින විවිධ ජනවර්ග වලට ඉතා ඈත පුරාණයේ සිටම පිලිසරණවූ ලංකා බෞද්ධයාට සමකළ හැකි ජාතියක්  ලෝකයේම නැත. එහෙත් තම ජාතියේ පැවැත්මට හානිකරණ  අන්දමින් කිසිවෙකු ක්‍රියාකළ හොත් , තම ජාතියේ ආරක්ෂාවට අවෂ්‍ය පියවර නොගන්නා බවක් ඉන් අදහස් නොකෙරේ. වර්ෂ 2500 ක ඉතිහාසය පුරාම ක්‍රි.පූ 2 වන සිය වසේ සිට 1948 දක්වාම  එය සිදුවී ඇත. එහෙත් තම ජාතියේ සහ රටේ  පැවැත්ම සඳහා එවැනි පියවර ගැනීම මානව අයිතීන් උල්ලන්ඝනයක් සේ කිසිවෙකුට අර්ථ කථනය කළ නොහැක.

උදාහරණ වශයෙන් දැනට වසර 250 කට පමණ පෙර ඕලන්ද කාරයින් සහ ඉන්ග්‍රීසීන් විසින් ඔවුන්ගේ වහල් මෙහෙයට ඉන්දියාවෙන් මෙහි ගෙන ආ මලබාර් වැසියන් සහ අන්ත දරිද්‍රතාව නිසා රැකියාවක් සොයා මේ රටට හොරෙන් සන්ක්‍රමණය වූවන් වසර 2500 පාරම්පරික  අයිතියක් ඇති සින්හලයින්ගේ මේ රටෙන් උ.නැ. හිරින් 1/3ක් ඉල්ලා යුධ වදින විට ඊට එරෙහිවී රට රැකගැනීමට පියවර ගැනීම, අයි. එස්. අයි. නමැති ලෝක මුස්ලිම් ත්‍රස්ථවාදීන්ස්ථාන 8 කදී  මේ රටේ අහින්සක මිනිසුන්  273ක් මරමින් 500 අන්ගවික කොට බෝම්බ ගසනවිට සහ වහබ් වාදීන් මේ රටේ අවුරුදු දහස් ගණනක් පැරණි සින්හල බෞද්ධ ශිෂ්ඨාචාරය විනාශ කරනකොට ඊට එරෙහිව පියවර ගැනීම සහ මේ රටේ සමස්ථ ජීවි පද්ධතියේම පැවැත්ම සහ ශිෂ්ඨාචාරය තීරණය කරණ මධ්‍යම කඳුකරයේ බෞතික ස්ථාවර භාවය  ඉන්දියාවෙන් ඔවුන්ගේ තේ වතුවල වහල්වැඩට ගෙන ආ සුද්දන් ඔවුන් යනවිට මෙහි  දමා ගිය ඉන්දීය දෙමළ කුලී හමුදාවක් විනාශකරනවිට  රටේ හා ජාතියේ පැවැත්ම සඳහා ඊට එරෙහිවීම මානව අයිතීන් කඩකිරිමක් වශයෙන් අර්ථ දක්වන්නේ කෙසේදැයි මම අසමි.

 මුළු ලෝකයේම සුළු ජනකොටස් අතර වැඩිම අයිතිවාසිකම් හා වැඩිම වරප්‍රසාද භුක්ති විඳින සුළුජන කොටස් ඉන්නේ ලන්කාවේ.ඇත්ත වශයෙන්ම මේ රටේ ජාතිය වූ සිංහලයින්ට පවා එතරම් වර ප්‍රසාද නැත. (උදාහරණයක් ලෙස දේශපාලන ක්ශේෂ් ත්‍රයේ කිසිම කේවල් කිරීමේ බලයක් නැති ලක්ෂ 70 ක් පමණවූ උඩරට සිංහලයින් ගැන සඳහන් කළ හැක).එහෙත් හැමදාම නෝක්කඩු කියන ඒ මදිවාට මේ සිංහල රටෙනුත් කොටස් ඉල්ලා සටන් කරණ ඒ වගේම සියගණන් මිනිසුන් මරා  තමන් ජීවවන මාර්ගය උපයාගන්නා රටට අලාභ හානි කරන අරුම පුදුම ලන්කාවේ සිටින  දෙමළ සහ මුස්ලිම් සුළු ජන කොටස්වල දේශපාලන බලය අසීමිතය.

මේ රටේ ජාතිය සිංහල. ඊට අමතරව ප්‍රධාන සුළු ජන කොටස් දෙකක් ඉන්නවා. ඒ දෙමළ සහ මුස්ලිම්.

සිංහලේ භූමිපුත්‍රයෝ සිංහලයෝ.

ක්‍රි.පූ 543 දී මේ රට සොයාගත්තේ සිංහල මිනිස්සු. ඔවුන් සිංහලයින් උනේ සිංහල භාෂාව නිසා. ක්‍රි. පූ 307 මහින්දා ගමනයෙන් බුද්ධාගම ස්ථාපිත වීමෙන් පසු සිංහල ලයින් බෞද්ධයින් උනා. ඒ වගේම 543 සිට අද දක්වාම මේ රටේ සිංහල ශිෂ්ඨාචාරය ගොඩනැගුවේත්, ක්‍රි. පූ. 307 සිට සිංහල බෞද්ධ ශිෂ්ඨාචාරය මෙහි ගොඩ නැගුවේත් සිංහලයෝ.එම නිසා ඔවුන් තමා මේ රටේ ජාතිය සහ අයිතිකාරයෝ. භූමිපුත්‍රයෝ.එය මේ රටේ සිටින  දෙමළ, මුස්ලිම් මිනිසුන් පමණක් නොවෙයි මුළු ලෝකයම පිළිගතයුතු පරම සත්‍යක්.

ශ්‍රී ලන්කාවේ දෙමළු

 දැන් උතුරු නැගෙනහිර රටෙන් 1/3 කට අයිතිවාසිකම් කියන ඊයේ පෙරේදා ආපු දෙමලුන්ගේ මුතුන්මිත්තන්ම, තමා ක්‍රි. .පූ. 2 වන සියවසේ සිට ක්‍රි.ව. 12 වන සියවස දක්වා 17 වතාවක්ම මේ රට ආක්‍රමණය කරලා විනාශ කළේ. ඔවුන් කළ විනාශයන් මහාවන්ශය ඇතුළු පොත් පත්වල මෙන්ම රටපුරා තිබෙන දෙමළ ආක්‍රමනිකයින් සිදුකළ විනාශයන් පෙන්වන සිංහල බෞද්ධ නටබුණ් වලින්ම පේනවා.ඔවුන් ඉතිහාශය පුරාම මේ රටේ  සිංහල බෞද්ධ ශිෂ්ඨාචාරය විනශකලා මිස, සිංහලයින්ට එරෙහිව ක්‍රියා කලමිස, කිසිදාක මේ රටේ දියුණුවට කිසිවක් කළේ නැහැ.අදටත් ඒ තත්වය එසේමය.

වර්තමානයේ මේ රටේ සිටින සියලුම දෙමළ ජනයා පහත සඳහන් වර්ගවලින් එකකට හෝ අයිති වෙයි.

1 ක්‍රි. පූ. 2.වන සිය වසේ සිට මේ රට අක්‍රමණය කළ දකුණු ඉන්දීයානුවන්ගෙන් සටන්වලදී නොමැරී හෝ ඉන්දියාවට නොගොස් මේ රටේ ඉතිරිවි සිංහල බෞද්ධ සමාජයට අන්තර්ග්‍රහණය වු කොටස්

2 එදා සිට මෑතක් වනතුරු වෙලඳාමට මෙහි පැමිණ ස්වදේශීය සිංහල සමාජයට අන්තර්ග්‍රහණය වූ අය

3.1665න් පසු ඕලන්ද ජාතිකයින් හා 1797 න් පසු ඉන්ග්‍රීසීන් විසින් ඔවුන්ගේ වැඩබිම්වල සහ යාපනේ දුන්කළ වතුවල ට ගෙන ආ කුලීකරුවන් සහ උතුරු නැගෙනහිර ජන ශූන්‍ය පෙදෙස් වල පදින්චිකොට මේ රටේ සිංහල ජන අනුපාතය අඩු කිරීමට ඉන්ග්‍රීසීන් විසින් ගෙන ආ මලබා වහලුන් අතුරෙන් ඉන්දියාවට ආපසු නොගොස් මෙහි නතරවූ කීපදෙනෙක්

4 ඉන්දියාවේ පැවති අසීමිත දරිද්‍රතා හා රැකියාහිගය නිසා හොරෙන් පැමිණ  මෙහි පදින්චිවූවන් (කල්ලතෝනීන්)

5. තාවකාලික වීසා බලපත්‍ර ඇතිව මෙහි පැමිණ අනවසරයෙන් සිටින අය

6.1838 සිට ඉන්ග්‍රීසීන් විසින් මධ්‍යම කඳුකරයේ තේ වතු වල සහ බටහිර කඳු බෑවුම්වල රබර් වතුවල කුලීකරුවන් මෙන් ගෙනවිත් 1948 සුද්දන් මේ රටින් යනවිට මෙහි අතරමන්කොට ගිය, රටක් නැති ජනකොටසක් වශයෙන් මෙහි  දමාගිය ලක්ෂ 12 ක් පමණ සුද්දන්ගේ වතුවල වහල් කුළීකරුවන්ගෙන් පැවත එන්නන්

මේ අන්තිම කොටසට අයත්  පුද්ගලයින්, 

 1)1948 න් පසු, 1948 අන්ක 18 ඉන්දු  පකිස්තාන් පුරවැසි පනත යටතේ මේ රටේ පුරවැසි බව ලබාගත් අය

2)1962 සිරිමා සාස්ත්‍රී ගිවිසුම යටතේ ලන්කාවේ පුරවැසිකම ලබාගත් අය

3)සහ එම ගිවිසුම යටතේ ඉන්දියාවට පිටත්කර යැවු එහෙත් දෙමල දේශපාලකයින්ගේ බලපෑම මත වවුනියාවේදී දුම් රියෙන් බැස එහි කැලෑවේ අනව්සරයෙන් පදින්චි වූවන්, 

4)1987 ජූලි 29 ජේ.ආර්/රජිව් ගිවිසුම යටතේ ,රටක පුර වැසිකම ලබාගැනීමට ලෝකයේ කිසිම රටක වලන්ගු නැති සමාදාන විනිස්චයකාරයකු ඉදිරියේ රුපියලක මුද්දරයක් මත අත්සකළ ලිපියකින් පුර වැසිබව ලබාගත් රුපියලේ වතු කමකරුවන්  යන අය වශයෙන් කොටස් 4 කි. ගෙන් සමන්විත වේ

5. ඉහත සඳහන් කිසිම වර්ගයකට අයත් නැති රට පුරා විසිරී සිටින ජේ.ආර්.රජිව් ගිවිසුම යටතේ රුපියලේ පුරවැසිකම් ලබාගත් කල්ලතෝනීන් සහ ජිප්සීන්.

මොවුන් සියළු දෙනාටම පහත සඳහන් ලක්ෂන පොදුය

1 ඔවුන් දකුන් ඉන්දියවේ මළබා දෙමළ මිනිසුන්වීම

2 ඉතීහාසය පුරා ඉන්දියාවේ ජීවිතය දුෂ්කර නිසා මේ රටට පැමිණි අයවීම

3 දෙම්ළ භාෂාව කථා කිරීම

4හින්දු ආගම ඇදහීම. ණලලේ අලු ගෑම.

5.ඉන්දියාව තම මව් රට වෂයෙන් සැළැකීම

6.තම පෙකනි වැලේ මුල් කොටස තවමත් දකුණු ඉන්දියාවේ තිබීම

7.සිහිනෙන් පවා ඉන්දියාව දැකීම

8මේ රටට කිසිම ආදරයක් හෝ ඇල්මක් නැතිවීම සහ අනුන්ගේ කූඩුවේ බිත්තර දැමීමේ කොහාගේ ප්‍රතිපත්තිය අනුගමනය කිරීම

9. තම ජීවිකාව කරගෙනයාම සඳහා පමණක් මේ රටේ සම්පත් පාවිච්චි කිරීම.

10 ශ්‍රී ලන්කා ආණ්ඩුවටත් .ආර්ථිකයටත් සින්හ භූමිපුත්‍රයින්ටත් මහත් හිස රදයක් වීම

වසර 300 කටත් වඩා අඩු වහල් කුලී පදින්චිය ඇති මලබාර් කුළී කරුවන්ගෙන් පැවත එන විග්නේශවරන් අවුරුදූ 3000 ක උරුමයක් ඉල්ලයි.

මොවුන්ගේ මේ රට තුල පදින්චිය ගැන සඳහන් කිරීමේදී, විශේෂයෙන්ම වර්තමානයේ උ.නැ. හිර පදින්චි මළබා දෙමළ මිනිසුන්ට ලන්කාවේ ස්ථිර පදින්චිය ඇත්තේ වසර 300 කට අඩු කෙටි කාලයක් පමණි. (බලන්න: ඊළම් මිත්ත්‍යaavei හෙලිදරව්ව 2020.) කේ.එන්.එල්පෙරේරා-විශ්‍රාමික මහේස්ත්‍රාත්). අරුණාසළම් පොන්නම්බලම් විසින් ලන්කා- සිංහලේ දෙමළ වෂයෙන් ඔවුන් නම් කළේ 1911 දීය. ඒ අනුව ඔවුන් මේ රටේ දෙමළ වශයෙන් නම්කොට දැනට ගතව ඇත්තේ වසර 113 ක් පමණි.  1815 වනවිට මෙ කිසිවකු මෙහි නොසිටිය නිසා මොවුන් සියල්ලමද විදේශිකයින් වෂයෙන් සැලකිය යුතුය. ඒ තාක් දුරට ඔවුන් මේ රටේ රටවැසියන් නොවෙන නිසා ඔවුන්ද මේ රටේ රට වැසිකම නීත්‍යාණුකූලව ලබාගත යුතුය.

විග්නේස්වරන් වසර 3000 ක ස්ථිර  පදින්චියක් හා උරුමයක් ඇතැයි කියන්නේ මේ අවුරුදු 300 ආගමන ජන කොට්ඨාශයකටය. විග්නේෂ්වරන් කියන පරිදි ළන්කාවේ තබා දෙමළ නිජබිම ඇති ඉන්දියාවේ හෝ මොවුන්ට වසර 3000 ක ඉතිහාසයක් ඇතයි සිතිය නොහැක.  සුළුජන අසාධාරණකම්  මෙන්ම ඔහු මේ සන්ක්‍යාවද සීයෙන් වැඩිකර ඇත

1838 න් පසු උඩරට තේ වතුවල කුලී වැඩට සුද්දන් ගෙනා  දකුණු ඉන්දීය දෙමළ කම්කරු හමුදාව

සුද්දන් ගෙනා මේ කුලීකරුවන්ද   1948 වන විට මේ රටේ නීත්‍යානුකූළ රට වැසියන් නොවේ. මලයාල දෙමළුන්ද, 1815 වනවිට මෙහි නොසිටි නිසා සිංහලේ රට වැසියන් වීමට නම් ඔවුන්ද මේ රටේ රටවැසිකම නීත්‍යාණූකූළව ලබාගත යුතුය.1948 වනතුරු බ්‍රතාන්‍ය පුර වැසියන් වූ මොවුන් සියළුදෙනාම එක්කෝ ඔවුන්ගේ මුල් රට වූ ඉන්දියාවට නැතිනම්, ඔවුන් ඒ වන විට බ්‍රිතාන්‍ය පුර වැසියන් වූ නිසා එන්ගලන්තයට ගෙනයායුතුව තිබිණ. ඒ බවකීමට තරම් කොන්දක් හෝ මොළයක් ඇති සිංහල නායකයින් 1948 මේ රටේ නොසිටි බව පෙනේ.

1987 දි ජේ. ආර්.ජයවර්ධන ජනාධිපතිවරයා මේ සිංහල රටේ උතුරු න්නැගෙනහිරෙන් රටෙන් 1/3 ක් ඓතිහාසික දෙමළ නිජබිමක් වෂයෙන් පිළිගත්තේ මෙවන් පසුබිමකය. 1948 න් පසු මේ රටේ පාලනය භාරව සිටි පාලකයින් තමන්ගේම රට ගැන තිබුණු දැණුම සහ ආදරය මෙයින්ම පැහැදිළිවෙයි.

ඉර හඳ පෑයූ දා සිටම සිංහලයින්ගේ මාතෲ භූමිය වූ මේ රට, තමන්ගේ අයිතිහාසික මව් බිම වැනි ගල්පැලෙන ප්‍රබන්ධ කතා ගොතමින් මේ රටෙන් 1/3 ක කට අයිතිවාසිකම් කියන්නේ මෙවැනි කෙටි ඉතිහාසයක් ඇති සුද්දන්ගේ වහලුන් වූ, පසුකලක වෙල්ලාල නමින් බෞතීස්ම ලැබූ ඉන්දීය මළයාල දෙමළ ජන කොටසකි. මෙවැනි පුද්ගලයින්ට එරෙහිව 16 වන ව්‍යවස්ථා සන්ශෝධනය යටතේ දැන්වත් පියවර නොගන්නේ මන්දැයි මට නොතේරේ

වසර 37 තේ වතුකරයේ රුපියලේ පුරවැසි දෙමලුන්

ඉහතින් දැක්වූ වතුකරයේ බහුතරයද මේ රටේ පුරවැසිකම ලැබූයේ 1987 න් පසුවය. මෑතක සිට නාම් 200 මලයහ” (අපි කඳුකරයේ 200 වසරක්) වැනි වචන  භාවිතා කරමින්,මොවුන්ද  මලය නාඩුවක සිහින දකිමින්, මේ රටේ රට ගැන නොදන්නා, තම මව්බිමට හෝ ජාතියට ආදරයක් නැති කාලකන්නි දේශද්‍රෝහී සිංහල දේශපාලකයිගේ සහ මේ රට් ඉන්දියාවේ 29 වන ප්‍රාන්තය කර ගැනීමට මාන බලන ඉන්දීය දේශපාලකයින්ගේ සහ සදා කල්හිම සිංහල බෞද්දයින් විනාශකිරීමට ක්‍රියාකළ  බටහිර ඊනියා ජාත්‍යන්තර නඬයේ සහායද ඇතිව   මේ සිංහලයින්ගේ රටේ හදබිම” අල්ලා ගැනිමට  අර අඳින බව පෙනේ. 

පුරවැසි අවුළ.

1948 පනත යටතේ මේ රටේ රට්වැසිකම දෙන ලද්දේ අඛණ්ඩව වසර 10ක් මේ රටේ ස්ථිර පදින්චියක් තිබුණු ඔවුන්ගේ මව සහ පියා ලන්කාවි උපන් අයට පමණි. මොවුන් සෑම දෙනාම මෙන් අවුරුදු පතා තමන් හම්භකරගත් දෑ ඉන්දියාවේ බැන්කුවල තැන්පත් කිරීමට ගිය නිසා ඒ සුදුසුකම වැඩිදෙනෙකුට තිබුණේ ණැත.1962 සිරිමා සස්ත්‍රී ගිසුමද නිසියාකාරව ක්‍රියාත්මක වී නැත. 1987 ලබාදුන් පුර වැසිකම් වලන්ගු වුවද එම පුර වැසිකම්වල වලන්ගු භාවය කුමක් වුවද මේ වන විට එහි වයසද වසර 37 ක් පමණි.

9. මේ ලෝකයේ වෙනත් කිසිම රටක තබා ඔවුන්ගේම අයිතිහාසික මව් බිම වූ ඉන්දියාවේ පවා නැති තරම් අයිතිවාසිකම් භුක්ති විඳීම

ඉතිහාශය පටන්ගත්දා සිටම සිංහලයන් විසින් සොයාගෙන ,ශිෂ්ඨාචාරය බිහිකොට වසර 2566 ක් තිස්සේ එය වර්ධනය කොට ක්‍රි පූ 2 වන සියවසේ සිට මොවුන්ගේම මුතුන් මිත්තන්ගේ ආක්‍රමණ 17කින් මේ රට බේරාගෙන එසේම 1505 සිට 1948 දක්වා බටහිර යටත්විජිත වාදී කොල්ලකරුවන්ගෙන් සින්හලයින් විසින් ජීවිත පරිත්‍යාගයෙන් බේරාගත් මේ රට, එසේම ඊලාම්වාදීන් ගෙන් 2009 දී මහින්ද රාජපකෂ බේරාගත් රටට  දැන් මොවුන් අයිතිවාසිකම් කියයි.1505 සිට 1948 දක්වාම ඉන්දියාවෙන් ගෙන ආ දෙමකුලී හේවායින් සටන්කළේද සිංහල යින්ට එරෙහිව සුද්දන්ට පක්ෂපාතීවය.

මුස්ලිම් වරුන්

ඉතිහාසයේ පළමුවරට 14 වන සියවසේ මුස්ලිම් වරුන් වෙළෙන්දන් වෂයෙන් මේ රටට පැමිණි බව වාර්තාවී ඇත.1505 වනවිට දිවයිනේ නිරිත දිග බේරුවල ප්‍රදේශයේ මොවුන් පද්න්චිව සිට ඇත. පෘතුගීසින් මොවුන් සමූළ ගාතනය කළ නිසා පණ බේරාගත් තවුන් එවකට සිංහලේ මහරජවූ සෙනරත් රජු බැහැදැක ආරක්ෂාව ඉල්ලා සිට ඇත.  එම අවස්ථාවේදි  පිරිසක් උඩරට රාජධානියේ තැනින් තැන පදින්චි කරණ ලදී.ඉන් එක් කොටසක් නැගෙනහිර මූදුබඩ ප්‍රදේශයක් වූ පානම පත්තුවේ පදින්චිකොට ඇත. එහෙත් ඉන් පසු ඉතිහාසය පුරාම මේ කෙළෙහිගුන නොදත් මුස්ලිම් වරුන්, කන්ට දුන් අත හපාකන්නවුන් සේ, ආක්‍රමනිකයාට ඔත්තු සැපයීමෙන් සහ වෙනත්සේවා සපයමින්, සිංහලයින්ට සහ මේ සිංහල දේශයට ද්‍රෝහීව ක්‍රියාකොට ඇත.

1818 සුද්දාගේ පැත්ත ගත් හජ්ජි මුහන්දිරම්ට සුදු ආණ්ඩුවෙන් දිසාපති පදවියක්

ඌව වෙල්ලස්ස නිදහස් සටණේදී සුද්දාගේ පැත්ත ගත් හජ්ජි මුහන්දිරම්ට දිසාපති පදවියක් දීම. මෑතකදී බේරුවල, මාවනැල්ල සහ දිගන වැනි සිද්ධීන් මොවුන්ගේ මෙ කෙළෙහිගුණ නොදත් සිංහල විරෝධී ක්‍රියාවන්ට කදිම උදා හරණය. ඒ සියල්ලටත්ම වඩා දරුණුම සිද්ධිය වුයේ 2021 සාන නමැති අයි එස් අයි ත්‍රස්ථයා දිවයිනේ ස්ථාන් 8 කදී පුහ්ගලයින් 273ක් මරාදමමින්  තවත් 500 ගානක් අන්ග විකළ කරමින් රටේ ආර්ථිකයට විසාල පාඩුවක් සිද්ඩහකළ් සහරාන් නැමැති මුස්ලිම් ත්‍රස්ථවාදියාගේ බෝම්බ මාලාවය. ඒ සමඟම රට පුරා ක්‍රියාත්මක වන වහබ් වාදයය.1915 දී ගම්පොලින් ආරම්භවූ කෝලාහලය ද මුස්ලිම් වරුන්ගේ ත්‍රස්ථවාදයට කදිම  උදාහරණයකි.

කෙසේ වුවත් අශ්‍රෆ්ගේ යුගය වන තුරු බෙදුම්වාදයක් ගැන ඔවුන් කථාකලේ නැත. මෙම ප්‍රවනතාව නැගී ආවේ නැගෙන හිර පලාතේ හිස්බුල්ලා සහ බස්නාහිර පලාතේ මුසාමිල් වැනි පුද්ගලයින්ගේ ක්‍රියාවන්ගෙන් පසුවය. ඒ අතරම වහබ්වාදීන් රට පුරා ක්‍රියාත්මක වීමට පටන් ගැනින. මෙවැනි ක්‍රියාවන් අතර දෙවනගල, කුරගල වැනි අයිතිහාසික අයිතිහාසික බෞද්ධ සිද්ධස්තාන, සහ නැගෙනහිර පලාතේ ඇතැම් ස්ථානවලද මුස්ලිම් ආක්‍රමණ ව්‍යාප්තවී ඇත. මේ සියලු අපරාධ මෙසේ ඩිදුවනතුරු සින්හල දේශපාලඥ්යෝ ඒ ගැන කිසිදු පියවරක් නොගෙන බලා සිටිති.

මේ සියල්ලටම ප්‍රධාන හේතුව වී ඇත්තේ 1948න් පසු මේ රටේ දේශ ප්‍රේමි, ජාති හිතෛෂි, ධූරදර්ෂී දැක්මක් ඇති මේ රට හා එහි ඉතිහාසය දන්නා එඩිතර සිංහල දේශපාලන නායකත්වයක් නොමැති වීමය. සිංහල කම සුද්දා ඒ තරමටම මොට කර දමා ඇත.

 මෙවැනි ඛ්හේධනීය පසුබිමක මේ ර්ටේ මානවහිමිකම් ගැන කථාකරණ සියළු දෙනාටම මට දීමට ඇති පනිවිඩය මෙයයි.

 මේ රට ඉතිහාසයේ ආරම්භයේ සිටම සිංහල. එය ලෝකයේ තිබුණු එකම් සිංහල බෞද්ධ රටය. එහෙත් ඒ තුල අද කිසිම කේවල් කිරීමේ දේශපාලන බලයක් නැති තම උපන් බිමේම අනාථයන් බවට පත්ව ඇති එකම පිරිස සින්හලයින්ය. ඒ අතරිනුත් තවත් සුවිශේෂී පිරිසක ඇත. ඒ ලක්ෂ 70ක් පමණවූ උඩරට සිංහලයින්ය.

 සුදු ආණ්ඩුවෙන් හජ්ජි මුහන්දිරම්ට වෙලස්සෙ දිසාපති පදවියක්තමන් සතු මහපොලව සහ ජීවිත ඇතුලු සියළු දෙයක්ම ඔවුන්ට එදා ඒ සටනේදී අහිමිවිය. 1840 රජයේ ඉඩම් බලහත්කාරයෙන් අල්ලාගැනීමේ පනත, 1853 විහාර දේවාල ගම් පනත සහ 1897 මුඩුබිම් පනත වැනි කෲර පනත් වලින් ඔවුන්ගේ කුඹුරු සහ නිවාස පිහිටි ඉඩම් ඇතුළු සෙසු සියලුම ඉඩම් ඉන්ග්‍රීසි ආන්ඩුවට අත් පත් කරගන්නා ලදී.1818 සහ 1848 නිදහස් සටන්වලදී  නොමැරි ඉතිරිවූවන් ඔවුගේ ගම් බිම් ගිනිතබා වියළි කලාපයේ වනාන්තරයට එලවා ගන්නා ලදී.

මෙසේ බලහත්කාරයෙන් අත් පත්කොටගත් උඩරට සිංහලයින්ගේ ඉඩම් සුද්දන් තේ වතු බවට හැරවීය. මුලු කඳුකරයම තේ වතු අධිරාජ්‍යක් බවට හැරවින. එම තේ වතු අධිරාජ්‍යයේ වහල් මෙහයට ගෙන ආ 12 ලක්ෂයක් පමණ වූ දකුණු ඉන්දීය කුලී හමුදාව පදින්චි කරවීය. මහපොලවේ නියම උරුමකරුවන් ගෙන් ඔවුන්ගේ ඉඩම් මේ ආකාරයෙන් බලහත්කරයෙන් ගත්තා පමණක් නොව එම වතු අධිරාජ්‍ය හරහා යාම පවා ඔවුන්ට තහනම් විය. එතැන් සිට එදා තම මව්බිමේ කඳුකරය පුරා පැතිරෙන තේ වතු අධිරාජ්‍ය දෙස බලමින් සුසුම් හෙලමින් මේ මහපොලව යලි තමන්ට ලැබෙන දිනය ගණන් කරමින් එදා සිටියහ. 1948 දී ඊනියා දේශපාලන නිදහසලබා වසර 76 ක් ගතව ඇති අද, සින්හල රටේ සිංහලයින්ගේම පාලනය යටතේ   සුද්දන් ගියපසු එහි නියම උරුම කරුවන්ට එම ඉඩම් ආපසු ලබා දෙනු වෙනුවට සුද්දන්විසින් උන්ගේ තේ වතුවල වහල් මෙහෙයට ඉන්දියාවෙන් ගෙන ආ, 1987 දී ජේ.ආර්. විසින් රුප්පියලේ මුද්දරයකට ලබාදුන් වසර 37ක ලන්කා පුරවැසිකම සහිත ඉන්දීය දෙමල කම්කරුවන්ට, තමන්ගේම් චන්දයෙන් බලයට පත්වූ මැති ඇමතිවරුන් උත්සවත් ශ්‍රීයෙන් බෙදාදෙන ආකාරය දෙස අද ශෝසුසුම් හෙලමින් ඔවුන් බලාසිටි. වසර දහස්ගානක් සිංහලයින්ට  උරුමව තිබුණු ඒ ඉඩම් අහිමිවීම ගැන, ඒ මගින් ඔවුන්ගේ ජන්මය උරුමය අහිමිවීමගැන මානවහිමිකම් පන්ඩිතයන් තබා ඔවුන්ගේම චන්දයෙන් පාර්ලිමේන්තුවට ගොස් සිටින සිංහල දේශපාලකයකු පවා වචනයක් කතා නොකරයි.

 මේ ප්‍රදේශ නියෝජනය කරන සිංහල මැති ඇමැති වරුන් 75ක් පමණ සිටියත් ඒ එක මනුස්සයෙක් හෝ මව් බිමේ මුල් අයිතිකරුවන් වූ උඩරට ගැමියන්ගේ ඉරණම ගැන එක වචනයක්වත්  කතා නොකරයි.මානව හිමිකම් අති පණ්දිතයෝද  මුනිවත රකිති. ලන්කාවේ මෙන්ම ජාත්‍යන්තර මානව හිමිකම් කරුවන්ද කතා කරන්නේ සුළු ජනයාගේ අයිතිවාසිකම් පිලිබඳ පමණි. සිංහලයින්ගේ මානව අයිතීන් ගැන මේ කිසිවෙක් කතානොකරන්නේ ඇයි සිංහලයින් මානවයින් ගණයට නොවැටෙන ජාතියක් නිසාදැයි මම අසමි.

අහෝ වීර කැප්පෙටිපොල, ඇහැලේපොල පරම්පරාවෙන්  පැවැත එන සින්හලයෙනි. මේ පාවදීම දෙස නිහඬව බලා සිටින්නේ ඇයි ?

1815 මාර්තු 2 උඩරට ගිවිසුමේ 2 වන වගන්තියේ සිංහලේ ආණ්ඩු කිරීමට දෙමළවර්ගයාට ඇත්තාවු සියළුම අයිතිකම් නැතිකර තවද විනාශකරන්ඩ යෙදුණු වග මෙයින් එළිදරව් කරණුය” යණුවෙන් සඳහන්ව ඇති බවද මෙහිදී සඳහන්කළ යුතුය.

එබඳු නෛතික පසුබිමක් තිබියදීත් ඒ කිසිවක් නොසලකා රටේ හා ජාතියේ හදවත බඳු මධයම කඳුකරය එසේම වසර 310 පුරා යුධමය වශයෙන් රට රැකගත් මධයම කඳුකරය ක්‍රි පූ 2 වන සිය වසේ සිට මේ රටට විනකළ දකුණු ඉන්දීය දෙමළ පරම්පරාවකින් පැවත එන පිරිසකට සිංහල චන්දවලින් බලයට පත්වූ මේ රජය විසින් සින්නක්කර ලියා දීම කොතරම් නම් මේ රටේ ආරක්ෂාවට තර්ජනයක් දැයි   රජයට නොතේරේනම් ඔබ අපවත් එක්ව ඊට විරෝධය දක්වා  අපි අපේ රට බේරා ගමු.

ඉහතින් දැක්වූ පසුබිම තුල මේ රටේ සුළු ජනකොටස් වලට මෙන්ම ඔවුන්ගේ චන්දය මේ රටේ සිටින  දෙමළ, මුස්ලිම් ඇතූළු සියළුම සුළුජනකොටස් පසුපස හිඟමනේ යන සියලුම දේශපාලනඥයින්ට ප්‍රඥාව පහල වීම සඳහා   පහත දැක්වෙන කරුණු ටික මම කියමි.

මේ රටේ සිටින දෙමළ, මුස්ලිම් ඇතූළු සියළුම සුළුජන කොටස් පහත සඳහන් ප්‍රඥප්තීන් අවිවාදයෙන් පිළිගත යුතුය,

ඉහතින් දැක්වූ පසුබිම තුල මේ රටේ සුළු ජනකොටස් වලට මෙන්ම ඔවුන්ගේ චන්දය පසුපස හිඟමනේ යන සියලුම දේශපාලනඥයින්ට මම මේ ටික කියමි.

ඇමුණුම1         

                 සිංහලේ/ශ්‍රී ලංකා ජනසම්මතවාදී සමාජවාදි

                                      ජනරජය

                       සින්හලේ/ ශ්‍රී ලංකා ජාතික ප්‍රඥප්තිය

මේ සිංහල බෞද්ධ රටේ ඒකීය භාවය,බහුමික අඛණ්ඪතාව,  පරමාධිපත්‍ය,ජාතික එකමුතුකම ජනවාර්ගික හා ආගමික සන්හිඳියාව, සමඟිය සහ සාමය ආරක්ෂාවීම සඳහා කිසිවෙකු විසින් සාකච්චා නොකළහැකි, සාකච්චා නොකළයුතු ප්‍රතික්ෂේප නොකළහැකි, නොකළයුතු, කරුණු ඇතුලත් ජාතික ප්‍රඥප්තියක්  නීතිගත කිරීම

                 පළමුව මෙම සියළුම පාර්ෂව පහත සඳහන් ප්‍රඥප්තීන් මේ රටේ වෙනස් නොවෙන ජාතික පදනම වෂයෙන් අවිවාදයෙන් පිළිගත යුතුය

                 ජනසම්මතවාදී සමාජවාදි ජනරජය

                සිංහලේ/ ශ්‍රී ලංකා ජාතික ප්‍රඥප්තිය

මේ සිංහල බෞද්ධ රටේ ඒකීයභාවය,බහුමික අඛණ්ඪතාව,  පරමාධිපත්‍ය,ජාතික එකමුතුකම, ජනවාර්ගික හා ආගමික සන්හිඳියාව, සමඟිය සහ සාමය ආරක්ෂාවීම සඳහා සාකච්චා නොකළහැකි, සාකච්චා නොකළයුතු ප්‍රතික්ෂේප නොකළහැකි, නොකළයුතු, පහත සඳහන් ප්‍රඥප්තීන් වෙනස් නොවෙන ජාතික රාජ්‍යයේ පදනම වෂයෙන් සිංහලේ වාශී  සියළුදෙනාම අවිවාදයෙන්  පිළිගත යුතුය

(එම  කරුණු ඇතුලත් ජාතික ප්‍රඥප්තිය ව්‍යවස්ථාගත කෙරේ)                  

               සිංහලේ/ ශ්‍රී ලංකා ජාතික ප්‍රඥප්තිය

එක්සත්, ප්‍රබල, සව්භාග්‍යමත්, හා සාමකාමී ශ්‍රී ලාන්කික ජාතියක් ගොඩ නැගීම සඳහා මේ රටේ සියළු දෙනාම (රටවැසියන්)) ඒකමතිකව පිළිගත යුතු ජාතික සම්මුති මාලාවක් පහත දක්වමු.

එය සිංහලේ/ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ  ජාතික ප්‍රඥප්තිය නමින්  හඳුන්වමු

1ශ්‍රී ලංකාව සිංහල ජාතියේ අයිතිහාසික මාතෲ භූමිය වේ. 

කි.පූ. එය 543 සොයාගත්තෝද, එහි සිෂ්ඨාචාරය බිහිකලෝද එසේම ක්‍රි.පූ. 2 වන සියවසේ සිට 1987 දක්වා,ඉන්දීයාවෙන් සහ යුරෝපීය රටවලින් පැමිණි සියලු පර සතුරු ආක්‍රමණයින්ගෙන්, ජීවිත පරිත්ත්‍යාගයෙන් මේ රට  ආරක්ෂාකොට ගත්තෝද ඒ තුළ ශිෂ්ඨාචාරය බිහිකලෝද ඔවුහුම බව පිළිගැනීම. 

2.    එහි නාමය සිංහලේ/ශ්‍රී ලංකාවිය යුතුය

ඉතිහාසය පුරාම මේ රට හැඳින්වුයේ ශ්‍රී ලන්කාවේ ලේ, සිංහලද්වීප වශයෙනි.එසේම ශ්‍රී ලංකා, ලංකාධ්වීප කියාද එය වන්ශ කථාවල හඳුන්වා ඇත. 1815 මාර්තු 2 උඩරට ගිවිසුමෙන් බ්‍රතාන්‍යට භාරදී ඇත්තේද සිංහලේ නම්වූ රාජධානියයි. එම ගිවිසුමේ සිංහලේ නමින් හඳුවන ලද්දේ මේ සමස්ථ සිංහල ලධ්වීපය ඇතුළු ඒ හාත්පසින් වූ මාලදිවයින් ඇතුළු දූපත් සහිත සමුද්‍රයයි.1972 ජනරජ ආණ්ඩුක්‍රම ව්‍යවස්ථාවේ පළමුවරට එය ශ්‍රී ලන්කා කියා හඳුන්වයි. එම නිසා මෙහි සඳහන් එකී නම්වලින් හැර වෙනත් කිසිම නමකින් එය හැඳින්වීම දඬුවම් ළැබිය හැක.

සිංහලේ කියාද ජාත්‍යන්තර වෂයෙන් ශ්‍රී ලංකා කියාද එය භාවිතා කළ හැක. එහෙත් ඒ සෑම අවස්ථාවකදීම සිංහලේ යන්න වරහන් තුල සඳහන් කළ යුතුය. 

1815 මාර්තු 2 උඩරට ගීවිසුම අනුව ඉන්ග්‍රීසීන්ට භාරදී ඇත්තේද සිංහලේ නම්වූ රාජධානියයි. එබැවින් ඇත්ත වශයෙන්ම රටේ නිවැරදි නම වූ සිංහලේ යන්න ලබාගත යුතුව තිබුණේ,1948 දී රටේ බ්‍රතාන්‍ය පාලනයෙන් රට භාරගත් අවස්ථාවේදීමය. එය අපි දැන් යලිත් ස්ථාපිත කරමු.

3. සිංහලේ/ශ්‍රී ලංකාව සිංහල බෞද්ධ රාජ්‍යයකි.

ශ්‍රී ලංකාව ″කි.පු. 307 සිට අඛණ්ඩව පැවති පරිදි සිංහල බෞද්ධ රාජ්‍යයකි. එසේම එය ලෝකයේ ඇති එකම සිංහල බෞද්ධ රාජ්‍යයද වෙයි.

4.ශ්‍රි ලංකාව ඒකචත්‍ර රාජ්‍යයකි

 (ලෝක ඉතිහාශය ආරම්භවූ දා සිටම ඉන්දීය සාගරයේ පිහිටි සිංහලද්වීපය නම්වූ, වර්ගසැතපුම් 25,332 (65,610 කි.මී)පමණ වු මේ දිවයින, ඒකචත්ත්‍ර සිංහල රාජ්‍යයක් වශයෙන් පැවත ඇත. ඒ අඛණ්ඩ සම්ප්‍රදායයි. එබැවින් කුමණ පදනමක් මත හෝ මේ රට බෙදීමට යෝජනා කිරීම හෝ එසේ කිරීමට තැත් කිරීම මරණ දඬුවම ලැබිය හැකි වරදකි.

5. මේ රටේ ජාතිය සිංහල වේ.

දෙමළ සහ මුස්ලිම් ඇතුළු සෙසු සියළුදෙනාම එම සිංහලේ, සිංහල ජාතිය තුල මේ රටේ ජාතිය සිංහල බව පිළිගන්නා රටවැසියන් වන ජන වර්ග පමණි.

6. මේ රටේ රාජ්‍ය භාෂාව සිංහල විය යුතුය. ඒ අණුව අධිකරණයේ ඇතුළුව රජයේ සියළුම කටයුතු සිදුකළයුත්තේ සිංහලෙන් පමණි.

7. ක්‍රි.පූ 307 දී සිට අඛණ්ඩව පැවති පරිදි මේ රටේ රාජ්‍ය ආගම බුද්ධාගම විය යුතුය. කෙසේ වුවද සෙසු ආගමික ලබ්ධීන්ට ඔවුන්ගේ ආගම් ඇදහීමේ නිදහස පමණක් සහතික කෙරේ.

8. මේ රටේ ජාතික කොඩිය යළිත් 1815 තිබුණ සිංහලේ කොඩිය විය යුතුය.

9. මේ රටේ ජාතික ගීය නමෝ නමෝ මාතා යනුවෙන් ආරම්භවන ආණ්ඩුක්‍රම ව්‍යවස්ථාවේ සඳහන් ගීය වේ. ජාතික ගීය දිවයින පුරාම ගායනා කළ යුත්තේ රටේ රාජ්‍ය භාෂාව වන සිංහලෙන් පමණි.  වෙනත් භාෂාවකින් එය ගැයීම දඬුවම් ලැබිය හැකි සාපරාධී වරදකි

10. මේ රටේ තිබිය යුත්තේ මුලු රටටම බලපාන පරිදි එක

නීතියක් පමණි–එය 1815 ට පෙර සිංහලේ වන මේ රටේ

තිබුණු සිංහල නීතිය සහ එහි ඌණ පූර්ණ සඳහා ආදේශකොට ගත් වර්තමාන රෝම ලන්දේසි නීතියේ සම්මිශ්‍රණයකි.

(එය සකස්කිරීම සඳහා සිංහල නීතිය සහ රෝම ලන්දේසි නීතිය පිළිබඳ විශාරධයින්ගේ මණ්ඩලයක් පත්කෙරේ).

දැනට පවතින පරිදි මුස්ලිම් නීතිය සහ තේශවලාමේ නීතිය මේ සිංහල රට තුල සපුරා තහනම්ය

11. මේ රටට පූර්ණ වශයෙන් ව්‍යවස්ථාදායක,විධායක සහ අධිකරණ  නිදහස ලබාගත්තේ 1972 මැයි 22 දා ජනරජයක් වෂයෙන් ප්‍රකාශ කිරීමෙන් පසු බැවින් මේ රටේ සැබෑ නිදහස් දිනය වියයුත්තේ මැයි 22 දිනය වේ.

12. මේ රටේ,ජනාධිපති, අගමැති, අග්‍රවිනිස්චයකාරයා, නීතිපති, ත්‍රි විධ හමුදාපතිවරුන්, සහ පොලිස්පති    හැමවිටම සිංහල බෞද්ධයින්ම වියයුතුය.

13. මේ රටේ තිබිය යුත්තේ ජාතික දේශපාලන පක්ශ දෙකක් හෝ උපරිම 3 ක් පමණි. ආර්ථික ප්‍රතිපත්ති වල වෙනස්කම් අනුව ජාතික දේශපාලන පක්ෂ දෙකක් හෝ තුනක්   තිබිමට ව්‍යවස්ථාවෙන් අවසර දිය හැක.

14. මේ රටේ මධ්‍යම කඳුකරය, ලංකා හදවත මෙන් රැකගත යුතුය.

(මන්ද මේ රටේ සකළවිධ ජීවී පද්ධතියේ මෙන්ම ශිස්ඨාචාරයේ පැවත්මේ ඉරණම රඳා පවත්නේ එහි භෞතික ස්ථාවරත්වය මත නිසාය.  එමනිසා එහි වනාන්තරයට, භූමියට, පසට, ජල සම්පත් වලට හෝ ජීවී පද්ධතියට හානි සිදුකරණ්නන්ට මරණ  දඬුවම දිය යුතුය+7)

1. මධ්‍යම කඳුකරයේ මු. ම. අඩි 5000 ඉහල සෑම ප්‍රදේශයක්ම. අධිරක්ශි ප්‍රදේශ වශයෙන් ප්‍රකාශ කෙරේ.කිසිම වගාවක් හෝ ජනාවාශයක් මේ තුල සපුරා තහනම්ය. එසේම රාජ්‍ය අවසරයකින් තොරව එහි ඇතුල්වීම පවා මරණ දඬුවම  ලැබීමේ වරදකි

11. අඩි 3500-5000 අතර විශාල තේ වතු තිබුණද ඒ තුළද සෑම වර්ගයේම ජනාවාශ තහනම්ය.

111.කඳුකරයේ සියළුම ජනාවාශ අඩි 3500 යේ සීමාවෙන් පහල ප්‍රදේශ වලට සීමා කෙරේ.

කඳුකරයේ   1000-3500 අතර ප්‍රදේශය ශ්‍රී ලංකා හදබිම අධිකාරියේ නිර්දේශිත ගම්මිරිස්,කරාඹු,කෝපි,එනසල්, පලතුරු වැනි මිශ්‍ර භෝග සහ, ගෘහස්ථ සත්ව පාලනය (ගව, එළු.කුකුල් සහ මීමැසී) සහිත කුඩා ගොවිපල ව්‍යාපාර සඳහා වෙන්කළ යුතුය.

මධයම කඳුකරය වටේ දිවෙන මෙම තීරුවේ උඩරට ඉඩම් නැති ගොවියන් ප්‍රමුඛ කොට උඩරට 3500 න් ඉහළ තේ වතු වලින් ඉවත් කෙරෙන දෙමල කම්කරුවන් මිශ්‍ර ගම්මාන වශයෙන් පදින්චි කළයුතුය. එසේ පදින්චි කිරිමට අපේක්ෂිත ගොවි පවුල් ගණන 2,50,000 කි. මෙසේ කිරීමෙන් උඩරට වතු දෙමළ ප්‍රශ්නයද සදහටම අවසන්වණු ඇත.

15 මේ රටේ ජාතික ආර්ථිකයේ මුල්තැන ගොවිතැනට දිය යුතුය.ඉනුත් වී වගාවට ප්‍රමුඛත්වය දිය යුතුය. ඒ සඳහා අවශ්ය ජලය,පොහොර, කෘෂිරසායනික, ව්‍යාප්ත සේවා  අලෙවි පහසුකම් සහ සහතික මිල ක්‍රමයක් ආදි සියළු සේවා සහ පහසුකම් රජයෙන් ලබා දිය යුතුය.

16 රටේ ආර්ථිකය, සන්වර්ධනය, සන්ස්කෘතිය සහ අධ්‍යාපනය ආදිය පිලිබඳ ආණ්ඩු මාරුවීමත් සමඟ වෙනස් නොවෙ‍න ජාතික ප්‍රතිපත්තියක් තිබිය යුතුය.

17 මේ රට බහුජාතික,බහුආගමික,බහු වාර්ගික බහු භාසික රටක් යන සන්කළ්පය අපි මුළුමනින්ම බැහැර කෙරේ.

18.ක්‍රි. පූ. 327 සිට පණ්ඩුකාභය රජු විසින් නිර්මිත ගම මේ රටේ ශිෂ්ඨාචාර්යේ මෙන්ම සන්වර්ධනයේද පදනම වේ

19.මෙම ප්‍රඥප්තියේ සඳහන් නියමයන්ට එකඟ නොවෙන කිසිවෙකුට මේ රටේ රටවැසිබව ලැබීමට හෝ මෙහි දීර්ග කාලීනව රැඳී සිටිමට නීතියෙන් තහනම්කළ යුතුය

20. මීට පටහැනිව කථා කිරීම, ලිවීම හෝ කුමණ අන්දමේ මේ ක්‍රියාවක යෙදෙන ඕනෑම පුද්ගලයෙකු පැය 24 ක් තුල රටින් පිටුවහල් කිරීමේ බලය සින්හලේ/ශ්‍රී ලංකා රජය සතු වේ.   

සේ සිංහලයින්ගේ රටෙන් කොටස් ඉල්ලා සිටින සුළු ජාතිකයින්ට පණිවිඩයක්

මේ රටේ රට වැසියන් වශයෙන් පදින්චිව සිටීමට නම්, මෙම ප්‍රකාශනයේ සහ ප්‍රඥප්තියේ අතුලත් සියළු කරුණු සහ කොන්දේශි පිළිගත යුතුය. එසේ කිරීමට එකඟ නොවන ඕනෑම කෙනෙක් සිටීනම් ඔවුන් අපේක්ෂාකරන එම අයිතිවාසිකම් භුක්ති විඳිය හැකි  දේශයකට ඔවුන් යා යුතුය.

 රුසියාවේ ජනාධිපති පුටින් සහ ඕස්ට්‍රේලියාවේ මීට මද කලකට පෙර සිටි අගමැති හෝවර්ඩ් කී පරිදි අපි මේ කිසිවෙකුට මේ රටට එන්ට කියා කිසි දවසක කියා නැත.සුද්දන් විසින්  ඔවුන්ගේ වහල් මෙහෙයට ගෙන ඒමෙන් හෝ තමන්ගේම අව්ශ්‍යතාවට නීත්‍යාණුකූලව හෝ අනීතිකව හෝ ඔබලාම පැමිණියා මිස අපි ඔබලාට මේ රටට එන්ට කියා කිසි දිනක කීවේ නැත. ඔබලා මෙහි ආවේත් මේ පොලවේ පදින්චිව ඉන්නේත් ඔබලාගේම් උවමනාවට මිස අපගේ ඉල්ලීමකට නොවේ.

 ඔබලාගෙන් අප රටට පාඩුවක් සහ කරදරක් මිස ලාභයක් නම් 

කිසිදාක සිදුව නැත.මේ වනවිට තේ වලින් ලැබෙන ආදායමෙන් 65 % ලැබෙන්නේ කුඩා තේ වතුවලිනි. 12 ලක්ෂයකට ආසන්න වතු කුලී හමුදව     නඩත්තුකරන්නේ  රාජ්‍ය

භණ්ඩාගාරයෙන්ය. එම නිසා දෙමළ වතු ජනතාව මේ රටේ ආර්ථිකයට විශාල ආදායමක් ලබා දෙනවා කීම පට්ටපල් බොරුවකි. ඔවුන්ගෙන් වාසි ලබන්නේ දේශපාලකයින් පමණි ඇත්තවෂයෙන්ම මොවුන් අද මේ රටට දැරිය නොහැකි ආර්ථික,පාරිසරික සහ දේශපාලන බරකි. එසේම යෝධ පිළිලයකි.

එමනිසා මේ සින්හල රටේ සිංහල නීති අනුව අනුගතව සින්හල සමාජයට ඒකාබද්ධව මේ රටේ වැසියන් මෙන්  සියළුම ඉන්දීය සම්බන්ධකම් සහ ආලවන්තකම් අත් හැර පෙර දවස සිදුවූ පරිදි මේ රටේ සින්හල සමාජයට අන්තර් ග්‍රහණයවී භූමිපුත්‍රනින් වන සින්හලයින් සමඟ සහයෝගයෙන් සිටීමට නොහැකිනම්, එසේම ඔබලා හිතන පත  ආකාරයෙන් ජීවත් වීමට ඕනෑනම්, ඔබලාගේම නීතියෙන් පාලනය වීමට ඕනෑනම් අපගේ ශිෂ්ටාචාරයට හා ආර්ථිකයට හානිකර අන්දමින් මෙහි නොසිට කාරුනාකර ඔබලා මෙහි ඒමට පෙර සිටි ඔබලාගේ මව් රටවලටම වහාම ආපසු පිටත්ව යනු මැනවි.

 ඉහතින් දක්වා ඇති පරිදි මේ රට, වසර 2566 ක් පුරා සිංහලයින්ගේ රට. ඔවුන් සොයාගත්, ඔවුන් ශිෂ්ඨාචාරය ගොඩනැගූ, වසර 2566 ක් පුරා සියලු පරසතුරන්ගෙන් ජීවිත පරිත්‍යාගයෙන් ආරක්ෂකොට ගත් රට.

ඔබ සැමට යන්ට රටවල් ඇත. ඒ ඔබලාගේ මව් රට වලය.ඒ අනුව දෙමලුන්ට ඉන්දියාව්ද මුස්ලිම් වරුන්ට ඔවුන් මෙහි ඒමට පෙර සිටි ඔවුන්ගේ අරාබි ලෝකයේ රටවලද ඇත.

ඔබ සියළු දෙනාම දන්නා පරිදි සිංහල අපට ව.සැ  25,332 ක් වූ මේ කුඩා දිවයි හැර මේ ලෝකයේ කිසිම තැනක බිම් අඟලක්වත් නැත.

 එමනිසා අපේ රටේ අපේ නීති රීති අනුව සිටීමට ඔබට නොහැකිනම් අප සමඟ අමනානප නොවි කරුනාකර ඔබලාගේම   මව් රටවලට පිටත්ව යන මෙන් ඕනෑකමින් මම ඉල්ලා සිටිමි.

එසේ නොකලොත් මේ රටේ නීති කඩණ, මේ රටට කරදරයක් වන පිරිසක් වෂයෙන් සලකා  ඔබලා මේ රටින් පිටුවහල් කිරීමට අපට සිදුවේvi.

එසේ නැතිව ඔබට මේ රටේම සිටිමට අව්ශ්‍යනම්, පෙර රජ දවස මෙන්, අපගේ සිංහල බෞද්ධ සමාජයට අනුගතවී මේ රටේ සිංහල බෞද්ධයන්වි  අද සිට ඔබේ රට ඉන්දියාව නොව, මේ සින්හල ද්වීපයම වේ, එසේම් ඔබ තව දුරටත් ඉන්දියානුවෙකුනොව මේ සින්හලේ රට වැසියෙකි කියා අධිෂ්ඨානකොට ගෙන අප සමඟ දුක සැප බෙදාගෙන සිටින මෙන් යෝජනා කරමි.

Siyatha

ALI SUKHANVER

Robin Jeffry, in a recent write up ,appeared in the East Asia Forum, said, From a young age, Modi has been a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu-supremacist organization whose inspiration stems from Italian fascism of the 1920s. The social and cultural goals of the RSS call for the creation of a state in which the strong central rule of a Hindu supremacist party and its leader bring about the rebirth of a golden Hindu civilization.” Robin Jeffrey is Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University and La Trobe University. Whatever thoughts he expressed in his write-up are very logical and rational. Mr. Modi is no doubt working very hard for changing the Indian society into a purely Hindu society; a society where no community belonging to some other religious school of thought would be allowed to survive. If all goes well according to the RSS desires and the planning of the BJP under the guidance and command of Mr. Modi, we would find not even a single Sikh, Muslim or even a Christian in the country in the next twenty years. Demolition of ancient mosques, Churches and Gurdwaras and their conversion into Hindu temples seems first step to that destination.

The Aljazeera reported on 9^th February 2024 that at least five people were killed and dozens others injured during a protest sparked by the demolition of a mosque and of a religious school in India’s northern state of Uttarakhand. Reports say that on 8^th February, these buildings in Haldwani Town were bulldozed by the Municipal authorities without issuing any prior notices. On the other hand the government officials blamed that the two buildings were built without getting proper permission. But the local people are of the opinion that in Haldwani Town not even a single building is constructed after getting permission from the Municipal authorities as it is a very old area. They say that if it were a building of a Mandir, it would never have been demolished so ruthlessly. Whatever is being done against the worship-places of religious minorities in India, is the part of an ‘officially- supervised’ move against the minorities there; it is not the result of any ‘hatred’ among different communities as Hinduism never preaches hatred; it is simply the result of an effort of winning the political-battle by using religion as a double-edged sword.

The Indian state of Manipur witnessed a horrible wave of violent attacks on churches in the first week of May 2023. That wave resulted in demolition, destruction and even burning of around 249 churches in just first 36 hours.Archbishop Lumon expressed his deep grief over ‘the silence of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the cluelessness of interior minister Amit Shah and indecisiveness of the local government’ regarding that wave of violence. Same were the reservations of Major Archbishop of the Syro-Malabar Church with reference to the dumbness of the authorities. He said, It is shameful that even though Christian churches have been destroyed and thousands have been left homeless, those at the helm of the administration are still not ready to condemn such activities or reject the rioters.”

Reports say that it is the R&AW behind all such brutal activities and this organization is under the direct command of the Indian Prime Minister Mr. Modi. Even in India people say that R&AW no more means The Research & Analysis Wing, it is the Rogue Assassins Wing of the BJP. The recent assassination plot of US citizen Gurpatwant Singh Pannun is the worst example of the heinous activities of this organization. According to a report published in the Aljazeera, the US Justice Department accused in a statement that an Indian government official was the mastermind behind the assassination plan of US citizen Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York. The report said, The suggestions from US officials that India might have been involved in an attempt at an extrajudicial killing on the soil of a friendly nation come six months after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused New Delhi of involvement in the assassination of another Sikh separatist leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, near Vancouver.” The New York-based lawyer, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun is a dual US-Canadian citizen. He is the legal counsel and spokesman for Sikhs for Justice, a US-based Sikh separatist group. His murder plan was exposed last year in November.

Whereas Hardeep Singh Nijjar was an Indian born in the district of Jalandhar. In 1997, he moved to Canada and soon made a name for himself as a vocal advocate for the creation of Khalistan. The BBC said about him in a report that ‘he was a peaceful advocate for Sikh independence and a man who cared deeply about his community.’ He was shot and killed by two gunmen wearing dark clothes with hoods outside a Sikh temple in a Vancouver suburb on a June summer evening last year. After a very deep and detailed investigation, the government of Canada accused India of being linked to the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. It was also officially stated that the murder of a Sikh leader on Canadian soil might fuel a significant rift between the two countries. Hardeep was murdered, reports say, that at the time of his death, he had been planning a non-binding referendum for Sikhs living in British Columbia. The demand of that referendum was the creation of Khalistan; an independent Sikh state in India. In short, the R&AW is doing all its best to convert India into a purely Hindu state under the guidance and command of Mr. Modi. It seems a matter of just a few years that we would not find even a single Muslim, Sikh or Christian living an honourable life in that Hindu society.