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President Chandrika Bandranaike Kumaratunga
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By
IOL South Asia correspondent
NEW
DELHI, November 14 (IslamOnline) - Shedding her antipathy towards
Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels, Sri Lankan President
Chandrika Bandranaike Kumaratunga has decided to walk that extra mile
in search of elusive peace which her tiny island-nation had been
bereft of for nearly two decades.
In
a marked shift from her self-professed “hawkish” stance vis-à-vis
relations with LTTE, President Kumaratunga pledged her support for the
ongoing peace process being brokered by Norwegian facilitators between
the two warring sides.
Kumaratunga’s
assurance came Tuesday, November 12, while she addressed the nation to
mark her eighth anniversary in office. “The 19-year ethnic war has
been a bane of our country,” the president admitted in her address.
Giving
an unexpected call for reconciliation, Kumaratunga said it was
“regrettable” that the anti-Tamil riots of 1983 took place.
“This (the riots) had spawned the island nation’s ethnic
conflict,” she rued.
“The
clear failure of the Sri Lanka state to protect its Tamil citizens in
July 1983 is a watershed event in ethnic relations. It was a failure,
which I deeply regret,” Kumaratunga said. The president went on to
the extent of calling the riots “a true tragedy of epic
proportions.”
The
president in her address to the nation suggested fresh ideas for the
peace talks, including a committee on “ethnic reconciliation and
sustainable peace” comprising representatives from all political
parties, the rebels and non-governmental organizations.
“The
major democratic political forces must agree on a common plan of
action and participate actively in its implementation,” Kumaratunga
stressed.
However,
nobody from Mr. Wickramasinghe’s ruling United National Party
attended the ceremony to mark the president's eight years in office.
According
to various human rights groups, the 1983 rioting by the pre-dominant
majority Buddhist Sinhalese mobs left between 2,000 and 3,000 minority
Hindu Tamils dead. Some 800,000 Tamils fled the country and sought
refuge in India and other Western nations. Over the past two decades,
the conflict has left more than 64,000 people killed.
The
precursor to the bloody clashes between the people of two religious
and ethnic groups in the island was the ambush of 13 soldiers by LTTE
rebels. The action by the renegade outfit had incensed the Buddhist
Sinhalese, who later wanted the ethnic minority Tamils to be
suppressed by all means.
Buddhist
Sinhalese had been at the helm of affairs in the island nation, and
the minority Tamils complain that successive governments had been
discriminatory and oppressive and all along had tried to brutally
suppress them.
Apparently
getting miffed over the Sinhalese high-handedness, LTTE under the
leadership of Vellupillai Pirabhakaran had been carrying on violent
struggle for an independent Tamil homeland called “Tamil Eelam” in
the island nation’s North and Eastern provinces.
In
a bid to let the peace process run smoothly, Kumaratunga has also
reportedly decided to extend an olive branch to her arch rival Prime
Minister Ranil Wickaramasinghe.
Setting
a conciliatory tone, Kumaratunga said, “She was satisfied with the
progress of talks,” and added, “Measures adopted in the last one
year to reduce tension between the antagonists seem to progress
satisfactorily.”
Earlier,
the same Kumaratunga had accused the prime minister of conceding too
much to the LTTE even as the two sides struggled to end the ethnic
conflict. At one stage, she had even threatened to sack the government
which could have presumably derailed the entire peace process.
Kumaratunga
belongs to the (opposition) People’s Alliance (PA) while
Wickaramasinghe belongs to the ruling United National Party (UNP).
