Sri Lanka pursues nation-wide agenda of renewal -– President at the UNGA
‘International Humanitarian Law should reflect reality of non-state actors in conflicts’
Mr. President
Excellencies
I have great pleasure in congratulating Your Excellency Joseph Deiss, on your assumption of the Chair of the sixty fifth Session of the General Assembly.
I also take this opportunity to extend our appreciation to the President of the sixty fourth Session, His Excellency Dr. Ali Abdussalam Treki, for his effective stewardship of the General Assembly.
Mr. President, Excellencies,
That the United Nations is now in its sixty fifth year serves to underline the durability of this organisation. It is an important mechanism in ensuring co-operation between States and a forum for discussion between sovereign nations. We must never under-estimate the importance of this organisation based as it is, on the principle of equal treatment of countries big and small.
It is in this spirit that I address you at a crucial juncture in the history of my own country. In two months, I will be assuming office for my second term.
My mandate will be very different from my last. For my second term as President, my promise to my people, is to deliver sustainable peace and prosperity to all and ensure that terrorism will not be able to raise its ugly head again.
In 2005, I was elected by my people on a promise to rid my country of the menace of terrorism. I say that Sri Lanka is now at peace, peace that was only a dream a few years ago.
Over the past year, much has been reported and much has been said regarding my country’s liberation from terrorism. However, far less has been said of the suffering we had to undergo and the true nature of the enemy we have overcome.
The rapidly forgotten truth is that we had to face one of the most brutal, highly organised, well funded and effective terrorist organisations, that could even spread its tentacles to other countries.
Many of the atrocities of terrorism that the West has come to experience in recent times, the people of Sri Lanka were themselves the victims of, for nearly 30 years, losing almost one hundred thousand lives, among them being a President of Sri Lanka, a visionary leader of India and scores of intellectuals and politicians.
The LTTE was an organisation so brutal, that even those it claimed to represent, the Tamil community of Sri Lanka, were as much victims of its terror as the rest of the population of our country.
Media Release
The arrival of the vessel MV Sun Sea with 490 illegal migrants on board has drawn much focus in Canada and especially in the Canadian media. This human smuggling operation with links to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is an issue which needs to be seriously addressed.
In order to justify the organized crime, certain elements are now making wild allegations against the Government of Sri Lanka without any basis and with mala-fide intensions to project the impression that people are fleeing Sri Lanka as the conditions prevailing in the country are deplorable and that Tamils are being persecuted etc.
The adverse critics of the Government of Sri Lanka may note that there is complete peace in Sri Lanka since the three decades long conflict ended with the defeat of the secessionist terrorist outfit in May 2009. Approximately 300,000 people who were held as a human shield by the LTTE and rescued by the government were accommodated and provided with required facilities, with the assistance of the international community. Over 80% of these Internally Displaced People (IDPs) have been resettled and the remaining 30,000 IDPs live in the welfare villages and their early resettlement have been ensured. They have the freedom to move in and out of the welfare villages. The Government of Sri Lanka is addressing issues pertaining to the resettlement process such as clearing of 1.5 million land mines planted by the LTTE, livelihood for the IDPs and infrastructure development in the areas destroyed due to the conflict, etc.