Honourable chairman of the committee, members of Parliament, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you all for giving us this opportunity to share our views on what's happening in Sri Lanka.
My name is Hasaka Ratnamalala. I'm a Sri Lankan Canadian. I practised as an attorney at law and was a journalist in Sri Lanka. During my time as a journalist, I had the privilege of travelling to every corner of the island of Sri Lanka. In fact, I was the first Sinhala journalist who managed to visit LTTE-controlled Jaffna in 1993.
During my first visit, I was able to interview LTTE leaders such as Anton Balasingham, Thamil Chelvam, and Aiyathurai Nadesan and was able to receive first-hand knowledge of the LTTE. My articles were published in a Sinhala language alternative newspaper called Ravaya.
I also belonged to a group of people, those who thought there was a possibility of peace in Sri Lanka if the Sri Lankan government would talk to the LTTE. I later understood from experience that it is not possible, because the LTTE would never compromise in their stand on the final solution to the conflict, which is, according to them, to have a separate state.
That is the only reason this conflict has lagged on so long. That is probably what the LTTE wants. In that case, peace talks or ceasefire became meaningless practices in the Sri Lankan context. In the Sri Lankan experience, a “ceasefire” with LTTE has had so many other meanings such as death, destruction, western conspiracy, western hypocrisy, new imperialism, rearming, regrouping and re-attacking--in other words, simply bombs, bombs, and more bombs.
Today, for the first time in the world, Sri Lankan security forces have shown the world that terrorism can be defeated by force. They have cornered the LTTE, the world's most ruthless terrorist organization, on a small piece of land close to 20 square kilometres. But the danger is that LTTE is holding several thousand civilians as a human shield. But very soon, the armed conflict will be over, and therefore what we have to concentrate on here is the situation after the conflict. The Sri Lankan government is already starting to look into a permanent political solution to the conflict.
As a first step, the Sri Lankan government has started to fully implement the 13th amendment to the constitution, and further devolvement to the provincial level is on the way through the APRC, or all-party round table conference. There is a huge debate on that matter going on in Sri Lanka. This is a positive sign. Unfortunately, those elements who support the LTTE agenda in the diaspora do not want that debate to take place in this diaspora.
In Sri Lanka all barriers that keep Tamils from thinking as Sri Lankans are coming down. The century-old British relic of showing ethnicity on a birth certificate has been removed. Tamil people did not get their chance to integrate into mainstream Sri Lankan society, mostly because Tamil political leaders kept Tamil society in that way for their petty political gains. With the end of LTTE, that barrier also ends. Tamil leaders who can work as Sri Lankans are coming forward today. I think we have to respect that.
Today, over 60% of the Tamil population is living in areas other than the north and east with the Sinhalese majority. That is the reality today.
Thank you very much.