Sri Lankan politics

3.04.2013

Dr Jehan Perera has the sort of mashed up face that you look at twice and wonder if he has been tortured and the charisma of Dennis Skinner or Tony Benn which gives away the era I was delegate for the Labour Party Conference.  His brief was to brief me on Sri Lankan politics.

The Peace Council in Sri Lanka is funded by Norway who we decided were doing it because they are a rich country who want to have international status as a peace maker.  The Norwegians also negotiated a settlement 2002 which would have given the Tamil Tigers a federal state, but they would not settle for that.  The inspiration for the Peace Council came from the Caritas arm of the catholic church who began it as a campaign against election violence in 1994.

http://www.peace-srilanka.org/

I was talked through the stages by which the Tamils have been disenfranchised since independence in 1948 when they had had a sizeable influence during British rule.  An interesting point was when we speculated on Sri Lanka taking a similar role as Cuba except Cuba was the Russian interest on America’s doorstep and Sri Lanka in the late 70s was pro American during the Russian influence in India at the time.

There are 3 million Tamils in Sri Lanka who are being ignored by the Sinhalese government, but 30 miles across the water in Tamil Nadu there are 80 million Tamils which is why they are not fixing the ferry because they don’t want easy links.  Meanwhile international interest is putting pressure on for those in government accused of war crimes to go before the Hague and the latest news is that the Buddhists are getting arsy with the Muslims which could have a negative impact on the Sri Lankan nationals who work as domestics in Muslim Eastern countries.  There was more.  It was all quite awesome.

I must be careful.  For me it is a huge buzz to get access to these sort of people.  The US Ambassador was due as I left.  I remember something similar in Cameroon.  They inspire you with the brightest and the best as part of your induction and then you get sent out to deal with the power mad idiots at grass roots level.

After extended dongle shopping I then had another 3 hours of language training except Ianthe is now well up for discussing culture rather than testing words in fact we wandered in to whether it was part of Christian theology or not that God tests Christians.  I thought yes, she thought no, so I have to bring the book in tomorrow and my sari I bought from India to be advised on the subtleties of its ‘class(caste!)’ and whether I can wear a t-shirt sari blouse underneath (potentially tacky) or a cotton one.  Today I have been mega stimulated!