Lanka protests over RCS move

In a strongly worded letter to the Royal Commonwealth Society (RCS), Sri Lanka has protested at the manner in which a discussion on the country has been promoted casting the High Commissioner in an embarrassing role.

The RCS is due to hold a discussion next month on a subject variously announced as "Sri Lanka at the edge: Is peace possible" and Sri Lanka at the edge: Building a peaceful future," without any previous reference to the high commission but asking the Sri Lankan envoy to sum up the discussion in which the editor of the Tamil Guardian, a pro-LTTE newspaper published here, is perhaps the only confirmed speaker.

Though Sri Lanka is a member state of the Commonwealth and a member of the RCS, the high commission said it was surprised that the RCS "had chosen to organise an event of this nature without any discussion with the high commission and chose to notify us in the manner of a fait accompli."

There too, wrote High Commissioner Kshenuka Senewiratne, requesting her to round up the discussion after the speakers, some of them still to be named, had had their say which made it diplomatically untenable.

"I am astonished that you wished to invite me to make the concluding remarks at a meeting of this nature which would be charged with biases and erroneous positions considering the panel's composition, and therefore the likely participants," the High Commissioner said in the letter to RCS Director-General Stuart Mole.

She has said that the Tamil Guardian "is the propaganda arm of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)" and that the paper's editor has "close association with the LTTE leadership" and his "usual role as a promoter of the ideology of this terrorist organisation makes it clear that this discussion is aimed at legitimising the organisation."

"It seems ironic that whilst the Commonwealth stands for the promotion of democratic values, pluralism and the rule of law, it has chosen not to invite young professionals who are representatives of the numerous moderate political groups within the Sri Lankan community but invited a representative of a terrorist organisation that has disenfranchised people living in certain parts of the north and east of Sri Lanka, engages in suicide bombing of democratically elected leaders of its own community, assassinates civilians and conscripts children."

In announcing the discussion, the RCS had said there would be input from young Sri Lankan "stakeholders" in various field such as business and policy.

The Sunday Times understands that there have been several other protests from the Sri Lanka community in Britain and the RCS is having a rethink about the meeting and the composition of the panel.