S.B. Dissanayake: A Century of Suffering for Minorities
Posted: December 10, 2009By Ranjit J. Perera
S.B. Dissanayake, the former national organizer for the United National Party (UNP) and the opposition leader of the Central Provincial Council, held a press conference Dec. 7 and announced that he will relinquish all affiliations with the UNP and rejoin the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) to support President Mahinda Rajapaksa in the upcoming election. In an exclusive interview with SLNN the same evening, Dissanayake spoke on a range of issues including minority rights. The audio excerpt of the interview is in Sinhala and its English translation follows.
Translation
We know that the war in the north is not something that began spontaneously. The children of the north – six different groups – took up arms not after dreaming about it. Not after being advised by soothsayers and astrologers. They didn’t take up arms because they wanted to release their youthful energy. They had problems that had been simmering for about a century. Problems about power. Problems about language. Problems about religion. Cultural problems. Problems about development. Problems about education. They had a major problem about equal rights. The feeling that they were being treated as minorities had entered their minds. They had a situation where they could not work with the central government in their own language.
As they continued to ask for solutions from 1911 onwards what happened was that controls were made tighter and minorities were marginalized: by making Sinhala the official language, throwing out those who couldn’t work in the Sinhala language during the sixties, reducing to a minimum the intake of minorities to universities through the introduction of a proportional system, removing in 1972 of the legal provisions introduced by the British that existed under the Donoughmore Constitution protecting the rights of racial minorities and those following minority religions, these provisions not being reinstated by [President] J.R. [Jayawardena] in 1978, (and) giving them false promises.
Because of all these reasons, first the people asked for power. Then they asked for one half. Then they asked for two thirds. They asked for fifty-fifty, then for a federal solution and then they went for Eelam. It was a long process. Today, there is no war in the country. In order to prevent another war in the future, all those factors that I mentioned which were factors that resulted in the war must be absent.
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The biggest problem SL has is the idiotic Sinhalese politicians blaming each other. In 1956 when only 8% of population spoke Enlish , English was the official language. Is this idiot saying that it was correct?? What else would be the suitable official language ,than Sinhalese which was spoken and understood by about 85% population. Say out of the 8% who knew English 3% were Tamils. So making Sinhalese the official language would have effected less than 3% of total population who were Tamils, since some of these Tamils who spoke English would have known Sinhalese as well. Tamils who knew Tamil only or Tamils who knew Tamil and Sinhalese only were not effected. So this ediot is saying Since it effected less than 3% of population of Tamils who spoke English it is UNFAIR to make official language to Sinhalese to benifit 85% of population and gave rise to the Tamil terrorist menenance.
Can this ediot name any other country in the world whoes 85% population known language is not made the official language of that country.
Why this ediot talk about propotionate basis of uni entace, this does NOT exit now. Does he not know it. Which planet he is comming from. Our Sinhales ediot politicians blaming everything for each other created this problem. OUr week defence system and help from other countries led Tamils to terrorism.