Thursday, 24 November 2016 18:57
While rejecting Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakse's recent statement in Parliament that some 32 Sri Lankan youths had joined the IS, Cabinet spokesman Minister Rajitha Senaratne today said that the statement was completely incorrect and misleading. Addressing the weekly cabinet press briefing in Parliament, Minister Senaratne said according to the armed forces intelligence reports, only four Muslim youths had joined the IS but they have joined the militant group from abroad. “I have reliable intelligence reports that the information given to Minister Rajapakse was not correct. But unfortunately, the statement made by Minister Rajapakse in Parliament recently has created a confusion and anxiety among the Muslim community in Sri Lanka. Someone has given him misleading information. Not a single Muslim youth joined IS directly from Sri Lanka,” Minister Senaratne said. He said the government must create confidence among the Muslim community as 90% of Muslims are a moderate and passive community and only 10% of Muslim youths are prone to fall into extremist ideologies and added whoever comes to Sri Lanka with the ruse that they are coming here to propagate Muslim, they are screened by the NIB (National Intelligence Bureau). Minister Senaratne said some 30 shocked and distressed Muslim organizations over the remarks made by Minister Rajapaksa representing the entire Muslim community in Sri Lanka had sought a discussion with him to sort out the issue and he would meet them shortly after briefing President Maithripala Sirisena. He charged that the joint opposition was in a dastardly move to create communal disharmony by inciting Muslims and Tamils in the South, East and North with the sinister motive to block Muslim and Tamil votes for the SLFP or the UNP in a future election as they think they could win elections only from Sinhala Buddhist votes which will be their waterloo. Responding to a journalist on the military conspiracy theory suggested by Parliamentarian Dinesh Gunawardane, Minister Senaratne said it was the most malicious and vengeful statement made by a Sri Lankan politician ever.
http://www.dailymirror.lk/article/Rajitha-contradicts-Wijeyadasa-119599.html
Monday, 21 November 2016 20:08
19 Nov 2016
Hon. Wijedasa Rajapakse
Minister of Justice
Colombo
An Open Letter to the Minister of Justice Hon. Wijedasa Rajapakshe
Minister Rajapakse,
The Muslim community takes serious exception to the censorious remarks made by you in Parliament on 17th Nov 2016. You juxtaposed selected irrelevant issues to implicate and malign several respected Muslim organisations and the Muslim community. Your fearmongering remarks are increasing the degree of tension among all communities thereby jeopardising nascent peace emerging in the country. The impact of your statement is not confined to the Muslims alone as it affects the whole country at a time when the President and the Prime Minister are forewarning the nation that anti-government saboteurs are scheming to bring Buddhist-Muslim clash as a strategy to bring down the government. Your statement strengthened the hands of the extremist racists of the country and the aftermath ensuing racist demonstrations in Kandy etc unwittingly places you as the initiator of the collapse of the government by sheer coincidence, which I hope not.
You being a responsible Minister and an erudite Presidential Council, it is unbecoming for a person of your calibre to make sweeping generalization of irrelevant stories put together under the cover of parliamentary immunity. You are making statement in the august house of Parliament to the peoples’ representatives. It is their right to know precise facts and figures, dates and places and names so that they can contribute to find solutions to the problems to which you are seeking to address. Your generalised naming of respected legitimate Muslim organisations and with sweeping generalization of Muslim internationals schools alleging extremist indoctrination by foreign scholars, about infighting between different sects and groups and referring to an isolated story of a person marrying a young girl and that it can be a cause for communal riot and racial disharmony. All these topped with the story of ISIS, alleging that four families consisting of 32 people men women and small children, at a time that the ISIS is at its death throes and the world has come to know who trained, funded, marketed and operated them to destroy Syria to protect Israeli interest. This is public knowledge, a common phenomenon experienced by many countries and created by the geopolitical realities at the hand of their handlers. I also draw your attention regarding the ISIS matter that you are not updated. Way back in 2015 when the ISIS issue cropped up in the media, the Prime Minister convened a meeting with major Muslim organisations to which senior ministers, The Defence Secretary, the three Service Chiefs, the IGP and the Intelligence Officials participated. I participated on behalf of the National Shoora Council amongst others. We settled these issues at the highest levels of consultation, coordination and communication. We give credits to the government, the military and the law enforcements agencies and the intelligence community for their professional handling of this issue and allaying our concerns.
You will realise that in these statements, you failed the august chamber to give precise intelligible facts to inform the peoples’ representatives. Instead your collection of irrelevant, outdated and fabricated facts are of no use to the peoples’ representative but are becoming handy tools to the racist trouble makers in the country hell bent on destabilizing the nation. Do you know how many potential investors to the country your statement and the aftermath would have shooed out resulting in loss to the country. Do you know how your statements are derailing the struggling government’s development initiatives? Do you know how you are making despondency and frustration to set in the country? Do you know how your statements are scuttling reconciliation initiatives of the country? Or is this the prelude to the enactments of Counter Terrorism Act by artificially creating tension and fearmongering in the country as a strategy?
We would like to know what was the rationale behind sensationalizing something past and irrelevant in a fast changing society seeking social harmony, rebuilding, reconciliation and rejuvenating of the economy as priorities of the Yahapalana Government. We fail to understand your logic of why you did chose to make this statement impromptu. We believe that you are not updated about the issues that you talked about with concrete facts, figures and dates. Whoever shared information with you has failed the test of due diligence thereby making you to speak something not in keeping with your stature as a legal luminary if not a Minister. We sympathise with you and shall be prepared to work with you corroborating with facts and figures, inshallah (God willing), for the sake of building Mother Lanka.
Thank you,
Sincerely
Tariq Mahmud President National Shoora Council