Sri Lanka president Mahinda Rajapaksa did not attend disaster management event (National Security Day), remembering Tsunami, took place this time in his colonial territory of Jaffna on 26th December. He was scheduled to preside over it according to earlier announcements. SL Prime Minister D.N. Jeyaratne substituted him and school students of Jaffna were ordered to ‘sing’ the SL anthem in Sinhala only for the occasion. The students clad in Tamil traditional dress, veaddi and chealai, said that they were never accustomed to sing the Sinhala anthem before, but were rigorously ‘trained’ in the last two days for it and were forced for the performance. The function, ignored by the public and participated mainly by officials, made SL minister Douglas Devananda to comment that public in future should be prepared for participation.
The security for the event was such that when the lone UNP parliamentarian from Jaffna, Vijayakala Maheswaran tried to enter the auditorium, she fell down when the presidential security forces pushed her aside. Mrs Maheswaran, a native of Jaffna, had to be identified by a Muslim minister from the south before getting her permission to enter. Full story >>
