Alliance for Peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka (APRSL) had a Parliamentary meeting at the House of Commons meeting rooms on Monday Oct. 19, exactly five months to the day that the LTTE were defeated.

The theme was Post-war in Sri Lanka: Peace and reconciliation- a way forward.

Andy Love MP chaired the meeting. Other British participants were

Des Brown MP and Siobhian McDonough MP. The speakers included Councillor Paul Sathianesan, Reza Yehya, Director Research - Serendip Institute of Research and Development (SIRD of Sri Lanka) and Roy Chaudhury who spoke on the’ Indian perspective of the conflict in Sri Lanka’.

Minister of Science and Technology and Chairman of the All Party Representatives Committee Prof. Tissa Vitarana was the main speaker and a surprise guest. He was accompanied by the new Sri Lankan Deputy High Commissioner in London, Mr. P M Amza, who was previously in Chennai. The previous Deputy High Commissioner in London, Sumith Nakandala, was recalled by Colombo prematurely.

The APRSL is a predominantly Sri Lankan Tamil organization in the UK, which is trying to reach out to the Muslims and the Sinhalese with a view to form a broader consensus.

Andy Love MP introduced Vitarana as Sri Lanka’s version of the "renaissance man".

Vitarana reiterated his quest to find a solution, one country, one nation and that his formula, or in his words "a summary, then a summary of the summary" of the formula had been submitted to the President for his consideration. After the President responds, Vitarana hopes that the TNA also contributes. He emphasized that a 2/3rds majority is needed and that in some cases a referendum may also be required.

In response to a question regarding the 13th amendment being the panacea, Vitarana stated that it was not an exercise in participatory democracy, but an imposition by India modeled on the Indian experience where devolved Indian states are larger than Sri Lanka.

Vitarana emphasized that his "home grown" solution empowers the village level and hence minorities living in areas surrounded by a larger community. He said that this solution has a bill of rights, individual and group rights as a part of the judicial structure.

Even at this event a Canadian Tamil political activist who had spent a month in Trincomalee and was on his way back to Canada expressed these fears. According to him, the Rajapaksa’s had purchased about 80 acres of beach land in the East near Trincomalee and Sinhalese fisherman were also being settled in the East on a permanent basis. The veracity of these allegations is not the issue, but that these are the insecurities of that community.

These fears and prejudices are also surfacing in the form of a Pillayan - Karuna clash, with Pillayan attracting Eastern Tamil support and even Indian support, while Karuna is the advocate of the State’s Sinhalese prejudices and fears.

There were questions as to why peace was being delayed till after the elections. Vitarana quoted the President in stating that the UNP always says that it will support constitutional reform, but they never do, going by their past record, and therefore the President feels that the government will be in a stronger position after the next elections. The government’s "aspiration" is to obtain a 2/3rds majority at the polls.

Vitarana addressed the IDP issue comprehensively. He stated that the remaining IDP’s as at October 4, 2009 were 237,641 from an initial 306,476.

19,675 had been reunified, 15,659 had been transferred to other camps, 2,938 had been rehabilitated, 2,111 had disappeared, 5,425 had been hospitalized and the rest had been released.

He stated that water is still a problem with long daily queues to collect water, but that community cooking had ceased and that five dry rations are distributed by the WFP for individual cooking. Water bowsers were being used regularly and contractors were required to use camp labour for work in the camps.

There were preparations for the monsoon in the coming weeks to relocate 72,000 from low lying areas.

10,000 LTTE cadres had been identified and they were in rehabilitation camps. Ambepussa has one and they are constructing 20 camps with 500 in each. Psychiatric assistance was being made available in these camps.

They estimate that there are another 5,000 or so LTTE cadres in the existing camps.

Independently this writer was informed from non-government, non-Tamil sources, of the presence of LTTE cadres in the camps in Vavuniya and that they are stirring up the Tamils in the camps against the authorities.

Vitarana has personally intervened to secure the release of some Jaffna University students and he said that his visit to local hospitals indicated that there were vacant beds after being full during the earlier months. He hoped that before long the IDP situation would be solved.

Vitarana’s performance at the meeting was constructive and he made progress with the audience until the gentleman who was sitting next to me posed a question.

He was Tom Wipple from the London Times. His question was about unfettered access for journalists to the camps.

From this point onwards Vitarana lost the floor and the audience turned against him.

He stated that he was personally for unfettered access but that Sri Lanka was hypersensitive because of bad reporting, raising of the issue of genocide and the press ignoring all the good the government had done and focusing on the negative.

An ex-Tamil politician sitting next to the Sri Lankan Deputy High Commissioner, Amza, raised a question that there are so many refugees all over the world, including Muslim refugees in Sri Lanka. Why were the British raising concerns and unfairly only focusing on Sri Lankan Tamil refugees?

This seemed a planted intervention by an ally riding to Vitarana’s defence. The same gentleman previously raised the question about the 13th amendment being a panacea, opening the door for Vitarana to market the "home grown" solution. These are games played by the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government, and after awhile one spots the plants. Others too notice and the result is a loss of credibility.

A British politician present responded by stating that he had visited the Muslim refugee camps in Puttalam and had raised the issue in the British Parliament.

There were shouts from the audience, "you are killing journalists because you are hypersensitive?"

Andy Love MP intervened to calm the situation and to allow Vitarana to speak without being interrupted.

Vitarana tried to pacify the audience by stating that the President always says that he wants to address the problems of the Tamils and that he spoke in public in the Tamil language. The audience laughed and dismissed the President talking in Tamil as a "bad joke".

Des Browne MP, special envoy of the British government to Sri Lanka spoke of the need to address the IDP issue as a priority as something fundamental could happen if this is not done.

Des Browne has Irish roots and this insight into the Irish psyche may have been one of the reasons why he was selected as the envoy to Sri Lanka. Sinhalese/Tamil psyche has many similarities to Irish Protestant/Catholic psyche, in respect of their fears and prejudices.

Browne emphasized the need for a legitimate process which identifies all Sri Lanka’s communities to achieve a sustainable peace. The need for the rule of law and the ability of the people to seek redress and substantial changes to the way that Sri Lanka is governed. The design he said, should be for the future, so that future generations could live in peace.

He stated that the Sri Lankan Diaspora is significant and its effects on Sri Lanka could be profound.

Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, presently running the South Asia security program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) was next to speak. He had previously served in the Indian Prime Minister’s Office for a few years and before that in a think tank in New Delhi. He has written extensively on India and Indian political-military issues, including two books on the Indian military.

Before entering the Committee room, I had the opportunity to interact with some of those who were waiting for the Committee room to fall vacant at 6.00 p.m. Councillor Paul Sathianesan informed me that another Tamil candidate is being proposed to run against him at the next council elections in East Ham, because he is viewed as a "traitor" for not supporting the LTTE war effort.

The mirror image of this phenomenon is found in Sri Lanka, where those who do not support the government’s point of view are branded as "traitors" or terrorist sympathizers.

Councillor Sathianesan, British, Canadian, Australian and American politicians who intervene on behalf of Tamils do so in support of their constituents. This is a norm in democratic behaviour, similar to a lawyer defending a client in court.

To accuse them and deport them as in the case of Canadian Bob Rae as being LTTE sympathizers is as ridiculous as accusing a lawyer of being a criminal because he is defending and having consultations with criminals. Such positions are unhelpful and expose Sri Lanka as being undemocratic and intolerant.

I also met a Sri Lankan reporter who is living in London after fleeing Sri Lanka, because of fear for his life.

Siobhian McDonough MP who was present, had called for a boycott of Sri Lanka during the Labour Party conference, which was concluded earlier this month. One of the participants Ishan Gunesekera, the owner of the Asiana Restaurant in Maida Vale, West London, wanted to question McDonough as to why she called for a boycott of Sri Lanka and if such a move would help anyone. Since the meeting had to be concluded by 8.00pm and it was already past this time, Ishan’s question never got answered.

After the meeting had concluded, Ishan and his sister confronted Siobhian McDonough MP and were seen in heated argument, with Siobhian acknowledging that she had never visited Sri Lanka and did not have to visit Sri Lanka to take such a stand, while Ishan was arguing that Siobhian must make informed statements and not merely appease a Tamil nationalist constituency.