National Peace Council urges Government to continue reconciliation policies set in 2015

The National Peace Council (NPC), while appreciating the Government for its measures to enhance security and to ensure that there was no recurrence of violence or terrorism, expressed concern about several decisions of the Government that could potentially impact upon inter-community relations within the State.

Recalling President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s declaration on taking the oath of office where he said he would be the President of all Sri Lankans, and not only of those who voted for him, the NPC said they are concerned about certain statements made by the President.

The first is the President’s statements that development would be prioritised in resolving the ethnic conflict and that strengthening the system of devolution of power is not going to be the answer.

Second is the President’s assertion that there is no problem of missing persons to be resolved and limiting it to those who fell on the battlefields of war.

The third is the assertion by Government leaders that the national anthem will not be sung in Tamil at the forthcoming Independence Day celebrations.

The NPC said these are issues that have come down the decades and require institutional reform and political commitment to resolve.

The NPC urged the Government to continue the policy set in 2015 that the national anthem would be sung in both Sinhala and Tamil languages in keeping with the earliest post-independence practice in 1949 at the inauguration of the Independence Memorial Building at Torrington Square of singing of national songs in both languages.

“As an organisation that has worked to build bridges between the ethnic and religious communities and the State for the past 25 years, the National Peace Council requests the Government to reconsider its initial assessments of those issues,” NPC said in a release.

“We urge the Government to discuss these matters with the political parties and representatives of the ethnic and religious communities, in keeping with the plural nature of Sri Lankan society, prior to concretising them as policy decisions.”

The National Peace Council is an independent and non-partisan organisation that works towards a negotiated political solution to the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. It has a vision of a peaceful and prosperous Sri Lanka in which the freedom, human rights and democratic rights of all the communities are respected.