Netherlands-funded CEPA project wages political ‘counter-insurgency’ on Diaspora, elected NPC
[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 June 2017, 23:06 GMT]The occupying Colombo and its global backers have charted a
comprehensive deceptive programme, which facilitates continued
structural genocide in the North-East through a common ‘development’
programme approaching Tamil-speaking Northern and Eastern provinces
together with the adjacent Sinhala-speaking North-Central province. A
Colombo-based NGO outfit, Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA), is tasked
to recruit gullible and opportunistic sections of the diaspora expanding
Rajapaksa-time ‘KP-Diaspora’ programme. The CEPA, led by Sinhala
academic cum consultant Udan Fernando, has been almost ‘spying’ on Tamil
diaspora with the support of the Foreign Ministry of Netherlands so
far. The CEPA was also trying to deceive the NPC. But, the NPC's
governing body has identified the agenda behind the project. Citing its
‘interaction’ with the NPC, the CEPA is now trying to deceive the Tamil
diaspora.
A highly placed source at the Northern Provincial Council (NPC)
governing body told TamilNet on Thursday that the CEPA and its Director
Udan Fernando were giving a wrong impression to the Tamil Diaspora, if
they were using the name of the Northern Provincial Council as being
involved in the deliberations and decisions in the CEPA meetings held in
Colombo in April.
An invitation sent to selected individuals in
Europe during the last week was stating that the meetings, led by Udan
Fernando, were being scheduled to explain 30 proposals that have been
formulated with the participation of the provincial councils from the
North, East, Central and North-Central provinces in the island. This has
given an impression to Tamil diaspora activists that the NPC was also a
partner of the CEPA project.
In fact, invitations were sent to
representatives from North, East, Central and North-Central provinces to
take part in a panel discussion on “Needs and priorities of the
provinces” on 20th April.
Another invitation was sent to NPC
Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran urging him to take part in a
CEPA-organised meeting on ‘Sustainable Tourism development’ along with
the chief ministers or their representatives from Eastern, Central,
Southern and Western Provinces on the following day at the SL Ministry
of Tourism Development and Christian Religious Affairs.
NPC
Chief Minister Justice Wigneswaran didn't participate in the meetings,
but he sent a senior representative to the meetings. The NPC's governing
body was quick to grasp the pattern and silently withdrew from the
deceptive discource, the source further said.
Anyone, who wants
to know the real stand of the NPC should contact the Chief Minister’s
office to clarify the actual position, the NPC source added.
Colombo
Establishment and its global backers are trying to isolate the Northern
and Eastern provincial councils by intervening through Colombo-based
authorities, ministries and departments coming under the Central
Government. Certain NGOs operating in Colombo also operate in the same
manner.
There is also a hidden agenda of diverting ‘post-war
development assistance’, ‘reconciliation’ and housing assistance
intended for North-East to North-Central Province. Such assistance is
deployed to Sinhalicise and colonize the Tamil homeland in the
North-East.
The same trend was also observed in the recent meeting by SL Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe in Jaffna in May.
* * *
The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign
Affairs is the main sponsor of the diaspora programme which is being
referred as a “policy research project”. The project has a lifespan from
01 November 2015 to 30 November 2018.
The project is backed by
several foreign ministry Establishments of the ‘strategic partners’ of
the West through the diplomatic missions in Colombo and through the
foreign ministries of the USA, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Norway,
Germany, Switzerland and Australia.
The NGOs such as the CEPA function as the facilitators of these external agenda-setters.
Initial
planning for the latest ‘Diaspora programme’ was sketched out and
fine-tuned in The Netherlands (July 2015) and in the UK (August 2015,
London School of Economics).
Dr Indrajit Coomaraswamy, who is
now Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, carried out the meeting
in the London. He remained as a director of the CEPA until he became
the Governor of the Central Bank.
The CEPA outfit lists certain
SL government institutions, local, international NGOs and bilateral
agencies such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, as its
clients.
“Build capacities of Sri Lankan government and private
sector agencies to innovate, formulate/design, and introduce policies
and systems to promote post-war development through private sector and
diaspora engagement,” is one of the nicely formulated objectives of
CEPA's Diaspora ‘Quisling’ project.
A Round Table was held at
Bern, Switzerland in May 2015 involving the Foreign Ministries of
countries with significant Eezham Tamil diaspora populations.
Apart
from The Netherlands, the Canadian Government-run IDRC has also
sponsored the CEPA at least twice. The organisation was launched in
2001.
The academics from the Netherlands, from whom the CEPA
claims to have derived guidance, include amongst others, personalities
such as Prof Dr Georg Frerks of University of Utrecht, Prof Dr Gerd
Junne, who was formally with the University of Amsterdam, Dr Shyamika
Jayasundara (ISS, The Hague), Dr Lothar Smith (Radbound University,
Nijmegen, The Netherlands) and Dr Awill Mahmoud, who is the director of
African Diaspora Development Center situated in The Hague.
Director of CEPA Dr Udan Fernando
Some
of the participants and the organisations they represented in the 3-day
meetings organised by the CEPA in Colombo, 19-21, April 2017
The Director of the CEPA is
Netherlands-based Sinhala consultant cum academic Dr Udan Fernando. He
is also running a private consultancy firm based in Colombo.
The
CEPA was attempting to carry out an almost surveillance-level
‘research’ on Tamil diaspora organisations and individuals in recent
months in Australia, in some European countries and in the North
America. A description of the ‘scoping study’ of the CEPA stated that “a
deeper understanding of intra- and inter diaspora dynamics and their
relationships with the host and home countries,” was needed to inform
future [SL] State engagement with the diaspora.
The involvement
of the CEPA has now moved to the next level of openly involving Tamil
diaspora ‘recruits’ in meetings in Colombo with the SL State. Follow-up
meetings are also being organised in Europe. A such ‘invitees-only’
meeting is to take place in June 2017 in Oslo with the indirect
facilitation of Norwegian Foreign Ministry and through formal invitation
extended by an institution belonging to the University of Oslo.
A
roundtable meeting was held for three days, from 19th April to 21st
April, in Colombo at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute of International
relations and Strategic Studies.
32 participants, most of them
Tamil diaspora personalities, took part in the Colombo meeting. Some of
them were members of Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE),
Global Tamil Forum(GTF), Norwegian Council of Eelam Tamils (NCET) and
Australian Tamil Congress (ATC). The TGTE and NCET participants were
using names of other (including defunct or non-existent) organisations
from their host countries (See the list of participants and the
organisations they were representing).
The meeting was organised by the CEPA in collaboration with SL Foreign Ministry.
V. Kuhanendran of the GTF, who is based in London, was co-chairing the sittings on on 21 April with Udan Fernando.
Balan
Ratnarajah from Canada, a former Speaker of the TGTE, was proposing
50:50 ownership share in diaspora investments up to five million rupees
and 51(local) and 49% (diaspora) share in investments ranging between 5
million and two crores.
Two TGTE members from Norway (Yogarajah
Balasingam and Sivakanesan Thiliampalam, who were earlier belonging to
different factions) and Panchakulasingam Kandiah of the Norwegian
Council of Eezham Tamils (NCET), were also attending the meeting.
They were all being referred as ‘Overseas Sri Lankans from Europe, North America and Australia’.
The CEPA further claims that it has undertaken following studies in the past 2 years:
- Literature review on Sri Lankan Diasporas and their engagement in post-war development, peace and reconciliation.
- “Reconnections”: Complexities of diaspora engagement in post-war Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka.
- Motivational Dimensions of Diaspora Investment in the Tourism Sector in the Jaffna peninsula.
- Space and the City: Post-war Tamil Diaspora Real Estate Investments in Wellewatte.
- Perceptions of diaspora in the Sinhala media.
- Unearthing and unleashing the potential of the Sri Lankan Diaspora.
- Sri Lanka's Large Private Sector with Old and new ‘Elephants in the Room’.
- Competing at the Periphery– Small and Medium Enterprises in Post-Conflict Sri Lanka.
- Beyond life and debt: An enquiry on the effects of the expansion of the finance industry in the North and East.
* * *
The CEPA discourse and
the associated political ‘counter-insurgency’ of the Colombo regime
seem to have close connections with the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) meddling in the affairs of Eezham Tamils.
This came to
light at a meeting SL Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe was attending
in Jaffna with public representatives and government officials along
with NPC Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran on 19 May 2017.
Mr
Wikramasinghe revealed some of the IMF and New Delhi outlooks for
‘development’ in the North. “Large construction projects need to come
into Northern province,” he said.
The Indian outlook of
‘development’ was orientating from the Indian Minister for Road
Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari and his suggestion was to upgrade
Jaffna - Mannaar coastal road, then extend it from Mannaar to Vavuniyaa
and from there to Trincomalee as express way. Development to the region
could come through the express ways accompanied by an Indian project at
Trincomalee was the Indian outlook, as revealed by Mr Wickramasinghe at
the meeting.
‘Development’ was needed to pay back the loans
taken by Colombo during the war and after, according to Mr
Wickramasinghe. Further, the ‘development‘ cannot wait until political
settlement is achieved, Wickramasinghe was saying.
At the same
meeting, Mr Wickramasinghe was also talking about a ‘new system’ of IMF
negotiated scheme of incentives to invite investors into Jaffna,
Northern and Easter provinces. He was connecting GSP+, other trade
related agreements and tourism as giving new growth and job-creation
opportunities to the island, including the Northern Province.
But, in order to divert investors into North, a special IMF-negotiated ‘arrangement’ has been made, he said.
“You
don't pay taxes until you make a profit. And, from the profit, you are
entitled to 100% depreciation tax-free. Hundred per cent! But, if you
locate in the North before 31st of December 2019, you are entitled to
200%! It is to get people into the Northern Province,” he went on
talking about Task Forces being created in Colombo to bring investors
into Jaffna and North.
In reality, SL Prime Minister and the
Central Government in Colombo were only paving creative ways for
bringing Sinhala or Colombo-centric southern investors into North, Tamil
civil officials who attended the meeting told TamilNet.
SL PM and NPC Chief Minister addressing public officials at the district secretariat of Jaffna on 19 May 2017
Justice C.V. Wigneswaran
was crisp in his response to SL Prime Minister’s ”large projects” and
making inroads through IMF/GSP+ facilitations for private sector
investments from South.
The responses from NPC Chief Minister
Justice C.V.Wigneswaran are more than enough to the non-articulating
sections among Eezham Tamils to direct their criticisms at the deceptive
Quisling programmes coming through the agent-State and agent-NGO
outfits such as the CEPA through the diplomatic missions of The
Netherlands, USA, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, Norway and
Australia.
The following are extracts from NPC Chief
Minister's address at the meeting, articulating the concerns of Eezham
Tamils in North:
“You must realize that we apportion
more importance to the attitude of the Centre rather than their lavish
largesse. When we found a discriminative design on the part of the
Centre in the post 1956 period we resorted to non - violent struggle
openly rather than deign deceptive co-operation in order to obtain our
lost rights. It was only when non – violence failed that violence took
charge. But it must be remembered that generally we are, as a unit of
people with special characteristics of our own, trustworthy, provided
you recognized our talents and temperaments. We are as a Nation
conscious of our antiquity and our ancient classical language. The older
generation among us still approve of the adage “high thinking and
simple living”.
“All this introduction brings me to the matters
at hand. Our Economic Development must ensure that we the people of this
Province are at the helm of our own affairs. We cannot be used as a
vassal Province for the benefit of wayward investors. We are proud of
our heritage; we like to live a life of our own rather that be dictated
to by outsiders. But we are most certainly willing to join in earnest co
–operation in the economic field, like in co – operative federalism in
the field of politics. ”
[...]
“In Private – Public
partnership, preference must be given to our local investors first, our
own diaspora investors next and if unavailable to others from outside
the Northern Province. We would like to give priority to our regional
work force, then to our Provincial work force and thereafter to others.
Whenever environmental concerns arise it is essential that our local
environmentalists official or otherwise are consulted and their opinion
obtained. After all we are a war-affected community and we need special
considerations. We have a different terrain and topography, different
climate and also different life perceptions and therefore our consonance
in important matters must be obtained.
“We do not approve of
“one stop” offices in Colombo dictating the course of internal
investments and economic regeneration in our areas. Our Northern
Provincial Council especially its elected representatives must be taken
into confidence and their views obtained when directing the course of
such investments.
“Thus all investments must get the approval of
our Planning Council and the Evaluation Committee of the Northern
Province which I intend constituting officially at the local level
shortly constituting academics, subject matter experts, professionals
and senior Officials with experience and expertise. Having served as CM
for 3 ½ years I am acutely aware of the effect and impact of the dual
administration system and their negative impact on the governance of the
Province under the Thirteenth Amendment.”
