US Ambassador meets Mannaar Bishop

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 June 2012, 10:28 GMT]
The United States Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Patricia Butenis, Wednesday, during an official visit to Mannaar, paid a courtesy call to Rt. Reverend Rayappu Joseph, Bishop of Mannaar Diocese, and talked to him for more than three hours on the current situation faced by Tamils in the NorthEast, sources close to the Bishop said.

Rt. Reverend Rayappu Joseph was summoned last month to the notorious Colombo’s Fourth Floor of the Criminal Investigation Unit by the Terrorist Investigation Department and was grilled by the TID officials over the evidence the Bishop gave to the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) in regard to civilian massacres, human rights violation and other atrocities committed in past.

National and International NGOs and Civil society organizations fearing threat to Mannaar Bishop's life appealed to the Government of Sri Lanka and Vatican to ensure security to the Bishop.

The US envoy, who arrived by a helicopter, met Bishop Rayappu Joseph in the hostile climate faced by the Bishop who was threatened recently by a Minister based in Mannaar and holding an important position in the Mahinda Rajapakse Government.

Colombo harasses Mannaar Bishop

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 May 2012, 10:20 GMT]
Rt. Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph, the Catholic Bishop of Mannaar, who boldly voiced for the number of people went unaccounted in the Vanni war, is being harassed by Sri Lanka's Criminal Investigation Department (CID) this week under instructions from the genocidal regime, informed sources in Mannaar told TamilNet. The Bishop's House has declined to comment on the situation. However, informed sources say that two Sri Lankan CIDs have been ‘visiting’ the Bishop on Tuesday after the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) of Mannaar Police had met the Bishop in person, informing him the decision from his superiors in Colombo. The Bishop didn't oppose the move, but civil society representatives said the move was a calculated psychological operation to silence independent civil voices in the North and East, now fully occupied by the SL military run by presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa.

Mannaar Bishop Rt. Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph

The Bishop of Mannaar, while testifying at Sri Lanka's LLRC proceedings, boldly brought out the fact with official statistical evidences that 146,679 people went unaccounted in the Vanni war. He was cited in various international reports and media accounts related to the genocidal war.

The Bishop was also an active member of the civil society movement of Eezham Tamils that cautioned the international community before the March sessions of the UNHRC in Geneva, about basing the LLRC recommendations for solutions.

“With deep regret we take note of the fact that the report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry on Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation (LLRC) has become the point of reference in the discussions on Sri Lanka in Geneva. We wish to emphasise that it is important to give preeminent status and importance to the UN Secretary General’s Expert Panel Report on Sri Lanka in the discussions and particularly to highlight the unbridgeable gaps between the LLRC report and the UNSG’s Expert Panel’s report,” a statement of the civil movement said on 10 February 2012.

Earlier, the civil movement has cautioned the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) against compromising with the fundamentals in finding solutions.

“[W]e cannot give up on our fundamentals for the sake of strategies. If we give up on these fundamentals the question does arise as to what and for whom we do politics,” the statement of the civil society to which the Bishop of Mannaar was the first signatory said in December 2011.

Colombo government has been threatening civil activists who were voicing for Tamil rights and has now begun targeting religious dignitaries and civil society representatives, deploying various methods to silence their activities.

The Bishop of Mannaar, under whose territory of religious jurisdiction the genocidal war took place, was uniquely different from the religious dignitaries of the other regions in standing up to the needs of his people.

While the Sinhala Catholic Archbishop for Sri Lanka, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, who is close to SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa, was calling for people to forget what had happened, his genocidal government was not accepting that it had done anything wrong.

Silencing the Bishop of Mannaar through isolated targeting is also in the interest of the abettors of the genocidal war, who now try to bury everything under the carpet and force the nation of Eezham Tamils to accept structural genocide and subjugation in the guise of ‘reconciliation’, ‘development’ etc., and by hoodwinking ‘political’ solutions, Eezham Tamil political observers in the island said.

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TNA should use its Tamil national mandate: Bishop of Mannaar

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 January 2012, 15:32 GMT]
The aim of the Tamil civil groups’ memorandum dated 13 December 2011 and addressed to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) was in fact to strengthen the Tamil national polity and its democratically mandated representatives. It was not meant to weaken the TNA. There is a mandate given by the people to the TNA about continuing talks with the SL government and that the TNA in its course of action should stick to its mandate is the thrust of the memorandum, clarified the Bishop of Mannaar, Most Reverend Rayappu Joseph, in a press release issued on last Monday on behalf of the civil society signatories of the memorandum.

Mannaar Bishop Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph

Welcoming the discourse evoked by the memorandum and thanking the comments pro and against, the Bishop expressed his deep regrets at those who politicise and personally attack the signatories of the civil society memorandum.

“On several occasions, and from time to time, most of us discussed the issues with the TNA parliamentarians and we have come out with the public memorandum after deep contemplation,” the press release said.

• Statement by Mannaar Bishop (Tamil)

In what way reminding the TNA parliamentarians about the mandate of the people could harm unity, asked the press release, adding that empty rhetoric on unity is useless, unless the envisaged unity of Tamil political parties have a bearing at strengthening the Tamil national polity, the press release reminded.

“Genuine and people’s polity could come only through a continued political discourse with the concerned people. The aim of the civil society memorandum is to create a space for it.”

The signatories of the memorandum don’t have intentions of electoral politics, as it was not a manifesto for any election. The memorandum did not favour the TNA directly participating the Provincial Council elections, but it was clear on the point of not allowing anti-Tamil national elements capturing the Council, the press release further said.

According to the press release there was communication between the TNA and the civil society representatives and there is positive expectation about a meeting between the parties soon.

The Bishop of Mannaar was the leading signatory of the civil society memorandum.

The Bishop made a historic contribution in internationally putting on record with evidence, the figure of 146, 679 people who went unaccounted in the Vanni war alone.

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