CABINET MINISTER P. CHANDRASEKARAN ANNOUNCES THAT RANIL’S GOVERNMENT IS READY TO GRANT CITIZENSHIP TO 160,000 INDIANS
By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles
July 11.10.00 AM:Cabinet Minister , Leader of the Upcountry People’s Front and political ally of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Periyasamy Chandrasekaran announced that the cabinet of Ranil Wickremesinghe unanimously decided to grant citizenships to 1,60, 000 Tamils of the upcountry tea plantations.
Chandrasekaran said he has had discussions with many opposition parties in the parliament and he expected the legislation granting the citizenship to the stateless people would pass without any difficulty.
A close political ally of Velupillai Prabhakaran, Chandrasekaran is often accused by opposition political parties of recruiting upcountry Tamil youth for the training in LTTE military camps in the districts of Badulla and other areas adjacent to Eastern Province. He is also accused of planning to form a separate state in collaboration of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
He said he appreciated Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s government was able to solve this problem that could not be solved by any other government.
He said he had discussed this problem with many opposition parties and expected to to get this passed in the parliament without any difficulty.
When another cabinet Minister Arumugam Thondaman met India’s Jaswant Singh over the same question to pressurize the Sri Lanka government the Sihala Urumaya issued the following statement in the year 2000: “When the Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh visited Sri Lanka in early June, CWC President and Minister Arumugam Thondaman met him and formally requested him to use his good offices to obtain Sri Lankan citizenship for approximately 200,000 Indians. We are not aware of Mr. Singh’s reaction to CWC president’s request. But it must be pointed out that the India Government has neither the legal nor the moral right to intervene in this purely domestic matter. Mr. Arumugam Thondaman needs to be told that he had no right to pressurize the Government of Sri Lanka through the agency of foreign countries in matters that are likely to adversely affect Sri Lanka’s vital national interests!
"It will be recalled that at the request of the late S. Thondaman President J.R. Jayewardene agreed to confer Sri Lanka citizenship to 98,000 Indians without having to go through the approval procedure because they did not possess even the basic documents to prove their residence in Sri Lanka. It is now well known that they were granted citizenship on the mere submission of an affidavit to the effect that they were not at that time citizens of any other country. Thus Sri Lanka became the only country in the world where one could acquire citizenship almost over the counter.
"It is estimated that the population of Sri Lanka has reached almost the twenty million mark, which is roughly equal to the population of the Australian continent, which is many times larger than Sri Lanka. This shows that we are one of the most densely populated countries in the world. It is time, therefore, that we took a sharp look at the size of our population and adopted more stringent measures to keep it at a manageable level. At the same time the authorities concerned must even at this late stage stipulate the basic minimum conditions for the acquisition of Sri Lankan citizenship. They must also ensure that those minimum conditions are strictly adhered to by prospective applicants for citizenship."
