Sections of the civil society have welcomed some of the steps taken by the current government, headed by President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, towards reconciliation – by way of drafting a new Constitution and setting up systems to probe cases of disappearances.
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Meanwhile Ban Ki-moon urged Sri Lankan youth to appreciate diversity in unity.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who is visiting Sri Lanka congratulated the government for the progress that was made after the war.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (2nd L, front) delivers a speech at a gathering in Colombo, capital of Sri Lanka, Sep.
Ban is in Colombo to assess Sri Lanka’s efforts to address post war reconciliation.
All the same, the island’s northern Tamils await a political solution-something Mr. Ban and former President Mahinda Rajapaksa in 2009 acknowledged as being fundamental to ensuring long-term socioeconomic development.
While noting that the progress in reconciliation has been “slow”, Ban said it has been “steady”, and offered all assistance from the United Nations to carry forward the reconciliation process and post-war re-construction.
Ban is due to wrap up his two-day visit later Friday after a visit to the Tamil heartland of Jaffna, where he will tour the village of Veeman Kamam, where war-displaced civilians were given their land back by the military earlier this year.
A group of Buddhist monks carried pictures of their members and civilians they said were killed by the rebels during the war carrying banners saying: “U.N., where were you?”.
“We did that because we feared that any protest could lead to unrest”, he said, requesting anonymity.
Ban, who is on the final leg of his visit to Sri Lanka, also urged Sri Lanka to speed up the return of land so that the remaining communities of displaced people can return home. “He expressed hope for increased momentum in these important areas”, the United Nations said in a statement after the meeting. “In fact Ban expressed satisfaction about the way the Sri Lankan government is handling the issue of reconciliation”, a reliable source in the President’s Office told Express.
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When asked about different positions of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the Chief Minister C V Wigneswaran, the President said that the government wanted to bring all these elements with different postures in the North and South to an acceptable middle point and when the current policies continued with success it would happen automatically.
