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A news item ?Fingerprinting: Bishop boycotts Britain in protest?
states that ?Colombo Anglican Bishop Duleep de Chickera has refrained
from visiting Britain as a mark of protest over the British High
Commission in Sri Lanka insisting visa applicants be fingerprinted.
In a letter sent by Bishop de Chickera to the Anglican Journal, he
states. ?I find that many are unaware of a discriminatory British Visa
policy that Sri Lanka and a few selected countries continued to be
subject to?.
The colonial servile mentality towards white supremacy brought down
through 150 years of British Imperialism in the minds of our UNP
politicians under the Premiership of Ranil Wickremesinghe and the
Foreign Minister-ship of Tyronne Fernando during their rule 2001-2003 is
what brought about this insult to all Sri Lankans living in this country
and abroad.
They do not have a sense of self-respect or backbone to stand up for
their countrymen and fight for the dignity and rights of our people.
Bilateral relations between two sovereign states are and should be, on
the basis of mutual respect and not servility.
At that time, none of the UNP Parliamentarians raised any objections
to the decision made by Britain to introduce finger printing of visa
applicants who wished to visit UK.
Did the then Government have the guts to inform Britain that
according to accepted protocol procedures, Sri Lanka would as a
reciprocal gesture, make the same request from British passport holders
who wished to visit Sri Lanka?
Almost all westerner passport holders on the other hand arriving at
Katunayake International Airport, are stamped a Visit Visa valid for 30
days no matter whether they be criminals, paedophiles, drug
traffickers/carriers, terrorist agents, money launderers or whatever.
From the time they enter this country, they are treated with utmost
respect and servility.
Little wonder that westerners who enter Sri Lanka never want to leave
it. Back in their own countries they will never receive such respect or
hospitality from their own people.
In the article stated above, it states Bishop de Chickera as stating
?British authorities were completely insensitive to the association of
finger printing with criminality? quite rightly so. We do hear of
persons with criminal records being subject to this practice, not only
in Sri Lanka but in all other countries in the world.
That is a chip one carries on one?s shoulders for the rest of one?s
life. So it is with Sri Lankan applying for UK Visas of no fault of
their but for the crime of wishing to enter UK most often to visit on
holiday their friends or kith and kin.
Another aspect which Sri Lankans have been indifferent to, is the
fact that Western Embassies High Commissions operating in Sri Lanka have
adopted agents or separate offices located outside and away from the
premises of these Foreign Missions to collect Visa Applications.
Inside our own country we are treated like the plague and are
required to queue up for long hours without proper seating accommodation
or shelter in the sweltering heat or thundering rain.
If one drives past these Foreign Missions one can see the pathetic
plight of Sri Lankan Visa Applicants seating on culverts or pavement to
rest their weary legs. This is Human Rights according to western
standards - Human Rights meted out to Sri Lankan citizens whose only
crime, is to want to visit those countries.
Once the Applications have been submitted, the coldness and rudeness
they are subjected to by Embassy officials when the applicants go for
interviews, is another story altogether.
All the above insults are not seen when universities and colleges in
Australia, UK, USA, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria etc, want to
enrol our students to do higher studies in their universities and
colleges - why? Because every year, thousands of Sri Lankan students
dole out millions and billions of foreign exchange and offer the much
needed revenue to these western countries for them to continue their
studies after having studied in International Schools which are operated
under the BOI in this country.
Having followed syllabuses of foreign educational colleges, these
students naturally cannot enter our universities. They must go abroad
for further studies.
Please check out the Sunday Observer Advertising Pages where you will
find hundreds of advertisements made by western colleges every week in
their quest to lure Sri Lankan students into their colleges,
institutions and universities.
Having obtained Students Visas and entered these western countries,
Sri Lankans are again treated like pickpockets because our skin is not
white but brown.
Sri Lankans must know and understand that we can never be whiter than
the whites (no matter how much we try to ape them) and that we will be
always treated as third grade citizens in their countries.
Equality For All - Freedom and Democracy-Human Rights - all these are
western dictates used by them, for them to maintain a hold on and
continue to control the Governments and people of Asian and African
countries or, as they have classified us - Third World Countries.
Ramani D. Wickramaratne,
Kotte.
According to some news reports the European Union (EU) had said that
its ban on the LTTE will depend on how the Sri Lanka Government (SLG)
respects the human rights.
One cannot understand this argument. Suppose we take SLG as a
violator of HR, is the answer to remove the ban on a mass HR violator.
By giving an indirect support to the LTTE for the past two decades,
the so called International community including the EU encouraged the
LTTE to carry out its acts all of which can be considered as violations
of human rights, and the environment thus created pushed the SLG into a
helpless position in safeguarding human rights.
IC should not forget how an innocent Brazilian?s human rights or the
right to live was violated when he got shot in the head in the aftermath
of ONE suicide bomb blast in the UK.
DESHAPRIYA RAJAPAKSHA,
Colombo 6.
This news item (May 20) about Sri Lankan women being abused in
foreign countries, in our own SL embassies and at our own airport etc.
is unbelievable!
How long are we going to tolerate this. The Government must take a
firm stand.
OLGA MENDIS,
Australia. |
