{"id":37353,"date":"2015-01-15T15:45:27","date_gmt":"2015-01-15T20:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=37353"},"modified":"2015-01-15T15:46:55","modified_gmt":"2015-01-15T20:46:55","slug":"president-sirisena-replaces-ex-army-general-chandrasiri-with-retired-iplomat-palihakkara-as-northern-province-governor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=37353","title":{"rendered":"President Sirisena Replaces Ex-Army General Chandrasiri with Retired Diplomat Palihakkara as Northern Province Governor."},"content":{"rendered":"

By<\/p>\n

Dharisha Bastians<\/strong><\/p>\n

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka \u2014<\/strong> A week after taking office, Sri Lanka\u2019s new president reached out to ethnic Tamils in the country\u2019s north on Thursday by appointing a new governor for the Northern Province, replacing a retired army commander with a retired diplomat.<\/p>\n

Tamil leaders have long complained that, five years after declaring victory over Tamil separatists, Sri Lanka\u2019s government remained reluctant to demilitarize the former conflict zone, instead maintaining large detachments of army troops and vast military compounds there. <\/p>\n

Particularly irritating to them was the man chosen as the province\u2019s governor: Maj. Gen. G. A. Chandrasiri, who had commanded army forces during the last, brutal years of the 25-year civil war that ended in 2009.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

President Maithripala Sirisena said General Chandrasiri would be replaced by H.M.G.S. Palihakkara, a longtime diplomat who once served on a Truth Commission that recommended an inquiry into reports of grave human rights abuses committed during the last phase of the war. The government website that announced the change emphasized that the new governor was a \u201cnonmilitary civil servant.\u201d<\/p>\n

General Chandrasiri\u2019s removal was \u201cone of the major requests\u201d expressed by Tamil voters in the most recent regional elections, said Abraham Sumanthiran, a legislator with the Tamil National Alliance party.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are hopeful of better times,\u201d Mr. Sumanthiran said. \u201cWe think there is hope with his appointment that things can improve.\u201d<\/p>\n

A United Nations report has said that as many as 40,000 Tamil civilians may have been killed during the final months of the war, largely because they were confined to a small territory under heavy government shelling. Rights organizations also accused the separatist rebels of recruiting child soldiers and using civilians as shields.<\/p>\n

During the presidential campaign, some Tamil voters expressed skepticism that Mr. Sirisena would offer significant changes in policy toward the north: He had served as a lieutenant and loyalist to President Mahinda Rajapaksa throughout the civil war and relied heavily on the same electoral base of Sinhalese Buddhists who mainly supported the government during the fighting.<\/p>\n

Still, Mr. Rajapaksa was deeply unpopular in the region, and turnout for his opponent was high on Jan. 8 in many parts of it.<\/p>\n

Ahilan Kadirgamar, a political scientist based in the Northern Province capital, Jaffna, said the new government would have to address a range of pressing issues in the north, including collapsing incomes, social exclusion and the return of land under military control. The opportunity for reconciliation between the Sinhalese majority and northern Tamils, he added, could easily be derailed by \u201can overbearing international community\u201d pressing for accountability.<\/p>\n

That said, he called the appointment of Mr. Palihakkara \u201cthe biggest opening we\u2019ve had since the end of the war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt certain times in our history, there comes a realization that the country has gone too far down a particular path, and there is a shift in another direction,\u201d he said. \u201cI see this as that kind of a moment. It\u2019s a major opening in that sense.<\/p>\n

Courtesy:New York Times<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dharisha Bastians COLOMBO, Sri Lanka \u2014 A week after taking office, Sri Lanka\u2019s new president reached out to ethnic Tamils in the country\u2019s north on Thursday by appointing a new governor for the Northern Province, replacing a retired army commander with a retired diplomat. Tamil leaders have long complained that, five years after declaring …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘President Sirisena Replaces Ex-Army General Chandrasiri with Retired Diplomat Palihakkara as Northern Province Governor.’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37353"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37353"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37355,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37353\/revisions\/37355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}