GTF welcomes President’s call for engagement with Diaspora

• Asks why the President had a sudden change of mind
• Requests made earlier by Tamil people’s representatives to meet the President have been deferred with flimsy excuses

By Kelum Bandara

Global Tamil Forum (GTF), a leading Diaspora group, said President Gotabaya Rajapaksa wanting to engage with the Tamil Diaspora is certainly a progressive move. Asserting that it welcomes the move, the GTF, however, asked why the President had a sudden change of mind.

 It says , “However, when meeting requests are made by democratically elected representatives of Tamil people (TNA) in Sri Lanka to meet with the President, which has been overdue and being deferred with flimsy excuses, now from New York, he has declared that he wants to engage with us, Tamil diaspora.

We wonder why the sudden change of mind, when only six months ago, in March 2021, his government gazetted proscribing organisations like the Global Tamil Forum (GTF) and individuals like my-self as terrorists.

The first impediment that the President will have is that he will have to somehow justify his actions or the seemed U-turn to his constituency.

The GTF didn’t stop its engagement with the people of Sri Lanka just because of ill-advised action of this administration proscribing us. Even recently, we facilitated multi-million US dollars worth of medical equipment to assist in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic, not just in the north and east of the country but in the entire Sri Lanka.