Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) leader Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam delivered a blistering speech in parliament today, condemning the government’s support for the construction of an illegal Buddhist shrine in Trincomalee and accusing the National People’s Power (NPP) administration of “capitulating” to Sinhala Buddhist nationalist pressure.
Speaking during the debate on the Ministry of Justice, Ponnambalam said the government had “betrayed” the Tamil and Muslim people who voted for it on the promise of ending racism and confronting the structural discrimination entrenched across the island. He warned that the events in Trincomalee were not an isolated dispute but part of a decades-long trajectory of state-engineered demographic change and land appropriation in the Tamil homeland.
‘Deliberate state-sponsored manoeuvres’ in Trincomalee
Ponnambalam anchored the incident within Trincomalee’s demographic history, citing census figures that showed a dramatic fall in the Tamil-speaking population’s share since the nineteenth century.
“In 1827, the Tamil population was 74.52 percent, the Muslim population was 24.72 percent, and the Sinhala population was 0.53 percent,” he said. By 1946, Tamils made up 48.74 percent and Sinhalese 9.87 percent. Today, he noted, the Sinhala population stands at 26.97 percent.
“That increase,” he argued, “is because of deliberate, deliberate state-sponsored manoeuvres… to make the Tamil-speaking people a minority in their own areas of historical habitation.”
He said the recent altercation at the Sri Sambuddha Jayanthi Bodhivardhana Vihara must be understood within that wider process.
“We are not opposed to Buddhist temples being built, we are not opposed to Sinhalese Buddhists coming into the North-East and living,” he said. “But when the state systematically manipulates a situation where the people who have historically habited an area are put at a severe disadvantage… then that is a cause of conflict.”
‘Correct decisions yesterday, shameful lies today’
The TNPF leader alleged that Minister of Public Security Ananda Wijepala had taken the correct decision on Monday when police removed an illegally installed Buddha statue following a complaint by the Coast Conservation Department. That move sparked protests by Sinhala groups brought into the area, he said.
“But you backtracked,” Ponnambalam told the government benches. “Today that same minister shamefully comes to this house and lies and lies and says that that decision was taken yesterday purely to protect that statue.”
He urged the government not to give in to “goons from the outer skirts of Trincomalee” and instead defend the rule of law. “The ordinary Sinhala public did not oppose it,” he insisted. “They voted for you.”
Call for Ministry of Justice vote to be defeated
Ponnambalam said the Justice Ministry had a responsibility to reverse racist state policies of the past, not repeat them. He accused it of attempting to use the proposed public prosecutor’s office as a shield in Geneva to deflect calls for international investigations into war-time atrocities.
“If the government… tries to make out that such an office can in fact deal with the war-related heinous crimes, crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, then that is a big, big mistake because that will never be accepted.”
He confirmed the TNPF would vote against the Ministry of Justice, arguing that both the Justice and Foreign Affairs ministries had “systematically tried to ensure that the victims not get justice.”
“It is only an international investigation that will get to the bottom of it,” he said. “The state was a party to the war and you cannot have that same state investigating itself.”
Government insists all communities are ‘safe’
Responding in the chamber, a government minister said the public prosecutor’s office would prosecute “every crime in this country”, and insisted that “you are a Sri Lankan and you are safe with our government… we will not discriminate.”
Ponnambalam countered that this did not address the fundamental issue: the use of a domestic mechanism to close the door on international accountability.