British government pay 50 billion pounds to Sri Lanka as compensation for the damage done during its colonial rule

The Jathika Hela Urumaya in a letter to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband had demanded that the British government pays 50 billion pounds to Sri Lanka as compensation for the damage done during its colonial rule.

The following is the full text of the letter;

Hon David Wright Miliband MP
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
United Kingdom

Sir,

When Libya announced last year that Italy had agreed to pay ‘billions’ as compensation for its three decades colonial rule in the oil rich country, a massive move was already underway in Sri Lanka to demand compensation from Britain for the social, political, economical and ecological damage caused for more than one and half centuries here.

Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) was building up a strong consensus and it was only the other commitments, mainly ones related to liberating the country from terrorism, that delayed the process of formalizing this demand.

With the major military victories in the North we are back with our crucial subject – compensation by Colonial rulers – since this is a war created essentially by the British by providing the Tamils with undue privileges and thereby dividing the Sri Lankan nation.

Sir, since our independence from the British for the last six decades we have been struggling to come out from the deep dark pit to which your have pushed the Sri Lankan nation to with your divide and rule policy. Even after sixty years we are yet to fully integrate the Sri Lankan nation which you divided sharply causing irreparable damage to the social outfit.

The end of your rule saw a major gulf between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils and Muslims in terms of understanding and the harm inflicted by your policies has been such it only went on to exacerbate the divisions over the years. A group of militants who exploited this situation formed the most ruthless terrorist group in the world – the LTTE resulting in Sri Lanka spending hundreds of billions of money they had reserved for the welfare of the State, for a totally unwanted war.

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