NE Governor affirms language rights

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 February 2005, 15:56 GMT]
"I agree that every citizen of the country should be given the right to communicate with the government institutions in their mother tongue," said Mr.Tyronne Fernando, Governor of the North East Province at a discussion held with the members of the Trincomalee District Bar Association in the Trincomalee Court Complex during the weekend. He made this remark in response to the speech by Mr.K.Sivapalan, President of the TDBA that most of the problems would not have arisen if the constitutional amendments in regard to the language rights of minorities were implemented.

Mr.Sivapalan pointed out that currently people are talking about conflict resolution after creating a conflict. "We should have adopted a conflict avoidance policy instead of conflict resolution," said Mr.Sivapalan.

Mr.Sivapalan brought to the Governor's notice that the North East Court Languages Act is not implemented at all. Police are submitting their reports and related documents to courts in Sinhala language causing hardships to litigants and members of the Bar. Police stations in the province, especially in the Trincomalee district are recording complaints from Tamil speaking people in only Sinhala. Action should be taken to post more police officials proficient in Tamil language to record complaints in the mother tongue of the complaints, sources said.

Mr.Sivapalan and other officials of the TDBA received Mr.Tyronne Fernando at the court entrance. At the commencement of the event two minutes silence was observed for those died in the tsunami disaster.


(L-R) Mr.Jegasothy, (Secretary,TDBA), Mr.R.Thirukuamaranathan (Asst.Secretary,TDBA), Governor, Mr.K.Sivapalan, (President,TDBA), Mr.T.Kesavarajah , (Treasurer TDBA) and Mr.Methsiri Cooray