Sri Lankan Minister of Foreign affairs is on an official visit to India soon after assuming duties in his ministerial portfolio. Indian media reported quoting Samaraweera to have said "We do not want any Sri Lankans living as refugees anywhere in the world. Please come back! We now have a truly Sri Lankan government in place, voted to power by all communities. We welcome all of you with open arms."
Minister Samaraweera chose India as his first port of call, just five days after taking office, signals the importance the new Sri Lankan administration appears to attach to improving ties with New Delhi.
The new administration has indicated a re-conciliatory approach towards the Tamil minority. One of the first decisions of the new government was to appoint a former diplomat as governor of the northern province in place of Rajapaksa’s appointee, a retired military officer. President Maithripala Sirisena has also entrusted the reconciliation portfolio with Ranil Wickremasinghe, who had preferred talks to war to settle the Tamil issue when he was prime minister. These are welcome gestures that could help rebuild trust between Tamils and the Lankan state.
Over a lakh refugees, who crossed over to India during the ethnic war, have resisted returning home even though it ended five years ago, fearing reprisal by the former administration. The issue came up for discussion during Samaraweera’s talks with Sushma Swaraj over the weekend. Convincing them to return could help Colombo send out a signal to the large Tamil diaspora in exile that it is serious about post-war reconciliation.
Progress on the Tamil issue will help forge stable and strong relations between India and Sri Lanka, given the Tamil cause’s resonance in Tamil Nadu and consequent influence on New Delhi’s Lanka policy.
According to a 2010 estimate quoted on the Global Portal for Sri Lankan expats, one million Sri Lankan Tamils live abroad. Many of them had left their homeland in the wake of the terrible anti-Tamil riots that rocked the island in 1983 and during the civil war that raged till the LTTE’s defeat in May 2009.
Quite a few of them have managed to acquire citizenship or refugee status in countries like Canada, Australia, England, the US, and continental Europe. In Tamil Nadu in India, about a hundred thousand Sri Lankan Tamil refugees live, two-thirds of them in special refugee camps. No definite estimates of those living as refugees in other parts of the world are readily available. But their number may be at least another two hundred thousand.
