BY NEVILLE DE SILVA

What do Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and our yahapalanaya leaders have in common? A wall of silence that is what it is! When Myanmar’s military turned its guns on a community that has long been considered outcasts and denied any semblance of nationhood and went on a burning spree hand in glove with Buddhist hardliners, tens of thousands of Rohingyas fled to neighbouring Bangladesh.

It is well known now that a major humanitarian crisis had developed on our doorstep. While the world was crying out for help as it did when thousands of fleeing refugees from North Africa were dying to reach safety on European shores, Aung San Suu Kyi, that angel of peace and compassion, remained silent for days over the plight of the people to whom she had promised reconciliation.

For days nothing was heard from Myanmar’s civilian leader who the west had embraced for decades as the one who had the popular support to turn Myanmar around and establish democratic governance.

Eventually when she did speak there was no condemnation of the perpetrators of what the world was beginning to identify as brutal ethnic cleansing. Nor were there any words of compassion, sympathy and hope for the victims who were pouring into Bangladesh with nothing but the clothes they were wearing.

While this tragic drama was unfolding to the Northeast of us, a sub plot was being played out in the outskirts of Colombo. Some 30-odd Rohingya asylum seekers, mainly women and children, accommodated in a safe-house by the UNHCR since April this year suddenly came under attack by a mob led by Buddhist monks (one presumes so as they were in saffron robes) who breached the gates and threatened the inmates with violence.

They had finally to be moved to the Boossa detention centre for their safety. Was our yahapalanaya government that is quick to preach ahimsa, metta and karuna moved to utter a few words of sympathy for the victims and prevail on the forces of law and order to act promptly? The silence of the government was deafening.

One must surely be thankful for Finance and Media Minister Mangala Samaraweera who swiftly stepped into the breach. It was not Minister Samaraweera’s call - the Media Minister has no real role in this - yet he did what others should have done.

In a video statement he said “I condemn in the strongest possible terms the attack against the Rohingya refugees who were under the care of the UNHRC in Mt. Lavinia by a group of 'thugs in robes'. In fact, I condemn these actions not only as the Minister in charge of Media but also condemn as a Buddhist, a Buddhist who is very proud of the fact that Buddhism is a religion of non-violence and compassion.”

He said the group of refugees, 30 of them from Myanmar, were rescued at sea by the Sri Lankan Navy in April this year and they were under the care of the UNHRC waiting to be resettled elsewhere in the US or Canada.

“In fact this is not the first time Sri Lanka has given temporarily shelter to such refugees. Way back in March 2008, the Navy rescued survivors of a boat after they were found adrift in the high seas. They were kept here until 2012 the year they were resettled in the US,” he said.

The minister said in a separate incident in 2013, the navy rescued two boat loads of Rohingya survivors from a shipwreck in the Eastern coast of Sri Lanka.

Thirty two of these refugees were kept under the care of the UNHRC until they were settled in the US and Canada, he said.

Samaraweera, as a long time foreign minister knew the importance of reacting promptly before the indifference of the Sri Lanka Government and its seeming refusal to condemn the threats and violence against an innocent group of people awaiting settlement reached the international media already alerted to what was happening in our neighbourhood.

While Samaraweera must deserve our thanks for acting where others failed to recognise the importance of a quick condemnation before the spotlight turned on Sri Lanka’s indifference to the pitiful plight of a group of innocent people, he is still not the government.

Mangala Samaraweera is but an individual minister even though through years of experience in the international arena he