Muslim civil society in Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province has stressed that North and East should not be merged when devolving power to the provinces under a new constitution.
The decision to oppose the Tamil party’s move to merge the two provinces has been taken at the conference of the Muslim civil societies representing the three districts of Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Ampara in the Eastern Province held in Kalmunai Monday, the BBC Sinhala Service reported.
The decision was taken following the Northern Province Chief Minister C.V Wigneswaran’s statement on Sunday that the Muslim community should be supporting the efforts of the Tamil people and the Tamil National Alliance in uniting the North and East.
Addressing media at the Jaffna Library on Sunday following a meeting of the Tamil People’s Council Wigneswaran said the government should re-merge the Northern and Eastern provinces on the basis that they were the cultural homelands of the Tamils.
The Chief Minister has justified the merger of the two provinces saying that the Muslim community in Sri Lanka uses Tamil as their language and a large number of Muslims live in the North and East.
Stressing that Muslim people have no reason to object to the re-merger of the North and East, the Chief Minister said the government and the Muslim leaders should accept the fact that if re-merged, the North and East will be culturally secure and power could be devolved in a manner suitable to the provinces through a federal system of administration.
However, President of the Federation of Eastern Muslim Civil Organizations, Mawlawi Z.M. Nadeer says the Muslim people in the East are different from their brethren in the North by cultural and social identity. He points out that merging the North and East could result in dangerous outcomes.
He explained that in the Eastern Province 39 percent are Tamil and 37 percent are Muslims. If the two provinces merged the percentage of the Muslims will fall dangerously to 17 percent, Mawlawi Nadeer pointed out.
Mawlawi Nadeer said his organization will present the proposals containing the response to the Chief Minister’s statement to the Sri Lankan government, Muslim political leadership and the international community.
“An ethnic community living in any country in the world would not want to be in a small percentage of the province in which they live,” he said.
The Mawlawi noted that in the history the Eastern Province existed as a separate province and the situation changed only after the Indo-Lanka Accord in 1987.
“We are against the federal system due to our experiences during the time the two provinces were merged under the Indo-Lanka Accord and during the 20 years of war. Because we will be a minority when the power is devolved,” the Mawlawi said.
– courtesy: ColomboPage