Sri Lanka: A Sinhalese Honored by a main Tamil Diaspora Group by Awarding a Prestigious Award

A Sinhalese, who is the first cousin of former President Chandrika Kumaratunga and a nephew of two former Prime Ministers, was given a prestigious award by a main Tamil diaspora group to honor his lifelong commitment to fight injustice against Tamils.

Lifetime Commitment Award was presented to Prof. Dr. Brian Senewiratne by Mr. Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran, Prime Minister of the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) in New York on May 15th.

“We hail Dr. Senewiratne as the voice of reason of the Sinhalese” said Mr. Rudrakumaran.

Despite his privileged background he chose to wage a courageous and often lonely campaign against the atrocities committed against the Tamil community. Dr. Senewiratne cared for the welfare of the Tamils as much as he cared for the wellbeing of his own Sinhala brethren.

When Dr. Senewiratne saw the rights of Tamils were impinged upon by successive Sinhalese governments of Sri Lanka and peaceful democratic protests were put down by government-sponsored pogroms and by military force, he made it his mission to defend the rights of Tamils to live with equality, dignity and security and without discrimination in the country of their birth, enjoying the same rights and privileges accorded to the Sinhalese community.

In 1972, as Professor of Medicine at the University of Peredeniya he took up the cause of Tamils, when they were hounded out of their dwellings by Sinhalese goons during the term when his aunt Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike was Prime Minister. He did what he impishly referred to as, “my nocturnal ward-round” wherein he traversed the streets of Kandy picking up dying Tamils, so that they could be given immediate medical attention in hospital and if they could not be saved to die with dignity.

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