HIS EXCELLENCY JALIYA WICKRAMASURIYA'S REMARKS AT THE INDEPENDENCE DAY 2009 - 07 FEBRUARY 2009

Ayubowan, Vanakkam, Assalamu Alaikum, Good Evening.

I would like to thank the Venerable Maha Sanga.

My thanks to all Hindu, Muslims, and Christian dignitaries who are attending this evening.

We also hail the courageous leadership of His Excellency President Mahinda Rajapaksa who heads our nation at this crucial juncture in Sri Lanka’s history and guides our country in its 61st Year of Independence.

We are grateful for the support of President Barak Obama and his administration. His recent letter to us was received in the most positive light.

A very special guest is here tonight, the son of his Excellency President Rajapaksa, Mr. Namal Rajapaksa joins us and we are happy he is here. Welcome to the United States.

To my fellow Ambassadors, Former Ambassadors for Sri Lanka, the diplomatic corp, and your spouses thank you for celebrating with us.

To the State Department, Defense Department and other United States officials in attendance tonight, thank you for coming, and I hope you will enjoy this wonderful exhibition of our culture.

As we honor our day of Independence, it is fitting that we pay generous tribute to our brave soldiers for the sacrifices they have made and the courage and determination they have demonstrated.

And to my fellow Sri Lankans, it is a sincere privilege to be your diplomatic representative in this country, and I am thankful for your support.

You are all Ambassadors for our country, wherever you go you represent all of us.

There are many people in this room who have shared not only their brilliant minds, but also their resources to help further our Motherland.

You have the many thanks of a grateful nation.

Your support is crucial to our success, and today, our home needs you now more than ever. Always know your country embraces you.

And to the children here tonight, everything we do is for you.

You are the future, you are the reason everything we do is so important.

We will not fail you, and please never forget from where your elders have come.

As we celebrate a very special Independence Day, let us first consider the many thousands of our fellow Sri Lankans who continue to be at risk in the North.

The terrorists are using innocent civilians as human shields, and these Sri Lankans must be released now.

I appeal to the LTTE to release the Tamil civilians to the safe area that has been created by the government. Do not continue to block their path to freedom.

As your representative in this country, it is important , I recognize the contributions of the United States government, and the FBI specifically for their support.

This government was the first western country to ban the LTTE and the first country in the world to ban the TRO as terrorist organizations.

And let me remind the world the FBI has called the LTTE as one of the most dangerous and ruthless terrorist organizations on the planet.

And thanks to the various intelligence agencies for your efforts to eliminate terror in this world.

Tonight I appeal to the Pro-LTTE Diaspora, don’t give your money to bombs and bullets. We need to rebuild the lives of so many Sri Lankans.

Join with me and give your money for development in Kilinochi, Elephant Pass and Mulative.

Let us all share our resources to buy bricks and books, let’s give our people a safe place to live and an education that will benefit the whole world.

It is important that we commit ourselves to the pursuit of lasting peace in our motherland.

Today our struggle continues, but only for a short time, and now we must prepare to begin a peaceful transition and reclaim the hopes and dreams of real independence.

It is time now to look forward, to seek a bright new beginning.

All of us, Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims, Burghers and Malays, are united under one flag and one common ambition.

We must remember today how our elders felt so many years ago when our country become sovereign, when we became free to choose our own destiny.

Let us reclaim those promises for our children.

To all of you my friends, those who have found a wonderful life so far away from home, we will need you.

We will re-build the North and East, and we will lay the foundation of new infrastructure as the backbone of the advancement of our people. And we will need your help.

We will educate our children and they will believe that with peace, anything is possible. And we will need you to help tell your stories of success.

Later we will be sharing with you new ways you may be able to play a significant role in the future of our country, and I hope you will come to this with an open mind and an open heart.

To be free is to have a choice, and we will choose to open our arms to all Sri Lankans, in the North and the South, from the East to the West. We will absolutely need your help to do this.

Let our new generation celebrate fresh opportunities. We Sri Lankans are smart, hard working, friendly people and now everything is possible as we move forward in peace and stability.

Let our new generation not remember the hardships of we have endured. Let them remember the exciting new prospects we all can realize, as peace is clearly visible on the horizon.

Independence is a blessing, and today we celebrate and accept again the obligation we as Sri Lankans to come together and live and work to our highest capability.

In that effort, I am sharing with you tonight a plan. We will be forming a number of new associations. We need a business forum, we need to involve ourselves in a joint chamber of commerce with the United States.

We will form a friendship association, an association of scientists, and a professors group. We will also form a political action committee.

I want to work closer to you, and my staff at the embassy is open to you. We want to create a database with all of you as contacts. You may email us, go to the embassy website or call us, let us add you to the list of our contacts.

We will take these efforts out of our hearts and into our hands. Now is the time for which we have been waiting for these many years.

Now is the time to turn from a spectator into an active participant. Please help us share the message of peace around the world.

Now is the time to exercise the true freedom we enjoy and we celebrate today.

Thank you for your continues support, and may the divine blessing embrace you, your families, and our wonderful Motherland.