What Really is the Point Pedro Institute of Development ?

My friend Athulathmudaly, drew my attention to a curious website http://pointpedro.org . I hope every body, including the Secretary of Defense takes a look into it.

The government is doing its best to develop the North and East, expecting the people there to understand that the efforts being made by government are in fact the respect given to the wishes of the majority Sinhala and other communities in the south to get closer to the Tamil people and build a true and a sincere union of the communities, to make a united attempt to develop our motherland and bring in prosperity.

While the Government and the Sinhala people and the other communities are thus engaged in the greater task of building a Nation, some Tamil groups in the North and East apparently helped by the Norwegian, British and other Western Governments, with the support of the Tamil Expatriate Community, are busy setting up their own agenda, preparing for a different kind of a Nation building organising the Tamil community in the North and East, and distancing them further and further away from the Government and their Sinhala and Muslim compatriots.

The website http://pointpedro.org , in question is titled the Point Pedro Institute of Development (PPID). Its primary objective it says is, “ to empower the people of Eastern and Northern Provinces to emerge out of serfdom towards freedom……..The primary focus area of PPID is the Eastern and Northern Provinces of Sri Lanka. In addition, research studies focused nationally and regionally (South Asia) would also be undertaken”.

The organisers forget that the Tamils of the North and East have already been taken out of their serfdom, before the advertised advent of the PPID into the scene, from a ruthless group of terrorists, and the further involvement with this type of liberation proposed by the PPID may be going back to an unknown serfdom worse than that from which they had been saved by the Government of Sri Lanka.

The PPID describes it self as a local institution with global reach. The Founder and Principal Researcher of PPID Muttukrishna Saravanthan with a impressive curriculum vitae of foreign qualifications and employments, is said to be a member of the British Association for South Asian Studies, among many other associations. He is presented as a Sri Lanka Analyst by the BBC, which apparently sponsors him as one of its favoured consultants. He pretends to be a voice out side the terrorists and the Tamil expatriates, and not all together favourable to the government of which he says he doubts the political will to address itself to the legitimate grievances of the Tamil people.

The PPID is definitely sponsored by the West, and its founder cannot be completely cleared of Tamil Expatriate and International Community connections. What is troublesome is its object of resurrecting the knowledge and intellectual bases of the Northern and Eastern provinces, is the map of Sri Lanka it presents (which I have copied below), showing its project of resurrecting the knowledge and intellectual bases of North and East, which incidentally is almost the same Eelam Map of Prbhakaran !

“ EMPOWERING THE PEOPLE TO EMERGE OUT OF SERFDOM TOWARDS FREEDOM !


The Jaffna peninsula can be claimed as the seat of knowledge and learning of the Eastern and Northern Provinces of Sri Lanka. The Jaffna peninsula is divided into three geographical zones; namely Thenmarachchi, Vadamarachchi, and Valikamam. The main town of Vadamarachchi is Point Pedro, which is also the northern-most town of Sri Lanka. The hallmark of Vadamarachchi is its learned citizens. Historically, Vadamarachchi had produced some of the best brains of Sri Lanka. However, due to the quarter century of civil war, almost all the learned persons have deserted to other parts of the country or abroad. This is not a tragic experience of Jaffna alone, but of the entire Eastern and Northen Provinces.

It is in this background, an independent private social science research institution in the name of Point Pedro Institute of Development (PPID) was established in 2004, in order to resurrect the knowledge and intellectual bases of the Eastern and Northern Provinces. “

The government should investigate into this, as PPID’s bona fides is doubtful. This may possible be an invisible arm of the expatriate terrorist sympathisers. In view of these developments one wonders whether the relaxing of emergency regulations and withdrawal of the Army Camps from high security zones in the North and the East are wise decisions.

The Government should wary about these associations springing up in the North and the East making it a legal necessity to register all Associations in the North and the East, perhaps under the emergency regulations.