A local newspaper reported last Sunday that Lands Minister Rajitha Senaratne on a recent visit to London was shocked to find that Sri Lankans living here knew "little about the present situation", meaning the on-going efforts to end the civil strife in the country.

One can understand Minister Senaratne's anxiety at the self-confessed ignorance or lack of knowledge of the Sri Lankans domiciled here of the current peace efforts which, after all, is another major move to end a debilitating war that has cost the country dearly.

But to draw conclusions from the ignorance of the persons of Sri Lankan origin he met here and to try and formulate an information policy on the basis of that, is to do a grave injustice to the rest of the Sri Lankan community in the UK and to the efforts of those who are genuinely trying to maintain a steady flow of news about current developments.

When some from our countrymen complain that they do not know what is going on, the first question one must ask is whether they have made any serious effort to seek information. The answers to those questions will reveal whether we are seeing the remnants of that dependency factor or whether there is indeed a serious flaw in the flow of information.

To begin with, there are at least 250,000 people of Sri Lankan origin living in the UK- some of them long standing residents especially of the post- July 1983 era that saw refugees arriving in England en masse. So how many Sri Lankans did Minister Senaratne meet during his brief visit to London- 100, 200, 500?

Even if he did meet as many as 500, I doubt they represent the vast majority of Sri Lankans who are up with the hard news, though they may not be entirely acquainted with the intricacies and conspiracies of Sri Lankan politics which is Byzantine at the best of times.

But to say that most Sri Lankans are unaware of what is going on in their former country is to denigrate them, though it is not Minister Senaratne's fault. His mistake is in equating the ignorance of the people who were around him with that of a general malaise facing the Sri Lankan community.

To cite a personal example. Every evening on my return from work, I stop at a Tamil-owned shop that is patronised by all communities from Sri Lanka. Those who have been following the news on radio or TV from Sri Lankan run electronic media, give me a synopsis of the day's relevant political news and other developments. I pass on the news from the websites that I have looked at during the day and so there is a constant exchange of news and views. What must be noted is the enthusiasm and concern with which these persons follow the news and disseminate it to other interested people.

I wonder whether Minister Senaratne asked those who complained to him whether the problem arose from a lack of news sources or whether they were expecting to be spoon-fed with the news. It would be unfortunate if Dr. Senaratne suggested to the cabinet that Sri Lankans in the UK should be given two tablespoons of news three times a day to keep them alive to the developments at home because that would be a wrong diagnosis.

What are lacking are not news sources that carry Sri Lankan developments but a lack of effort by sections of the Sri Lankan community to keep themselves informed. They hope that information will be delivered to their doorstep at no cost to them. There are several websites originating in Sri Lanka and elsewhere devoted largely, if not exclusively, to news from the country. There are radio stations and TV networks run mainly by Tamil expatriates that bring news from Sri Lanka and abroad. There are Sri Lankan newspapers- weekly and monthly- in English, Sinhala and Tamil published in London- most of which are distributed free through mainly Sri Lankan outlets.
Moreover Sri Lankan newspapers published in Colombo-particularly the Sunday editions- are sold in several places in London and other cities. They are air freighted weekly.

So there is no dearth of news.The problem does not lie in the lack of interest by sections of the Sri Lankan community. But they are extremely free with their complaints. Which raises another relevant question. Why complain to a minister? There is nothing any minister can do with regard to private sources of information. Whether a website, a news agency or a newspaper reports on Sri Lanka or not is not a matter that can be rectified by complaining to a government official.

So what is the government agency which seems to be the target of these complaints? Obviously the Sri Lanka High Commission. But can any diplomatic mission fill the kind of information gap that sadly appears to exist in a segment of this society?
It is easy to blame Sri Lanka's diplomatic missions for everything, as some of our expatriate communities often do without any understanding of the parameters within which diplomatic missions work.

There was a news item recently that Foreign Minister Tyronne Fernando expects to streamline the ministry's publicity division to keep the foreign countries informed of the latest situation in Sri Lanka.

I don't know whether the foreign minister's intentions have been correctly reported. The question here is not one of keeping foreign countries informed but of keeping the Sri Lankan communities in foreign countries informed, which are two different things.
The ministry certainly can fulfil the former intention, but it will be much harder to achieve the latter, issues which I hope to discuss later.

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