Former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga said her son had told her that he fell ashamed to call himself a Sinhalese and a Sri Lankan after watching the controversial Channel 4 documentary on Sri Lanka – the Killing Fields.
“I shall remember till the end of my days the morning when my 28-year-old son called me, sobbing on the phone to say how ashamed he was to call himself a Sinhalese and a Lankan, after he saw on the 50-minute documentary,” she was quoted as saying at a commutative lecture. “My daughter followed suit, saying similar things and expressing shock and horror that our countrymen could indulge in such horrific acts,” she said. Both her children are living abroad.
Kumaratunga warned of a “short-lived peace” unless the government shares power after crushing the LTTE. “If we persist in this policy of winner takes all, then we will lose the remaining members of the minority communities,” she was quoted as saying in a commemorative lecture for a late supreme court judge, K. Palakidnar.