Sri Lanka: Anglican school head a security risk: CEN 7.18.08 p 8 July 24, 2008
Posted by geoconger in Church of Ceylon, Church of England Newspaper, Politics.trackback
The British headmaster of an Anglican public school in Sri Lanka has been declared a security risk by the government and forced to leave the country.
On May 15, the Sri Lankan government cancelled the visa of Mr. Roderick Gilbert, headmaster of Trinity College, Kandy. A petition filed by the school’s Board of Governors with the Controller General of Immigration has since been rejected without explanation.
Founded by the CMS and modeled upon British public schools, Trinity College is one of Sri Lanka’s leading boy’s schools and has educated the elite of the island nation for over 135 years.
In a statement released last month, the Board of Governors expressed its “full confidence” in Mr. Gilbert and said its “inquiries have revealed no evidence whatsoever of a national security threat to the Government and people of Sri Lanka” from the headmaster.
Mired in a decade’s long civil war between the majority Sinhalese-speaking population and the minority Tamil community, Mr. Gilbert’s expulsion order comes amidst a breakdown in negotiations and heightened political turmoil over newly introduced anti-terror laws that civil liberty advocates say is being abused by the government for partisan political ends.
The “absence of any official and reliable information of the reasons” for the expulsion of Mr. Gilbert made speculation as to the government’s motives unwise, the chairman of the Board of Governors, the Rt. Rev Kumara Illangasinghe, Bishop of Kurunagala, said on June 9.
While it was “correct that a [second] member of the staff has been arrested and is in custody” under the nation’s anti-terrorism laws, “no charges have been framed against him, as yet,” the bishop said. The school governors would “continue to extend its total co-operation to the authorities to ensure that the national security of our country is maintained” but would continue to fight the headmaster’s deportation.
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