Bandula Jayasekera: An appreciation

As a resident of Canada for over 50 years I have seen perhaps more than my share of Ceylon/Sri Lanka diplomatic representation in Ottawa and Toronto. It is said that career officers make better envoys than political appointees but, in my experience, this is not always the case. Vernon Mendis, part of the ‘old guard’ of the Ceylon diplomatic corps, had formidable gravitas and was a highly successful high commissioner in Ottawa. But so was Ernest Corea, eminent newspaperman, a political appointee who was named H.C. by the J. R. Jayewardene government. His networking skills and public speaking facility are legendary. More recently, Chitranganee Wagiswara, a career officer, graced the post and served with distinction.

The late Bandula Jayasekera, another newspaperman, was appointed Consul General in Toronto by the Mahinda Rajapaksa government around 2007, if memory serves. This was a time of great ructions by the Eelam-supporting Tamils in Canada, most of whom lived in the Toronto. The LTTE’s glory days were long over and the Sri Lanka Army’s brilliant tactical decisions and battlefield successes were chasing the LTTE leadership into smaller and smaller cordons. In Toronto, the focus of LTTE activism was to take the military pressure off Prabhakaran and his terrorists and the Toronto supporters stopped at nothing to achieve that goal.

They gathered in their thousands on the streets displaying Tiger flags, spewing forth propaganda at full volume, the goal being to bring political pressure on Canada’s famously corruptible politicians to call off the Sri Lanka Army. I remember returning home from work and trying to make my way through myriads of Eelamists gathered at the entrance to transport hubs. On TV and Canadian radio there was a constant barrage of anti-Sri Lanka propaganda by well trained Tamil and local ‘hired guns’ to smear the Sri Lankan govt. (an effort that continues to this day). Poor communications strategies of the Sri Lankan govt. made things worse. Eelamist argy-bargy culminated in their halting all traffic on the Gardiner Expressway, the major highway into and out of Toronto.

In the midst of all this mayhem stood Bandula Jayasekera. But he hardly stood still. Death threats he got many, right from the start of his tenure. Those seem only to encourage his fighting spirit. Bomb threats accompanied every event Bandula organised. TV interviews here, radio interviews there; he got so many of these media requests that he asked some of us in the Sri Lankan community to speak on his behalf — which we did happily. Assailed as Bandula was and fighting resolutely like Macaulay’s Horatius at the bridge his only help came from the patriotic community; the diplomatic fort in Ottawa, helmed by a man who told the Toronto Star newspaper that he got the plum so that he could be ‘close to his family’ in Canada offered not a whit of help.

We have had excellent diplomats serve Sri Lanka in Ottawa. But in the five decades I have lived in Canada, our motherland never had such a lionhearted defender at her service as Bandula Jayasekera. It was fortuitous that Bandula served when he did because the challenges Sri Lanka faced in Toronto were monumental. Sri Lanka’s reputation was being shredded by Eelam propagandists, past masters at ‘fake news’. Tamils who opposed Eelam — there were thousands — were being attacked physically, financially, and psychologically. Sinhalese children were targeted at Toronto schools. A Sinhalese-owned restaurant in Brampton was bombed. None of this fazed Bandula the Brave Fighter.

I think I speak for tens of thousands of patriotic Sri Lankans in Toronto when I say that we are so glad that this courageous young man was there to assist us at the moment we needed him. His bravery ran deep. The way he faced death amazed all of us. It was truly exemplary. My wife Fiona and I are truly privileged to have been his friends, sometimes confidantes even. How cruel it is that this accomplished warrior was cut down in the prime of his life. With his many talents — writer, television broadcaster, scholar, diplomat — what more he could have achieved had he got more time! We in Canada mourn him.

— Asoka Yapa