sponsorship

Sri Lanka's leaders were falling victims to LTTE terrorism. One by one they were targets of lethal suicide bombers. The assassination of Gamini Dissanayake brought the plight of the nation starkly home to many of us who loved our motherland. Without an effective leadership our country would surely fall into the paws of the Tiger terrorists.

The disinformation campaign war was being waged in all Western countries. The LTTE propaganda machine had no effective counter to it. Having been prepared from the 1970s, Tamil Tiger propaganda churned out by the various stooges of the LTTE were effectively pushing the Sri Lanka government onto the back foot. In Australia the media was a tool of the Tiger supporters and the anti-Sri Lanka reportage was rampant. The media used footage supplied them by the Tigers to support fabricated stories of human rights abuses by the Sri Lanka army. The LTTE supporters had such a free hand that once, one of the major TV channels in Melbourne showed a massacre that had been carried out by the LTTE on a Sinhala village as an atrocity committed by the Sri Lanka army on a Tamil village. The politicians in Western countries, on the promise of a few Tamil votes, became willing tools of the LTTE supporters and attacked successive Sri Lanka governments through their speeches in Parliament.

It was in this atmosphere that SPUR began our activities. On the 6th of November, a blustery and bitterly cold evening, 70 people attended a hastily called meeting held at the Springvale Community Centre. After a long discussion, the attendees were requested to contact Asoka Subhawickrama to form a committee which would decide how this initiative would be taken further. The debate was whether to revive a now defunct association or form a new one to be a counter propaganda tool to the LTTE's propaganda machine.

Twelve people contacted Asoka following the meeting. In the next few weeks, an interim committee was formed to work out the final strategy. Following the deliberations of this committee by the end of 1994 a brand new association was formed. The organising committee was determined that the new association would not be sabotaged from within and the constitution was formulated with that in mind. The first Annual General Meeting was held on the 4th of February 1995 and SPUR - Society for Peace Unity and Human Rights for Sri Lanka Inc was born.

Soon after Patriots in New South Wales, Western Australia and Queensland also formed associations and under the same name. While these associations work together they are independent entities. Today SPUR has also travelled overseas and work with associations in New Zealand as well as England and Japan, which have common objectives to SPUR in Canada, England, the USA, the Middle East and several other countries. Spearheaded by SPUR Victoria, these associations have come together to form an umbrella organisation known as WAPS - World Association for Peace in Sri Lanka. In the last ten years, these organisations have managed to expose to the world the true nature of the LTTE and their supporters in the west, quietly catching up on the near thirty year lead the separatists have had with their propaganda machine.

One of the first activities conducted by SPUR in conjunction with several other associations in Melbourne was an anti-Terrorist rally. Duties were delegated to various task forces and this very nearly resulted in the rally ending disastrously. At the last minuted it was discovered that the posters that had been prepared did not condemn the LTTE or the terrorism they were unleashing on the hapless population of Sri Lanka. Frantically, the committee members devised suitable slogans and had them written up on the placards that were to be carried by those attending the rally. This very first rally that was held in June 1995 was a great success. Nearly 5000 people attended the rally which was conducted very peacefully with no ugly incidents to mar the occasion. Ending in the City Square in Swanston Street, the rally began its march very appropriately commenced from the Tomb of the unknown soldier.

Since then SPUR has conducted many rallies in Melbourne and in Canberra and has always been ably supported by the Sri Lankans.

One of the major criticisms we here is that SPUR does not give publicity to its activities. Although we do not blow our own trumpet for everyone's benefit, our activities are known to those who want to know what we are doing. The President of Sri Lanka has high praise for the work we have been doing and what we have achieved with the limited resources we have.

Our success is due to the fact that those who come forward do so with an idea of serving our motherland and our compatriots. We are apolitical - what we do is not for any political party or any kind of gain or fame. There is no "I" in SPUR - we do it for our Mother and our Motherland.