Father Jeyanesan’s new technique in fund raising
“Perhaps Father Sellathurai Jeyanesan evidently fancies CACM as a newly emerging nation state, a kind of Vatican within the City of Rome inside the Wanni enclave! Ridiculous as it may be, but that is what he did to breakaway to become a head of a church of his own creation when he was not appointed the bishop of the JDCSI.”
by Victor Karunairajan
(August 22, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) Around the time a posse of the Church of the American Ceylon Mission {CACM} gang led by the Swiss Funds Fraud Pastor Annappah Jeyakumar stormed the Pandatheruppu Church of the JDCSI and its parsonage, chased the resident priest and his family out and caused Rs 300,000 worth of damage and loot, his leader Father Sellathurai Jeyanesan sent a worldwide appeal for funds to help victims of the civil war in the LTTE enclave of Wanni.
There is something familiar about this, a kind of dejavu feeling! Hasn’t he done the same for about a decade using the name of the Jaffna Diocese of the Church of South India (JDCSI) travelling in the US, Europe and Israel and raising funds that are still to be accounted?
Wanni appears to be his new campaign area for raising funds with his position in the east on steady ebb with parishioners returning to their legitimate flocks. May be he finds being a kind of pressman for the Wanni rulers will bring in more shekels and could soon find himself in a situation of not having to account for them like the LTTE fund collectors in North America.
Many of them are quietly waiting for the demise of the LTTE so that they can safely keep all the collected funds for themselves. This also happened with many of the Tamil liberation groups. When the LTTE virtually decimated them, their fund collectors fled the country with all their collections.
Father Jeyanesan’s appeal letter is a wholesale attack on the government forces determined to liberate Wanni and we have no idea how much of what he has stated is true. It is an unfortunate perennial war situation there and worse, the entire country is suffering from terrorism from many forces, the government included.
It is evident from the appeal letter he has sent out that he is desperately in need of funds, even for the court cases that he himself filed against the JDCSI, gone are the million dollar counsels.
This is in a way good for lawyers who need a steady flow of clientele to earn their daily rice and curry under the circumstances prevailing in Sri Lanka and the rapid rise in cost of living.
What can the poor Father Jeyanesan do with so many priests, half-priests and pretenders to take care of, and meet the sun, moon and the stars he promised on the day he paraded freshly dressed up ministers in their dozens augmented by some he had flown from India to impress the JDCSI folks that his church is the genuine one.
His appeal is virtually a report on the civil war where the Wanni people who have been held ransom, had become the constituents of, as he put it, “the very miserable situation for the Tamil people.” There is nothing new about this misery and it has existed ever since the 1983 riots in particular.
His report will make some impression on those reading it especially those who would not know and understand the real circumstances. Even more worrying is Father Jeyanesan’s utterly corrupt stewardship of public funds. The CACM is a mere frontage to this man’s ravenous and insatiable addiction to raise funds for his own private show and needs. Wanni seems to have become his last resort presuming that it offers him a safe refuge. But there are terrible risks involved which means his circumstances are very desperate.
War, any war is evil and we all need to seek solutions in a determined and committed way. We need no quote from anybody to tell us that no problem can be solved with war. Father Jeyanesan cleverly garnished his appeal with such a quote from a speech recently made by President Pratheepa Patel of India.
But the man who seeks funds and support has still not accounted for the millions he had amassed over a decade in the name of the JDCSI. Can we trust this man who also tried to appropriate properties belonging to the JDCSI? The CACM gang is also violently active under his deputy, Pastor Jeyakumar.
His appeal claiming Wanni worse than Dafur titled “Human misery in Vanni” was sent to two people addressed as “My dearest Shanti and Upali and copied to the Secretary General of the United Nations, four prime ministers – United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the Foreign Ministers of Canada and New Zealand, one hundred and seven United Nations representatives in New York all individually and one hundred and sixteen UN agencies in Geneva and elsewhere.
He had shared these with many others in North America, Europe, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and India as well. This is indeed an interesting document which is just short of seeking a seat for the CACM in the United Nations professing in his fanciful dreams perhaps as a new nation state within the LTTE enclave of Wanni; a kind of Vatican within the City of Rome.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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