September 13, Colombo (LNW): Iranganie Manel Abeysekera, who broke new ground as Sri Lanka’s first woman to enter the country’s foreign service, has died at the age of 93.
Abeysekera passed away on Thursday, and her funeral was held yesterday at the Borella Kanatte Cemetery, bringing to a close the life of a diplomat whose career helped open the door for generations of Sri Lankan women in the country’s diplomatic service.
Born on 14 August 1933, Abeysekera was the daughter of civil servant and Senator E.W. Kannangara. She joined the then Ceylon Overseas Service in 1958, at a time when senior positions in the public service were overwhelmingly occupied by men.
Over the course of a distinguished career, she served Sri Lanka in several important diplomatic assignments, including as Ambassador to Germany and Thailand. Her reputation for calm negotiation and persuasive diplomacy was put to an extraordinary test during her posting in Bangkok.
In one of the most dramatic episodes of her diplomatic career, Sri Lankan national Sepala Ekanayake hijacked an Italian passenger aircraft carrying 169 people and threatened to destroy the plane while it was on the ground at Bangkok airport.
Abeysekera became closely involved in the negotiations that followed. After almost 40 hours of discussions with the hijacker, her diplomatic efforts helped bring the standoff to an end without injury to any of the passengers or crew.
Her responsibilities extended beyond individual diplomatic missions. In 1976, she served as Chief of Protocol during the Non-Aligned Summit in Sri Lanka, one of the country’s most significant international gatherings, which brought together 92 heads of state and government.
Abeysekera later recorded her experiences in her memoir, Master-Sir, published in 2010. The title itself reflected some of the unusual challenges she encountered as a woman navigating a diplomatic establishment in which men overwhelmingly occupied senior positions.
The book also recalled a telling moment from her posting in Bangkok. When she arrived in 1970 to take up duties as chargé d’affaires, the driver sent to meet her at the airport reportedly struggled to reconcile the diplomatic title with the fact that his new superior was a woman.
His spontaneous greeting — “Welcome, Madame-Sir” — became an amusing illustration of the unfamiliar territory women diplomats were entering at the time.
Abeysekera’s career ultimately became part of a much larger transformation within Sri Lanka’s diplomatic service. The path she helped establish has since been followed by numerous Sri Lankan women who have risen to senior diplomatic positions around the world.
Her legacy consequently extends beyond the posts she held or the crises she helped resolve. By succeeding in a profession once largely regarded as a male preserve, she demonstrated that Sri Lankan women could occupy the highest levels of international diplomacy and helped pave the way for those who followed.
The post Trailblazing Sri Lankan Diplomat Manel Abeysekera Passes Away at 93 appeared first on LNW Lanka News Web.
