Re: Canada asks Sri Lanka to start talks with Tamil Groups

By Asoka Weerasinghe, Canada

Hon. Deepak Obhrai, MP, Parliamentary Secretary for the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Government of Canada, House of Commons, Ottawa,

Dear Deepak:

Wo…wo….wo… Deepak, just hold your horse.   You seem to be galloping willy-nilly not knowing where the heck you are heading to when you get Canada involved in Sri Lankan politics.  You recognized the difficulty that Sri Lanka is facing when you requested Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner Chitranganee Wagiswara – “Canada has asked Sri Lanka start talks and the reconciliation process with the Tamil groups, saying such a step is crucial for lasting peace in the country.”

I note that you used the plural “Tamil groups”.  Did you let the High Commissioner know which group(s) that Canada wishes Sri Lanka should engage in talks with?  Tamil groups, all wanting their piece of Sri Lanka’s territory have mushroomed all over the world after the demise of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (aka Tamil Tigers) last May. So what Canada is really asking Sri Lanka is to fall sick for the next 30 years trying to tackle this “dog’s breakfast” made out of the ingredients, claymore mines, bullets, AK47s, human suicide bomber body packs, RDX , TNT and sulphuric acid.

What astounded me was to know that Canada which now has a strained relationship with Sri Lanka for letting the Tamils collect funds, two million dollars a month for 13 years mind you, to buy sophisticated war weapons to  kill her people for the Tamil Tigers to have their separate, mono-ethnic, Tamil state Eelam in the North and East of the island,  and Canada  which wasn’t happy when Sri Lanka exercised her right to defend her sovereignty and territory from the Canada-fed  Tamil Tiger terrorists to give back the right-to-life to her citizens who had been threatened by this killing machine,  is now showing our concerns for Sri Lanka’s people.  What baloney, Deepak.   It is a bit hoaxy, isn’t it?   I am a card carrying Conservative and I cringe at the thought at our Conservative government’s lack of honesty when it comes to dealing with Sri Lanka.

I protested refusing to give a single cent for the rest of 2009 to the Conservative Party election fund when Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon sent a pathetic press release in May last year not even congratulating Sri Lanka for getting rid of the Tamil Tigers the most ruthless terrorists in the world after a 27 year war, when every other Western country did so.  By then I didn’t care two hoots whether our Conservatives would get re-elected to form the next government or not.  I was that livid.

Here is a revelation for you Deepak.  The Tamils who stayed back without getting on a plane  after the July 83 riots and land on their knees on Canadian soil with their palms together saying “we are refugees please take us in with our warts and all”, have little interest to have talks with the Government as they are happy living in Sri Lanka and the treatment that they are receiving  as equals with all other communities.  They wish that they would never hear from this Tamil Diaspora ever again and want them to be left alone.  This is what a 31 year old Airporter limousine driver, schooled at D.S.Senanayaka College in Colombo, who drove me to the Katunayake airport said, “The Tamils living in Canada, they are bad people Sir, they are creating a lot of problems for us.  I have no problem, nor does my family living in Grandpass have any problem living in Sri Lanka.  We got very good and loving Sinhalese friends.”  That is the other side of the story.

Deepak, remember the Gong Show- the Emergency Debate on Sri Lanka that took place in the House Chambers on February 4 evening last year?  Remember how the Liberal’s Dirty 5 -  Jim Karygiannis leading the charge together with Judy Sgro, Derek Lee,  Robert Oliphant and Albina Guaneiri   accused Sri Lanka of “genocide”? 

What you and I found out later was that the Sri Lanka government was not killing the Tamils but preparing one million meals to feed the 300,000 Tamils thrice every day who they saved from the clutches of the Tamil Tigers inhuman shields.  That was a miracle in action, but they did it anyhow without much help from Canada. That colossal feeding exercise was much more than we Canadians do for thousands of poor kids in Canada who go to school each morning with an empty stomach because their parents are too poor to feed them a breakfast.   Some of those kids happen to be from the heart of decadent Ottawa, the capital of Canada.  That is a reality check for you Deepak.  These five foolish Liberals should really tip their hats at Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa for being a principled humanitarian and ask him to take a bow.  That would be expressing the “O! Canada’s” honesty.

Remember how on February 4, 2009, Albina Guaneiri the Liberal member for Mississauga East-Cooksville accused the Sri Lankan soldiers for raping Tamil women in the Welfare camps?  And I told her to ask her male Liberal colleagues whether they would want to rape a Tamil woman, however beautiful and luscious she is with kissable lips, luscious breasts and ample hips when the camps seem to be crowded like Iroquois Longhouses with the walls of each abutting to the next, where a scream from the raped women would penetrate through the walls like fog horns giving notice of their approach through a thick fog in the Newfoundland gut. That’s how ridiculous you MPs were that night tripping all over trying to get at the Sri Lankan government to appease the hundreds of Tamils in the gallery who were watching you all perform baiting with their blood soaked votes.  Deepak, I watched that act of the Tamil Tiger Blarney and I was embarrassed to call myself a Canadian.  It was a High School end of term comic play for laughs.  That was an embarrassing act in the Chambers of our House of Commons.  It was pathetic.

And remember how that Liberal twit, Jim Karygiannis, the member for Scarborough-Agincourt, stood up and said with an animated blatant disregard to that puny island, nevertheless a democracy, “When is the government going to rise and say that if Sri Lanka does not change its ways, it is going to be kicked out of the Commonwealth?  Ha! That twit is an embarrassment to all of Canada.  Won’t you say so?

And here is my final observation on your dialogue with High Commissioner Chitranganee Wasgiswara.

You showed Canada’s uppity arrogance and an attitude of being patronizing when you said, “Canada urges the government of Sri Lanka for an early safe return and resettlement of the approximately 100,000 individuals who remain displaced.”

Do you really believe that Sri Lanka is dragging its feet in resettling the rescued Tamils after having resettled 200,000 in nine months?  This is an amazing achievement, when even Britain took eleven years to resettle their war victims after World War II and we Canadians take years to uproot and resettle our Inuit communities in the North like in the Davies Inlet.  Come off it, Deepak?  I know you want to pander to the 300,000 Tamil community, but don’t be that silly.

Sri Lanka is still doing its hurried best with a little help from her friends ( I don’t  consider Canada as a friend of Sri Lanka anymore) to reclaim the land which has been pocked with millions of mines planted by the defunct Tamil Tigers, the  friends of Canada and the Tamil Diaspora in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver.

The fact that you cannot ignore is that Sri Lanka is doing its best to clear the rest of the landmines, when villages in Croatia, like Dragalic, Bebinge, Crista  Mala, Crista Velika, Ilok and Karlovac are still demining even after the Balkan war ended in 1995.  And that is a reality check for you Deepak, and let’s not show our hoaxy arrogant pretence that we really do care about Sri Lanka, when Canada ganged with the other 11 “White” countries to bring Sri Lanka in front of an International War Crimes Court during a vote last year at the UN Human Rights Council. “What a bunch of Western bastards”, I cursed under my breath, and that included Canada.

We all know that Canada is no friend of Sri Lanka anymore.  Your Canadian arrogance showed it with your dialogue with High Commissioner Wagiswara; the Lawrence Cannon Press release said it so; and Canada’s UNHRC vote to haul Sri Lanka in front of a War Crimes Court said it explicitly.

So Deepak, get off your high horse, and put it back in the stable.  Sri Lanka will talk with the Tamil Group(s) when they are ready and they will do it their way, not because they feel pressured by Canada. But let me be quite clear. On the day it happens that carving out Sri Lanka’s territory for a bunch of Tamils for their mythical Eelam will not be on the table.

“Obhrai  told high Commissioner that Sri Lanka remains a priority for Canada.”  How come, so suddenly Deepak? Are we Conservatives too trying to claw at the 100,000 Tamil votes in the GTA region and ask these Tamils to send their blood soak dollars to the Conservative election fund coffers?  It would be a damn shame if your intentions were so.

Sincerely,

Asoka Weerasinghe, Member of the Conservative Party of Canada  & Sustaining Donor