Asada M Erpini

The Island on 16^th May reported a statement attributed to the Canadian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka that she will not attend the Victory Day Parade, to be held on 18 May 2014.

The stance adopted by Canada and the statement by its representative to Sri Lanka are exactly what peace-loving Sri Lankans would expect from this country. When the Commonwealth Heads of  that Sri Lanka had ever ogranised.

It is pathetic that the far away Canada – nearly 13,000 kilometres distant from Sri Lanka – sees ‘human rights violations’ and ‘atrocities’ against the Tamils as the only things happening in the island nation. The fact that nearly 300,000 Tamils who had been herded from the Northwest of Sri Lanka to the East and had been kept as a human shield by the LTTE were rescued by Sri Lanka’s armed forces and received three meals a day until they could return to their villages does not ever come within the radar of Canada. Looking at more recent events, Sri Lankans are yet to hear of any strong condemnation of or action by Canada of Boko Haram that abducted nearly 200 schoolgirls in Nigeria and are being held against their will, for use as barter in the demand for the release of the members of Boko Haram who have been imprisoned by the authorities.

Closer home, Canada should turn the light inwards and look at how it has treated, and continues to treat, the Canadian First Nations who are the original inhabitants, and the rightful owners, of the massive land mass that today is called Canada. A letter delivered just last year to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous People by a team that included a former leader of the Canadian First Nations refers to the despicable manner in which Canada has treated a section of its own people: the document states that Canada used racism, bigotry and discrimination to assimilate the members of the First Nations to the Canadian polity and refers to the “psychological and historical” reality of genocide of the Aboriginal people of Canada. Instead of worrying about and preaching to Sri Lanka, Canada should first put its house in order if it desires right thinking individuals to even consider that there is some basis for the never-ending noises that Canada continues to make.

The victory of the Allied Forces against Nazi Germany that occurred in 1945 is celebrated with much pomp and pageantry by the UK and many other countries even today, nearly 70 years after the event: members of the Allied Forces who sacrificed themselves are remembered and the military in full regalia assemble at places such as the Cenotaph in London. Sri Lanka has every right to commemorate – nay, celebrate – the victory that it earned in spite of Canada and some of its misguided European pals using every possible trick in the book to scuttle the actions that were being taken by Sri Lanka’s armed forces to give back its 20 million people their human rights.

The biggest obstacle to any reconciliation in Sri Lanka is not the commemoration of the liberation of the whole of Sri Lanka from the grips of a ruthless terrorist group in May 2009. It is the stance, pronouncements, support and actions by countries such as Canada, which are blind to the ground realities that stand in the way of any meaningful measures being implemented in Sri Lanka towards this goal.