RE: Canada imposes sanctions on Sri Lankan state officials for human rights violations
Posted on February 22nd, 2023
Sri Lanka Canada Association of Markham Suite 135, 4981 Hwy 7 East, Unit 4, Markham, ON L3P 0E3
The Honorable Melanie Joly
Minister of Foreign Affairs
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada
K1A 0A6
Feb 15th, 2023
RE: Canada imposes sanctions on Sri Lankan state officials for human rights violations
Ms. Melanie Joly,
As Canadians of Sri Lankan origin, we feel that Canadian foreign policy towards Sri Lanka is extremely biased, unfair, and damaging. Imposing sanctions unilaterally by Canada against two former Presidents of Sri Lanka is unwarranted and serves no purpose, other than politically motivated to please the Tamil Diaspora voter base in Toronto, and the GTA.
The reason given was that two former Presidents of Sri Lanka – Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, have allegedly committed Human Rights (HRs) violations during the Tamil terrorist war that ended in May 2009. This is against the fact that none of the reputable nor recognized global Human Rights (HRs) organizations – like United Nation (UN), United Nation Human Rights Commission (UNHRC), International Criminal Courts (ICC), have not imposed any form of sanctions against Sri Lanka. Besides, if violation of HRs is the issue here, why not Canada sanction pro-LTTE associations in Canada, UK, and US, which are equally guilty of raising millions of illegal funds to support a terrorist war that killed thousands of innocent Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims?
After all it was a brutal war started by a vicious terrorist group called Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) – that invented suicide bombing by sacrificing innocent Tamil children. There is no such thing called a clean war. The wars are always ugly and brutal as we witness daily in Ukraine, and the previous wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. However, the difference here is whenever a war is started by the West (NATO), so-called HRs champions like Canada, do not utter a word about HR violations or atrocities committed by the Western (NATO) forces. Rather they call it collateral damage.” Strangely, such standards do not apply to wars in developing countries, like Sri Lanka?
However, to single out a country that had successfully defeated a vicious terrorist group that was determined to carve out a monolithic, fascist separate state in Northern Sri Lanka, is not only unfair but shows clear hypocrisy, double standards, and biased Canadian foreign policy towards Sri Lanka. If anything, Canada should be ashamed of allowing many pro-LTTE Diaspora organizations to collect millions of dollars in Canada for decades, which helped the Tamil terrorists to prolong their atrocities against innocent Tamils, Sinhalese, and Muslims in Sri Lanka. It was thanks to former Prime Minister, Mr. Steven Harper, who stopped the illegal fund raising of pro-LTTE organizations by proscribing LTTE terrorist organization in 2006.
What we Sri Lankans do not understand is the audacity of the Canadian government to weaponize HRs and use it against Sri Lanka – a fellow commonwealth country, which has a long and proud history of democratic freedom and rights for its citizens to elect governments of their choice. Let us focus on human rights violations, since Canada considers itself a champion and a leading voice of HRs everywhere in the world. However, it is nothing short of hypocrisy and dishonesty for Canada to call itself a champion when Canada has one of the, if not the worst, record of human right violations, systemic racism, and genocide against its own indigenous men, women, and children for centuries.
( https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021/country-chapters/canada )
It is indeed laughable that Canada claims itself a HRs protector when its recent past shows just the opposite. Even today, some of the Indigenous communities are living under third-world conditions, with lack of clean drinking water, Medicare, proper housing, and other despicable conditions. Ironically, Canada is busy sanctioning and lecturing countries like Sri Lanka on alleged HRs violations while ignoring the massive scale of such violations of its own citizens of the first nation communities.
We perfectly understand the hypocrisy of the Canadian foreign policies which seem to be based on domestic ethnic politics – pioneered by the Canadian Liberal Party and its present government, especially regarding Sri Lanka. It seems the Liberal Party is under the impression that to win elections, they need to exploit various ethnic communities, especially in major cities, like Toronto and the GTA where the largest ethnic vote blocks are, such as Tamils, Sikhs, Chinese, etc.
We do understand how a well-funded, well-organized, pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora, and number of their Associations have been lobbying the Liberal Government and its parliamentarians relentlessly, to punish Sri Lanka under the false and fabricated propaganda of human right violations – with unproven and unfounded claims of Tamil Genocide.” These claims are not based on facts, but fabricated lies by various pro-LTTE Tamil groups, with zero evidence or credibility to such claims. Not a single Global HR body – such as the UN, UNHRC, ICC, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International (AI), have given any legitimacy to these bogus claims. They are purely fabricated by the pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora organizations to achieve their political and financial agenda in the Western nations like Canada, UK, US,etc.
One of the false justifications given by Canada for sanctions is that such action would help the ethnic reconciliation in Sri Lanka. This is a load of bunk, to say the least. If anything, these sanctions will polarize the ethnic communities rather than bringing them together, with peace and harmony. There is not a single country in the world where reconciliation has been achieved by pitting minority ethnic groups against the majority. South Africa did not achieve its reconciliation by punishing white leaders. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of South Africa has taken over 20 years since its inception in 1994, to bring closure and reconciliation for its citizens to heal the wounds of apartheid.
Naturally, it takes time to heal the wounds of the ethnic divide in any country. And the truth and reconciliation process must start within the country by the various groups affected – monitored by an impartial third party, rather than interference and pressure from countries like Canada, that are shamelessly exploiting ethnic conflicts to promote and profit from their domestic political agendas.
Canada certainly could have helped Sri Lanka to overcome the painful wounds of the war if it acted genuinely with total honesty and integrity rather than its own self interest. There was a time when Canada had a global reputation as an impartial country that was genuinely interested in peace, harmony, and unity around the world. Unfortunately, that reputation is severely tarnished globally now thanks to its hypocritical and biased foreign policies based on domestic ethnic politics. And its efforts to weaponize HRs and democracy to punish countries like Sri Lanka has eroded its image further.
If Canada is genuinely interested, it could have certainly helped Sri Lanka by providing humanitarian support, such as food, medicine, to help the people of Sri Lanka, who are severely affected by the worst economic disaster in its history, due to many factors beyond its control such as the COVID pandemic and the current war in Ukraine – which have devastated the economy with shortages and exorbitant prices of food and energy. Unfortunately, Canada has not been forthcoming with humanitarian aid, in comparison to other nations that are helping Sri Lanka.
Rather than helping, Canada seems to have taken the opportunity to punish Sri Lanka during its worst economic, and political crisis by slashing sanctions against its former presidents, which is clearly politically motivated to satisfy the Canadian Tamil Diaspora, and to secure their votes.
Prime Minister Trudeau and his Liberal government may win the domestic politics by exploiting and polarizing various ethnic groups in Canada and elsewhere. However, by doing so Mr. Trudeau has jeopardized the reputation of Canada, not only in Sri Lanka, but among many countries around the globe.
The former Prime Minister, Honorable Pierre Elliott Trudeau, considered the father of the multiculturalism, who made Canada a beacon of peace, hope, and fairness for millions of immigrants from around the world, would have been extremely disappointed and disapproved of his son’s shameful act of turning domestic politics into partisan ethnic politics, purely for the purpose of winning elections.
Sincerely,
Jaliya Wickremarachchi
President
Sri Lanka Canada Association of Markham
(SLCAM)