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Canadian Tamil Congress-A Letter to Dr. Maurice Vellacott, MP Conservative MP for Saskatoon-WanuskewinBy Asoka Weerasinghe (Conservative Party Member –C11255047)Conservative 2007 Sustaining Donor-0885011255047)Gloucester, Ontario CanadaMarch 1, 2007 Dr. Maurice Vellacott, MP Dear Maurice Vellacott: I understand from a news report that you were present at a press conference on Parliament Hill called by the Canadian Tamil Congress (CTC) seeking clarification from your government and mine on the Sri Lankan policy. What they were really seeking was whether Canada believes that Tamils deserve independence from Sri Lanka. That shouldn’t be a difficult question to answer knowing the clarity of the Canadian governments past and present, towards the separation of Quebec from the rest of Canada, and witnessing the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords fiascos. I am writing you with a clear understanding that you are a Man of God having been a pastor at Bethany College in Hepburn and having studied at the Canadian Theological Seminary, and thus would be easy to pull at your compassionate heart strings. And I am sure, this is exactly what the spokespersons of the Canadian Tamil Congress wanted to achieve presenting their case – the ‘Tamil truth’ so to speak. The very statement that you heard, “By every objective measure, Sri Lanka is a failed state. With state-sponsored pogroms, with military bombings of civilian areas, with the burning of homes and schools, Sri Lanka has failed to meet the basic criterion under which nation-states can justifiably continue to exist intact: that bottom line is protecting your own citizens from harm,” needs a response. All that spiel sounds like as if it had been spoken by a ‘paragon of virtue’. If my dear Mother had heard it, she would have told this Tamil, “You are a bloody liar. Your Mother should wash your mouth with carbolic-soap!” Being a Man of God, it makes sense for me to assume that you believe in the Cosmic Law of “cause and effect”. This is where I like to believe that I could help you with ‘Facts” now that you have been bombarded with the ‘Tamil Truth’, so that you could make educated conclusions on issues presented at the press conference. I will only deal with the contents of the news item (OTTAWA MEDIA ADVISORY –CCNMatthews–Feb.26, 2007), which you would be familiar with having attended the press conference. 1. _Tamil Truth_: “On the fifth anniversary of the Sri Lankan ceasefire, representatives from the Canadian Tamil Congress note in a news conference on Parliament Hill that Sri Lanka has seen a disheartening backward slide into deepening chaos, violence, and aggression that has seen more than 3,000 Tamils killed and 250,000 displaced last year alone.” *_Fact_*: The Cease-Fire Agreement (CFA) brokered by Norway was signed on February 22, 2002.By July 14, 2006, according to the Scandinavian-staffed Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), the Tamil Tigers had violated the agreement 7,308 times compared to the Government forces of just under100 times. By January 2007, the Tamil Tigers had violated the ceasefire agreement over 10,000 times. The violations were depicted by their – encroaching government controlled territory, building bunkers for their army in the encroached territory, exploding claymore mines and mortars to kill government soldiers and innocent civilians including infants and pregnant mothers in the thousands, assassinating Tamil moderate politicians and intellectuals who did not toe the line of the Tamil Tigers, conscripting children for their army to be trained as front line soldiers and suicide bombers, cutting off water supply at Mavil Aru anicut, a basic human right, to 60,000 Sinhalese civilians mainly farmers, smuggling in 11 ship loads of weapons during the ceasefire period /( *Newsflash:* Feb.28 –Sri Lanka’s navy fired at a 70-75 metre long vessel suspected to be transporting arms for Tamil Tigers/ /off the southern coast of Sri Lanka/. /After a series of explosions the ship is on fire.)/, and bringing two Czech-built Zline Z-143 aircraft for possible kamikaze attacks, constructing an air-strip in Iranamadu, et cetera. And the items in this menu go on, and on, and on. According to the SLMM nearly 4,000 people have lost their lives, and they were not all Tamils, during the past 15 months. *And the latest violation happened on February 27, when the Tamil Tigers attacked a helicopter carrying 10 foreign diplomats with mortars who were visiting the east trying to help Sri Lanka to find ways to find solutions for the present Tamil separatist problem and to assess the resettlement programmes currently in progress. This happened when the helicopter was landing at an airfield in Batticaloa. The three diplomats who were injured were US Ambassador Robert O’Blake, Italian Ambassador Pio Mariano and the German Ambassador Jurgen Weerth. * To say that “…and aggression that has seen more than 3,000 Tamils killed and 250,000 displaced last year,” has a sense of surrealism of a war where only one side of the conflict gets hurt and not the other. That itself is a disingenuous account by the CTC, and the International Red Cross will tell you otherwise, that thousands of Sinhalese and Muslims as well as Tamils were killed as well as being displaced in the north and east provinces. By February 25, 2007 the statistic of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) recorded an exodus of 20,812 families (76,224 persons) from the Batticaloa and Trincomalee districts in the eastern province These were from all three ethnic groups, the Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims. Now that the Tamil Tigers have been kicked out from this territory and freeing these people from their claws, it certainly has been a daunting exercise to resettle these people and providing them security from the marauding Tamil Tiger killers. I believe that Canada is one country that is helping Sri Lanka to achieve just that. Ethnic cleansing has taken the centre stage in this battle of the Tamil Tigers wanting their mono-ethnic, separate, racist Tamil State, Eelam, comprising the north and east provinces. Between 1971 and 1981, they terrorized, killed and chased 27,000 Sinhalese who lived for generations in the Jaffna peninsula. In August 1977, they stoned and chased 400 Sinhalese undergraduates and lecturers from the Jaffna University campus in the north, while not a single Tamil undergraduate was harassed nor chased from University campuses in the south. In 1990 the Tamil Tigers gave 24 hours for 100,000 Muslims to get out from the north leaving behind their valuables and gold at the nearest mosque, which made Uganda’s Idi Amin look like an angel. With these shenanigans, they have the gall and the temerity to claim their generic-purity in the north and the east of Sri Lanka, claiming this purified territory belongs to the Tamils and no other ethnic group. The Canadian Tamil Congress has been disingenuous in stating their case. Who are they trying to kid? They are no ‘ innocent Babes in the Wood,’ and they are far from it. 2. _Tamil Truth_: “Being the home of the largest Tamil Diaspora in the world-numbering 300,000 people – Canada is in a unique position and carries special clout to help stop this dispiriting trend.” *_Fact_:* The Canadian Tamil Congress should be cautious when they try to bloat their figures of Tamils in Canada. According to the 2001 Census, it identified only 92,100 people who spoke Tamil as their mother tongue. This number not only included Tamils from Sri Lanka but also those from Tamil Nadu (India), and Malaysia. But the Tamils in Canada continue to announce that their population in the Grater Toronto Area to be around 300,000. Even if we are generous by saying that 150 Tamils from Sri Lanka entered Canada each month since January 2002 as immigrants, refugees and by human trafficking, that would add up to another 9,000 by December 2006. We now have a grand total of 101,100 Tamils. Even if we are generous one more time and add another 15,000 Tamils to this 9,000 arriving since 2002, the grand total happens to be 116,100. This is a far cry from their number of 300,000. I say their numbers are fraudulent in an effort to give their presence in Canada an unnecessary importance. Just give these numbers some thought as I have some difficulty with fraudulent numbers to swing the case in the favour Tamil separatists. 3. _Tamil Truth_:“Most Tamils in this country believe the ultimate solution to the plight of their relatives lies in Tamil independence,” said Julian Francis, Ottawa Coordinator for the CTC. *_Fact_:* I doubt that the majority of Tamils living in the south, a million of them, who are enjoying the best of their lives, will agree on what Francis had to say. They certainly will challenge Francis by asking him – “What the heck are you belly-aching about? We in the south are quite alright living in peace with the Sinhalese majority.” When these southern-Tamils are involved in lucrative businesses, being doctors, dentists, lawyers, diplomats, teachers, land-lords, no wonder they are not complaining. When 75 per cent of Wellawatte, the Rothwell Heights of the capital Colombo is owned by Tamils, they have little to complain. They have inter-married with the Sinhalese and are living ‘happily ever after,’ with their children attending International Schools and educated in Universities in the south. The latter luxury is denied to Sinhalese undergraduates in the two Universities in the north and east by the separatist Tamils. That is a reality check for you. A far cry from what CTC had dished out to you all at the press conference. 4. Tamil Truth: “By every objective measure, Sri Lanka is a failed state. With state-sponsored pogroms, with military bombings of civilian areas, with the burning of homes and schools….” *Fact:* The majority of Sinhalese, including myself, have
admitted that the July 1983 riots left a black mark on Sri Lanka as
well as etched scars in their conscience. Even though my family in
Colombo took into our home three Tamil families from harms way, I
am still pained by the But what is important to note is that since that incident the Tamil Tigers have provoked the majority Sinhalese many a time, like bombing the Buddhist Temple of the Buddha’s Tooth in Kandy, the Sinhalese refused to bite that bait. They have refused to go back on that road of ‘riots’. In the summer of 1985 I had lunch at an Italian restaurant in Vancouver’s Gastown with the Director of UBC’s Anthrolopogy Museum. He knew Sri Lanka and its peoples very well, having studied Buddhist culture in the south of Sri Lanka for his graduate degree. While discussing the July 1983 violence, I asked him, “I have had a lot of difficulty with these riots and I am not sure how and why most of our Sinhalese Buddhists did to the Tamils during those couple of days.” The answer was an honest one which came straight from his heart, which I was able to accept. “I have no problem with that Asoka. The Sinhalese are generally good, kind and generous people. But what you don’t do is to push your envelope and challenge their mild-manner. The Tamil Tigers were at it for a decade, killing their people, chasing them away, burning their houses in the north, and the ambush killing of 13 of their soldiers in Palaly was the last straw, and they snapped when the 13 bodies of the soldiers were flown into Colombo for burial. It is that simple and you will have to allow that reality sink into you and accept it, however difficult it is. Your people are good people, kind and generous. So don’t loose sleep on it.” That was a Canadian speaking, who later was honoured with the Order of Canada. These riots were an anomaly in an otherwise peace loving society, and to call it a “pogrom” was intended to seek sympathy from international Sri Lanka watchers like you. “Pogrom”, said the CTC spokesperson to you and the rest of those who attended the press conference. See who was talking! If one has to go buy the Oxford Dictionary definition of ‘pogrom’ – “Organized massacre”, the Tamil Tigers have been maestros of ‘pogroms’ for 23 long years. Suicide bombing have been ‘organized massacres’, and they have had 271 so far to lead the international field of terrorist suicide bombings. And then the other cowardly ‘organized massacres’; creeping in the morning dark and shooting with Kalashnikovs and chopping the poor innocent Sinhalese fisher-folk and farmer families with machetes when they were fast asleep, and burning their houses by dowsing them with kerosene and popping hand grenades onto them and watching them go up in flames. They also shot and killed hundreds of Muslims at prayer in mosques at sun-down. The CTC’s call for sympathy should be dismissed without any
recognition as their Tamil Tigers are not a group who has in the past,
nor at present, and will in the future live within the sacred norms
of a civilized society, but will continue with their tribal instincts
of hunting the weak with Kalashnikovs and killing them in cold blood,
and sometimes plucking infants from their mothers arms and bashing
their heads on rocks and watch with glee their skulls part oozing
with blood. 5. _Tamil Truth_: “The group also called on Ottawa to take more immediate steps that would place pressure on Sri Lanka to ease the suffering of Tamils in that country. They asked the federal government to demand that Sri Lanka put an end to the road blockades that have exacerbated an ongoing humanitarian crisis.” *_Fact_*: The mortar attack on a helicopter on February 27 carrying 10 foreign diplomats who were on a fact finding mission to help the ‘suffering Tamils’, Sinhalese and Muslims in the east, doesn’t make the CTC’s complain kosher. What is required here is for Ottawa to add pressure on the Tamil Tigers to lay down their arms and get back to the peace palavers with the Sri Lankan Government to find solutions democratically to whatever complaints they have. The “…end to the road blockades that have exacerbated an ongoing humanitarian crisis”, is a strange request from these friends of the Tamil Tigers.I believe what the CTC is expressing is to have the main supply route Alpha 9 (A9) opened. Here is their concern. A9 is the main supply route from the south to the Tamil dominated Jaffna peninsula in the north. This road passes through a vast area called the Wanni controlled by the Tamil Tiger terrorists. It touches their headquarters at Killinochchi. This road has two highly guarded entry/exit points at Omanthai, just north of Vavuniya at the southern end, and at Muhamalai, just south of Chavakachcheri at the northern end. The Tamil Tigers took over the Wanni area after the Indian Peace Keeping Forces left in 1990, and used it as the refuge when Jaffna fell to the Sri Lankan army in December 1995. During the ensuing battle for the Wanni, A9 was closed between 1994 and 2002. However, with signing of the ceasefire accord the road was opened in February 2002. That was the beginning of the Tamil Tigers A9 Highway robberies that amounted to mining pots of gold when they started levying taxes and road tolls, and custom duties from users of the A9 highway. It has been estimated that their collections ranged between Sri Lankan Rupees 200 million and 300 million (US$2.8 million) per month. With this closure, the Tamil Tiger war chest saw the funds evaporating
by the day, and they were choking and theirs shoes were pinching.
This is exactly why the CTC spokesperson was croaking for help from
the Canadian government and pulling at your compassionate heart strings.
The reason why the Sri Lankan government closed A9 was because the Tamil Tigers were not only using it to collect millions of dollars to buy weapons, but also to move their military cadres and heavy weapons to strategic positions to breakthrough government forces defense lines to claim more territory. As for the humanitarian concerns the Sri Lankan Government with the help of International Red Cross and other INGOs moved essential supplies by sea and air to the northern peninsula people, and bringing ship loads of essential supplies from Tamil Nadu. That sure aches these Canadian Tamil Tiger friends. Will their buckets of cods-wallop and baloney work this time around among Canadians? I don’t know. And it is left to Sri Lanka watchers like you to make that judgment. On your way to making this judgment the question that you have to ask is, “Am I, as a Canadian, be prepared to let a separatist FLQ, levy taxes, road tolls and custom duties on every vehicle which enters their separate, mono-ethnic, racist French sovereign Quebec around Hawksbury, the Trans-Canada Highway’s western entry point in Ontario, or when a vehicle enters Quebec on Trans-Canada Highway around Edmundston, its eastern boundary with New Brunswick. And then watch the monies collected swell the separatist armory coffers to defend their sovereignty? That is the analogy that you have to grapple with. *And in conclusion there are two questions that the Canadian Tamil Congress have thrown at the Canadian Government. * *1. Will the Canadian Government support the Tamil independence and the creation of its mono-ethnic, racist Tamil state, Eelam, carved out of 33 per cent of Sri Lankan territory bordered by 60 per cent of the coastline for 3.9 per cent (World Watch 2006) of the 21 million populations in Sri Lanka?* *That is a no brainer. We cannot be hypocrites. What we refuse to give the separatist Quebec sovereignists, we cannot give to the separatist Tamil Eelamists* * * *2. Will the Canadian Government support Tamil terrorism as a means to claim their Eelam?* *That is a no brainer too. If ‘Terrorism’ describes a /modus operandi/, a tactic, Canada should side with the Sri Lankan government and its security professionals who define terrorism as the deliberate targeting of civilians in pursuit of a political goal, and support their efforts to wipe it out in that little island nation in the Indian Ocean.* * * *When we have our troops in Sri Lanka’s neighbour, Afghanistan to help wipe out Taliban terrorists, we ought to let Sri Lankan armed forces get on with the similar exercise against the most ruthless terrorist group in the world, the Tamil Tigers, who perfected the art of suicide bombings with body packs.* * * *When you voted on February 27, with the rest of the Conservatives to extend the two controversial measures in the Anti-Terrorism Act – preventive arrests and investigative hearings – to safeguard the national security of the Canadians, you and your government have little choice but to support the Sri Lankan government’s efforts to safeguard the national security of Sri Lankans against Tamil Tiger terrorism.* * * *“Any party that doesn’t take the national security of Canadians seriously will never be chosen by Canadians to form the government of Canada”, said your leader Stephen Harper after the defeat of the motion to extend the clauses of the Anti Terrorism Act. I am certain that Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapakse understands those sentiments pretty darn well.* * * Yours sincerely, |
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