Sri Lanka - Final Report

Asoka Weerasinghe Gloucester . Ontario . Canada

January 8, 2007

Ambassador Allan Rock
UNSG
Special Representative on Children and Armed Conflict
New York
US

Dear Ambassador Allan Rock:

I gather that the report on your Sri Lankan fact finding mission in November 2006 on child abductions and recruitment by Tamil terrorists, which is based on “credible evidence” and hearsay gathered on a two-day visit to the war-affected East will be discussed by the UN Security Council (UNSC) on January 15.

On October 29, 2006, you wrote me saying, “Thank you for your thoughtful and encouraging message. I feel greatly honoured to have been asked to take on this important assignment, and I approach it with genuine respect for its complexity. I shall do my very best to make a constructive contribution”. And I responded by saying, “And I sincerely hope you will,” as I gave you the benefit of my doubt knowing that you are an intelligent human being with a sense of responsibility. I also prefaced my letter saying, “When I take away the past Liberal Party mantle off you, a party that showed a bias in favour of the Tamil Tigers for reasons aligned with domestic politics, I see you as a person of peace….” That comment was solicited because I knew your background prior to you becoming a Liberal parliamentarian in 1993.

You were right, as the reason for the Tamil separatist terrorist war in Sri Lanka is indeed complex. The Tamils wanting their separate state has gone on for as far back as the 1930s, and some historians may say that it has been much earlier. And thus a “complexity”, not as simple as the reasons that caused Canada’s Oka crisis or the FLQ crisis which were recent political phenomena compared to the Tamil separatist terrorism issue in Sri Lanka

You may recall how we in September 1990 starved the Kanesetake Mohawk Warriors to submission, and that too over a disputed land claim of 97 acres. I cannot imagine the Sri Lankan Government starving the Tamil Tigers to submission because they want one-third of the island’s prime real-estate bordered by 66 percent of the coastline, as the UN and the rest of world would descend on the Sri Lankan government with open dinosaurial-claws as violators of human rights and try to punish them in devious ways. Canada got away easy with the Oka crisis, as no foreign nation wanted to claw us as human rights violators, except for the defiant George Erasmus, grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations, who said the Canadian public should not expect natives to now be “good little Indians. Forget it”, he said.

Whether you agree or not, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau evoking the War Measures Act, in October 1970, which most called a draconian law, saved Canada from the lingering terrorist violence by the FLQ. They too wanted their separate Province. They didn’t get it, as all of Canada didn’t want them to have it. It was that simple. Pierre Trudeau nipped the possible terrorist violence within a couple of months while being resolute on his action and telling a media reporter, “Yes, well, there are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don’t like to see people in helmets and guns. All I can say is go on and bleed.” So Allen Rock, you and I got away with such a damning issue easily without much pain or having hundreds of innocent civilians killed by the FLQ for their political cause. Pierre Trudeau’s primary concern was the security of his people, and then the sovereignty of the nation. And that is what the Sri Lankan government wants to achieve, which has been thawed by foreign countries that have supported the Tamil Tiger terrorist cause like, India, Norway and Canada.

Remember the Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accords where we rejected Quebec as a “distinct society”, among other things? That is how selfish we Canadians were. But we look at Sri Lanka’s Tamil separatist crisis differently and mostly supportive of them to go ahead and claim their separate, mono-ethnic, racist Tamil state, Eelam. Speak to your Liberal parliamentary colleagues, Jim Kaygriannis, Albina Guaneiri, Judy Sgro, Maria Minna and Paul Martin as they have pronounced this finality publicly. That is Canadian hypocrisy at its prime. The motive here is to garner the 100,000 Tamil votes to have 10 Liberals elected in ridings in the Greater Toronto Area. Well…think of it, this motive is selfish too, not caring for the survival of a legitimately elected democracy, and a sister Commonwealth nation, nor for the innocent, unarmed civilians getting killed in droves with claymore mines, suicide bombers and Kalashnikovs by the Tamil Tiger terrorists who are on the war path to achieve their mythical Eelam.

The difficulty that I have with whatever the contents are in your report, is that I cannot believe that you are capable of sieving the untruths searching for possible facts on child abductions in a couple of days, and especially when your guide was Arthur Tveiten, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission’s (SLMM) Batticaloa chief. He has gone on record making prejudicial comments against the Security Forces many a time. There is every possibility that Tveiten could have manipulated evidence and distorted the ground situation in the area, as the SLMM is a mischievous crew supporting the Tamil Tigers. Unfortunately, the alchemy of this, piggy-backed with your inherent bias in favour of the Tamil Tigers which you had nurtured and instilled in your political psyche for almost a decade as a Liberal parliamentarian, spells “suspect”.. In other words, your report is suspect coloured with a questionable agenda as laid down by your supervisor, Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy, who is an ethnic Sri Lankan Tamil. And you allowed yourself to be trapped to be the fall-guy by biting the bait, perhaps wanting to boost your ego of being invited to be a UN Fact-finding Special Envoy. This is just my guess!

If Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy claims that it was her ethical standard that kept her away from the assignment, as she felt that it would have been a conflict of interest being a Sri Lankan, I would have expected for you to recuse yourself because of your past bias towards the Tamil Tiger cause while being a Liberal parliamentarian. That would have been the right thing to do, which gives me that ominous suspicion that both of you are up to some mischief with a hidden agenda to get at the Sri Lankan government and its armed forces, rather than focusing on the real culprits of child abductions, the Tamil Tigers. Their abductions and recruiting of children are being tallied in the thousands. The child abductions by Tamil Tigers are even being reported today to bolster their depleting trained cadres. It has also been reported that the Tamil Tigers have started recruiting young Dalit girls in Tamil Nadu as future suicide bombers, offering payments ranging from Rs. 10,000 up to 25,000 to their poor families.

If your report is merely to tell the Sri Lankan Government and its armed forces, “Radhika and I gotch ya!”, the above facts should be a good enough reason to prompt the UNSC to subject your report to a cautionary field audit targeting every “credible evidence” that your report is based on. Without such a revision, your exercise is a sham, discrediting you as an impartial UN Ambassador. Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy should also share that blame.

Canada’s The Toronto Star of November 23, 2006, headlined “UN’s Allan Rock ridiculed in Sri Lanka. Called ‘village gossip’ for saying military helped rebel faction abduct child soldiers”. That is a tough indictment from the mainstream media from your own country. That shouldn’t sit well in your diplomat resume.

What disappointed me most, and should the UNSC, is how you were brazen enough while still in Sri Lanka to take to the international airwaves accusing Sri Lanka’s armed forces for apparently assisting the Karuna group to forcibly recruit children for their Baby Brigade, disregarding the protocols involved and over playing your role as a UN Special Advisor and letting diplomacy fly out the window. This was a blatant breach of protocol given the sensitive nature of the child proscription issue. Your first responsibility was to report your findings to your employer, the UN before spewing out the findings to the entire world. Tich! Tich! Such meddling in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka even before you sat to pen your report is unconscionable. Surely, this is unbecoming of any UN diplomat, and you stand guilty in my eyes. And what a let down!

You also provided triumphant announcement when interviewed on international radio stations that the Tamil Tigers had promised to release all child soldiers by the end of January this year, and stop abducting them. When I heard you on CBC radio, I spoke to you under my breath saying, “Durr…honestly Allan, how naïve can you get to believe these rascals who have thumbed their noses at every international diplomat who did their little song and dance in front of them in Killinochchi requesting them to give up child recruiting. You just made yourself another number in their statistics of ‘diplomat-fools’. What was so important about you that you thought you could achieve when others failed miserably? Not even Olara Otunnu.”

However, there is a positive side to this drama and lessons to be learnt if we care to.

Firstly, the Sri Lankan government, I hope in the future would do a thorough background check of all foreign personnel who are sent as fact finders, and have the gumption to say, “Sorry, you are persona non grata for this particular mission and we will not issue a visa to carry out this particular assignment. We’d like another name to be proposed.”

Secondly, that you will hopefully resolve not to lose another opportunity to demonstrate Lester Pearsonian statesmanship qualities that will make not only you, but also Canada a strong leader of peace beyond reproach in the world stage. This obviously requires the ability to stand up for your strong conviction and commitment, rather than look at a situation with a jaundiced eye and be a servant to your political affiliations.

And thirdly that the Sri Lankan Armed Forces will make every effort to discipline themselves to keep out of any semblance of helping any para-military group in child abductions as the penalty is woefully high with human right watchers breathing on their necks. That could be easily done, which I believe is already in place.

I will be watching with a keen interest to find out where the dice falls with regard to your

questionable “credible evidence” report after the UNSC meeting on January 15.

Wishing you a Happy and a Productive 2007.

Yours sincerely,
Asoka Weerasinghe