Maria Minna, the Liberal
MP for Beaches-East York says she’s no LTTE (Tamil Tiger) supporter.
That’s nonsense.
Asoka Weerasinghe Gloucester,
Ontario, Canada
Despite the two badges of Honour conferred on her by Sri Lanka’s
President Mahinda Rajapakse who had said, “I am happy to learn
that this years’ winner of the (Canada-Sri Lanka Business Council)
President’s Award is the Hon.Maria Minna, PC., MP, a friend of
Sri Lanka who has served our expatriate community in Canada for nearly
a decade”, and “That opinion was seconded by Consul-General
C.S.Poolokasingham (a Tamil diplomat, and who said that Tamils were
discriminated?), who wrote “It is noteworthy that as President
of the Canada-Sri Lanka Friendship Group in the Federal Parliament,
she is promoting close relations between the government and peoples
of Canada and Sri Lanka”, she cannot erase the fact that she
as the Minister of International Cooperation supported the Tamil Tigers
by attending the fund raising dinner organized by FACT, a front organization
for the LTTE terrorism on May 6, 2000.
Neither can she erase the fact that she was a member of the Liberal
Party caucus that refused to ban the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization
for 13 years to the disgust of the Conservative parliamentarians and
senators, when other countries like the US, UK, Australia, India,
Malaysia and the Czech Republic had banned them.
Nor can she erase the fact that it was during her tenure as an MP
of the governing Liberal party that, according to Maclean’s the
Canadian Tamil Tiger supporters cut a cheque for $6.8 million collected
in Canada to acquire a massive shipment of explosives from the Ukraine
through forged end-user certificates. The shipment included 50 tonnes
of TNT and 10 tonnes of plastic RDX. What followed were several horrific
series of Oklahoma City-style bombings on civilians and infrastructures
in Sri Lanka.
After her visit to Sri Lanka in 2004, she said that Tamil Tigers
left an impression on her by figuring global warming into their plans
for the construction of a sea wall to protect against future Tsunamis
and Tides.
Was she not ignoring the fact that the democratically elected Sri
Lankan government had the sole responsibility to govern all of Sri
Lanka and she was legitimizing the Tamil Tiger’s de facto- separate,
racist, Tamil state of Eelam with such an irresponsible statement?
What Maria Minna is trying to tell us is a bunch of boloney to distance
herself from the Tamil Tigers welfare that she is so wrapped up in.
Little wonder why we are told that politicians are creatures who could
talk from both sides of its mouth!
