CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

Your statement in Sri Lanka

Asoka Weerasinghe Ottawa, Canada

December 17, 2007

H.E. Dominick Chilcott
British High Commissioner to Sri Lanka
British High Commission
Colombo
Sri Lanka

Dear Mr. Dominick Chilcott:

I appreciate you responding to my Open Letter criticizing your statement about the Tamil Tigers and its separatist movement and its democratic legitimacy.

You quote Voltaire to defend your statement, but her is something that you may wish to consider as a diplomat posted to a friendly country.

Colin Hannaford in his *Mathematics Teaching and Political Freedom: the unnoticed connection*, says, */“Democracy can be understood as a science fundamentally of mathematics, and also as a philosophy or religion (depending on whether one sees that it has a spiritual basis or not) that acts not to separate people but to join them.”/* That’s quite telling.

But this is what is much more telling in context to your /prima donna/ attitude as a diplomat from the old country in Sri Lanka.

On an official visit to Canada in July 1967 to celebrate Canada’s 100 years of nationhood, President Charles De Gaulle of France ignited a storm of controversy in the Anglophone world when he stood before a crowd of 100,000 Quebecers in Montreal and declared/:” Vive le Quebec libre/”. While this implied support for Quebec’s independence was a monumental diplomatic blunder and interference into another country’s private affairs, it was that statement that inflamed the passion of some nationalist Quebecers and inspired members of the emerging FLQ separatist movement.

Following General De Gaulle’s public remark, the Prime Minister of Canada, Lester B. Pearson cancelled plans for his visit to Ottawa, the nation’s capital, and asked him to leave the country. So he was ushered to the airport and he took the first plane out of Canada to France.

As for your interference in Sri Lanka’s internal affairs on the Tamil Tiger separatist movement, leaving aside diplomatic protocol, you were just a wee bit lucky that Asoka Weerasinghe wasn’t the President of Sri Lanka.

Sincerely,
Asoka Weerasinghe
Ottawa, Canada//

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