CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

Black July ceremony in Canada

Asoka Weerasinghe Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

28 July 2007

To * Steve Gilchrist*, former Provincial Minister for Municipal Affairs and the Present federal Conservative candidate for Ajax-Pickering *Marilyn Churley*, former Ontario Provincial Minister for Consumer and Commercial Relations, and NDP federal candidate for Beeches-East York *Frank Scarpitti*, Mayor for Markham *Hon. John McCallum*, Liberal MP for Markham-Unionville and former Federal Minister of National Defence *Hon. John McKay*, Liberal MP for Scarborough-Guildwood and former Secretary to the Minister of Finance *Derek Lee*, Liberal MP for Scarborough- Rouge River

Honourable Lady and Gentlemen:

It was reported in TamilNet of July 27, that all of you participated in the ‘Black July ceremony in Canada’ at Markham Civic Centre, where it is reported that 5,000 Tamils participated. This was “to commemorate the pogrom of July 1983 and to pay homage to the hundreds of Tamils who lost their lives during the state sponsored violence.”

It was also reported that all of you spoke at the gathering denouncing the Sri Lankan government. Whoopee-do! What I noticed among you lot was that all of you were Caucasian with that smugness of “we are holier than thou’ attitude. It is time that all of you stop sanitizing yourselves trying to tell the world, such things don’t happen in the Whiteman’s world.

David Beck-Brown wrote in */High Price in Prison Riots/* on March, 2007:
/“A recent riot at Cantinela State Prison left the prison splattered in blood. An eye witness said ambulances were lined up preparing to enter and exit the sally port with stabbed, beaten and maimed inmates. The public rarely hears about these riots. The drab prison grey of concrete and steel sparkled with the brilliant red of spilled blood. The sound of the thumping helicopter blades beating the thin desert air soon subsided. The prison was placed on lock down and the desert became eerily still. The quiet masked the hidden danger now slowly soaks into the dry desert sand.” /Could you believe that it happened in a prison in a Whiteman’s country?

You all tend to forget that in Canada too people riot, and some get hurt and some get killed. There were the 1917 Conscription riots in Quebec; the 1933 Christie Pits Race Riots in Toronto; the 1935 Regina Riots in Saskatchewan; the 1935 Battle of Ballantyne Pier in Vancouver, British Columbia; the 1938 Blood Sunday Riots in Vancouver; the 1955 The Richard Riot in Montréal, Quebec; the 1969 Sir George Williams Computer Riot in Montreal, and one of its leaders now sits in the hallowed Chambers of the Canadian Senate; the 1969 Murray-Hill riot in Montreal, Quebec; the
1971 Kingston Penitentiary riots in Ontario; the 1994 Stanley Cup riots in Vancouver, and the 2001 Quebec City Summit of the Americas riot.
There you are. So let’s wipe out that Whiteman’s sanitized smirk from your faces as Canada is no better than what happened in Sri Lanka that tragic July in 1983.

I understand that all of you were pulling at the heart strings of every Tamil in that 5,000 gathering saying that ’ I sympathize with you lot’, hoping to win their votes. After all, all of you are politicians who sometime unashamedly become whores of opportunism. And this incident happened to be one such case.

But “Woooo….be aware” say’s this soothsayer reminding all of you of your childhood game holding hands with your friends and going round in circles reciting, “Ring a-round the roses, Pocket full of posies, Ah-tishoo, ah-tishoo, We all fall down”. The chances are that at the next federal elections, you may “All Fall Down”, as there are others in your constituencies who are deeply disturbed with your molly-coddling with the Tamil Tiger terrorist sympathizers, and there are thousands of them.

It is amazing how all of you backed Anton Philip Sinnarasa, like the chorus line of */Dreamgirls/,* who spoke of his experience as a survivor of the 1983 Welikada prison massacre. But what he failed to tell you was that he in his former reincarnation as the Roman Catholic priest wearing a white collar, was from the Tamil Tiger camp and was suspected to have been involved in the Peoples Bank robbery at Neerveli in January1981.
They netted over Rupees 8,000,000. It was hitherto the biggest bank robbery in the history of Sri Lanka. According to police reports and ‘The Agony of Sri Lanka’, your friend who took the lead at this gathering, allegedly helped to deposit part of the loot with finance companies and in fixed deposit accounts. That in 1986 he worked at the Tamil Tiger propaganda office in Madras, India, along with the late Anton Balasingham, the International political chief who was later domiciled in London, England. Don’t you suspect his motives? Are you cringing now to know that you all were taken down the garden path one more time by this Tamil Tiger sympathizer.

What he also did not boast to all of you was that, “We got these God-damn Sinhalese buggers good. Seventeen months later on Friday, November 30th, 1984, around 5.30 in the morning when around 60 farm families were sleeping at the Dollar and Kent Farm settlements in the Mulaitivu District, we slyly crept into their huts and shot and chopped them to death. We got one of their Cultivation Officers and herded another 15 into their office building, locked the door, poured kerosene oil around the building and set it on fire. While the building was burning, we threw bombs and hand grenades into the building. We wanted to roast these Sinhalese buggers good!” You all didn’t hear that story did you, now? Go, be brave, ask Anton Philip. Tell him that Asoka Weerasinghe from Ottawa told you so. This was the beginning of hundreds of massacres of innocent unarmed Sinhalese which included infants, children and pregnant mothers.

If I happened to be the mother of each one of you, I would have forced each one of you to wash your mouths with carbolic soap for speaking at this rogue-gathering of the Markham Tamils. I would have also got you to sit down at your desk and ask you to write this sentence a thousand times – “I will never ever participate in such rogue gatherings of the Tamil Tiger sympathizers. I promise.”

And let me end up with a special note for Steve Gilchrist. I know it is an uphill climb for you to defeat the Liberal incumbent Mark Holland of the Ajax-Pickering riding, but don’t get sucked into this Tamil humbug.
Don’t forget that it were the Conservatives who banned the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization after the bogus shilly-shallying by the vote hungry Liberals for 13 years. Don’t let our side down. I am speaking to you with authority on this Tamil bluff, and as a colleague of the Conservative party. But if you do feel strongly that you have to seek their votes, then tell them that you will speak at their rallies, if and only if, they begin the meeting singing this gathering-anthem, with an apology to Woody Guthrie –

*This land is your land, this land is my land From Tangalla to the Delft islands; From the Teak Forests to the Palk Strait waters* *Sri Lanka** was made for You and Me.*

* As I was walking that A9 highway.
I saw above me that endless skyway,
To my right the Toppigala jungle
This land was made for You and Me.*

* I’ve roamed and rambled and I followed my footstep To the sparkling sands of west-coast beaches, And all around me a voice was sounding Sri Lanka was made for You and Me.*

* When the sun was rising, and I was strolling And the rice fields waving and the mist shroud rolling, As the mist was lifting a voice was chanting This land was made for You and Me.*

* As I went walking I saw a sign there
And the sign said, “Welcome to Jaffna”
“A true multi-ethnic community”,
This place was made for You and Me. *

* Nobody living can ever stop me
As I go walking that A9 highway,
Nobody living can ever make me turn back As Sri Lanka was made for You and Me.*

* *Asoka Weerasinghe
Ottawa, Ontario.
e-mail:weerasin@magma.ca

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