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Dear Jack Layton, other NDPier, and Rupinder Kaur, who have expressed concerns about Sri Lanka:Asoka Weerasinghe (a Conservative) Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario Canada
October 5, 2008
Hon. Jack Layton, M.P., Leader of the NDP, his Parliamentarians and Rupinder Kaur (NDP’s Media Officer) House of Commons Ottawa, Ontario.
Dear Jack Layton, other NDPier, and Rupinder Kaur, who have expressed concerns about Sri Lanka:
Holy Moses! “Booo!”, I say to you all. I just read your ‘NEW DEMOCRAT STATEMENT ON SRI LANKA’, which was astounding for the lack of factual honesty and you all seem to be behind by at least 12 months in what is going on in Sri Lanka. Hey! Just hold on to your horses and just keep on reading.
I don’t think you all know what the heck you are talking about, and especially coming out of a caucus where the leader Jack Layton, compared the ruthless Tamil Tiger terrorist leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, a serial killer of innocent civilians, to South Africa’s Nelson Mandela at a Pongu Thamil celebration at Toronto’s Queens Park in front of 10,000 Tamils. I take it that stupid and calculated announcement did not translate into Tamil votes and now you all are trying to steal the Liberal-Tamil votes with your Statement on Sri Lanka. The Liberals too made a statement pitching Sri Lanka onto Canadian federal election hustings a few days ago to garner the 100,000 Tamil votes in the Greater Toronto Area. What the heck has Sri Lanka got to do with Canada’s federal election? I am stymied, unless there is a cunning agenda with a ploy to hand over a part of Sri Lanka to the Tamil Tigers for their separate, mono-ethnic, racist, State Eelam.
Jack, the NDPiers and Rupinder, you lot have disappointed me immensely. You guys dabbling in Sri Lanka’s internal affairs is like a child lost in a playground maze. You lack substance. You don’t have a clue.
Let me roll back the years to 1985/86, when you NDPiers were out of control and mouthing off during Parliament’s Question Period, drubbing the Sri Lankan government and favouring the Tamil Tiger terrorists. I personally reported this to your then President Marion Dewar at her Headquarters on Metcalfe Street, asking her to rein in her parliamentarians, especially the MPs, Ernie Epp and Mike Cassidy. She promised to bring my concerns up in caucus. There was a big silence during Question Period after that meeting.
On January 24, 1986, I wrote to Ernie Epp, your MP for Thunder Bay-Nipigon, and said, “We, the undersigned Sri Lankan-Canadians and sympathizers, who support ‘Project Peace for a United Sri Lanka’, take great exception to and deeply regret your biased statement in favour of the Sri Lankan-Tamils, in Canada’s Parliament on December 11, 1985 (HANSARD Vol.128, No.196 – 33rd Parliament, p.9372).
“Your statement indicates a complete lack of knowledge, political sensitivity and acumen on this very volatile issue that has been subjected upon one of Canada’s democratic sister nations of the Commonwealth. While explaining to you where you floundered miserably as a concerned Parliamentarian, we have taken the liberty to provide you with factual documentation for your research and further study of the ethnic crisis, so that you would fairly represent the subject to the Parliamentarians, in case you favour to further involve yourself in Sri Lanka’s ethnic crisis.”
While Ernie realized that he had put his foot in his mouth on this issue and later apologized with embarrassment, it does seem that your inability to decipher what is true and what is a lie in this issue as related by your Tamil constituents seems generic.
When your late Pauline Jewett embraced Sri Lanka’s Tamil United Liberation Front’s (TULF) leader Appapillai Amirthalingam, and while in the Gallery having the Speaker introduce him to parliament to a standing ovation from the parliamentarians, I proved to you all that Amirthalingam was no Tamil moderate but a bloody liar, presenting you all with Justice Sansoni’s Report where it was documented that he and his parliamentary Tamil colleagues were gunning for a mono-ethnic, Tamil separate State carved out of puny Sri Lanka, which he had denied on camera. I was shown that video clip. And you all looked like a bunch of fools for believing him who took you all down the garden path, him singing, “La, lala, la,la…what a bunch of fools you are!”
Amirthalingam was bumped off on July 13, 1989, at his home in Colombo, shot at point blank range by a Tamil Tiger, the very terrorists that you all are trying to support surreptitiously hoping to claw in the Tamil votes. That is sick!
When Ernie made exception to Sri Lanka’s enactment of The Prevention of the Terrorist Act of 1979, more or less painting the NDP as “We are Holier than Thou”, I said "THE PREVENTIN OF THE TERRORIST ACT OF 1979, that you seem to have taken great exception to, is nothing more than a restructured version of the WAR MEASURES ACT that Canada invoked in Parliament on October 16, 1970, when having to deal with a similar terrorist movement – the FLQ crisis…..If you clinically analyzed the Canadian trauma of that day, no doubt you would sympathize with the Sri Lankan Government who are faced to meet the challenge of thousands of Tamil terrorists who are well equipped with thousands of M-16 and AK-47 assault rifles, rocket launchers, land mines, hand grenades, and millions of rifle shells, compared to the handful of terrorists that Canada had to deal with, with a weaponry of a grand total of 33 fire arms, and 21 other offensive weapons including 3 smoke grenades, 9 hand knives and 1 sabre. There is no comparison, and we hope you would make a better effort to understand the crisis in Sri Lanka.”
That is what I told your Ernie Epp. Now…now….now, I don’t want you all to crawl under the tables with embarrassment as I haven’t finished dealing with your, ‘Smart Alec’ Statement on Sri Lanka.
Let me deal with the contents of your Statement with which you were hoping to bait the Tamil votes from the Liberals.
You are right when you said that, “Sri Lanka has been involved in a deadly and violent conflict for over two decades”. This is a war started by the Tamil Tigers, who were trained by India’s Indira Gandhi having taken a few hundred bare footed Tamil guerillas who could not shoot straight with a rifle, missing its target by several inches, trained them in terrorist warfare at several camps in India and sent them back dressed in army fatigues and jack boots, cradling Kalashnikovs and with festoons of live bullets around their necks with the promise to send them more arms. These Tamil terrorists were also funded by the Canadian Tamil Diaspora who was allowed to collect two million dollars each month to stuff the Tamil Tiger war chest to purchase sophisticated weapons until they were virtually stopped by the Conservative Party in 2006 having banned them as a terrorist organization which the Liberals refused to do for 13 years. This is the very reason that the Conservatives will get my vote. So your concern should be directed at the Tamil Tigers who are the catalysts of this unnecessary, ugly war and not at the Sri Lankan Government, which is rightly defending its sovereign territory and its peoples from getting killed by the Tamil Tigers.
Yes, you are right again when you said, “Jack Layton and the New Democrats are listening to the community (I suppose you meant the Tamil community). They are telling that the violence is escalating, human rights are being violated…”
I suppose what you did not recognize is the body language of the members of the ‘Tamil’ community who complained – the uneasiness knowing that they are not laying out all the facts and truths on this issue on the table, conning you all to their hearts core. Did they not tell you that the Tamil Tigers are almost being wiped out and the armed forces are a mile away from capturing their Headquarters in Kilinochchi, and about to liberate the Tamil people from the fascist clutches of the Tamil Tigers. They achieved the same in the Eastern Province last year by kicking out the Tamil Tigers and re-introducing democracy by having local elections after almost 20 years. And the Chief Minister of the Eastern Province is a politician called Pilliyan, who was a former Tamil Tiger child soldier who broke away from the Tamil Tigers in 2004. A born again democrat, he has now metamorphosed into a ballot-hugging politician, rather than being a bullet-shooting terrorist. I take it that the Tamils who wept on your shoulders didn’t tell all this either, did they?
One of the things that the Sri Lankan government is engaged in is to give back the trust to its peoples of their precious right-to-life, which had been threatened and high-jacked by the Tamil Tigers who bombed and massacred them in droves. Very soon all these people who use public transport will stop making the sign of the cross or put their palms together in prayer before getting on to a bus wanting to arrive at their destination in one piece and not be bombed to smithereens by the Tamil Tigers. The Government is doing what it is expected of them to do to bring law and order to its land, and along the way honour Human Rights. You were not aware of all this, did you? You certainly cannot penalize the Sri Lankan Government for doing just that – restore human rights.
“Reopen the A9 land link…” you said in your Statement on Sri Lanka. You certainly are a bunch of embarrassing politicians. Why the heck are you fussing about A9 which is a highway almost 15,000 miles away on a little island? Without huffing and puffing like an angry Scottish Bag pipe, you all should have got your information right. This request is just academic, as right now, at this very moment, the Government’s armed forces are reclaiming A9 from the Tamil Tigers and will be reopened for the benefit of all Sri Lankans without being taxed to use it.
This bit of news is hot off the press wired by Reuters. “The Sri Lankan military battled within a mile of the town that is considered the headquarters of the Tamil Tiger rebels on Saturday (Oct.4), and allowed civilians to flee.” In other words the Tamil Tiger terrorist’s butts are being kicked for good after 25 years of fighting, hemorrhaging that little island nation. If terrorists have no place in Canada, then terrorists should have no place in Sri Lanka either. What is good for the goose surely should be good for the gander. NDP should stop barging into an area where you have absolutely no business to go to, and face-paint yourselves in an embarrassing lobster-pink, as a bunch of Ha! Haa! Shriner’s Circus clowns, whether you want the Tamil votes in the Greater Toronto Area or not.
For your benefit, let me tell you what the A9 issue is all about, as I know with your naive request, it is apparent that your knowledge on this specific issue is an embarrassing zero.
Alpha 9, which is better known as A9 is the main supply route to the northern Jaffna peninsula. In fact it is the main link and the shortest link between the South of Sri Lanka and the Jaffna peninsula in the North where the majority of the Tamils live.
This road passes through a vast area called Wanni, which was controlled by the Tamil Tigers (not anymore). It touches the Tamil Tiger political headquarters at Killinochchi (which will fall to the government forces within the next few weeks).
The road has two highly guarded entry/exit points – at Omanthai, north of Vavuniya (ask one of your Tamil constituents to provide you with a map to follow the story) at the southern end, just north of Vavuniya, and at Muhamalai, just south of Chavakachcheri at the northern end.
The Tamil Tigers took over the Wanni area between Jaffna and Vavuniya after the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) left in 1990, and used it as a refuge when Jaffna fell to the Sri Lankan army in 1995. During the battle for Wanni between 1994 and 2002, the A9 road remained closed. But with the beginning of the Norwegian brokered Peace Accord in February 2002, A9 was re-opened.
The reason why the Tamil Tigers agreed to open A9 was because they were unofficially allowed to collect road taxes, road tolls and custom duties from users of this highway. And it was estimated that the collections ranged between Sri Lankan 200 million rupees (Cdn$1=Rs.100) and SL Rupees 300 million per month.
When on August 11, 2006, the Tamil Tigers executed a bold bid to crash into Jaffna through Muhamalai with a massive artillery and mortar attack which was the gravest threat to the government in years and failed miserably, the government closed the A9 at the northern end, which made sense even to a high school war strategist.
With Jaffna cut off, traffic ceased and the Tamil Tiger revenue touched rock bottom, their shoes began to pinch, and they were choking financially. And that is the only reason why they lobbied you all to have the A9 opened to collect funds to buy more sophisticated weapons for their war to go on killing my innocent Sinhalese people. And that is a No, No.
And if indeed your wanting A9 re-opened to throw a life-line to the Tamil Tigers to collect funds to kill my Sinhalese people, then let me be candid as I don’t want you all to second guess me – I say “Pox to all of You, and keep your ruddy noses off Sri Lanka’s internal business.” My anger towards you all is visceral and I wish you all could see my eyes doing cartwheels spitting fire at you foolish bunch.
With a general release of this letter I will be requesting all non-Tamil Sri Lankan-Canadians NOT TO VOTE FOR THE NDP, NOR FOR THE LIBERALS AND TO VOTE FOR THE CONSERVATIVES on October 14.
Sincerely, Asoka Weerasinghe (a Conservative)
cc: Thomas Mulcair, M.P., Joe Comartin, M.P., David Christopherson, M.P., Wayne Marston, M.P., Christ Charlton, M.P., Paul Dewar, M.P., Peggy Nash, M.P., Tony Martin, M.P., Charlie Angus, M.P., Olivia Chow, M.P., Brian Masse, M.P., Pat Martin, M.P., Alex Atamanenko, M.P., Bill Siksay, M.P. Peter Julian, M.P., Jean Crowder, M.P., Dawn Black, M.P., Nathen Cullen, M.P.,Libby Davies, M.P., Denise Savoie, M.P., Dennis Bevington, M.P., Judy Wasylycia-Leis, M.P.
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