Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . Canada

30 October 2012

The Editor, EMBASSY Ottawa

Sir:

Your October 10 issue deals with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s heading to Congo despite boycott calls by the Canadian-Congolese community because of its alleged human rights violations and undemocratic systems. Yet, Prime Minister Harper said he would boycott Sri LankaƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s Commonwealth Summit in 2013 if Sri Lanka did not improve its human rights and deal with alleged atrocities stemming from its war with the worldƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s most ruthless separatist Tamil Tiger terrorists which lasted 27 years. This is a strange contradiction, when especially the Tamil Diaspora in Canada were allowed to fund one-third of the Tamil Tiger terrorists annual operating war budget by letting them stuff two million dollars each month for 13 years into the Tamil Tiger war-chest to purchase a sophisticated armoury to fight a conventional war for the want of their mono-ethnic, racist, separate Tamil state, Eelam.

Minister of State for La Francophonie Bernard Valcourt has come to Prime Minister HarperƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s defense with reasons which were weak as a kitten. Pity! He says the Sri Lankan and Congolese situations are ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-totally separate and apart.ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚ What a brilliant revelation! What he has failed to admit is that there are over 300,000 Tamil refugees in the Greater Toronto Area whose votes have an influencing factor in Canadian Federal politics, as they could turn the tide as to which party would govern by electing a particular party candidates in ridings in the Greater Toronto Area, as when they switched their allegiance from the Liberals to elect Conservatives at the last general election and let the incumbent Liberals fall in defeat going down like ten-pins. But the Canadian-Congolese community does not have that luxury of those influential voting numbers. And that is a fact.

And the reality is that Canada wouldnƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢t dare antagonize the Tamil community as 30,000 Tamils will descend on Parliament Hill and along Wellington Street at a drop of a hat, under a sky of red Tamil Tiger flags for days and weeks demonstrating inconveniencing the general public. And in Toronto they will block the Gardiner Express Highway as they did in early 2009. And that is the fact.

Prime Minister Harper wants Sri Lanka to improve their human right record for him to step onto the tarmac at the Katunayake International Airport in 2013. That shows his lack of honesty in a big way. When Canada, the Commonwealth sister nation of Sri Lanka, has still not acknowledged the classic text book example of giving back the right-to-life to 21million of its people which was hijacked by the Tamil Tigers with suicide bombings and detonating claymore mines which was a daily affair, when they were wiped out militarily on 19 May 2009, Canada has no moral right to ask Sri Lanka to do better on their human rights record. Canada, the country that has failed so far to acknowledge the text book example of the remarkable positive act of human rights in that island nation when its soldiers liberated 294,000 Tamils by 19 May 2009 who were herded like unwashed cattle for 30 months from the west coast to the east coast as a human shield by the Tamil Tiger terrorists, housed them in temporary welfare camps, and prepared a million meals a day to feed each liberated Tamil three hearty meals a day ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…” breakfast, lunch and dinner, and looked after medically the seniors, pregnant mothers and infants in temporary health clinics, and sent all back to their original homes after renovating and demining the terrain where their houses stood on, and rebuilding the infrastructures, et cetera, within three years, Canada has no moral right to demand Sri Lanka better their human rights record for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to attend the Commonwealth Summit in 2013.

I say to the Government of Canada, please show some honesty before you try to bludgeon Sri Lanka unfairly with hockey sticks and baseball bats. And if Prime Minister Harper wishes to stay back from the Colombo Summit to appease the 300,000 Tamils in the GTA, so be it. The Commonwealth Summit will be better off without a Commonwealth country leader who has difficulty to acknowledge the positives that have happened in Sri Lanka since 19 May 2009, the day that the Tamil Tiger terrorists were wiped out militarily on the shores of the Nandikadal lagoon in the east coast of Sri Lanka.

As for Minister Bernard Valcourt, all what he had to say in Prime Minister HarperƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s defense was pathetic exposing how vulnerable domestic politics are when 300,000 refugee voices howl at the government with their demands or else that bloc-votes will not be theirs at the next federal election and so their demands are given to them on a platter. And according to my thesis, Prime Minister Stephen Harper not wanting to attend the Commonwealth Summit in Colombo has nothing to do with human rights in Sri Lanka, but has everything to do with Tamil votes when seeking a Conservative majority at the next federal election,

Asoka Weerasinghe