Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . Canada

29 November 2013

Deepak Obhrai, MP

Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs,  House of Commons, Ottawa

Dear Deepak:

At 11:25 this morning I watched on CPAC  you getting up from your seat in the House and briefing your parliamentary colleagues with a statement on your visit to the Commonwealth Summit in Colombo, Sri Lanka, representing Canada as your immediate superiors John Baird, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister Stephen Harper had decided to boycott the Summit to satisfy the Tamil Diaspora at the GTA, thus trying to secure as many Tamil votes at the federal elections in 2015.    That was their motive, and don’t you ever try to tell me that it was not so.  So you carried the two Whiteman’s burden as the guinea-pig to slay Sri Lanka for not letting the Tamil Tiger terrorists live another day beyond  the 19^th May 2009, when they were militarily annihilated on  the beach of the Nandikadal lagoon.

Your statement had a supercilious air of “we Canadians are the Masters of upholding Human Rights.”   You know what Deepak, you almost choked me with cynical laughter.   “Come…on… Come again, Deepak, recite what you said.  I want to know whether I heard it right!” I told myself within my breath.

Surely not after the UN had slammed and lambasted Canada for our human rights violations against our own aboriginal women.  Surely not after the Idle No More demonstrations by the First Nation, M©tis and Inuit peoples and their Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence was on a hunger strike for the very reason for the Government of Canada violating their rights.   So, Deepak, your presence in Colombo and being boorish laying a wreath at Elephant Pass when you were asked not to by a Sri Lankan official, you said was to commemorate all victims of violence of the Eelam War didn’t end up smelling roses, but smelling you know what?

Your Canadian sincerity was in question when you had decided to lay the wreath at Elephant Pass, your chosen spot where three historical battles of the Tamil Tigers took place, when there may have been thousands of other neutral spots in that 25,332 square miles of an island.    Booo! to you Deepak.  You were not smart.  That stupid act was not kosher by any means, but boorish and undiplomatic and behaving like a high school bully.  You showed a lack of respect for your host.  Almost spitting at her who had offered you a warm cup of welcoming tea of the best brew of Ceylon Orange Pekoe.

You know what Deepak?  I feel almost certain that you had promised the Tamils of the GTA who are feeding the Conservative party with funds and the promise of their bloc vote if you would do that favour – laying a wreath at Elephant Pass when the battle for that isthmus on July 10^th 1991, saw a 5000 strong Tamil Tiger terrorist force launching a large scale attack on the Elephant Pass Army garrison where there were only 800 soldiers.  Not only was the invasion force massive in numbers, the Tamil Tigers had planned the attack to perfection with anti-aircraft guns  strategically placed so that no helicopter could land in supplies nor evacuate casualties from the base.

So by laying that wreath at Elephant Pass you stuck a Bravo Tamil Tigers post-it note on the lapel and jacket of every Tamil separatist in the Greater Toronto Area, hoping to secure their vote.

During that statement in the House, your voice raised a decibel or two when you said “…in memory of all the victims of that war.”  Perhaps you wanted to include the majority Sinhalese as well as the Muslims,Tamils and Burghers.  Yet, the Tamil transcript on the banner addressed only the minorities excluding the majority Sinhalese.  That was very stupid wasn’t it Deepak!  And it was mischievous.   Perhaps you do not read Tamil script.  If so, the knuckles of the person who engineered to produce that banner which had the Tamil script talking of the “…victims of the minorities”, thus excluding the majority Sinhalese should be rapped severely for embarrassing you.  Would it have been the Canadian High Commissioner in Colombo?

However, if you were expressing those emotional words as penance for Canada’s aiding and abetting this Eelam War as a surrogate Godfather of Terrorism, then the most appropriate place that you should have laid that wreath was at the steps of the new Central Bank Building in Colombo’s Fort, which was brought down by a Tamil Tiger terrorist truck filled with explosives bought with Canadians dollars sent out of a Bank in Vancouver, from the Rubezone Chemical Factory in the Ukraine in 1994.   That explosion on 31 January 1996, killed 114 innocent peoples and well a maimed for life 1,338 others.  If penance was your intention, I would have accepted grudgingly your tears on the floor of the House spilled from your bleeding heart, as that you on behalf of Canada regret for participating in that murderous incident.

That was the day that one of my Sinhalese friends, a Director of the Central Bank, a Ph.D from Ottawa U, who had a minutes before the explosion had gone up  a few floors to the library and was trapped on the floor with two fallen stacks over his legs,  and who was lucky to be alive and almost had his two legs amputated.

That was the day that my nephew and niece, both Sinhalese, both employees at the Central Bank, managed to extricate themselves through the tons of rubble, found themselves by chance on the streets in a daze, and managed to walk home in blood splattered clothing for four hours, as all public transport had stopped, to meet at the front door by a howling chest thumping mother who was cursing the Tamil Tiger terrorists for that explosion.

Deepak, its time that you guys now take a break from talking to the Tamils and change gears, put on your  “I am a honest Canadian politician” cap and speak to the Sinhalese and Muslims to get their stories about this war and the effects it has had on their  families and communities.  Failing to do that Deepak, I will not hesitate to call you Conservatives a “Bunch of Rogue-Humbugs”.  Enough is enough.

By laying that wreath at Elephant Pass, you have knocked the last nail on the coffin of Friendship  between Canada and Sri Lanka.   Canada lost every bit of respect from its citizenry other than those Tamils who belly ached to you in Jaffna about Sri Lanka, hoping that you will be able to open the flood gates again to take them into Canada.  The question that goes begging is, would a Tamil Nadu politician have the same impact from these same Tamils in Jaffna who belly ached to you.   Not a snowball chance in hell, Deepak. They wouldn’t Deepak, as they wouldn’t want to go to Tamil Nadu… as they all want to come to Canada where they think that our roads are paved with gold, and the social system will drop a dole-cheque onto their outstretched palms at the end of each month after they set foot on our soil.

You my think that I am cynical and bitter about you Conservatives treatment of my Motherland, Sri Lanka.   To be honest, yes, I am.

Let me be absolutely clear Deepak.   No one, absolutely no one is going to harm my Motherland, Sri Lanka, that nurtured me during my first 19 formative years of my life, unfairly.  The Motherland who taught me to read A-B-C-D in the alphabet and also taught me to add 2+2 and come up with the  magical number 4, Free without an educational fee right through the primary school, middle school, and high school years, until I was qualified enough to leave home to continue my studies abroad. And so did the now belly aching Tamils who enjoyed the free education right through their lives to become doctors, lawyers, engineers and you name it,  who now tell you how bad Sri Lanka was and has been. These Tamils are hocus-pocus storytellers.  You don’t have to believe them.  And that is the bottom line.

Sincerely,

Asoka Weerasinghe (Mr.)