Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . Canada

19 December 2013

The Editor (Letters) 
THE OTTAWA CITIZEN

Dear Editor:

Your essay on ‘Baird defends foreign policy shift’ is an eye wash when he tries to defend “…Harper’s  decision to skip a Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka” because  he was concerned with  alleged human rights violations in that island nation.

Sri Lanka had the last laugh on Stephen Harper’s boycott of the Summit which he thought he would be playing Pied Piper leading the other nations to boycott the summit, but Britain, Australia and New Zealand Prime Ministers told him, you can stay if you want  to and isolate Canada, but we are going, and they attended the Summit.   The Commonwealth Summit was a mighty success even without Stephen Harper’s presence.

What Foreign Minister Baird failed to tell us was this exercise of  “We will huff and we will puff and we will blow your house down” attitude on Sri Lanka was to shore up support from the Tamil community seeking their votes in the GTA where nine ridings depend on their votes.   This was proved positive when his Parliamentary Secretary Deepak Obhrai laid a wreath dismissing the request not to do it by a Sri Lankan official, at Elephant Pass, which was the battle ground of three major battles between the Tamil Tigers and the Government Forces to arrest the isthmus that separates the Jaffna peninsula and the south of the island.  Thousands of Sri Lankan soldiers were killed by the Tamil Tigers during those battles.  Obhrai claims that it was neutral grounds according to Canada to lay the wreath there.  The Tamil inscription on the banner said that Canada was laying the wreath in memory of the minorities (Tamils) who lost their lives in this war.  Thus ignoring the 7,000 soldiers from the majority Sinhalese community  who gave their lives to rescue 295,873 Tamil refugees who were used as a human shield by the Tamil Tigers during the last 30 months of the war.

Furthermore, Obhrai returned to Canada and briefed the Tamil community in Toronto, more or less telling them, see what I did for you guys, and now let me have your votes.  He didn’t meet the Sinhalese community in Toronto. 

Minister Baird’s defence of the shift of its foreign policy on Sri Lanka to accommodate the wishes of a small separatist Tamil community in Scarborough, Markham and Brampton of all the immigrants from Sri Lanka who have arrived since  1954 and settled across Canada, is nothing to be brag about.  Canada has  failed miserably with our policy on Sri Lanka.  The 22 million Sri Lankans in that island nation are now suspect of us and quite rightly so.

Asoka Weerasinghe