Mahinda Gunasekera

Ms. Salma Zahid, MP
Member for Scarborough Centre

Dear Ms. Salma Zahid,

We refer to the motion proposed by the NDP to investigate Sri Lanka’s action to defeat Tamil Tiger Terrorism in the years 2006 to 2009 as an act of Genocide against Tamils, which was passed in the House with the consent
of all parties on the 19th of June 2019.

We thank you for granting members of our Sri Lankan community to meet with you today and explain the correct situation in Sri Lanka, so that you may report back to your party colleagues who have been misled by certain
extremist elements of the Tamil community that extended support to the internationally designated terrorist group known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). You are no doubt aware that the LTTE was so
designated by the UN Security Council in September 2001, and banned by 32 countries including Canada, USA, UK, EU, India and Malaysia amongst others.

In order to briefly advise you on the ground situation which existed in Sri Lanka ten years back, I wish to list out the following events for your information and assessment of the associated facts:

1. The LTTE and its supportive groups extorted large sums of money from Tamil expatriates and businesses to launch their so called final war of liberation confirmed by the Human Rights Watch report of March 2006;

2.  The LTTE ignoring the ceasefire agreement carried out isolated attacks against Sri Lankan targets from December 2005 and thereafter thrust a war on Sri Lanka by shutting off drinking and irrigation water for 12 days at Mavil Aru to 30,000 farming families;

3.  Sri Lanka was compelled to restore the water supply and proceeded from there to militarily dislodge the LTTE from the usurped territory in the east and north;

4.  As Sri Lankan forces advanced on LTTE strongholds they began to retreat at the same time forcing the resident Tamil civilians to move with them from the northwest coast to the east to be exploited for their labour, conscripted to fight and serve as a human shield;

5. The Sri Lankan Army steadily advanced and soon came to surround the LTTE forces that had retreated to a narrow strip on the northeast coast in Mullivaikal.  In order to protect the Tamil civilians from harm, the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) marked out a Civilian Safety Zone (CSW) which was infiltrated by the LTTE with their heavy guns which they fired at the SLA
attracting retaliatory fire. 

6.  Sri Lanka called on the LTTE to surrender from the beginning of 2009 which they disregarded and continued to fight. Later Sri Lanka unilaterally declared two 48 hour ceasefires in February and mid-April 2009, but the civilians who attempted to  leave were fired on and killed by the LTTE to prevent an exodus thereby depriving the LTTE of a human shield. This fact is confirmed by Anna Neistat of Human Rights Watch who went to Sri Lanka and met with the rescued Tamil civilians, in the following TVO video clip  viz.https://youtu.be/OJsAa7s4Asg .

7.   Sri Lankan Security Forces which had earlier rescued nearly 120,000 trapped civilians in April 2009 by carrying out a military  manouvre to split the area held by the LTTE, finally used their special forces to breach the high defensive berms (bunds) built by   the LTTE to attack the hardcore LTTE fighters and rescue the remaining civilians held by these terrorists bringing an end to the three decade long armed conflict. In all, 295873 civilians held against their will were brought to safety including about 12,000 former LTTE fighters dressed as civilians that gave up the battle to escape with the civilians.  

8.   The total number Tamil civilians bandied about by the pro-LTTE groups as having been killed between January 1 and May 19,   2009 ranges from 70,000 to 140,000, whereas the UN Resident Representative’s office in Colombo reported 7,721 civilian deaths between August 2008 and May 13, 2009. The Government of Sri Lanka conducted a census using Tamil teachers and Tamil public servants as enumerators and arrived at a figure of 7,432 excluding those who had died of natural causes, whilst the Tamilnet, a key propaganda arm of the LTTE reported monthly deaths from January 1 to May 19, 2009, which added up to 5,295, which they later revised and claimed was 7398. Lord Naseby of the British House of Lords obtained heavily redacted copies of confidential reports sent by Col. Gash, the Military Attache at the British High Commission in Colombo to the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office in London, where he reported a total of around 8,000 civilian deaths with 2,000 of that number being killed by the LTTE to prevent these civilians that formed a human shield from fleeing their area of control. Contrary to what is claimed as genocidal attacks by the Sri Lankan forces, the number of genuine civilians killed is unknown as none of the published figures distinguishes between combatants, LTTE Auxiliary Forces Personnel, and genuine non-combatant civilians.
In fact, the UNSG’s panel on Sri Lanka reported that a large number of LTTE fighters battled in civilian attire blurring the distinction between fighting cadres and civilians.

9.  Another interesting statistic is the total number of injured persons among the Tamil IDPs according to the ICRC responsible for ferrying them by land and sea for medical attention was 18,439 which is lower than the 40,000 supposedly killed during the last stages according UNSG’s personal panel. Normally, the world’s average ratio of injured (WIA) to the number killed (KIA) is between 2-3 times the number killed, which
means that the number injured should have been 80,000 – 120,000. Can someone explain this discrepancy other than determining that the high civilian death numbers being quoted are bogus guesstimates.

10. They were housed in Welfare Camps, provided all meals, medical/ psychological care, education, vocational training, and resettled in their former places of residence after clearing the land of 1.5 million landmines laid by the LTTE to hamper the advance of the country’s armed forces. The former Tiger cadres were enrolled in a rehabilitation program, given new life skills that would enable them to lead independent lives and released to society. ARE THESE ACTS OF GENOCIDE AGAINST THE TAMILS? 

Please consider the above factual data and arrange to share this information with your parliamentary colleagues.


Yours sincerely,

Mahinda Gunasekera

Honourable Premier, Cabinet Ministers and Members of the Ontario Provincial Legislature,

Further to my mail sent on April 7, 2019, please read the detailed article written By Professor Michael Roberts of Adelaide, Australia, on the many aspects of the armed conflict which took place in Sri Lanka between the nation’s security forces and the fighting forces of the Liberation Tigers of Tamils Eelam (LTTE) designated as a terrorist movement by the UNSC in September 2001 that sought to carve out a mono-ethnic racist Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka, carried in his blogsite called the “Thuppahi’s Blog” covering mainly the critical latter stages during the first five months of 2009:
https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2018/10/16/the-western-worlds-cumulous-clouds-of-deception-blanketing-the-sharp-realities-of-eelam-war-iv/

Yours sincerely,

Mahinda Gunasekera