Amnesty's Campaign Against Sri Lanka At the Cricket World Cup

Ira de Silva Ontario, Canada

Ladies & Gentlemen at Amnesty :

Further to my note to you of April 7, I have just read your reply regarding your "play by the rules" campaign at the cricket world cup wherein you target Sri Lanka and call for human rights monitors. Your statement that you are not targeting the cricket team is appreciated, however given that you are influenced by an advocacy director in the U.S. (A.Kumaran) who is closely aligned to the terrorist group the LTTE, that a director of A.I. in the U.S. (Francis Boyle) has represented these Tamil terrorists in Geneva in 2005 at a meeting with the EU and that there is a news item dated April 11,2007 that the Tamil Tigers are backing your campaign to shame Sri Lanka during the Cricket World Cup gives the lie to your objectives, intentions and timing of your campaign. To say that your "campaign has been misunderstood" is a lame excuse at best and at worst the height of stupidity. Sri Lankans are not stupid. They have not misunderstood your campaign, they fully understand that you have been tricked by Tamil terrorist supporters in your organization into supporting Tamil terrorism that is killing ordinary civilians daily. You therefore have blood on your hands because you are carrying out the dictates of the Tamil terrorists which is resulting in death and destruction in Sri Lanka. Far from protecting human rights in Sri Lanka you are part of the problem. Being part of the problem you have no right to campaign for monitors or otherwise try to influence what Sri Lanka should do to deal with Tamil terrorism..

If you are interested in human rights in general, and have an ounce of integrity, why has your organization not also targeted the English team - after all the government in the U.K. has introduced draconian laws to deal with terrorists in the U.K.(British citizens) after only 50 people were killed, has invaded Iraq, a sovereign country and is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Would you not agree that human rights violations in Sri Lanka is child's play when compared with what the British armed forces and the U.S. have been doing in Iraq? Why has Sri Lanka been singled out for a campaign of abuse for a specific objective which by the way is a goal of the Tamil terrorists? Why is it that western governments feel that they have the god given right to invade, murder, imprison citizens of sovereign countries while other countries in the developing world who are being challenged by true terrorists are being pressured and bullied to not defend their country and citizens in any way possible? Rather than championing human rights is it that A.I. is racist, myopic and pro-terrorist at heart while trying to maintain a facade of being concerned about "human rights"? Your statements on this campaign indicate this attitude.

As stated in my note of April 7, your mandate is outdated as all you can think of is pressuring elected governments while doing nothing to address the terrorist groups who are the root cause of most of the violence in the world today, other than of course the actions of the British and United States armed forces in Iraq. The Tamil terrorists in Sri Lanka have the dubious distinction of being the most ruthless terrorist organization in the world today. That A.I. has in it's organization leading supporters/advocates/ sympathizers of these terrorists indicates that your organization can no longer be considered impartial as you are now part of the propaganda arm of a terrorist organization.

I would appreciate hearing your comments and also your plans for future campaigns at events such as football games, hockey games, rugby, swimming etc. against the worst perpetrators of human rights particularly the U.K. and U.S.A.

Yours truly,

Ira de Silva
Ontario, Canada