CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS





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OPEN LETTER to
The Rt.Hon. Lord Malloch-Brown
Minister of State for Africa, Asia and UN Foreign and Commonwealth Office House of Commons Westminster London,UK

Asoka Weerasinghe Ottawa, Canada

Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . Canada
February 29, 2008

Dear Lord Malloch-Brown:

TamilNet, the communications organ of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE aka Tamil Tigers) of February 27, carried an article headlining ‘*Britain** to get tough with* *Sri Lanka** – Minister’*. The minister that they were quoting happened to be Lord Malloch-Brown, and that’s you.

While I am cognizant that you have been known to cause trouble at Westminster and as well as during your whole career and known to be the biggest mouth among all the talents at Westminster, and being cognizant of the fact that it has been noted that your enemy has been your own mouth, permit me to address you.

While it sounded like a highhanded effort to correct the mess the British created with the divided and rule policy while ruling this little island for 131 years, your intentions however like, *“The UK will be demanding….”, “We are going to go on pushing hard to put the political negotiations back on track”,* et cetera are troublesome, not nice and not congruous with the present day ground realities in Sri Lanka.

I understand your insistence that *“The UK will be demanding and pressing hard for wide* *access….”* to the UN personnel like John Holmes and Radhika Coomarasawamy, since you were the second United Nations Deputy Secretary-General in 2006 and you still believe that United Nations is a healer.

But then, my good Lord, UN has lost its mandated meaning, not only in Sri Lanka but also in countries like Israel, Sudan and Singapore.
Furthermore, with good reason there are some negativism attached to these persons which does not help your supposedly good intentions. These UN personnel are biased in favour of the Tamil Tigers, and the government of Sri Lanka had said so to the UN many a time providing reasons why they thought so.

You are obviously concerned about human rights violations in Sri Lanka.
Aren’t we all! But then the Sri Lanka’s legitimate government is at war with an illegal group of Tamil terrorists who have been provided sustenance and oxygen by your Tamil Diaspora and foreign countries like Norway, India, foreign NGOs working in Sri Lanka and foreign funded local NGOs.

The battle in the field between the government forces and the Tamil Tigers has been formidable and has been going on for 25 years with deaths totaling to over 70,000, with Tamil Tigers killing innocent civilians with impunity in the thousands. They are targeting civilians traveling in buses, trains, farmers in fields, infants that are being nursed by mothers, fisherfolk sleeping in their adobe huts and killing them with claymore mines, Kalashnikovs, hand grenades and machetes. So my question to you is, *‘So why on* *earth is Britain going to get tough with Sri Lanka?’* That just does not make sense when the culprits are the Tamil Tiger terrorists that do not have an electoral-legal status in Sri Lanka.

This may be news to you my good Lord. After all Britain’s rule of Sri Lanka was not all that bad as they did at least leave behind some Churchillian spirited examples how to fight and win a war.

I am told that Sri Lanka’s President is a great fan of Sir. Winston Churchill and has the wall of his private office wall-papered with Churchillian quotes from which he gets a daily dose of inspiration and courage to face these Tamil Tiger terrorists and their international lackeys who are trying to destroy Sri Lanka by dividing this island into two and hand over one-third of its real estate to these Tamil Tigers..
Prominent among these quotes I am told are –

*/“I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many long months of toil and struggle./*

*/“You ask what our policy is. I will say, it is to wage war with all our might, with all the strength that God can give us, to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime./*

As you may recall, this was from his first speech as Prime Minister in the House of Commons, on 13 May 1940.

Well, my good Lord, what was good for Sir. Winston Churchill and the British then, should certainly be good for President Rajapaksa and Sri Lanka now. Wouldn’t you say so?

The second quote that is prominently displayed on the wall, I am told is – */ “We shall not flag or fall. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and ocean. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches; we shall fight on the landing-grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets; we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!”/*

*/ /*I am sure you do see this House of Commons statement of 4 June 1940 by Sir. Winston Churchill acted right now in the fields and beaches and the air in Sri Lanka. What was good for the British then is good for Sri Lanka now, and stop trying to penalize Sri Lankans for their valour to stop human rights violations by the Tamil Tigers to save the lives of its citizens and give back their trust and belief that they have a ‘right to life’. My good Lord, this is what this war is all about, and you certainly cannot penalize the Rajapaksa government for that.

And let me produce another poignant quote which adorns the walls of the President’s private office, which was the tribute to the Royal Air Force in the House of Commons by Sir. Winston Churchill on 20 August 1940, and you may recall this:

*/“The gratitude of every home in our island, is our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to few.”/*

This Churchillian sentiment is what President Rajapaksa is exactly expressing of their airmen who are doing a marvelous job to end this war. It has gone far too long, 25 years in fact, and when your Sir.Winston Churchill handled World War II for the British and her allies, it lasted only six years and human rights was not an issue then as bombs were dropped like monsoon rain drops, and the two atom bombs that killed millions.

So what I tell you my good Lord is, just don’t try to be pious and wag your fingers at Sri Lanka saying that ‘We are Holier than Thou’, and especially with British involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where human rights has not been an issue, as you lot are there to win those wars against terrorism.

But this quote that the President has on his wall is much more poignant and speaks to goody-two-shoes -Sri Lanka-watchers like you. And again this was what Sir. Winston Churchill said in the House of Commons on 9 September 1941.

*/“The mood in Britain is wisely and rightly averse from every form of shallow or premature exultation. This is no time for boasts or glowing prophecies, but there is this – a year ago our position looked forlorn, and well nigh desperate, to all eyes but our own. Today we may say aloud before an awe- struck world, “We are still masters of our fate. We still are captain of our souls.”/*

So does President Rajapaksa feel that he is the captain of his soul, who gets his dose of inspiration from Churchillian quotes, and let people like you know that “We are still masters of our fate *(so don’t try to change it for us),* and we still are captains of our souls (*so don’t try to inculcate our souls with your foolishness and keep your noses out of our business.) It is that simple and I hope you get it.*

It is quite obvious that you have been a bad student of Sri Lankan affairs lately as it shows up when you say that “There is no military solution to this problem”. I don’t think that anyone in Sri Lanka has come up with that foolishness as everyone, including the President has admitted this line. But what we all know is that the mono-ethnic, tribal Tamil terrorism has no place in Sri Lanka and has to be wiped out.
Dealing with the alleged Tamil grievances is another file to be dealt with politically and discussions. No Sri Lankan disagrees with that.

My good Lord, you have been a bad student again, not keeping your eyes and ears glued to the happenings in Sri Lanka when you insinuate that the Sri Lankan government is the problem when you say *–“We are going to go on pushing hard to put the political* *negotiations back on track.”* I don’t think that you have to push the Sri Lankan government that hard because they are on the same page as you are. But your problem will be the Tamil Tigers. If you manage to push them hard to the negotiating table, my advice to you is to shackle them to their chairs, as all six times that they sat at the negotiating tables, they were the ones who jumped up like a bunch of Jacks-in-the-Boxes making these Norway sponsored negotiations Gong-Shows. Don’t be that hard on Sri Lanka as they deserve an ‘A’ for honesty and effort as they had made six attempts in the past two decades using international mediation as well a direct talks to reach a negotiated settlement. But these Tamil Tigers insist that they need their mono-ethnic, racist, separate state Eelam, and nothing more and nothing less. So, my good Lord, you sure are barking at the wrong tree.

As for the gruesome brutality of the Tamil Tigers who have violated human rights with impunity, go and speak to the innocent citizens of Buttala and Dambulla and whose loved ones were killed recently. You might hear them welcoming you with an adapted version of a George Harrison song, and not the traditional songs as you would expect having been welcomed earlier with African traditional songs by children at Dafur camps -

My sweet Lord
Mm, my Lord
Mm, My Lord

I really want to see you
I really want to tell you
I really want to show you
The blood stains on the soil my Lord

I really want to see you
I really want to show you Lord
How they killed my mother,
father, sister, brother , my Lord
That won’t take long my Lord
But will not take that long, my Lord.

My sweet Lord
I really want to see you

My sweet Lord.
Mm. my Lord
Mm, my Lord

Sincerely,
Asoka Weerasinghe
Ottawa, Canada


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