by Ira de Silva London, Ontario

Hon. M. Ignatieff
Leader of the Liberal Party
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario.

Dear Sir:

I am writing to you regarding your response to the illegal demonstration in Toronto yesterday by the supporters of the Tamil Tiger terrorists who were waving their LTTE flags, making statements that their leader is Prabhakaran, who as you are well aware is a mass murderer wanted by Interpol, and disrupting the lives of other Canadians. True to Liberal Party policy, you promised to intervene on their behalf and raise the issue in parliament today. In other words you are condoning the illegal and dangerous actions of terrorist supporters and denying other Canadians the right to live in peace.

You must know that the Canadian Government has no right to demand anything from another country. The Tamils supporting the LTTE know nothing but demands, violence and yesterday they acted true to form using Tamils as a human shield just as they are doing in Sri Lanka. It is not surprising that they had women and children on the frontline because for years they have been conscripting children to fight. They also boast of a “grandma brigade” of older women. Their suicide brigades are women. They are doing in Canada what they have been doing for years in Sri Lanka, making demands, not caring what effect their actions have on others and endangering the lives of the women and children they are supposed to be fighting for. All Canadians now have a great insight into the thinking and actions of the LTTE and their supporters.

The members of parliament of the Liberal Party in the GTA have consistently supported these LTTE sympathizers, attending fund raisers for the LTTE, providing political support and attending memorials when LTTE leaders have been killed. This support of LTTE terrorism is well known to Sri Lankans because the money from Canada has been used by the LTTE to kill thousands in Sri Lanka. In other words these members of your party are as responsible for the deaths of thousands of Sri Lankans as are the LTTE itself because those who provide the weapons and bombs are as guilty of murder as those who use these weapons.

Pictures of the artillery and weapons being used by the LTTE in the “no-fire” zone are available. Those who have escaped from the LTTE have told the world that they were shot at when trying to escape. These protesters in Toronto have provided these weapons and are now protesting, not because civilians are being killed, but because the LTTE leadership is desperate. They did not demonstrate when the LTTE drove these people from their homes and herded them from the west coast to the east where they are using them as a shield against the advance of the Sri Lankan forces. If they are concerned for family and friends why did they provide the weapons to the LTTE? The Sri Lankan forces are trying to rescue these hostages from the LTTE. Also, all the hype in Toronto is caused by the LTTE propaganda machine which is very active in Canada. For your information, they claim that a doctor gave the information of the dead and wounded on the weekend. The Ministry of Health has confirmed that there is no doctor by that name in the medical registry for that area. Also there are audio recordings of the LTTE proving that they opened fire on the civilians this weekend.

That members of your party should try to extend the suffering of the civilians being held captive is unconscionable. When is the Liberal Party going to act in a principled manner both in Canada and in it’s relations with other countries?

Yours truly,

Ira de Silva
London, Ontario