Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario .Canada

May 28, 2009

Hon. Peter Milliken, MP
Speaker of the House of Commons
Ottawa

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Dear Speaker Milliken:

I was stymied and flabbergasted with the insistence of Jack Layton, the Leader of the New Democrats presenting another petition in Parliament on May 27, wanting to convene the second emergency debate on Sri Lanka. Amazing! “Doesn’t this man have other important things to do for our country”, I wondered?

I was amused by the first one which happened on February 4th evening, which to me was a sick class act of a Gong Show, a Theatre of Tamil Tiger Blarney, which saw most of the parliamentarians who participated exaggerating as to what was going on in Sri Lanka and some even being dishonest and misrepresenting facts. Five Liberals even said that there was “genocide” in Sri Lanka when it never happened, and the Liberal Member for Scarborough-Agincourt demanding that the Canadian Government have Sri Lanka kicked out of the Commonwealth. What audacity! They were pandering to the Tamils who filled the Gallery that evening who were baiting the Liberals and NDPiers with their votes dangling before their eyes.

I suppose you too were suspicious as I did of the cunning ploy of Jack Layton. Now that the guns are silenced in Sri Lanka, wanting to bring that distant war on to the floor of the House of Commons to claw at Tamil votes, especially the ones that would be voting Liberal at the next federal election. The valuable working hours of the parliamentarians should not be squandered by the Tamil vote hunting MPs when their time should be devoted to other important critical domestic files like unemployment, forestry, EI, Arctic sovereignty, Immigration, national security, and environment, et cetera.

The Eelam war is over with its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran dead as well as all his senior officers killed in battle. The guns have silenced. The defeat of the most ruthless Tamil Tiger terrorists which we banned in April 2006, was a historic moment in Sri Lanka having defeated terrorism after 30 years with no help from foreign countries like Canada nor from NATO, which haemorrhaged that island nation and killed around 100,000 people.

The triumphant out come of this war, by the Sri Lankan government would have been embraced by the West if it were that of the Taliban and al Qaeda which they are trying to eliminate as an unadulterated righteous triumph. But Oh No! not Canada, which with several European countries begrudged this wiping out the Tamil Tiger terrorists and Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Foreign Affairs came out with a pathetic statement with no congratulations for eliminating the most ruthless terrorist group in the world while the majority of the member nations of the UN did, paying due regard to the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka.

While the mainly Anglo-Saxon and European West that included Canada, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chile, France Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, voted for at the UN’s Human Rights Council Special Session resolution to haul the Sri Lankan government in front of an International War Crimes Court, 26 other countries which included the most populous mass of humanity of India and China voted against the crass, punitive and mean spirited agenda. This was meant to slow down the progress of Sri Lanka’s agenda of resettling the 280,000 Tamil displaced citizens, rehabilitation, promoting reconciliation and healing and the development of the North and East of Sri Lanka. Let us not forget that Sri Lanka’s security to all areas of her society during the terrorist war was often impeded by outside conspiracies like wanting for a “ceasefire” to save the leadership of the Tamil Tigers, etcetera, and unfortunately Canada was one such country. I hope Jack Layton will note that the 26 country members of the UN Human Rights Council that backed Sri Lanka said that the Tamil Tiger terrorist conflict was a “domestic matter and doesn’t warrant outside interference”. And Canada is a player “outside” this arena.

Now that Sri Lanka with her honesty made the West, including Canada retreat over the ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”war crimes’ agenda at the United Nations, I hope Jack Layton and the other Tamil voter-centric MPs, mainly from the Greater Toronto Area will stop calling for more Emergency Debates on Sri Lanka willy-nilly in the future and find other means to win the Tamil votes.

And I hope Speaker Milliken, that you will have the wisdom to put your foot down on such futile nonsense.

If Canada still feels that we have a role to play in providing humanitarian assistance to Sri Lanka, a concern that Jack Layton has, by providing more aid to Sri Lanka, I am sure Sri Lanka would be glad to accept that offer. Failing, I am sure Sri Lanka would do without it, and as you have realized by now, Sri Lanka is no push over when it comes to interference by countries like Canada who even didn’t want to recognize their ending the Tamil Tiger terrorist war having crushed them for good on May 18, 2009, and then voted to haul Sri Lanka in front of the International Criminal Court for alleged ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”War Crimes”. This futile exercise no doubt has made Sri Lanka recognize and chalk in who her friends and foe are for future references.

Sincerely,

Asoka Weerasinghe

(Ottawa-Vanier Riding)

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