Insight By Sunil Kumar For LankaWeb

When the Sri Lankan authorities on Wednesday barred a Canadian legislator Bob Rae from entering the country and put him on the next plane back to Canada it seemed indicative of how the Government of Sri Lanka views anyone sympathetic to the Tamil Tiger separatists’ cause as someone who does not have Sri Lanka’s best interests at heart.

It is the latest incident of a foreign official sent out of the country at the end of a 25-year war and Mr.Rae should have known better than to attempt entry into Sri Lanka after agitating in the Canadian Parliament calling for investigations into Sri Lanka’s war against the Tamil Tigers.

Mitigating Factors as reported by Reuters~ “Sri Lanka has refused entry to several foreign officials and journalists viewed as hostile towards the fight to wipe out the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The Government declared victory over the separatist rebels in a 25-year war on May 18. It rejected Britain’s attempt to send a special envoy to the conflict, saying it had been done without proper consultation, and refused to grant Sweden’s foreign minister entry in the closing stages of the war.

Sri Lanka’s conflict has long attracted foreign politicians, and their past involvement has been perceived by many in the current government as one reason the war was prolonged in peace talks with the LTTE that ultimately proved fruitless” which seems justifiable on the part of the Sri Lankan authorities to no longer tolerate any person or persons whose views are contradictory to Government policy and could hamper the process of Nation Building!

Bob Rae, a Liberal party legislator once an NDP’ er who is also known as a turncoat and a ship jumper by some Canadians has a notoriety if getting mixed up in contentious issues in his native Ontario where he has accrued a degree of unpopularity on several issues as someone who uses his political status as carte blanche to make dictatorial sounding statement and dabbles in situations he would have been better off leaving alone.
An idealist and a dreamer who seems to have his own views of being politically correct where the prefix ‘in’ seems to be missing he has found himself on the wrong side of the fence with the Sri Lankan authorities because of his outspoken sympathies and involvement with the Canadian Tamil Diaspora activities where he has often made veiled albeit unclassified statements about the justification of the Tamil struggle for secession which some analysts interpret as pro LTTE sympathies and he has only himself to blame for this response by the Government of Sri Lanka.

In saying that “the Sri Lanka’s Government had reached “ill-conceived and defamatory conclusions about me,” despite having spoken out against the Tigers during his prior involvement in the peace process which of course was a shambles, he is probably wrong as the conclusions made by the Sri Lankan Government appear to be based on his urging the Canadian Government to press for further investigations into allegations against the Military Campaign which eliminated the Tamil Tigers, something totally unacceptable to his friends within Canada’s Tamil Diaspora who still run around in droves waving flags for Velupillai Prabhakaran and the criminals of the LTTE.
“A review of Mr Rae’s record would also show that he has been a champion of the sometimes vociferous expatriate Tamil community’s opinions of dissent against the Governmrnt of Sri Lanka which has not augured well towards his popularity in Sri Lanka.

Rae was stopped at Sri Lanka’s international airport by the controller of Immigration and Emigration in the company of two Canadian High Commission officials when he reached the immigration counter as he attempted to enter Sri Lanka.This was done on the basis of intelligence reports on Mr Rae and the instructions were not to allow him into the country according to Immigration sources and was detained at the airport where he was put on the next available return flight.

Rae previously visited Sri Lanka to take part in the peace process after a 2002 truce and has been a featured speaker at Tamil forums in Canada. Rae’s constituency is in Toronto, which is home to a large Tamil population.

Repeated protests by Tamils in Toronto during the closing stages of the war, where demonstrators waved LTTE flags, infuriated Sri Lanka’s government since Canada is one of more than 30 countries that has listed the group as terrorists and apparently Mr Rae’s rhetoric in Parliament relative to investigations he had called for into accusations against the Government appear to have been a key contributing factor towards the refusal.