Roxanne James, Conservative MP for Scarborough Centre, Ontario
Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety & Emergency Preparedness
House of Commons, Ottawa

Dear Roxanne:

Forgive me if I am breaching Electoral Riding protocols by responding to your letter to your constituents asking for a feed back on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s “principled decision to boycott the Commonwealth Heads Government Meeting in Sri Lanka.”

The subject matter on the Sri Lanka file on the Eelam War and the separatist Eelamists in the Greater Toronto Area has interested me since July 1983, and I was living then and ever since in Ottawa.    I suppose 1983 was your last year at High School or perhaps your frosh year at University and the Sri Lanka’s separatist Tamil war may not have been in your intellectual radar at that point.

In your questionnaire to your constituents you had asked, “Do you agree with the Prime Minister Harper’s decision to boycott Commonwealth meetings in Sri Lanka?”    My answer would have been an emphatic NO.   The reasons for this you may decipher from my conclusions of Canada’s attitude towards Sri Lanka and its agenda to crush or hold back Sri Lanka’s reconciliation progress as well as that island’s social and economic progress after the 27 year war, especially in the war ravaged north and east of the island.

To be honest Roxanne, Canada has been the surrogate Godfather to Tamil Tiger terrorism in Sri Lanka together with India, Norway and the UK.  We aided and abetted that war which killed innocent, unarmed Sinhalese and Muslim civilians in the  scores of  thousands for 27 long years.  And also aided and abetted the assassination of the former Prime Minister of India,  Rajiv Gandhi; President Ranasinghe Premadasa of Sri Lanka; two Foreign Ministers Lakshman Kadiragamar and Ranjan Wijeratne, and three Mayors of Jaffna, the Sri Lankan  equivalent of Quebec City.  All killed by the Tamil Tigers that Canada helped by letting the Tamil Diaspora stuff two million dollars a month for 13 long blooding years during the government days of the Liberals, to buy sophisticated killing war weapons.

You might dismiss this observation as trivial by saying, “Asoka, is that all?”

Not at all Roxanne, here’s what took placed in 1994.   The Tamils cut a cheque for 7.5 million dollars from a bank in Vancouver from an account of a Tamil to buy 10 tons of hexagon a plastic explosive like Semtex; 50 tons of trinitrotoluol (TNT) and a large quantity of electric timing caps and detonator cord, from the Rubezone Chemical Factory in Ukraine.

Now what’s all this have to do with Stephen Harper boycotting the Commonwealth Summit in Colombo you might ask!   It were these explosives bought with Canadian dollars that were used in the truck bomb by the Tamil Tigers that brought down the Central Bank Building in the business district in Colombo on 31 January 1996, killing 114 and maiming for life 1,338 others.  All 34 million Canadians got blood on our hands Roxanne with those killings aided and abetted by Canada.  It were the same consignment of explosives that were used to bomb the Temple of Buddha’s Tooth Relic in Kandy in the hill country on 25 January 1998, killing 12 and maiming 13 others.

And now  Prime Minister Stephen Harper has got on his high-horse to admonish Sri Lanka for having eliminated the Tamil Tiger terrorists that Canada  helped to survive and prolong that nasty war in Sri Lanka, and refuse to attend the Summit because of his concerns of human rights violations during the last five months of the war.   Is my Prime Minister and your boss confused about Canada’s complicity  in these alleged human rights violations, or is he trying to placate the GTA Tamils crying out for their bloc vote!   Go figure  Roxanne and let me know..

With this backgrounder, Roxanne, let’s not kid ourselves that “O Canada our home and native land….”  is squeaky clean.  What nonsense!   That silly idea is not worth two masala vadai’s with two curled dead shrimps at their top deep fried in coconut oil, from a Tamil Take Out joint in Scarborough Centre.

So let’s take out that item off the Conservative silly season of Senate scandals, Commonwealth boycotts, and Jason Kenney’s attempt to preach to the Sri Lankans in Colombo on January 7th on human rights when the First Nation peoples were demonstrating a stone’s throw away from his parliamentary office and Theresa Spence the Chief of Attawapiskatt Chief  was on a hunger strike protesting against Canada’s human rights violations of her people.   Sheesh! It was not only silly, it was also stupid for Jason to go to Colombo and act God, and tell the Sri Lankans “Hey, We are Holier Than Thou” So what’s going on in your Conservative camp, Roxanne?   You Conservatives with Stephen Harper at the apex are dishonest, disingenuous and a strange bunch, isn’t it?”

But here is a bigger problem for you Conservatives, who think we Canadians are a bunch of goody-two-shoes.  You quote Prime Minister Stephen Harper who said: “It is clear that the Sri Lankan Government has failed to uphold the Commonwealth core values, which are cherished by Canadians.  As such as the Prime Minister of Canada, I will not attend the 2013 CHOGM in Colombo, Sri Lanka.  This is a decision that I do not take lightly.”

*Roxanne, what are the Commonwealth Core Values that Prime Minister Harper is  talking about?   It was his Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon  who sent out a pathetic Press Release when the Tamil Tiger terrorists were finally eliminated, single handed by the Sri Lankan Government on 19 May 2009, after a 27 year long war that killed over 100,000 innocent people of all ethnic groups.  And when every other country patted the back of Sri Lanka and said “Way to Go, Sri Lanka”, but Oh No,  but not Canada. Canada couldn’t handle it.  Roxanne, Canada didn’t have that disciplined honesty to  do what the other nations did,  pat Sri Lanka’s back and say, ” Bravo! Way to go Sri Lanka for eliminating the most ruthless Tamil Tiger terrorist group in the world.”  That’s how hypocritical Stephen Harper’s Canada was.   So Prime Minister Harper should  stop pretending that he is a disciplined politician trying to  uphold Commonwealth’s Core Values. That is a mighty sham!

* I thought that one of the Commonwealth’s Core Values was to uphold every person in the Commonwealth of Nation’s  right-to-life, the most revered and treasured  paramount human right.  And getting rid of the Tamil Tiger terrorists militarily by the Sri Lankan government saw the classic text book example of giving back 22 million Sri Lankans their right-to-life after it had been hijacked by the Tamil Tiger terrorists for 27 years.  But Canada didn’t see it that way at all.   Roxanne, what’s wrong with Canada?  Was Stephen Harper concerned that if he had patted the back of Sri Lanka and tell its political leader “Way to go Sri Lanka!”, that you all would have lost all the Tamil votes in the Greater Toronto Area, and with that move even you would have lost your riding, and the Tamils would have blocked the Gardiner Highway in a demonstration for a whole day.   Is that what it was all about?  The police couldn’t have used water cannons to disperse the demonstrators and these Tamils are smart enough to have the older generation of Grandmums and Grandads  in wheelchairs, as well as young Tamil mothers with  infants and kids in prams and strollers on the front line.   You saw them doing it in May 2009 and would have repeated it again.   Are the Conservatives a bunch of hypocrites, Roxanne, or what?  If you ask me that question, I would tell you; “You bet, damn well we are!”

*Commonwealth Core Values, I thought included rescuing  and liberating citizens who were taken hostage as a human shield by the Tamil Tiger terrorists?  And so did President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Sri Lankan armed forces.  They rescued 295,873 Tamil refugees from the clutches of the Tamil Tigers by 19 May 2009.

It was not only rescuing these 295,873 Tamils, the Sri Lankan Government also prepared a million meals a day to provide three hearty – breakfast, lunch and dinner  each day, and not let these 295,873 rescued Tamils starved to death.   If they had died, the whole anti-Sri Lankan world would have screamed “Genocide…genocide!” Go figure why this miraculous performance by the puny Sri Lanka has not been  acknowledge until today by the Stephen Harper’s Canadian Government, as a Commonwealth Core Value of preservation of lives of  humans and  giving back to them their right-to-their-lives..  And Roxanne, do you know who cooked these million meals a day to feed these Tamils refugees?   The majority were Sinhalese that the  GTA Tamils ran away from saying that they have been discriminated by them?  I say to you Roxanne, the Conservative Government is down right hypocrites.   And here is the problem for you Conservatives.  For Stephen Harper to say that he wasn’t going to Sri Lanka because of the human rights violations is buckets full of hog-wash.

Roxanne, so what has been the problem for your Conservatives to acknowledge this classic text book example of promoting human rights in Sri Lanka with the rescuing these 295.873 Tamils who were held as a human shield by Prabhakaran’s Tamil Tigers for 30 months?  And there lies the rub –   the disingenuous dishonesty by Canada’s Conservative government on Sri Lanka.  And who are you Conservatives trying to fool?  Most certainly not me!

And I take umbrage of Prime Minister Harper’s representative Deepak Obhrai, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affair, who was arrogant, and brash to disrespect the host by doing what they requested him not to do – to lay a wreath for the Tamil Tiger victims at Elephant Pass where three major battles were fought when the Tamil Tigers wanted to cut off the isthmus to isolate the northern Jaffna peninsula to claim it for  their separate mono-ethnic, racist Tamil state, Eelam.

Deepak was a boorish guest, and acted like a Canadian High School bully and a thug spoiling for a fight in the school’s backyard.  Not good.  I suppose, there would have been cheers by the separatist Tamil community in the GTA and consider Deepak as one their heroes, together with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Ministers John Baird and Jason Kenney.

And finally, here’s what I resent mostly about you Roxanne.   You say, “I can assure you that Canada is deeply concerned that the situation in Sri Lanka and has been monitoring and urging them to improve the situation and prevent violence against the Tamil peoples.”

Roxanne, that statement,   no doubt, has found approval for your membership as a Honourary Member of the elite ‘Society of Conservative Parliamentary Humbugs about Sri Lanka’.  Why, violence against the Tamil people, and why have you had difficulty to include the Sinhalese as well as the Muslims in that statement of caring.   They are children of the same God, and the Tamils are no Babes in the Woods, nor are they lily-white or Paragons of Virtue. The Tamil Tiger terrorists hacked with machetes and shot with Kalashnikovs and blew my Sinhalese people with claymore mines and suicide bombers to smithereens, and plucked infants from the young Sinhalese mothers arms  and bashed their heads on granite and charnokite  rocks and enjoyed watching the infants skulls open and gush out ketchup blood.   And these rascals shot and killed the Muslims with assault rifles while they were kneeling at prayer in their mosques.  Were you aware of all this?

This is my submission to you Roxanne as I do not believe in the Conservatives  nor their leader anymore.  I have been a card carrying Conservative since the Reform days, and I will let my membership lapse when December comes along.  And I have made up my mind not to vote for the Conservatives, even if I have to hold my nose walking to the ballot box, as the Conservative policies on Sri Lanka stinks to high heaven. Nor will I vote for the NDP and the Liberals for very good reasons and their attitude towards Sri Lanka which do not gel with my passion and psyche for my Motherland, Sri Lanka..

If you ever want to have a debate on this Sri Lanka file and Prime Minister Stephen Harper boycotting the Colombo Commonwealth Summit, count me in.   And I would love to have Deepak Obhrai, Jason Kenney and Patrick Brown on the opposite side of the table.

Sincerely,

Asoka Weerasinghe