Mahinda Gunasekera Tambrook Drive Agincourt, Ontario anada

By E-mail    
January 10, 2014

 Hon. Thomas Mulcair, MP, Leader of the NDP

Leader of the Opposition

House of Commons, Ottawa

Dear Mr. Mulcair,

Re: Puerile Antics of MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan and Comments of MP Paul Dewar

I am writing to bring to your attention the foolish antics of MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan on her recent visit to Sri Lanka as reported in the media, which I trust you are fully aware of. She is a caucus member of the NDP and the Deputy Whip of your Party, and should know better how she should conduct herself on a private visit undertaken by her to that country. She had travelled there on a tourist visa without disclosing the fact that she was a Canadian parliamentarian ignoring accepted protocol of informing Sri Lanka’s mission in Ottawa, and try to engage in the internal political affairs of Sri Lanka during her stay there. 

We are aware of her hostile actions against Sri Lanka both within the House of Commons and outside, and also her links to the proscribed Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from pictures displayed in her facebook since eliminated.  Her meetings with politicians in Sri Lanka who still advocate the break up of Sri Lanka and the creation of a separate state exclusively for the Tamil community were reported with pictures in the Tamilnet, a propaganda website of the Tamil separatist bloc. She was obviously representing herself to them as a Canadian parliamentarian from the NDP. What I and other Canadians would like to know is whether she was tasked by the NDP to carry out an anti-Sri Lanka agenda to prop up the Tamil separatists, or was she pursuing an agenda based on her ties to the Tamil Tiger rump in the diaspora who are seeking to punish Sri Lanka for defeating their military and terrorist wing?

Following the mass scale demonstrations carried out by the supporters of the Tamil Tigers in 2009 in the major cities of Toronto and Ottawa disrupting the prevailing peace and good order, I remember how the NDP and the other federal political parties like all good opportunists jumped on the band wagon to eke out some political advantage by backing the demands of the demonstrating mob to call the military action against the terrorist tigers as a ‘genocidal act’ and calling for the immediate halt to the fighting.  The Canadian politicians were basing their assessments on the wild charges being made by the pro-Tamil Tiger groups which were nothing but unsubstantiated allegations which are being used as a weapon against Sri Lanka.  It was the Tamil Tigers who launched attacks on both the security forces and the civilian population from December 2005 and thrust the war on Sri Lanka when they forcibly cut off irrigation and drinking water to 30,000 farming families at Mahavil Oya (Mavilaru) in August 2006. ( Refer Human Rights Watch report of March 15, 2006 wherein they spoke of large scale extortion of members of the Canadian Tamil community and the rest of the diaspora in western countries by pro-Tamil Tiger groups to launch their final war of liberation. )

Mr. Asoka Weerasinghe has in his letter to you referred to aspersions cast by your Foreign Affairs Critic, MP Paul Dewar on the Sri Lankan authorities in a statement by him to Huff Post to the effect that MP Rathika S was being closely followed and asked to take care in whom she meets with on her private visit. As far as the Sri Lankan authorities are concerned, MP Rathika S did not cross their radar, whilst it was the Tamilnet which covered her various meetings. Mr. Weerasinghe has also referred to MP Paul Dewar as a Sri Lankan basher who has little knowledge of Sri Lankan affairs.  I was associated with Mr. Weerasinghe when we jointly made presentations to the Parliamentary Sub-Committee on Foreign Affairs, that MP Dewar left the table without responding to Mr. Weerasinghe’s submission that it was a humanitarian exercise by Sri Lanka’s security forces. 

The Sri Lankan forces were not only tasked with the goal of defeating the armed Tamil Tiger terrorists and regaining the usurped territory illegally held by the LTTE, but also rescuing the nearly 300,000 Tamil civilians who were being exploited for their labour, forcibly conscripted to replace fallen cadres, and also used as a human shield at gun point.  They accomplished in rescuing 295,873 internally displaced Tamil civilians who were cared for in welfare camps and resettled in their villages after demining the land of over a million and a half anti-personnel mines and other munitions planted by the Tamil Tigers, putting infrastructure in place and repairing/rebuilding their homes within a short space of three years.  Defeating the Tamil Tigers also upheld the vitally important ‘Right to Life’ of all of her citizens from all communities (Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, Malay, Burgher, etc.) who were constantly targeted for the past three decades by the planting of bombs in buses, trains, shopping centres, and subjected to claymore mine attacks, suicide bomber attacks, midnight machete attacks, etc. by the Tamil Tiger terrorists who were supported by Canadian Tamils including Rathika as proven by her facebook pictures with funding to carry on the carnage in Sri Lanka, in pursuit of an exclusive separate state for the Tamils to be carved out of Sri Lanka’s sovereign territory by force of arms. Success of the humanitarian military operations against the Tamil Tiger terrorists resulted in the dawn of peace in Sri Lanka, and a period of rapid economic development along with programs to heal the wounds of conflict and bring about reconciliation and harmony within the country.

The NDP and the other federal political parties can either continue to echo the unproven wild allegations being made by the active rump of the Tamil Tigers in Canada and the western world to receive any benefits from vast funds earned by them through illicit activities and extortion of members of the expat Tamil communities, and in the hope of winning their votes in the Greater Toronto Area. You could play along with MP Rathika Sitsabaisen’s antics and badger Sri Lanka with the likes of MP Paul Dewar and the rest of the blundering Sri Lanka bashers who will only earn the wrath of the Canadian public. Alternatively, you could help Sri Lanka to build on the existing peace and fully recover from the devastating 30 plus years of conflict. 

 Yours sincerely,

 Mahinda Gunasekera