We argue here, within the context of the HR-committee review, that (i) Canada has lost its capacity to influence Sri Lanka because it has been widely viewed, for several decades, as a hostile power by a majority of Sri Lankans. (i) The yardstick of Human-Rights accountability that can be applied to a prosperous, peaceful educated society cannot be blindly applied to societies that have been subject to two generations of war and thereby impoverished both economically and morally. (iii) In many cases, the “facts” as presented by AI and other advocacy agencies prejudge the issue, ignore the rights of the accused, and would not hold water in a judicial setting. (iv) That prosperous, peaceful nations like Canada, Australia and UK have done little to prosecute the LTTE ex-terrorists or fund-raising fellow travelers who live on their own soils. Even UN officials were complicit in money channeled to the UN. Western governments have not implemented accountability recommendations of Royal-commission recommendations to restore the rights of their own depressed peoples, while demanding accountability elsewhere. (v) The calls for accountability vehemently pursued by the Human-Rights NGOs are counterproductive and Shylockian in nature. The pound of flesh is dictated by strict retributive accountability; for instance, it does not ask how much harm and dissension it would create in the aftermath of such interventions, imposition of sanctions etc.

Indeed, 25 years prior to this discussion, AI worked by identifying individual prisoners of conscience. AI in its pristine days stood away from government patronage and political advocacy groups. Today the situation is very dubious, with close connections between AI and the US state department. In 2012 an ex-official of the US-state department, Suzanne Nossel who advocates `smart power’ based on ‘military force’ and R2P was executive Director of AI-USA. Madeleine Albright, ex-US secretary of state (who confided to Leslie Stahl that the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, including an estimated 500,000 children was a price “worth it” to weaken former U.S. ally, Saddam Hussein), was the lead speaker in an AI ‘shadow-summit’ held in Chicago in May 2012. AI mounted posters justifying NATO’s invasion of Afghanistan. These showed the extent of impairment of AI’s moral judgment by 2012. Suzanne Nossel resigned when protests mounted with Rowley and Right exposing Amnesty’s Shilling for US Wars. Amnesty’s current policy towards Sri Lanka is also well-aligned with that of the US-state department.

AI’s posters supporting the NATO invasion in the name of women’s rights (click to enlarge)   →

John Argue and Alex Neve of AI at a Sri-Lankan Tamil-separatist fund raiser. (click to enlarge) →

The U-tube movie establishes that AI has adopted the narrative of the Tamil Eelamists (click to enlarge)   →

In Canada itself, AI had no hesitation of joining with the Canadian Tamil Congress, alleged to be an off-spring of the now-banned World Tamil Movement (WTM), and openly accepting some $50,000 from Sri Lankan Tamil-separatist groups now living in Canada. So today, the original AI, fiercely independent of power blocks and advocacy groups, has now become a very different beast. Nevertheless, we are thankful to AI for its focus on Sri Lanka in the 1980s.
At that time there were two types of terror movements in Sri Lanka creating disappearances, assassinations etc., associated with rapid surge in unemployed youth populations. The first was an armed Sinhalese Marxist-youth insurrection that began in 1971; it was quelled without much bloodshed. But when it re-appeared in the late 1980s, it was put down with great brutality by the pro-Western `United National Party (UNP)’, with the tacit consent of the West, led by Ronald Regan. The other was the armed insurrection of Tamil youth inflamed by Tamil nationalism that developed into the LTTE. Both ideologies (Marxism and Tamil nationalism) exploited the high-demographic hump among youth. The LTTE initially had the support of Indian politicians, but by 1987 they had decided to rein them in and sent an army, the IPKF, into Sri Lanka.

Given AI’s long interest since 1971, since the first JVP (Marxist) youth uprising, it is surprising that AI had very little to say about the human-rights violations by the so-called ‘Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) that arrived in Sri Lanka to dis-arm the Tigers (LLTE) and end the conflict. That was surely a typical example of a failed R2P operation that went horribly wrong. Instead, a brutal affront between the IPKF and the LTTE led to HR-infractions that have been documented by the University Teachers for Human Rights-Jaffna (UTHR-J) , as well as other organizations. Similarly, in the aftermath of the the IPKF leaving Sri Lanka, 600 policemen who surrendered to the LTTE were massacred in cold-blood by the LTTE, thus triggering the Eelam war-II in 1990. However, many Human Rights NGOs (including HRW and AI) began to demand an investigation into these crimes after Karuna, the Eastern LTTE commander broke ranks and later jointed the government. Similarly, at that time the ICRC also pushed for a demilitarized zone in Jaffna and justified its silence regarding LTTE atrocities in the name of getting an accord!

Clearly, during his ten visits as a tourist, John has not been “followed” by the police – has he? He went about freely, and associated closely with people from the Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA), and other Western-funded “civil-society” activists who are looked at with great suspicion by the state because of their well-documented support of “peace at any cost” with the LTTE. He has, of course, not seen any of the horrible things that have been occurring there for the last 30 years. But people have told him these things rather freely. So is there no free speech compared to other countries at war or in civil turmoil (say, taking the yardstick of Egypt today) ?

There was a parliamentary national election in Sri lanka in 2004. John should mention the continued guerillas activity by the Tigers, and how The LTTE did not allow any opposition to the candidates of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) who where their political proxies, and election monitors reported this as a a serious infringement. The same TNA, strongly supported by the Tamil diaspora in Canada that ran the walk-a-thon for AI is again in power in the Northern province. In fact, the same land-owning class (and caste) has been continuously in power in the North since the 19th century. (So, the victory of the TNA in the 2013 provincial elections shows that voting in the North is still largely controlled by the same land-owning castes).

So, is Canada “engaging” the Sri Lankan government in a fruitful way by boycotting CHOGM? AS we discussed in in our introduction , and as will be clear from Mr. Samathanam’s testimony, the majority of Sri Lankans regard Canada as a hostile country, and have, unfortunately, disengaged themselves from Canada. Even Britain and Australia disagreed with Canada in how to engage with Sri Lanka. When the Lessons-Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) was launched, Alex Neve, John argue and friends refused to even make a token gesture and pick up the challenge of the Sri Lankan government. They cannot really “engage the Sri Lankan government”, since they have closed all avenues except just one mechanism – an invasive international inquiry forced on a regime which has strong support of Sinhalese, the “plantation” Tamils, Muslims as well as many urban Tamils in Colombo.
Read:

• The statement by Bishop Francis, a Tamil.  The following comment by the Bishop regarding the nature of the Tamil polity should be noted.
  Bishop Francis: There is this myth of a Tamil cause in Sri Lanka. To me there is no such thing because there are four different groups that speak Tamil totally different to one another. There are the Northern Tamils, the Eastern Tamils, and the Upcountry Tamils are different to both the Northern and Eastern Tamils. Then there are the urban Tamil communities and the Tamil speaking Muslim community. If somebody is talking about a Tamil cause, they should consider all these other groups as well. We have suffered enough from division. It is unfortunate that some people have been thinking only of the north. A bishop is a national leader. He must think of the country, not just his territory.
• Tambimuttu Jr. : Batticaloe political family scion beckons Tamils away from politics of hate; Island Sept 2011 – Part I.
• Media and the suffering of the Tamil people, by Noel Nadesan, Daily Mirror, 14-July-2011
  Noel Nadesan is a leader of the Tamil community who is the editor of Uthayam, the only Tamil-language newspaper in Australia.

Amnesty talks of Twenty Years of Make Believe’, while ‘granting’ that ‘there was the problem of the war’, as if it was the least of problems!. These twenty-years were a time when most Sri Lankans, kids included, were not certain that they would come home alive by evening, as even southern rural towns were targeted by Tiger suicide squads. It is a wonder that they even appointed commissions of inquiry under such dire circumstances. It is a wonder that they did not call up compulsory military service, take the draconian measures that Pierre Trudeau unleashed against the very first terrorist act by the FLQ, or introduce the universal surveillance that came into place in the US after 9/11. In fact, this ’20 year period’ was one where Canadian politicians allowed the Canadian Tiger organizations like the World Tamil Movement (WTM) or the Tamil Rehabilitation organization (TRO) to collect funds to support terrorism in Sri Lanka, breeding the same culture of impunity and irresponsibility that Canada displayed in regard to Sikh terrorism. In fact, the National Post fittingly carried the article Sri Lankan blood on Liberal hands – National Post 22-July-09. No investigation of the human rights abuses in Sri Lanka would be meaningful if the Cnandian funding sources were not investigated. This can be done in Canada. It is not just Canadian politicians, even the UN Knew that its money went to the LTTE but kept it hushed up.
John Argue’s statement every one of the commissions or investigations and inquiries established by the Sri Lankan government to examine human rights violations or establish what happened around particular incidents did not result in justice is even more forcefully applicable to the commissions of inquiry or redress in Canada, with respect to disappearances of aboriginal men and women, as well as women driven to prostitution and menial work, notably in BC, Alberta and Manitoba. We already pointed out that even Royal commissions remain academic exercises in Canada and Australia, even during times of peace and prosperity to the ruling classes. This ruling class has the luxury of pointing fingers at poor countries that are struggling with terrorism funded by `refugees’ harboured by these very same countries.
When has AI, HRW, and other NGO organizations called for sanctions against Canada for more than a century of repression of the rights of Native and depressed people? A mild, rare statement from time to time is perhaps the best they can muster? If AI could write “twenty years of make believe”, it should also have a document like “A century of make believe” against Canada or Australia. Does AI know the consequences of this? A majority of these depressed people (living in native reserves or in urban hovels) suffer from mental health, chronic kidney disease, tuberculosis, chronic criminality and alcoholism. These are families broken, lives wasted and killed. If you integrated the sum total over the last century, the numbers killed, and the level of torture is well beyond everything that AI has highlighted since its early efforts directed to the cold-war objective of attacking the soviet union’s treatment of dissidents.

AI, ICG,HRW etc., are made up of the same family of people, and indeed, they `come to similar conclusions’ as they depend on the information fed to them from the Colombo-based advocacy NGOs like the CPA, funded from outside the country. However, other more scholarly voices (e.g., John Thompson, President of the Mackenzie Institute in Ottawa , or Michael Roberts of Adelaide University paint a different picture . But AI, ICS, HRW etc had accepted the Tamil Diaspora narrative. They had already stated that nothing short of an `international investigation’ with their own inserts doing the job would satisfy them. If they could not even estimate the number of people held hostage by the Tigers in the Vanni, and if they could come out believing figures ranging from 40,000 to 100,000 as the casualty numbers in the last stages of the war, surely their judgment is questionable, and their inputs would be misleading in any inquiry. Darusman, and Sooka are examples of this, as they had already made statements giving their pre-dispositions, even before they were appointed to the UN Secy. General’s advisory panel, on the advise of individuals close to ICS, Campaign for Peace and Justice in Sri Lanka (CPJSL), and other NGOs who were running the Tamil-Diaspora narrative.

Sri Lanka was correct in rapidly appointing a commission for inquiry to lay down a template to guide its post-war program of reconciliation rather than retribution. Even today the government as well as Sri Lankan public opinion is not convinced that the “last months of the war were just horrendous in 2009”. Even Tamil public opinion in the south, and Tamil-Diaspora-dissent opinion in Canada do not buy this NGO picture painted by Gordon Weiss, Callum MacCrea, Darusman and others. The objective evidence (high-resolution satellite imagery, census data, ICRC food-supply figures, reports of witnesses who were in the theater of war at the last stages) etc., all go against the picture painted by the NGOs who have taken up the narrative of the Tamil diaspora, the TNA and proven LTTE-mouthpieces, ignoring the point of view of the southern, Eastern and plantation Tamil-speaking people in Sri Lanka .

This is misrepresentation. The UN gave a figure of ~70,000 and Panab Mukherjee used that figure in February 2009 when he called for a cease-fire. Mukherjee underscored India’s `grave concern over the humanitarian crisis that is building up with every passing day in Sri Lanka.’ He said that, reportedly, “over 70,000 civilians are trapped in the conflict zone in Sri Lanka and there is acute shortage of food, water and medicines”; the government made similar guesses, going up to 100,000 as time passed.
By early March, Lakdhar Brahmi, an ex-UN official and member of the ICG,spoke of 150,000 people who “are now trapped in a tiny pocket of land between Sri Lankan military forces, whose artillery shells regularly fall among them, and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who shoot at them if they try to escape. Although the UN failed abysmally in dealing with humanitarian catastrophes in the Gaza, Beirut, Darfur and other places, Brahmi suggests UN intervention, but glossed over the unsolved question of how to force the Tigers to release the hostages. Ms. Navi Pillai has also quoted various figures.
Actually, the misrepresentation and hiding of facts came from the NGOs and UN officials. The ICRC, and the UN through their food supply via the WFA had access to LTTE areas not open to the government. The UN/WFP and the ICRC pulled out of the Vanni only on the 15th of May, 2009. The Western agencies knew that the LTTE was holding the population hostage, and it did not want to put too much blame on the LTTE and so they concealed the figures that they knew. Initially, the NGOs claimed that the govt. was trying to discredit the Tigers by giving captive-population figures bigger than the UN figures.
Even on 21st April 2009, ICRC director of operations Pierre Krahenbuhl, in a press Briefing on Sri Lanka stated: “The hostilities are now taking place in a very narrow stretch of land along the eastern coastline of Sri Lanka. And within that narrow stretch, which had been declared a `no-fire zone’ by the government, tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped. At present we put their estimate at 50,000“. It is this sort of statements, made by NGO officials like Weiss that are also used in the reports by Darusman, Soosa and others. And yet, John Argue puts the blame on the government.
At the same time the NGOs and the UN began to talk of an impeding ‘humanitarian catastrophe (which was averted by the army breaching the LTTE earth bund that prevented people from escaping. Although the UN and the ICRC chief gave low figures, the UN/WFP and the ICRC shipped more than enough food for the 300,000 people held in captivity, as we discussed in detail in reviewing the claims of Deputy Director-HRW.

As John Thompson of the Mackenzie Institute had remarked, the ` Sri Lankan government fended off NGOs it didn’t trust (with reason)’. The impression in Sri Lanka is that the agents of these NGOs come to Colombo, and join up with their link-NGOs in Colombo, and go about the country uncritically amassing ‘material’ they can use to buttress their pre-conceived beliefs. They almost always head North, while ignoring the 75% of the population who may also have equally valid rights-grievances against the government, or other dominant players. But they do not figure in John Argue’s narrative. In out view, it is very unlikely that he could have contributed any useful information to the LLRC commission, in spite of his 10 tourist visits to the country.

It would be interesting to ask if the public opinion in Europe would have allowed a call by some group of people (say, ex-Nazi Diaspora living in South America) to appoint a commission two years after WWII, reviewing the firebombing of Dresden, the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the sacrifice of Eastern European nations to Stalin, or whether any useful outcomes would have arisen if Churchill, Truman and others had been tried as war criminals, even in a mock trial.
There is a significant public opinion against the atrocities that happened in Iraq. But Madeline Albright, Bush administration officials etc., are bedfellows of Amnesty International, and the Chilcot report cannot even be published. So what is the moral yardstick used by John Argue? He clearly has no moral yardstick or moral compass in his public stance.

John Argue says that Amnesty’s great problem is that it appointed the LLRC without any consultation with the Tamils. There are Tamil members in government. Over 50% of the Tamils live in the south, and not in the claimed “exclusive homeland”. It is the remaining Tamil people, less than 5% of the total population that John Argue is referring to as “The Tamils”, ignoring the southern Tamils, plantation Tamils, and the Eastern province Tamils. In 2010 the TNA had no mandate to speak “for the Tamils”, as they had meekly sanctioned every atrocity committed (e.g., killing of the foreign minister Kadirgamar) by the LTTE. They lived in Colombo, in fear of the Tigers, and followed the dicta of the Diaspora!
The LLRC included respected Tamil members, and there were hosts of Tamils who spoke in front of the commission, and brought out their grievances without fear.
However, the separatists and other advocacy NGOs, funded from outside, followed the dicta of the Diaspora and declared from the outset that they will boycott the LLRC. This attitude was underlined by AI, ICG, HRW etc., who are also not interested in a ‘home-made’ LLRC. but have demanded from the out set for an external inquiry.
However, in less than 2 years after the launching of the National plan of action (POA) to implement the LLRC, tangible progress has been made as outlined in a document presented in Geneva, January 2014. In fact, it is far more than was achieved by Canadian, Australian or British Royal commissions in similar time periods and in prosperous no-war conditions. In fact, when it comes to investigations regarding war crimes in Iraq, NOTHING has happened in Britain (e.g., Chilcot commission), USA etc.

It should now be mentioned that on the 13 of November, Mr. Samathanam, in a decidely political move, caught headlines in Canada to coincide with the Commonwealth heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) in Colombo. That day he declared his intention to take his case to the UN Human-rights committee. He cannot sue any Sri Lankan officials in a Canadian court (even in absentia) as they have ‘state-sector immunity’.
According to the National Psot, documents on Red Cross, Government of Canada and Sri Lankan government letterheads support Mr. Samathanam’s account of detention. They make no mention of torture. After Mr. Samathanam’s case was published, the Sri Lankan high-commission had submitted to the Canadian parliamentary commission Sri lanka’s position, and details about the court case about Mr. Samathanam. However, the Parliamentary sub-committee has not made them available as public documents.

According to the diplomat Richard Colvin, Canadian-held captives in Afghanistan have been handed over to afghan authorities for interrogation and certain torture . It is well established that the Canadian government has incarcerated individuals and acquiesced in torture, kidnapping etc. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association website carries a news item stating that “Canada has transferred detainees to the United States and Afghanistan with full knowledge that the detainees would be in extreme danger of torture and that Canada uses and shares intelligence likely obtained through torture”. John McNamer, an investigative journalist, provides over 250 documents in support of his allegations that he has submitted to the international criminal court (ICC) in November 2013 ”

The out-sourced torture of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati, Muayyed Nureddin, and Maher Arar by Canadian Security forces are far better known than the Afghan and other cases.

As Canadians, we need to compare Mr. Samathanam’s case with similar events, e.g., that of Maher Arar, here in Canada. Maher Arar had associated with Abdullah Almalik, who was under suspicion for exporting electronic communication equipment, just as Mr. Samathanam was accused of, by Sri Lanka. Maher Arar was kidnapped from a New York airport when he was in transit, and taken to Syria. Countries like Syria and Libya have colluded with western powers as hosts for out-sourcing interrogation under torture. The extra-ordinary rendition involved collusion between the CIA and Canadian security services. Once the case came to the public, the Canadian Prime minister had to apologize and compensate Mr. Arar handsomely, some 5 years after the event. The US has refused to acknowledge the case, despite its obligation to do so under the UN Convention Against Torture and other human rights treaties. The US supreme court has conveniently declined to hear the case, while Arar remains permanently on US no-fly lists. Amnesty International in the USA has done very little except to issue the usual press release, launch a petition and an `apology button’. It has not effectively hounded the US on accountability. Furthermore, it is well known that the US has refused to provide a `body-count’ of the numbers dead, civilians or combatants (from the Iraqi side, in its war against Iraq and) in its theaters of war.
According to Maher Arrar, CBC news, Sep 08, 2011, “the fact that there is still co-operation between some Western governments and dictatorships, as long as there’s double standards there’s going to be grounds for those groups to recruit people. And I hope that Western governments understand that.”
Arar said when he was deported it changed Canadian public attitudes, reminding them suspicion is not guilt and intelligence services do not tell the whole truth. Today we find that it is not just ‘intelligence services that are gulity of falsifications and half-truths. Human-Rights agencies also do not tell the truth. They tell the narrative” that fits their cause which is most well-funded. They, like the inquisitors of a forgotten age, pick on half-truths and present them as the moral truth justifying their witch hunts. Just as medieval governments worked with the inquisitors, modern HR-agencies work hand in hand with powerful nations who link their state-department officials to high positions in AI, HRW, ICG etc..

The Canadian government apology came some five years after Maher Arar being kidnapped by government agents, and some 4 years after his release from the courts, in a situation where Canada was not at war. Mr. Samathanam was released by Sri Lankan courts very recently. Mr. Samathanam had access to Canadian consular services and claims that, perhaps because of that he was not really tortured. If compared with the Canadian yardstick, Samathanam should result in a Sri Lankan government apology and compensation by the year 2018. However, just as Maher Arar could not get an apology from the US, a foreign state, Sri lanka becomes a foreign state to Mr. Samathanam as he is now a Canadian citizen. Mr. Samathanam’s wife can work for redress in Sri Lanka, just as Maher Arar’s wife did in Canada.

When foreign individuals engage in political activities in any country, it is normal that the government takes note. The situation in Sri lanka has been much worse. The government is many-times burnt by NGOs who have surreptitiously aided the Tigers. Even UN officials allowed their funds to fall into the hands of the Tigers. Other NGOs allowed the Tigers to use their vehicles, communication equipment, or earth-moving equipment that they had brought in for “reconstruction”, to fall into the hands of the Tigers. Many officials of Amensty International are known to closely associate with Colombo NGOs like the ‘Center for Policy Alternatives’, ‘National Peace Council’, `Transparency International’ etc. These are justly or unjustly regarded as anti-national un-elected organizations that have always stood for appeasing the Tigers, and down-playing LTTE-political assassinations. So they are viewed as hostile bodies who are to be excluded in the aftermath of the conflict. This is the wish of most people, including many urban Tamils, and politicians have bowed to it by not allowing certain foreign NGOs. Canada also routinely excludes NOGs that it claims are linked to various ‘liberation movements’ from the Middle East.
In contrast, the SL-government is not rigorous enough to exclude individual AI activists like John Argue, as long as they do not appear to be engaged in political activities. John was not harassed by the police or spied upon, although his phone or Wi-Fi linked devices may well be tapped at Canadian airports.

John Argue’s view of a ‘balanced” approach seems to be to say that they have also criticized the “Tigers”. What is needed is to ensure that the criticisms are not based on cherry-picking facts and selecting only those that fit their narrative, while ignoring facts which are inconvenient to them. Furthermore, the use of false images and impressions to push falsehoods or half truths as whole truths happen easily as AI, ICG, HRW etc., have no mechanisms to allow independent scholars to interrogate their claims in a judicial setting. These NGOs, even if they began with seemingly lofty ideals, have now become self-appointed advocacy groups who push the views of those who fund them

To explain what we mean, let us look at some specifics. The CPJSL was one of the NGOs that pushed for the UN-Darusman panel. It, and many NGOs like the ‘Center for Policy Alternatives’ (CPA) in Colombo, (and indeed AI and HRW too) use the barbed wire picture of the IDP-camps in Sri lanka to imply that the IDPs were held in `concentration camps’. Even the UN refugee camps use such barbed wire. And it is needed to protect the IDPs from their enemies, to quarantine the the IDPs who likely carry infectious diseases, and to screen-out terrorists who were pseudo-civilians. In fact, Jim MacDonald’s report (19th Dec. 2011) tagged AI also use the barbed-wire picture in his critique of the LLRC report. It is because of this type of misrepresentations by NGOs that John Thompson of the Mackenzie Institute stated the following:
“Crude, guarded camps were surrounded by barbed wire and the Tigers were quick to declare these as concentration camps and allege that Bergen-Belsen and Dachau had been reborn. The story has failed to resonate in the outside world, partly because the Sri Lankan government fended off NGOs it didn’t trust (with reason), but also because by May 2010 some 74% of the estimated 300,000 persons had already been released“. Unfortunately, AI, ICS, HRW, CPJSL etc., continue such false narratives.

It seems that the Sri Lankan authorities have also stated that, if a review is to be made, then it is meaningless to cover just the final weeks of the conflict. They have repeatedly said that such a review needs to cover the previous decades. The accountability has to also extent to those who funded the war, engaged in the war and immigrated out of Sri Lanka. Even people who have moved out of reach of a given jurisdiction can still be named.

While the suggestions of the SC-AI is correct in an idealistic way, we think they are way off the mark. What is the yard-stick of post was behaviour that SC-AI is using? Is he expecting the rule of law, accountability etc., that often do not seem to exist even in peaceful, prosperous western societies to hold in Sri lanka emerging from 30 years of internecine conflict? Britain has refused to even publish the Chilcot report, let alone attempt to implement it or take up accountability. The history of attempts to force accountability on various crimes in the Irish-British, Kal conflict is a saga in itself. Canada too has many cases that the journalist John McNamer wants to submit to the ICC. Even though Canada finally investigated and rendered justice after 5 years to Maher Arrar, the US has refused to even admit the existence of a case.
So, the big nations have made accountability into a joke.
In the case of Sri lanka, we have a society where at least two generations have been brutalized by war, while the ethnic conflict started much earlier, with the first race riot in 1939. A thirty year war produces a society where there are hand grenades, AK47s, Kalashnikovs and other illegal weapons, arm deserters; corrupt politicians and power figures emerge in all war zones. The external intervention approach (preached by the R2P gurus) was shown to be an abysmal failure when the Indian Peace keeping force turned into a colossal error generating more crimes than what it tried to correct. It will also take at least two more generations for the society to sort itself out. Th solutions proposed by the “international community”and Canada in particular are wrong, counterproductive and un-implementable without widespread inhuman consequences.

Neverrheless, failing the one-to-one approach, the government has appointed an all-party parliamentary commission which is being boycotted by the TNA.
Roy Samathanam’s litany of race riots
While these riots undoubtedly took place, there were always two=-sides to the coin. Nevertheless, we agree that the successive governments failed to establish law and order at each incident and allowed violence to spiral. But separation and the creation of an Eelam would not sole the problem, it would in fact lead to more problems.
Many informed commentators (e.g., K. M. de Silva, Gerald Pieris, Sebastian Rasalingam, Dyan Jayatilleke, D. B. S. Jeyaraj) felt that even if an Eelam were created, it would still lead to explosive border confrontations, battles for fishing rights in the sea, for water which comes from the central hills outside the proposed Eelam, and so on. These sober observations were put aside once India and the West began to support ‘a political solution’ with the Tigers, and dumped large sumps of money to change public opinion to fit the Norwegian stance formulated by Solheim and Balasingham.

We think blanket statements like “Sri Lankans responsible”, or earlier statements by John Argue and others about “without any consultation with the Tamils” need to be revisited with care. Tamils living in Sri lanka are also Sri Lankans, constituting about 12%, while the region claimed to be the “exclusive Tamil homeland” had a population of about 5%. Furthermore, all Tamils are definitely not supporters of the program of action that the International NGO groups and the National Tamil Alliance (TNA) have been advocating. For instance, see (the quote from Bisop Francis). The TNA was the political mouth piece of the Tigers and their narrative has not changed.
Nevertheless, we need to ask (i) if the accusations made against the the rulers of Sri lanka (Not Sri lankans in toto) are actually valid. The sittings of the HR-subcommittee have confined itself to hearing just one side of the story. We have painstakingly attempted to show in these documents how the “facts” used by the presenters are in fact in largely incorrect (ii) if the plan of action will lead to peace in Sri lanka, or simply a Shylockian approach to justice which leads to further violence in Sri Lanka. The hearings so far have failed to recognize this and ask how the aftermath of the exercise would be.

However, as we well know, Canada has not succeeded in even dealing with many individuals who have hidden their criminal histories and obtained refugee status. The legal process, run by Human-rights lawyers drag on and on over points of law. In the end courts fail to deal with such individuals. It can be documented that many ex-members of the now banned World-Tamil-Movement (WTM) have gone through this process. Some of them have formed Human-Rights fronts and work hand-in-hand with the established HR-NGOs. So, even though we fully endorse the second objective (case-by case action) stated by SG-AI in response to Hon. Irwin Cotler, it does not happen in the real world.
The situation is equally bleak in the UK and many other countries, where ex-LTTE leaders have written autobiographical books where they boast of how they were engaged in training suicide cadre. But there has been no move to proceed in the manner that stated by the SC-AI.

Again, what is the yardstick that John Argue is using? Sri Lanka, emerging from a long war, should be compared with neighbouring countries, even though they have had relative peace. But that yardstick, Sri lanka seems to run fair elections with much less violence than India, Bangladesh or Pakistan. Even comparing with Canada, John Argue would know that there are always some claims of computer fixing (“computer jilmart”) by the Marxist party that lost. But unlike the’Robot phone’ scandals here, the ‘computer jilmat proved to be a pure fabrication.

What we have pointed out is that the “bilateral relationship” that Mr. Neve, the SI-AI is talking about, has been fractured for about two decades or more. Since about the mid 1990s, Sri Lankans have begun to believe, rightly or wrongly, that Canada is a hostile nations. If you are regarded with hostility, you are unlikely to he heard. We just have to look back into the testimony of Mr. Samathanam, where he tells us how the other prisoners reacted to him:
After that day, they remanded me to the Welikada prison, the main prison in Sri Lanka, and … put me in with other prisoners, Sinhalese prisoners. I got continuous abuse from them and from the guards who were saying, “You are Canadian…”.
That is, there was group hostility, because he was from Canada, perceived as a hostile country. So, even when Canada wishes to present proposals that seem eminently reasonable to some Canadian parliamentarians, Canada will not be heard. The recent not-so-friendly visits of the Hon. Deepak Oberai, the Hon. Ms. Rathika Sitsabaiesan, the strong rebukes of the Hon. Minister John Baird, and the ‘boycott’ pronouncements of the Hon. Mr. Harper, the Prime minster, will find no reception what so ever in Colombo. Furthermore, they are widely seen as a prelude to Mr. Harper’s intention to cut Cnadian funding to Commonwealth initiatives. Furthermore, just as the Indian prime minster’s absence was understood in terms of Ramil Nadu politics, Mr. Harper’s absence was understood in terms of Tamil-diapora politics translating into Canadian hostility against the Sri Lankan government.
In contrast, when the Hon. Joe Daniels, the Hon. Chungen Leung and Marlene Gallyot (Special Assistant to Hon. Joe Daniel for Sri Lanka) visited Sri Lanka from 8th to 11th January, 2012, they had significant success in reaching the ear of the government.

In our view, it is skilled diplomacy, and not wielding the big stick or behaving like the infamous bull in the china shop, that will work with Sri Lanka. Its government has the support of the majority community and a significant section of the tamil speaking people, especially in those who live in the south. It successfully won a long and difficult battle against terrorism, by ignoring Eric Solheim, David Milbrand, Bernard Kouchner, and Hillary Clinton who demanded a ‘political settlement’ with the Tiger leader even at the last stages of the battle. So is it any wonder that the SL-government would ignore the Canadian thrust delivered through emissaries perceived to be hostile to it?