Sri Lankan Army Peacekeepers
Posted on November 17th, 2017
Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . K1J 6G1 Canada
15 November 2017
Michael Cooke, The Editor
Toronto Star
1 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
MSE 1E6
Dear Editor:
Having returned from abroad after an absence of just over two weeks, I have just read your article Sri Lanka’s military aren’t ready to be peacekeepers” which was published in your Toronto Star on 3rd November 2017. That was Hogwash!
It happens that you had reported the words spoken by the Member of Parliament
Gary Anandasangaree (GA), who I gather, happens to be a Tamil from Sri Lanka.
So we are now on to Part 2 of the ‘Canadian Parliament’s Tamil Tiger Blarney Gong Show’. The first one happened on the evening of February 4, 2009, when an all party Emergency Debate on Sri Lanka happened in the Parliamentary Chambers called by the late leader of the NDP, Jack Layton. It was a stupid Tamil vote soliciting Ha! Ha!! Sri Lanka bashing exercise, as they were going after the Tamil Tiger terrorists who were on the run before they we annihilated militarily on May 19th on the shores of the Nandikadal lagoon along the east coast.
Of all the Sri Lankan Tamils residing in the Greater Toronto Area, it would be Gary A, a lawyer and a political activist, who would know best that eradicating the ruthless Tamil Tiger terrorists by the Sri Lankan Army, brought Peace to that beautiful island nation that Gary A and I come from. The Sri Lankan Army knows best what Peace is, and they know how to achieve it too, having got it for the island peoples after a 27-year long war with the separatist Tamil Tiger terrorists who hemorrhaged. that island nation with their heavy armoury, truck bombs, suicide bombers, claymore mines and over 1.5 million buried land-mines
GA knows best that annihilating the Tamil Tiger terrorists by the Sri Lankan Army gave back the right-to-life to 21 million peoples, his and mine, which was hijacked by the Tamil Tiger terrorists for 27 bloodying years, What more credentials does GA honestly want to say that the Sri Lankan Army is ready for Peacekeeping.
Here are three more valid credentials of the Sri Lankan Army to prove to you, Editor, that the Sri Lankan Army is ready to take over the responsibility of Peacekeeping. They have proved to the world, that they are the best Army that was, is and will be in the future to accept the role of peacekeeping, and Member of Parliament Gary Anandasangaree was absolutely wrong, wrong and wrong with his unfortunate comment about the Sri Lankan Army.
GA knows pretty well, that it was the Sri Lankan Army who rescued 295,873 Tamil civilians from the clutches of the ruthless Tamil Tiger terrorists by the end of the war, who were used as a human shield. They were herded from the west coast to the east coast like unwashed cattle under the scorching Jaffna sun for three months. And who rescued them may I ask? It were the Sri Lankan Army, an act of peace building by saving innocent Tamil lives from the flying Tamil Tiger bullets and feeding them to sustain their starving lives.
GA also knows very well how the Sri Lankan soldiers carried the Tamil GrandMums and GrandDads in their arms like babies and ran them to safety dodging the Tamil Tiger bullets. An act of valour and courage risking their own lives to save Tamil lives and keeping Peace.
GA also knows that it were the Sri Lankan Army soldiers who joined the local Sinhalese to cook a million hearty meals – breakfast, lunch and dinner, every day to sustain the lives of the 295,873 rescued Tamils housed in temporary shelters. If these acts by the Sri Lankan Army navigating the suicidal path of flying-bullets and claymore mines detonating conflict, to life saving peace, I am not sure what it is then. I am not quite sure what this Member of Parliament is griping about.
All these acts by the Sri Lankan Army is proof-positive that they are Masters of providing security, and the political and peace building support to countries to make the difficult early transitions from conflict to Peace and Peacekeeping.
I have proved positive that this member of Parliament’s statement of ‘Sri Lanka’s military aren’t ready to be peacekeepers’ is a bunch of baloney hanging from a delicatessen stall in the Byward Market. I have no difficulty to dismiss this statement as poppycock without any more consideration.
As for the response from Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner in Canada, Ahmed Jawad, it is sound, honest and foolproof. He is a career diplomat and not a lackey of Sri Lanka’s President nor the Prime Minister, which would have made his thesis suspect. It would be difficult for the Member of Parliament to pick holes in it. I hope he would use it as a learning curve on the subject
As a concluding remark, I hope and wish that your Editorial Board would consider rebooting your policy on Sri Lanka and stop providing ink for such negative and malicious Statements on Sri Lanka. It is time that the Toronto Star graduate to a higher level in journalism and provide your readers a balanced account on issues on Sri Lankan -Tamil separatism as fed by its sympathizers of this Eelam movement.
Sincerely,
Asoka Weerasinghe
Cc. Sri Lanka High Commissioner, Ahmed Jawad
November 17th, 2017 at 11:34 am
Well said Asoka, as always..!
Gary A, like his fellow LTTE sympathisers, is nothing but opportunistic politician who try to score points with the Canadian Tamil community. This idiot, and his fellow SL bashers have done nothing for their Tamil brothers and sisters in SL, who have suffered in the hands of blood-thirty Tiger murderers.
All these LTTE parasites in Canada are enjoying the high-life thanks to blood money they had collected for the last two decades. They have no concerns for the Tamils in Sri Lanka, except they still use them to continue their political agenda in Canada.
Unfortunately, Canadian mainstream political parties and their members shamefully exploiting the ethnic communities by giving into their demands in return of their votes.