Asoka Weerasinghe (Mr.) Kings Grove Crescent . Ottawa . Ontario . K1J 6G1 . Canada
15 September 2025
Mr. Volker Turk
UN High Commissioner Human Rights (UNHRC)
Palais Wilson
52bRue des Paquis
CH1 201, Geneva
Switzerland
Dear High Commissioner Volker Turk:
Re: Your Report at Session 60: UNHRC on protecting Tamil Asylum-seekers and Refugees from Sri Lanka.
Before I deal with the above topic, I want to let you know that I have just reached Cloud 9 having read the news item –‘UNHRC: 43 countries stand with Sri Lanka’ against the blasphemous Report that you Authored. I rejoice and sing :
“Joy to the world minus UNHRC
Sri Lanka’s Lord Vijitha Herath has arrived.
Let Earth receive this Lord
Let every heart prepare him room
And Heaven and Nature sing….
And heaven and Earth sing….
And heaven and Nature sing.
Joy to this world minus
Nikki Haley’s cess-pool UNHRC.”
“Asylum and Refugee Protection:
The UNHRC works to protect the rights of asylum-seekers and refugees and advocates for Sri Lanka to ratify the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, as well as develop a national asylum system.”
Volker, are you telling the world that the Government of Sri Lanka is not
Protecting the rights of Tamil asylum-seekers and refugees?” Volker that’s a load of Austrian Hogswash. That’s strings of baloney hanging from a deli store in the heart of Austria that you come from.
Here’s the story that you should know from me, Asoka Weerasinghe, who worked
for the Sri Lanka Government in Ottawa’s High Commission, as a senior officer.
I gave up a career in Communications as a permanent employee of the Canadian Government for 20-years, when President Premedasa of Sri Lanka wanted me to take over the Communications Portfolio between July 1989 and the end of June 1994. I never knew him, but he was acting on the recommendations of Defence Minister Ranjan Wijerathne (who was assassinated by Tamil Tigers,) and A.J. Ranasinghe the Deputy High Commissioner at the Mission in Ottawa.
I had to deal with these Tamil Refugees who came to the High Commission on Range Road in Ottawa, seeking travel documents to return to Sri Lanka
to visit their dying parents from Cancer, when Diplomat K.B. Fernando, the First
Secretary was not available who dealt with Immigration matters.
What you did not know was there happened to be a lethal pandemic in the months of November, December, and January in Sri Lanka that afflicts only the parents of the Tamils…a Cancer virus that seems to be in incubation between February and November each year which almost kills the Tamil parents and not the Sinhalese, Burgers and other minorities. I am not a medical person and it was hard for me to comprehend. It was a bit suspicious.
High Commissioner Turk, the Tamil ‘Convention Refugees came to the High Commission in droves with telegrams in their hands which usually said – “PLEASE COME HOME IMMEDIATELY, FATHER DYING OF CANCER HE WON’T LIVE ANOTHER WEEK“; or “MOTHER SERIOUSLY SICK WITH CANCER COME HOME IMMEDIATELY SHE WILL DIE SOON”.
Volker, contrary to what you think of us Sri Lankan Diplomats; we all had compassionate tear- jerking hearts, as big as a World Soccer Cup football. So I and K.B. Fernando provided them with travel documents on compassionate grounds, as long as they provided us with a Police certificate saying that they had reported they lost their legal passports in the plane or in a rickety corroding fishing trawler on their way to Ka-Na-Da which they thought had roads paved in gold, and roads lined with trees with leaves of green dollar bills, and plenty of ATM machines at every street corner that they thought could pick money from, like in a cookie jar. And an affidavit from a ‘legal’ person or a JP confirming their legitimate name, date of birth and their nationality.
And here is the TRUTH Volker. Some Tamil refugees were smart to have photocopies of the passports that they lost, and affidavits with their anglicized names to identify that they were not the ones who had ‘disappeared’ . So Harischandran Dorai was Harry Dorai; Sammuganathan Nadaraja now was Sam Raja; Periyadorai Sivalingam was now Perry Lingam, and Krishantha Jayalingam was Chris Jaylin and so forth. That is how the ‘disappeared Tamils’ had incarnated and introduced themselves to you all cunning-humbugging fools at UNHRC.
And here is another TRUTH Volker, in case you are preoccupied trying to figure out about Sri Lankan Tamils you thought were discriminated and persecuted and now running away not to their rightful Mother India which was only 18 miles away from South India, but to Ka-Na-da which was 8530 miles away over the Indian and Atlantic oceans, which they thought had roads paved with gold, and trees with green-dollar leaves lining along roads.
On January 7, 1993, TheToronto Sun had a news item bylined by Tom Godfrey, headlined REFUGEE SCAM RIPPED.
“A Sri Lankan Embassy official says thousands of his countrymen
are scamming their way into Canada as refugee claimants.
Embassy official Asoka Weerasinghe said many claimants show up at the embassy seeking travel documents to go back to Sri Lanka within weeks of entering Canada as Convention Refugees.
Immigration spokesperson Bianca Bertrand said some Sri Lankans are returning to their homeland to sell their Canadian documents. Many return to claim refugee status again under a different name.
Last year Weerasinghe said 8442 claimants visited the Ottawa High Commission for travel documents. Only 3,208 were issued……
It’s estimated the immigration department will spend $200 million to process the 4,000 Sri Lankan claimants. It cost about $50,000 to process each claimant.”
SO THAT YOU KNOW, Volker Turk, UNHRC High Commissioner,
TAMIL REFUGEES COME TO CANADA IS NOT BECAUSE THEY WERE PERSECUTED AND DISCRIMINATED IN SRI LANKA, BUT BECAUSE IT IS A MILLION CANADIAN DOLLAR BUSINESS.
“HERE IS A TRUE STORY THAT YOU OUGHT TO KNOW. so that you do not tarnish the good name of my Mother Lanka.”
Let me roll your days back to a Summer’s work day in June 1991. I interviewed a 24-year old Tamil refugee who came to see me with his uncle at the Sri Lankan High Commission in Ottawa. He had come to apply for his third Sri Lankan passport in three months. He said he had lost the other two in the previous two months.
I asked, “I don’t believe you lost the previous two passports. Was it 20 or 25 thousand you got for each?”
“Twenty. Sir” was his response. The uncle butted in. “Sir, I don’t think he understood your question properly!”
I did a quick calculation and told the Uncle. “Of course he did. He seems to be a smart businessman. What you have in him is a millionaire in your family at age 24. Convert that 40,000 Canadian dollars into Sri Lankan rupees at 15-rupees for one Canadian dollar. I am sorry, I cannot get involved and support his illegal business acumen.
“What he did was sell a Canadian Government document as the passport is a Sri Lankan Government property which was issued to him as the legal caretaker of it, and not to sell and make money.
“I will get an advisory from the Director of Immigration in Colombo as to what I should do for your request for the third passport. Phone me in two days. I will let you know of our decision for your application.”
Volker, the decision was to penalize this Tamil refugee for a year and not issue
another passport. I shared that information with the Tamil 24-year old millionaire.
With this bit of truthful information, I think it is time that you at UNHRC cut out that arrogant, ignorant crap about the Tamil asylum seekers and their relationship with the Sri Lankan Government. The bottom line is you don’t hurt my Mother Lanka unfairly ever, as you will hear one more time my angry voice loud and clear like the 12 ding-dongs of London’s Big-Ben at noon and at midnight.
And you know what the Republican Nikki Haley said about you lot, don’t you?”
That you at UNHRC are a “cesspool of political bias, and a self serving body that makes a mockery of human rights.”
And let me repeat what China told you lot at the UNHRC’s 60th Session.
“China urges relevant countries to respect the Sri Lankan people’s own choice of human rights development path, abandon intervention in internal affairs and political pressure, and return to the right dialogue and cooperation.” That is told in simple English, that I am sure you understood.
Volker, I have no legal mind as you lawyers at UNHRC. But with my academic
background as a palaeontologist-museologist, I feel confident having created an excellent Canadian National Dinosaur Hall, Life Through the Ages at the Victoria Memorial Museum in Ottawa, I feel that I can identify a ‘pea-brained dinosaur easily. Maybe a Humanoid too.
Let me share my thoughts on THE MANTHRA – the word that you at UNHRC keeps throwing around that would be the answer to Sri Lanka’s future …RECONSILIATION which distorts into my word RE-CON-SILLY-A-SHUN.
It is not frivolous as I have given much thought, and History, I hope is not going to rain-on-your-parade.
It is about the majority Sinhalese that makes up 75% of Sri Lanka’s population, and the minority Tamils that makes about 10% of the population that were once upon a time before, 23 July 1983, were at 12.6%. Since then, thousands and thousands of Tamils left in planes and ricketty, corroding fishing- trawlers to foreign lands saying that they are refugees, running away from Sri Lanka because of discrimination and persecution. And a few to their Tamil Motherland, 18-water-miles away to Tamil Nadu in South India where they really belong.
And mind you Volker, these are the same 10%Tamils who lived as a ‘privileged minority’ for 131 British Colonial years, while the majority 75% Sinhalese lived as a ‘wronged majority‘ during those divide-and-rule 131 colonial years. I hope you will get what I am trying to make you understand since you got involved in Sri Lankan internal-affairs jumping in with your feet first. It is muddy, Volker…it is muddy and Eelam-bloody.
Here are the Sri Lanka’s Historical Rosary of Events when strung into a questionable Re-Con-Silly-A-Shun will agree with me that “You are dreaming if you think that the Sri Lanka’s separatist 10% minority Tamils will want to co-exist with the majority 75% Sinhalese community and live happily ever after!”
Volker, you all at UNHRC are dreaming in multi-colour, sometimes like scary Halloween ghosts!.
*These were the 1940s cunning separatist Tamils who were up to all sorts of
cunning Shenanigans to formulate a way to rule the majority Sinhalese population. On the eve of Independence (1948) the All Ceylon Tamil Congress led by G.G.Ponnamblam, put forward to the Soulbury Commission a scheme of representations in the proposed legislature of Independent Ceylon which with a macabre sense of humour, he dubbed it as “balanced representation”.
It was only when Lord Soulbury Commissioners pointed out the obvious that
“If 50 seats were assured to the minorities but the remainder left open to anyone to contest, the Sinhalese who had always been the majority group, might by the loss of one or more of these seats would have been converted into a minority.” Shish…cunning…cunning Tamil separatist rascal!
* These are the separatist Tamils who did not want to co-exist with the Sinhalese people in the North who had been living there for generations.
Between 1971 and 1981 through vicious ethnic cleansing of the Jaffna peninsula kicked out 27,000 Sinhalese by killing and terrorizing them. They wanted then, and still want now their mono-ethnic, racist, separate Tamil state, Eelam. Don’t you at UNHRC understand this phenomena, thus providing Republican Nikki Haley to call you all “the cesspool of Political bias and self-serving body that makes a mockery of Human Rights.”
Where is the sea-change, Volker?
*Volker, these are the same separatist Tamils in North of Sri Lanka, who baptised President Idi Amin Dada Oumee of Uganda in October 1990 as Saint Idi Amin as he gave the Ugandan-Indians 90-days to leave Uganda in August 1972.
Compared to Tamil Tiger Terrorist leader Velupillai Prabhakaran who gave 90,000 Muslims in the North and East of Sri Lanka 24 hours to get out, under a death threat in the most inhumane way. It was that brutal. They were only allowed to take a measly 300 rupees per family and some clothing. Everything, including milk powder for infants, were confiscated. Damn it! What sinners!
You at UNHRC are so foolish to ask the Sri Lankan government
to have a reconciliation between the two communities. You at UNHRC who claim to be smart-Alecs and claim the Right to dictate on what has to be done in Sri Lanka for the Muslim community. Check every Muslim diligently, and you will find none of the 90,000 Muslims have holes in their heads, to trust the Tamil terrorists who massacred 103 Muslims and maimed for life 70 others while at prayer at the Meera Jumma Mosque in Kathankudy on 28 October 1990 by the Tamil terrorists. A Reconciliation between the Tamils and Muslims as you are demanding that the Sri Lankan Government make a reconciliation happen.
Dream on UNHRC! Where is the see-change Volker? Tell me…show me..Surprise me!
*The ethnic cleansing of the North to purify that peninsula for the Tamils only went on unabated. It was on 13 August 1977, that 400 Sinhalese undergraduates and lecturers were stoned at the Jaffna University campus and chased South in a convoy of Buses escorted by the Police and Army under a hail of rocks and stones. And so you talk of reconciliation. “Ha!”
Dream on Volker….dream on UNHRC. And do you all really believe that these separatist Tamils would want to co-exist among the Sinhalese and Muslims and share the same air to breathe. I believe it is a far cry. That’s insane poppycock in my eyes. These Sinhalse people will not trust the separatist Tamils and will be scared sxxt, who have mastered the art of chopping alive human bodies with machetties like one would skin-peel-and chop a bull or a calf in a butcher’s shop, in Prabhakaran’s Valvettithurai! Or pluck an infant from a young-Sinhalese Mother’s breast and bash the infant’s skull on a charnockite granite rock and enjoy watching the open skull ooze ketchup blood.
All that does not amount to RECONCILIATION….but RE-CON-SILLY-A-SHUN.
In CONCLUSION, These words are to be shared with Minister Vijitha Herath, the Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka, as I will be copying this letter to him .
You Volker Turk, United Nation High Commissioner for Human Rights on 8 September, 2025, at the UN Human Rights Council’s 60th session said “Sri Lanka today has an historic opportunity to heal from the cycles of violence and impunity that have dominated for decades.”
Volker, if those words were directed at me, Asoka Weerasinghe, a Sri Lankan Canadian, who has since 4 August 1983, has fought from Canadian trenches to uphold the dignity and good name of my Mother Lanka, who natured me for the first 19-years of my life, and still romancing her as the Matriarch of my Motherland with immense gratitude, tell you, “Volker you are being a dishonest Human Rights Ambassador. You are a Humbug through and through. You have got that story skewed very badly, and you got my goat and I am angry.
Here’s what I had expected of you to say: “Sri Lanka today has an historic opportunity to heal from cycles of violence and impunity that have dominated for decades. And we promise that we will see that no external International force, like India, UK, Canada and others who in the past had aided and abetted that ethnic war by training theTamil Tiger terrorists for warfare, or facilitating collection of funds to buy the war armoury making it difficult for you Sri Lanka, to achieve that historic opportunity to heal from the cycle of violence and impunity”.
That is what is needed, Volker. Not such sanctimonious pronouncements at a UNHRC Session which means sweet nothing.
And demanding constitutional changes that dilute the unitary state – disguised as “reform” but designed to bypass Mother Lanka’s democratic and legal process, allowing external players who are not answerable to the people to decide national governance. Not good…not kosher….not cricket!
Give me a break Volker and erase that anger in me that you all have created at the UNHRC which is spitting dragon breath from my cartwheeling eyes.
Sincerely,
Asoka Weerasinghe (Mr.)
