{"id":46298,"date":"2015-07-28T23:40:25","date_gmt":"2015-07-29T05:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=46298"},"modified":"2015-07-28T16:40:00","modified_gmt":"2015-07-28T23:40:00","slug":"open-letter-to-members-of-the-tamil-national-alliance-tna-ilankai-tamil-arasu-kadchi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/07\/28\/open-letter-to-members-of-the-tamil-national-alliance-tna-ilankai-tamil-arasu-kadchi\/","title":{"rendered":"OPEN LETTER to Members of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) – Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Asoka Weerasinghe<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

OPEN LETTER\u00a0to Members of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) – <\/strong>Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Headquartered in Jaffna, Sri Lanka<\/p>\n

Ladies and Gentlemen of TNA<\/p>\n

I read with interest your Parliamentary Election, Manifesto of 2015, and have taken\u00a0 the liberty to forward you a letter sent to you all a few years ago, which I believe is still relevant.\u00a0 This is how one Sinhalese-Canadian sees your cunning.\u00a0 Read it.<\/p>\n

Sincerely<\/p>\n

Asoka Weerasinghe<\/p>\n\n\n\n
 <\/p>\n

TNA HIGHLIGHTS <\/strong><\/p>\n

Sinhalese influx into North Lanka <\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Members of the TNA,<\/p>\n

I was livid to read what P.K. Balachandra had reported of your concerns about the Sinhalese<\/strong> influx into North Lanka \u201d.\u00a0 <\/strong>Let\u2019s get this crystal clear to all you shadows of the late Velupillai Prabhakaran, NORTH LANKA IS NOT A NO-MAN\u2019S LAND FOR US SINHALESE<\/strong>.\u00a0 It is our land as much as yours.<\/p>\n

What is indeed your problem TNA?\u00a0 What is it in your genes that you feel that you have the right to seek territorial purity for Tamils in the North and yet you think that you men with three finger stripes of ash across the foreheads have the Hindu Trinity rights to invade the South and claim 41 percent of the population of the capital Colombo and own 75 percent of the prime real estate of its suburb Wellawatte, and yet, \u00a0keep out the Sinhalese from the North who have every God given right to own and occupy real estate there, especially in Jaffna and live and work there and to be happy ever after like you Tamils living happily ever after in the South and the Hills.<\/p>\n

You TNA Tamils have the gall to flood Sea Street in the Pettah with business sign boards hanging from the roofs promoting your \u2013iah\u201d clan in Tamil calligraphy\u2013 the Selliahs, Thambaiahs, Nalliahs, Suppaiahs\u00a0 and Rasaiahs, but have immense difficulty to accept the signs of the Silva Bakery, Perera Grocery Stores and the Sumana Kopi Kade in Sinhalese calligraphy in the heart of Jaffna.\u00a0 That is a hell-of-a-how-do-you-do, isn\u2019t it TNA?\u00a0 My knife cuts both ways and not one way and that is where you lot and I differ!<\/p>\n

Well\u2026well\u2026.well\u2026 Premachandran, Sambandan and Sridharan lets cut out this crap once and for all.\u00a0 Lets not go through another 30 years of violence killing each other just because you think that your blood is more crimson and purer than my Sinhala blood.\u00a0 Rubbish!\u00a0 And let your Tamil kids be kids enjoying \u2018hide-and-seek\u2019 and \u00a0\u2018hop-scotch\u2019 and not play \u2018cops and robbers\u2019 in Tiger fatigues cradling Kalashnikovs which are heavier than most of them and get killed in the battle frontlines because you adults feared to face the army bullets. I hope you TNAs have learnt a lesson from the past 27-years.<\/p>\n

The army has about 40,000 troops now in the Wanni.\u00a0 Very soon, the troops\u2019 families will join them\u201d<\/em><\/strong> you griped to Balachandran.\u00a0 What\u2019s wrong with that may I ask?<\/p>\n

That is what we call Family re-unification\u201d in Canada .\u00a0 Like, when one of your Tamils get on a plane with a legitimate Sri Lankan passport at Katunayake airport on the way to \u00a0Canada\u2019s Toronto\u2019s Pearson International Airport, and then mid-air this Tamil does an ABRACADABRA and destroys the Sri Lankan passport, and when he\/she lands on Canadian soil claims with crocodile tears welling in the eyes to be a Convention refugee fleeing persecution and discrimination in Sri Lanka and have no valid document.\u00a0 The person goes through the normal Immigration Refugee determination procedures to get permanent residency (PR) and a Canadian passport.\u00a0 Once he gets the PR, then the Family reunification\u201d act kicks in immediately. So this Tamil brings over the mother, the father, the brother, the sister and the whole family caboodle and later all of them become jet-setters travelling to Sri Lanka often, the country that they ran away from saying that they were persecuted and discriminated. This is a classic case of Mirror, mirror on the wall who is the liar of them all!\u2019<\/p>\n

If such \u2018Family reunification\u2019 is good for you Tamils, it certainly should be good for the Sinhalese army personnel who are legitimately guarding the Sri Lankan territory, especially the North and the sovereignty of Sri Lanka .\u00a0 If the families are not reunited, they will have a legitimate right to grieve as much as you Tamils have complained to the Human Rights Commission that your rights have been violated by the Sri Lankan Government.\u00a0 It is as simple as that.\u00a0 So what is your gripe TNA?<\/p>\n

Once a settlement comes up, infrastructural facilities like Sinhalese schools and Buddhist temples will come, and the cultural character of the Wanni will change,\u201d<\/em><\/strong> gripes, Suresh Premachandran who is contesting from Jaffna District.<\/p>\n

Really, Suresh!\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that the normal sociological phenomena?\u00a0 Come to Canada \u2019s Ontario \u2019s Scarborough .\u00a0 Within the past 20 years, the Tamil refugees have turned the place into a Little Jaffna.\u00a0 There are Tamil Grocery Stores, Sari stores, Restaurants, Shopping Malls, Vadai and Thosai boutiques, Tamil Curry Huts, Hindu Temples you name it, and they have it.\u00a0 Added to all that they also have gun-totting and knife-wielding Tamil gangs to claim their patch of \u00a0Canadian territory.\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that a natural phenomenon in an evolution of a new society?\u00a0 So let\u2019s cut your whining as the Sinhalese are no different from you Tamils.\u00a0 Perhaps they are a bit lighter in complexion and talk English with a slightly different accent.<\/p>\n

It is time that you Tamil \u2018Eelam\u2019 dreamers accept that you are a minority in Sri Lanka \u00a0which is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and \u00a0multi-religious society and that you Northern and Eastern Tamils should learn how to live peacefully together with the majority Sinhalese as the Tamils do in the South and the Hills who have been doing it for donkey\u2019s years.<\/p>\n

And your claim of a Tamil Homeland\u201d in Sri Lanka \u2019s North and East has created a problem in my mind, because that\u2019s a bunch of baloney.\u00a0 Is it why you ethnically cleansed the Sinhalese and kicked 27,000 of them out of the North between 1971 and 1981, by killing and terrorizing.\u00a0 Then of course, in October 1990 you all kicked out 100,000 Muslims out of the North giving them 24 hours to move out.\u00a0 After those dastardly acts, and now you all think that the North and the East are purified and are yours and for the Tamils alone, and portray such legitimacy internationally.\u00a0 Ha! Come again. Give me a break TNA.<\/p>\n

Remember how you Tamils ethnically cleansed the Jaffna University campus.\u00a0 Let me tell you what happened and after 33 years my blood still gurgles with resentment.<\/p>\n

On 22nd<\/sup> July 1977, the United National Party (UNP) formed the Government after an overwhelming victory.\u00a0 Three weeks later on 13th<\/sup> August, in Jaffna , Tamil extremists attacked the government buildings and Sinhalese shops, and you guys still spit about the July 25, 1983 riots when the Tamil shops were attacked by Sinhalese mobs in Colombo.<\/p>\n

There were around 400 Sinhalese lecturers and undergraduates at the Jaffna University at that time.\u00a0 The Vice Chancellor on hearing of the anti-Sinhalese disturbances closed the University.\u00a0 While Tamil students went to their homes, the Sinhalese students had no place to go.\u00a0 The staff met and decided to move them to the Third Floor of the Main Building .\u00a0 While some Tamil staff members went to their homes a few stayed back to protect their Sinhalese colleagues and students, (Well\u2026all Tamils are not bad and so are the Sinhalese who took in thousands of Colombo-Tamils into their homes to keep them away from being harmed during the July 83 riots).<\/p>\n

Around 10 o\u2019clock that morning a group of Tamil Tigers tried to force their way to the Third Floor, but were prevented by the Tamil staff members. \u00a0Tamil Tigers went back, threatening to return.\u00a0 The Tamil staff members stayed on.\u00a0 At about 2 o\u2019clock in the afternoon an armed gang of Tamil Tigers forced their way in.\u00a0 The Tamil lecturers again did not allow them to go up and at this point, a professor informed the Government Agent (GA) of the situation.<\/p>\n

The GA arrived around 5:00 PM and provided meals to the Sinhalese students and lecturers who had not eaten since morning.\u00a0 By 7:00 PM he arranged the Army and Police to escort the 400 students and lecturers who were taken south out of Jaffna in buses all lying on the floor out of \u00a0the line of a hail of rocks and stones. \u00a0Just a note for you TNAs.\u00a0 The July 1983 riots didn\u2019t flare up suddenly.\u00a0 This ethnic cleansing of the Sinhalese was part of the powder-keg that you Tamils started stuffing for it to explode one day and it did happen on July 25, 1983.<\/p>\n

You griping TNAs, should note that while the Sinhalese undergraduates were stoned out of the Jaffna University Campus not a single Tamil undergraduate was touched by the Sinhalese in the Peradeniya and Colombo University campuses.\u00a0 My TNA friends, why are you hiding this incident to your western cronies?\u00a0 Admit to them that you guys are no paragons of virtue.<\/p>\n

Tamil nationalists point out that the predominantly Tamil Wanni has been substantially denuded of Tamils by the war which had gone on for 30 years,\u201d<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 you TNA Thambis were crying to Balachandran. Don\u2019t we all know it!<\/p>\n

The Tamils had a choice and they were the architects of their destiny, don\u2019t you think so TNA?\u00a0 You Tamils got on your mythical train of Eelam which wasn\u2019t going anywhere other than burying children under 12 inches of soil because you all abducted them and sent them out to war to be killed by bullets.\u00a0 The smart Tamils placed their palms together, looked up and thanked God for providing them an opening to get out of Sri Lanka in search of greener pastures bypassing their Motherland India and in countries further west.\u00a0 So they got on planes to fan out, and so they paid volumes of money to ship captains to take them by sea and dump them near a western shore.\u00a0 That was the choice of your people TNA, so let\u2019s not gripe.<\/p>\n

Here are the facts about the North and East which you claim to be your \u2018homeland\u2019.\u00a0 If it was a joke then I just didn\u2019t get it.\u00a0 You can read this, absorb these facts and if you don\u2019t like it roll the paper into cigars and smoke it if you wish to but my facts will not lie.<\/p>\n

Let me roll back to the pre-development days of the east of Sri Lanka in particular of the Gal-Oya project initiated by the first Prime Minister of Sri Lanka (Ceylon) after Independence, D.S.Senanayake, as some of you may not\u00a0 have yet been born, thus the false claim of the Tamil Homeland\u201d\u00a0 by the older generation may deem true in your naivet\u00e9 eyes.<\/p>\n

With his vision the 62 mile long Gal Oya (river) rising from the Badulla range in the Central Province was dammed in 1949 for the welfare and prosperity of all Sri Lankans.\u00a0 Let me repeat for the welfare of all Sri Lankans which includes your Tamil people.\u00a0 The repository of water left after damming now forms the lifeblood of the peasant farmers of the historic region of Digamadulla, who some of them were massacred by your Tamil Tigers for purposes of ethnic cleansing.<\/p>\n

Prior to this project, contrary to what you Tamils would like us to believe that it was predominantly a Tamil area, on either side of the Gal Oya River grew relentless jungle.\u00a0 The actual denizens were Veddahs (aboriginal people and not Tamils) and wild animals.<\/p>\n

It is still recalled by a few old Veddahs how their parents trekked a few miles along the jungle trail to visit the dam site overlooking the Inginiyagala rock, which still stands as a giant sentinel and never met a Tamil woman or a man along the way.\u00a0 Those days only foot paths and animal tracks criss-crossed that vast amphitheatre which was entwined by dense jungle. \u00a0I wonder where the hell the Tamils were hiding \u00a0in this area as you TNA claim that it was your Tamil country (homeland).\u00a0 Your claim for this land is an egregious nonsense.<\/p>\n

Thus the \u2018state aided colonization\u2019 in the Gal Oya project refers to the process by which largely unoccupied and unutilized land belonging to the State which was \u2018traditional homeland\u2019 of the aboriginal people, the elephant, the sloth bear, the leopard, the monkey, the deer, the mynah and the jackal were colonized by peasant farmers.\u00a0 They were given meagre financial assistance to enable them to gain both a livelihood and feed their fellow citizens with the fruit of their toil.<\/p>\n

With these facts you better tell us where your Tamils were and at what point did they join the Act?<\/p>\n

These are the facts TNA and I don\u2019t believe your fairy tales and nor would many thousands of others.\u00a0 So lets stop whining about the Tamil cultural character of the Wanni<\/em><\/strong> will change\u201d<\/em><\/strong> with the Sinhalese influx into North Lanka \u201d.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not start another fight.\u00a0 Let\u2019s not kill each other with another 30-year war. You Tamils in the North and East better learn to live peacefully with the majority Sinhalese as they do in the South and the hills of Sri Lanka .<\/p>\n

You all should better get used to seeing the business signs of Silva Bakery, Perera Grocery<\/em><\/strong> Stores<\/em><\/strong> and Sumana Kopi Kade<\/em><\/strong> in the heart of Jaffna, as much as we have got used to seeing and patronizing\u00a0 Selliah Thosai boutique<\/em><\/strong>, Rajaiah Pharmacy, Suppiah Sari Emporium<\/em><\/strong> and Nalliah Jewellers <\/em><\/strong>in the heart of the capital Colombo.<\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n

Asoka Weerasinghe<\/p>\n

Ottawa, Canada<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Asoka Weerasinghe OPEN LETTER\u00a0to Members of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) – Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi Headquartered in Jaffna, Sri Lanka Ladies and Gentlemen of TNA I read with interest your Parliamentary Election, Manifesto of 2015, and have taken\u00a0 the liberty to forward you a letter sent to you all a few years ago, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asoka-weerasinghe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}