{"id":65951,"date":"2017-05-09T04:26:07","date_gmt":"2017-05-09T11:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=65951"},"modified":"2017-05-09T04:26:07","modified_gmt":"2017-05-09T11:26:07","slug":"dpl-people-smugglers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/05\/09\/dpl-people-smugglers\/","title":{"rendered":"DPL People Smugglers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . K1J 6G1 . Canada<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

7 May 2017<\/p>\n

Hon. Maithripala Sirisena, President of Sri Lanka
\nPresidential Secretariat
\nColombo, Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

Hon. Ranil Wickremasinghe
\nPrime Minister of Sri Lanka
\nColombo, Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

Cc. Hon Mangala Samaraweera,
\nMinister of Foreign Affairs
\nColombo, SriLanka<\/p>\n

Hon. Gayantha Karunatilake
\nChief Government Whip
\nMinister of Mass Media and Parliamentary Reform
\nColombo, Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

Honourable Gentlemen:<\/p>\n

With your vindictive politics and your eagerness wanting to go after the former Rajapaksa Government, your Chief Government Whip telling the Parliament that Some Rajapaksa era DPLs were people smugglers\u201d<\/strong> with an obnoxious pretence that the Yahapalanaya Government is \u2018We are Holier than Thou\u201d, with halos over our heads\u201d, <\/em>you opened a can of worms crawling out of the stinky Meethotamulla garbage heaps.<\/p>\n

You accused the Rajapaksa era DPLs as \u2018people smugglers\u2019<\/strong>, and I say to you Even if they did, so what!<\/em><\/strong>\u201d\u00a0 I have been in Ottawa since 1970 and I can vouch for what I\u00a0 say to you within the context of the Sri Lanka\u2019s Mission in Ottawa.\u00a0 This \u2018people smuggling\u2019<\/strong> has been going on for donkey’s years, just not only by DPLs of the Rajapaksa era.\u00a0 If your Chief Whip is speaking of the domestics who stay back after their Diplomat employer’s conclude the tour of duty, I have my doubts that, Later, they released those assistants in those countries to find other jobs there and they would not return home at the end of their assignments.\u201d <\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Does your Government Whip know this as a fact?<\/p>\n

Gentlemen ,this has been\u00a0 an ongoing phenomenon for years and years and years, and not just a happening during the Rajapaksa era.\u00a0\u00a0 What your Chief Government Whip said was poppycock, and barrels full of jardi.\u00a0 Unless you expect wanting\u00a0 returning Diplomats violate the rights of their domestics, by\u00a0 shackling them to a post at the residence at\u00a0 Range Road in Ottawa, a week before they head to the airport and frog-march the domestics to the plane.\u00a0 Will you three Honourable Gentlemen do it.\u00a0 Na! I doubt it.\u00a0 So you think you are going to use the Diplomats of the Rajapaksa era to get at the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his government.\u00a0 That\u2019s a lot of Meethotamulla garbage!\u00a0 And heaps of it isn\u2019t it!<\/p>\n

Please inform your Chief Government Whip of the drill of what happens at the Sri Lankan Diplomats domestics who are brought to Canada.\u00a0 These domestics are no fools.\u00a0 They are alert and begin to understand and revel at the thought that they are in a pot of gold\u00a0 that they are thrown into, once they begin to fall in love with\u00a0 the green Cdn$20 bill that is worth about Rs.110 back home. And they begin to befriend Sri Lankans who stayed back as refugees during their off days from work.\u00a0 And these domestics are given a course how to stay back and apply for\u00a0 refugee status and being introduced to an Immigration lawyer when time comes to carry his\u00a0 refugee claim forward legally.\u00a0 And what is more lucrative is that the monthly welfare cheque they receive until they find work gives them much more value in rupees that they will\u00a0 ever earn for a month working back at\u00a0 home.<\/p>\n

A few days prior to the day they are suppose to leave for Colombo with their diplomat employer, they disappear.\u00a0 The diplomats wouldn\u2019t have a clue of what they will be confronted with.\u00a0 The Diplomats can do sweet nothing about it\u00a0 other than\u00a0 report to the police of the disappearance of their domestics, with the suspicion that they might want to stay back in Canada.\u00a0 But, if your Government Chief Whip\u00a0 points the finger at these Diplomats saying that the they take \u2018kappan\u2019 from the domestics for them to stay back, then let us hear more about it with the identity of the Diplomats.\u00a0 If that is indeed true, then you can claim your right as the Yahapalanaya Government to penalize these Diplomats who become involved in \u2018people smuggling\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

But here is the rub gentlemen.\u00a0 The worst culprits in such people smuggling\u201d<\/strong> have been your past Ministers of Foreign Affairs, like Harold Herath, Tyrone Fernando and ACS Hameed.\u00a0 They sent their \u2018catchers\u2019 to the\u00a0 Ottawa Mission with the intention to give them a break to live in Canada happily ever after, by claiming to be refugees or whatever.\u00a0 Some are lucky and others are hounded by the Immigration Border Police having failed their refugee claim and put them on a plane to arrive at Colombo\u2019s Katunayake Airport 30 hours later.<\/p>\n

One Foreign Minister\u2019s \u2018catcher\u2019 who was sent as the Third Secretary, with the specific intention that he gets some specialist medical help for his child, got caught pilfering from Sears at St. Laurent Shopping Center. The husband pilfered men\u2019s clothes and the wife pilfered some costume jewellery.\u00a0 After the Minister Councillor at the Mission made a conscientious effort to keep the embarrassing episode hush..hush\u201d from the public eye,\u00a0 this Third Secretary\u00a0 got exposure to his story from the local newspaper saying that he did not want to return home as he did not want to stop the excellent treatment his child was getting.\u00a0 He wanted to stay back on humanitarian grounds.\u00a0 The Ottawa Citizen<\/em><\/strong> carried the news item.<\/p>\n

Another Foreign Minister loaded the Mission with his\u2019 catchers\u2019 and at one point\u00a0 had 22 staff members at the Mission.\u00a0 I am\u00a0 not sure whether they had enough chairs to sit them all or whether they sat in style on Dumbara mats sucking on hookahs or stood at a corner of a room and sucked their thumbs not having any work to do.\u00a0 I know most of this Foreign Minister\u2019s \u2018catchers\u2019 stayed back.\u00a0 Would you categorise this Foreign Minister as\u00a0 a people smuggler.\u201d\u00a0 <\/strong>Or does he get immunity as\u00a0 he happens to be a powerful Minister in the Government!<\/p>\n

I<\/strong>n the early 90s a Junior Minister, a Tamil, came over to Toronto\u00a0 with a mini-wedding party to give his daughter in\u00a0 marriage. The wedding happened and the bride\u2019s politician Dad went back home to Sri Lanka leaving behind the wedding party\u00a0 to wangle their way to become permanent Canadian residents.\u00a0 I suppose according to your Chief Government Whip\u2019s vindictive logic, this Tamil Junior Minister is not a people smuggler<\/strong>\u201d because this act didn\u2019t happen during the Rajapaksa era.\u00a0 Right! Sish\u2026!\u00a0 What logic! What nasty Yahapalanaya vindictive politics!!<\/p>\n

Trying to be vindictive hoping that you could band-aid the Rajapaksa government with immoral and crude fairy tales like the intended coup, the 18 billion dollar hidden bank accounts of the Rajapaksa\u2019s, the Lamborghini, the golden horses the blame game of the Meethotamulla garbage Episode where you all buried\u00a0 people alive, are unfortunate.\u00a0 There is nothing smart about all of this nor does it belie Good Governance<\/em><\/strong> with the Bond Scam which is a family of albatrosses around your necks.\u00a0 Not that the Rajapaksa government were made up of angels either\u00a0 Far from it.\u00a0 And some of their rejects by the people are comfortable earning their perks in your camp, especially the Rs. 100,000 bonus each month.<\/p>\n

What is most upsetting was the comment that your Chief Government Whip made.\u00a0 He said, as I read it in The Islan<\/em><\/strong>d<\/em> that\u00a0 \u201d… Action should be taken against those officials who took them using the official allocations provided to them and earned money <\/strong>.\u00a0 Those human smugglers disrespected the foreign service<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Was your Chief Government Whip insinuating that the Sri Lankan Diplomats sent to Canada earned \u2018kappan<\/em>\u2019 to let their domestics stay back,\u00a0 For heaven\u2019s sake do you really believe it?<\/p>\n

My association with some of the Sri Lankan diplomats in Canada projected that they had some class, and not cussed enough and cheap to siphon off monies that the poor domestic earned.\u00a0 If any of them were, it shows up the quality of\u00a0 diplomats that the Foreign Ministry have recruited.\u00a0 It is now for the Chief Government Whip to clear the doubts among many of us and identify the diplomats that he was using to get at the Rajapaksa era.<\/p>\n

It is just too bad and please stop trying to fool your people and cut out your vindictive politics as I have my doubts that it is going to pay the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe Combo<\/strong> well to come out smelling like roses as you all have outclassed the Rajapaksa Government in every negative aspect that you all seem to point out to the masses.\u00a0 The Yahapalanaya Good-Cops are now suspect that they\u00a0 have become\u00a0 Bad Cops in the eyes of\u00a0 Sri Lankans in today’s democracy.<\/p>\n

The question to you Mr. President and Mr. Prime Minister is, what the heck are you going to do about it?<\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n

Asoka Weerasinghe (Mr.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . K1J 6G1 . Canada 7 May 2017 Hon. Maithripala Sirisena, President of Sri Lanka Presidential Secretariat Colombo, Sri Lanka. Hon. Ranil Wickremasinghe Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Colombo, Sri Lanka. Cc. Hon Mangala Samaraweera, Minister of Foreign Affairs Colombo, SriLanka Hon. Gayantha Karunatilake Chief Government […]<\/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-65951","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\/65951","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=65951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}