{"id":71707,"date":"2017-11-17T05:42:26","date_gmt":"2017-11-17T12:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=71707"},"modified":"2017-11-17T05:42:26","modified_gmt":"2017-11-17T12:42:26","slug":"sri-lankan-army-peacekeepers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/11\/17\/sri-lankan-army-peacekeepers\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lankan Army Peacekeepers"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

15 November 2017<\/p>\n

Michael Cooke, The Editor
\nToronto Star
\n<\/strong>1 Yonge Street
\nToronto, Ontario
\nMSE 1E6<\/p>\n

Dear Editor:<\/p>\n

Having returned from abroad after an absence of just over two weeks, I have just read your article Sri Lanka\u2019s military aren\u2019t ready to be peacekeepers\u201d<\/strong> which was published in your Toronto Star<\/strong> on 3rd November 2017.\u00a0 That was Hogwash!<\/strong><\/p>\n

It happens that you had reported the words spoken by the Member of Parliament<\/p>\n

Gary Anandasangaree (GA), who I gather,\u00a0 happens to be\u00a0 a Tamil from Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

So we are now on to Part 2 of the \u2018Canadian Parliament\u2019s\u00a0 Tamil Tiger Blarney Gong Show<\/strong>\u2019. The first one happened on the evening of February 4, 2009, when an all party Emergency Debate on Sri Lanka\u00a0 happened in the Parliamentary Chambers called by the late leader of the NDP, Jack Layton.\u00a0 It was a stupid Tamil vote soliciting Ha! Ha!!\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Of all\u00a0 the Sri Lankan Tamils residing in\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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<\/p>\n

GA knows best that annihilating the Tamil Tiger terrorists by the Sri Lankan Army gave back the right-to-life<\/em><\/strong> to 21 million peoples, his and mine, which was hijacked by the Tamil Tiger terrorists for 27 bloodying years,\u00a0\u00a0 What more credentials does GA\u00a0 honestly want to say that the Sri Lankan Army is ready for Peacekeeping.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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,\u00a0 and Member of Parliament Gary Anandasangaree was absolutely wrong, wrong and wrong with his unfortunate comment about the Sri Lankan Army.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 They were herded from the west coast to the east coast like unwashed cattle under the scorching Jaffna sun for three months.\u00a0 And who rescued them may I ask?\u00a0 It were the Sri Lankan Army, an act of peace building by saving innocent Tamil lives from the\u00a0 flying Tamil Tiger bullets and feeding them to sustain their starving lives.<\/p>\n

GA also knows\u00a0 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.\u00a0 An act of valour and courage risking their own lives to save Tamil lives and keeping Peace.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 housed in temporary shelters.\u00a0 If these acts by the Sri Lankan Army navigating the suicidal path\u00a0 of flying-bullets and claymore mines detonating conflict, to life saving peace, I am not sure what it is then.\u00a0 I am not quite sure what this Member of Parliament is griping about.<\/p>\n

All these acts by the Sri Lankan Army is\u00a0 proof-positive that they are Masters of providing security, and the political and peace building support to countries to make the\u00a0 difficult early transitions from conflict to Peace and Peacekeeping.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have proved positive that this member of\u00a0 Parliament’s statement of \u2018Sri Lanka\u2019s military aren\u2019t ready to be peacekeepers\u2019<\/strong> is a bunch of baloney hanging from a\u00a0 delicatessen stall in the Byward Market.\u00a0 I have no difficulty to dismiss this statement as poppycock without any more consideration.<\/p>\n

As for the response from Sri Lanka\u2019s High Commissioner in Canada, Ahmed Jawad, it is sound, honest and foolproof.\u00a0\u00a0 He is a career diplomat and not a lackey of Sri Lanka\u2019s President nor the Prime Minister, which would have made his thesis suspect.\u00a0\u00a0 It would be difficult for the Member of Parliament to pick holes in it.\u00a0 I hope he would use it as a learning\u00a0 curve on\u00a0 the subject<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 It is time that the Toronto Star <\/strong>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.<\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n

Asoka Weerasinghe<\/p>\n

Cc.\u00a0 Sri Lanka High Commissioner, Ahmed Jawad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s military aren\u2019t ready to […]<\/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-71707","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\/71707","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=71707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71707\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}