{"id":71999,"date":"2017-11-24T17:42:29","date_gmt":"2017-11-25T00:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=71999"},"modified":"2017-11-24T17:42:29","modified_gmt":"2017-11-25T00:42:29","slug":"response-to-kate-cronin-furmans-article-in-the-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/11\/24\/response-to-kate-cronin-furmans-article-in-the-washington-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Response to Kate Cronin-Furman’s article in the Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

23 November 2017<\/p>\n

(KINDLY PASS THIS LETTER ON TO THE EDITOR)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Editor
\nThe Washington Post
\n<\/strong>1301 K.Street NW
\nWashington DC 20071
\nUS<\/p>\n

Dear Editor:<\/p>\n

The article that you published by Kate Cronin-Furman, Are Sri Lankan officers ordering soldiers to sexually assault Tamil detainees?\u2019<\/strong> nudged me to come out of retirement temporarily on the Sri Lanka-Tamil \u2018Eelam\u2019 refugees<\/strong> file.\u00a0 I have been active on this file from August 1983 until August 2013.\u00a0 Active mainly to breakdown the vile attacks on the Sri Lankan soldiers by Tamils who are still smarting at them for annihilating their Tamil Tiger terrorists on 19 May 2009,\u00a0 after a 27-year blooding war. The Tamil Tiger terrorists fought to give the 12.6% Tamils their much desired mono-ethnic separatist racist state, Eelam, carved out of 33% of that beautiful island\u2019s territory bordered by 66% of the coastline.\u00a0 Dream on, I say!\u00a0 And still expect the 54% of the Tamil community presently living in the South happily to continue to live in harmony among the majority Sinhalese population.\u00a0\u00a0 These Tamil-Eelamists don\u2019t ask much, do they?<\/p>\n

I thought that this story that I encountered in the summer of 1987 should be recorded and\u00a0 told to clip the present Tsunami of tarring the Sri Lankan soldiers whom I consider \u2018human rights angels\u2019<\/em><\/strong> for giving back the 22 million Sri Lankans which includes the Tamil community, their right-to-life, <\/em><\/strong>which was hijacked by the Tamil Tiger terrorists for 27 years.\u00a0 These soldiers also saved the lives of 295,873 Tamil civilians\u00a0 by the end of the Tamil separatist war, who were herded for 30 months from the west coast to the east coast like starving unwashed cattle under the scorching Jaffna-Kiliniochchi sun as a human shield by the Tamil Tigers.\u00a0 The Tamil expatriates seem to forget this angelic-act by the Sri Lankan soldiers. And into the mix, the unarmed majority Sinhalese and minority Muslim peoples were ethnically cleansed from the North and East of the island,\u00a0 having terrorized and killed with bombs, bullets, claymore mines, machetes and suicide bombs by the Tamil Tiger terrorists for 27 warring years, aided and abetted by foreign countries like India, UK, US, Canada, Norway and many others.<\/p>\n

The second para of the article Kate Cronin-Furman says But it\u2019s not just the brutality of the assaults that stands out; it\u2019s their routine nature.\u00a0 Because unsettling, these allegations are not anomalous.\u00a0 In 2016, the British organization Freedom from Torture reported that 71 percent of the predominantly male Tamil clients said they had been raped or endured other sexual torture. Given the stigma that conservative Tamil culture attaches rape, male victims have a strong incentive to remain silent about such crimes.\u00a0 The actual incidence is likely to be even higher than the reported rate.\u201d <\/em><\/strong>I say, that’s a plane load of poppycock!<\/p>\n

You know what Editor, such news as reported by Kate Cronin-Furman always break at an inconvenient time for Sri Lanka, when it is up for its Universal Periodic Review at the U.N., Human Rights Council Sessions.\u00a0 This has happened always, always, always.\u00a0\u00a0 Don\u2019t you ever be surprised if the Tamils come with their next explosive report at an inconvenient time for Sri Lanka, when they will say that the Sri Lankan soldiers tied\u00a0 elderly Tamil mothers and gang raped them behind barbed wired fences under indigo starless night skies. Would you want to place a\u00a0 wager on it\u00a0 I know these lying scammers like the life-lines on my palms.\u00a0 And that is how the cookie crumbles.<\/p>\n

And now here\u2019s my story<\/strong> which always has had a Tamilian pattern of cunning, exaggerated and distorted lies.\u00a0 In 1986\u00a0 the Sri Lankan Government appointed the retired Army Commander, General Tissa \u2018Bull\u2019 Weeratunga as the High Commissioner to Canada.\u00a0 Earlier he was the Commander of Security Forces in Jaffna from July 13, 1979 to December 31, 1979, which was the den of Kalashnikov carrying Tamil Tigers with festoons of live bullets around their necks.<\/p>\n

The expatriate Tamils in Canada,\u00a0 mainly Convention\u00a0 refugees who have the habit of holidaying back home during the winter months, led by a Tamil Roman Catholic priest were ready to pounce on him when he arrived accusing him as a Tamil\u00a0 detainee torturer.\u00a0\u00a0 This Tamil Roman Catholic priest hid his separatist views well under a black pious religious cloak and a white collar starched towards heaven, and every gullible journalist and Canadian politician believed this pious looking foxy man of God.\u00a0 It so happened that I was introduced to him at a dinner party and within 45 minutes I told this priest, Philip, you are a fraud cloaked in black and I don\u2019t believe you even for a finger snapping moment.\u201d\u00a0 The party filled with Roman Catholics looked stunned by this Sinhalese Buddhist\u2019s slander.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t regret it as I knew I was right. I debated this priest on a morning television Talk Show on his Tamil separatist movement, sullying the Sri Lankan Government.\u00a0 The viewers got to know the other side of the coin on this Sri Lankan Tamil refugee scam.\u00a0 I relished this opportunity to explain my side of the story. Canadians who viewed it loved it.\u00a0 Keep going, let us hear more,\u201d they said.\u00a0 We want the facts!\u201d<\/p>\n

The print and audio-visual media hounded the new High Commissioner for days and months and one Sunday in 1987 I was tipped off that a senior journalist\u00a0 and a News anchor at CBC was flying in a Tamil refugee from Paris, who was known as \u2018Baby Para\u2019 whose name very likely was Pararajasekaram to be interviewed who apparently was a victim of torture by the Sri Lankan Army.\u00a0 He was brought\u00a0 to prove that the High Commissioner, as an Army General had supervised\u00a0 him being tortured during his days as Army Commander of Jaffna.\u00a0 Baby Para showed a mark of a perfect ring on his ankle, which he said was from being hanged from his foot\u00a0 when being tortured<\/p>\n

One would have expected a downward torque of the rope around his ankle due to Baby Para\u2019s\u00a0 body weight and that is Grade 5 common sense.\u00a0 But this mark was a\u00a0 wedding-ring perfect circle around his ankle.<\/p>\n

Hmmmm! So, the mark of this perfect ring on Baby Para\u2019s ankle was suspect.\u00a0 Was it a Hindu penance mark on his way to Kataragama Religious Festival in the South of Sri Lanka to pay a vow for a God to get rid of bad karma, to reach a higher state in life, as they would pierce the tongue and cheeks with needles and piercing the skin of their backs with silver hooks to pull\u00a0 the chariot\u00a0 carrying Murti of Murugan.\u00a0 The westerners wouldn\u2019t know this.\u00a0\u00a0 Hmmmm…or was it a permanent bracelet tattooed on the ankle\u00a0 rather than having a leather or a silver ankle bracelet. These are Oooooo\u2026…Ahhhhhh\u2026 O…No\u2026 gruesome events and naive journalists and politicians swallow these packaged \u2018O My God did the military really do it to you\u2019\u00a0 stories begging for western\u00a0 bleeding-heart sympathy.\u00a0 Come on let\u2019s not be so naive,\u00a0 let\u2019s be real.<\/p>\n

These High Commissioner Tissa \u2018Bull\u2019 Weeratunga hating Canadian-Tamils were having a Press Conference\u00a0 with Baby Para in attendance, at 10 on a Monday morning in a room at the Holiday Inn on Kent Street.\u00a0 I was the only Sinhalese at the Press Conference and the room was packed with television cameras, journalists with boom-mics and members of the Tamil community.\u00a0 No sooner I entered the room, Fr. Philip, the Roman Catholic priest who was dressed in a black suit and a white collar starched towards heaven and chairing the Press Conference objected to my presence and wanted to throw me out of the room.\u00a0 The camera\u2019s started to roll as there was a confrontation.\u00a0 Then a senior Tamil Public Servant, a sympathizer of\u00a0 Eelam entered the room and seeing the commotion told\u00a0 the Chairman, that I could stay.\u00a0 He stood me against the wall and two burly Tamils stood on either side sandwiching me, and told me in\u00a0 stern voices that I shouldn’t interrupt the Press Conference.<\/p>\n

After about 40 minutes I walked out of the room in disgust for the very reason that, when a journalist asked Baby Para a two line question in English which was translated for Baby Para in three Tamil sentences, and Baby Para responds to it in about six Tamil sentences,\u00a0 These six Tamil sentences of Baby Para were translated in about 20 English sentences.\u00a0 They were\u00a0 a well rehearsed concocted torturing story that these Tamils wanted the media to hear. I was able to thread these translated sentences together and was able to decipher what these Tamils were up to. I couldn\u2019t stomach this vicious Tamil blarney which was trying to tarnish the good name of Sri Lanka and her\u00a0 heroic soldiers and I left the room.\u00a0 I was in no mood to accept these smelly garamma-sala varnished-crap.<\/p>\n

After Baby Para\u2019s Press Conference in Ottawa, the Tamil Tiger Blarney Gong Show<\/em><\/strong> travelled 450 miles to Toronto for their second Press Conference to prove that Sri Lanka\u2019s High Commissioner, the retired Army Commander, General Tissa \u2018Bull\u2019 Weeratunga was a Tamil detainee military torturer.<\/p>\n

That afternoon I got a call at work from a senior Journalist from the Canadian Press Bureau asking\u00a0 me whether he could meet me for lunch the following day at the Japanese Village on Kent Street which was close to my workplace at 200 Kent Street.\u00a0 He told me that the Deputy Bureau Chief of the Canadian Press had asked him to meet\u00a0 with me to get some facts on High Commissioner Weeratunga who has been hounded as a torturer of\u00a0 Tamil detainees, as I was honest and very reliable\u201d.<\/p>\n

So we met for lunch at noon the following day at the Japanese Village.\u00a0 He had\u00a0 attended the Baby Para Press Conference and had noted my presence and the commotion too.\u00a0 During our discussion I asked him, Did you not see it strange that when Baby Para responded to one of your journalists two sentence question in English, his response in Tamil was in six sentences, and that the English translation of those six Tamil sentences took 20 to 25 sentences.\u00a0 It happened all the time.\u00a0 What was\u00a0 your take on it as I was disgusted?\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

His response was, Funny that you brought it up Asoka, we sent our most senior journalist\u00a0 to Toronto to cover the Baby Para\u2019s Press Conference.\u00a0 He phoned us from Toronto to say to forget this story as he had come to know that the Tamil translator did not speak a word of Tamil.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

After all the Baby Para\u2019s accusatory story about High Commissioner General Tissa \u2018Bull\u2019 Weeratunga, if my memory is not betraying me, the Press Conference\u00a0 did not pick up ink in\u00a0 the following morning\u2019s newspapers nor did CBC carry a news clip about the High Commissioner as a torturer.\u00a0\u00a0 The Canadian Tamil Eelamists expected fireworks with their well orchestrated storyline with rehearsed English translations of Baby Para\u2019s simple Tamil responses.<\/p>\n

So the Tamil separatist frauds\u00a0 who orchestrated this Baby Para\u2019s\u00a0 Sri Lankan Military Torture Travelling Show were exposed as a bunch of liars as this was supposed to be a hot-hot firecracker in their foolproof fireworks to pin the High Commissioner Tissa \u2018Bullk Weeratunga, was a Dud that went off with a pooff!\u201d, and so did the Roman Catholic priest who chaired these Press Conferences.\u00a0 No doubt his starched white collar pointing towards heaven might have turned limp tarnished cursed by an unGodly sinners-shame.\u00a0 I called him a fraud at that dinner party and I was right.\u00a0 He just couldn\u2019t\u00a0 fool me.<\/p>\n

The exercise of these Baby Para Press Conferences was to target High Commissioner General Tissa \u2018Bull\u2019 Weeratunga who had worn Khaki fatigues once upon a time as\u00a0 the Army Commander in Jaffna to get him declared as a persona-non-grata<\/em> by the Canadian Government.\u00a0 It never happened and the late General Tissa Bull\u2019 Weeratunga who left us in\u00a0 November, 2003, must have been turning in his grave\u00a0 howling with laughter.<\/p>\n

Editor, if you are so\u00a0 inclined to verify the veracity of the players in my story – The Hot Dud Firecracker that went \u2018Pooff\u2019 in the Tamil Tiger Blarney Fireworks Gong Show, <\/em><\/strong>I will be ever so glad to provide you the names of the Senior Journalist of\u00a0 CBC, the Deputy Bureau Chief of the Canadian Press, who I think is somewhere in British Columbia and the Senior Reporter of Canadian Press who interviewed me is, I believe, somewhere in Nova Scotia.<\/p>\n

Well, Editor,\u00a0 Kate Cronin-Furman should be judicious in future as she is dealing with Tamilian frauds who would do anything to get accepted by a western country as Convention refugees.\u00a0 I suggest that she ought to go on a trip to Kataragama in south of Sri Lanka during the Hindu religious festivals.\u00a0\u00a0 She will see and be amazed how the Tamils undergo gruesome self-torture doing penance. They are maestros at it and it is no big deal for them. to undergo self-torture to accomplish what they want. So let us not be bleeding-hearts and be suckers to their fraudulent ploys and say, \u2018The military tortured Tamils who want to land on soils of western countries, bypassing their Motherland, India\u2019s Tamil Nadu which is just 18 saltwater miles away, let us have them. <\/em>Enough is enough of this varnished-crap which has no value for you to let these stories pick up ink in your worthy newspaper.\u00a0 The final choice is yours, Sir.<\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n

Asoka Weerasinghe (Mr)<\/p>\n

Tel.613-747-2272<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . K1J 6G1 . CANADA. 23 November 2017 (KINDLY PASS THIS LETTER ON TO THE EDITOR) The Editor The Washington Post 1301 K.Street NW Washington DC 20071 US Dear Editor: The article that you published by Kate Cronin-Furman, Are Sri Lankan officers ordering soldiers to sexually […]<\/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-71999","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\/71999","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=71999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}