A rebuke to Sri Lanka
2 May 2013
The Editor
The Ottawa Citizen.
Sir:
You say in today’s editorial,”… the diplomatic equivalent of a slap in the face – is for the leader of one country to refuse to attend a high profile gathering hosted by another. Well Canada has just slapped Sri Lanka,” by announcing that Prime Minister Stephen Harper not wanting to attend the Comonwealth Summit in Colombo. The reason being that there has been alleged human rights violations during the last five months of the 27 year long Tamil Tiger terrorist’s Eelam War for wanting their separate mono-ethnic, Tamil state.
On the contrary, I see that Canada had got egg all over its face, when Prime Minister Harper thought that he could be the Commonwealth’s Pied Piper and hoping that all other 53 nations would stand behind him wanting to boycott the summit. Not so. There has been no takers so far and Canada has been isolated.
But then, what moral right has Canada got to preach human rights to Sri Lanka when Canada was part of Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger terrorist problem when Canada aided and abetted the Tamil Tigers by allowing the Tamil Diaspora collect two million dollars a month for 13 Liberal party governing years to stuff it into the Tamil Tiger war chest to buy sophisticated war weapons to kill over 100,000 innocent civilians. And the RDX and TNT explosives used in the truck bomb which brought down the Central Bank Building in the Fort in Colombo killing 114, and maiming 1338 others for life on 31 January 1996, were bought from the Rubezone Chemical plant in the Ukraine with a seven-and-a-half million dollar cheque cut from a Tamil account in a Vancouver Bank in 1994. So let’s not paint Canada lily-white.
And more to the point with Canada’s human rights violations of its native peoples which is a concern of the UN, Canada’s presence at the summit
with all that questionable baggage and double-speak will only tarnish that gathering of the Commonwealth leaders in Colombo.
If Canada wants to boycott the summit, so be it. That Commonwealth Summit will certainly do well without Canada’s classic hypocrisy.
Asoka Weerasinghe
2066 Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . K1J 6G1
