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It is on a day like this (June 2nd 1987), the Tamil Terrorists, funded by the Tamil Terrorist Diaspora killed 33 innocent Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka. This is the Tamil initiated genocide that happened in Sri Lanka.  Who is responsible for this massacre? Tamil Terrorist sympathizing Diaspora, LTTE, Canadian politicians who support the Terrorist sympathizers.

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DailyFT

By Ranjiv Goonawardena

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It is worthwhile to examine the recent history of the key countries who have passed the vote against Sri Lanka in the UN Human Rights Council and shine a light on their true values, as have been to date pertaining, with regard to human rights.

Countries that passed judgement against Sri Lanka have been the UK who was the penholder, in tandem with Canada, Germany and France just to name a few. Proclaim themselves to be judge, jury and executioner of human rights; sanctimonious to lecture other nations, having a dishonourable record themselves on the same subject matter of human rights. Surely their moral integrity is questionable; are these countries fair and genuine to criticise Sri Lanka?

There seems to be so much historical amnesia about what the British Empire really entailed. The fact that colonial history inclusive of its ugly brutality is not taught in schools or even in universities, has led to a complete lack of awareness of the atrocities committed throughout the empire and its subjugation of people by force. The extraction of substantial wealth was taken out of the colonies that they held by force and intimidation. Also, Britain financed its Industrial Revolution and its prosperity from the degradation of empire.

Let’s look at the UK’s true values

The UK Government it seems has conveniently forgotten all the atrocities and human right abuses caused by the British Empire, death and destruction stretching from Europe, Middle East, Asia to Africa, for instance:

In Chagos Islands: Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth said the UK was now an illegal colonial occupier. Between 1968 and 1974, Britain forcibly removed thousands of Chagossians from their homelands and sent them more than 1,000 miles away to Mauritius and Seychelles, where they faced extreme destitution and discrimination. Britain then invited the US to build a military base on Diego Garcia. US planes have been sent from the base to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq. The facility was also reportedly used as a “black site” by the CIA to interrogate terrorism suspects. In 2016, the lease for the base was extended until 2036.

In May 2019, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Chagos Islands being returned – with 116 states backing the move and only six against. The UN said that the decolonisation of Mauritius “was not conducted in a manner consistent with the right to self-determination” and that therefore the “continued administration… constitutes a wrongful act”.

The UN resolution came only three months after the UN’s High Court advised the UK should leave the islands “as rapidly as possible”.

The UK has repeatedly apologised for the forced evictions, which Jugnauth has said were akin to a crime against humanity. Prime Minister Jugnauth said the UK and US lectured countries “to respect human rights, but they are champions of double talk”. “They are hypocrites. Shame on them when they talk about human rights and respect,” he added.

In India: Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, also called the Massacre of Amritsar, the incident happened on 13 April 1919, in which British troops fired and killed up to 1,000 peaceful protesters. They were a crowd of unarmed Indians in a park known as the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar in the Punjab region of India.

Acting Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer ordered troops to fire their rifles into the crowd of unarmed Indian civilians. The entrance was blocked by the armed soldiers, as well as by two armoured cars with machine guns. The vehicles were unable to pass through the entrance. Upon entering the park, the general ordered the troops to shoot directly into the gathering. The shooting continued unabated for about 10 minutes and the soldiers’ supply of 1,650 rounds of ammunition was almost exhausted. He has been called “the Butcher of Amritsar”. He became a celebrated hero among some with connections to the British Empire. Some historians argue the episode was a decisive step towards the end of British rule in India.

Some commentators have suggested that the British Government orchestrated and were a contributing factor to the severity of famines during the time India was under British rule. During the Indian famine under British rule, up to 29 million Indian starved to death. Historians have said that it wasn’t a famine it was a form of grand theft perpetrated by the British Empire to steal the food of India for the benefit of the mother nation England. While under the British administrative rule they diverted, stockpiles of tens of millions of tons of food from India. Then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said: “I hate Indians, they are beastly people with beastly religion, the famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.” The architect of the so-called famine in India.

In Iraq: At the crashing of the Iraq independent uprising in 1920, here the British indiscriminately massacred a large number of the Kurdish population in northern Iraq, on an industrial scale. 

It wasn’t Saddam Hussein who first used chemical weapons in 1988 against the Kurdish population, it was rather the British Empire, no other than the infamous Winston Churchill as the War Secretary in Lloyd George’s Coalition Government who decided to conduct aerial bombings with chemical weapons to annihilate and subjugate the population.

In Germany: Coincidentally one of the Royal Air Force squadron leaders in Iraq was Arthur Harris – who in 1942 assumed the leadership of RAF Bomber Command. Several of his senior officers in Bomber Command had served in the same squadron in Iraq. For Harris, during the Second World War believed that the German people could be obliterated from the air as he had once vanquished the tribesmen of Iraq. The destruction of Hamburg, Dresden and scores of other German cities and towns followed. Around 600,000 Germans, mostly civilians were killed, he earned the nickname “Butcher” Harris but as a sign of admiration. He was vilified as a mass murderer and a war criminal only decades later.

After his evil deeds were regarded as heroic deeds, and he was loaded with titles of the realm, ending up as ‘Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet GCB OBE AFC’.

In Kenya: The Mau Mau rebellion in 1952 was undeniably caused by the growing tensions between the Kikuyu ethnic group native to Central Kenya and the English white immigrants. The Kikuyu had long been unhappy with white immigrants in Kenya taking their ancestral land without compensation rather obtained by brute force, and their economic deprivation led to vast discontent throughout the Kikuyu. The British troops rounded up to 1.5 million Kenyans including Barack Obama’s grandfather and put them into concentration camps in Kenya. British colonial records indicate 100,000 believed to have died.

Sir Evelyn Baring, 1st Baron Howick of Glendale, KG, GCMG, KCVO, played an integral role in atrocities committed and the subsequent cover-up of the abuses carried out during the suppression of the Mau Mau revolt and kept them secret from the British public.

Colonial administrators and governors including Sir Patrick Muir Renison GCMG, Sir Henry Steven Potter KCMG and Sir Walter Fleming Coutts GCMG MBE had a significant part to play according to the archive reports.

Let’s look at America’s true values

In America: As historians are fully aware, during the 500 years of the transatlantic slave trade, colonists from the US, the UK and France transported 12.8 million enslaved Africans to the Americas, in addition to another 10 million who died during transportation. 

The act of dropping atomic/nuclear bombs on a civilian population; on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was at the time governed by international law found in the Hague Regulations on Land Warfare of 1907 and the Hague Draft Rules of Air Warfare of 1922–1923 and was therefore unlawful. Also, under the Additional Protocol of the Geneva Conventions, the nuclear bombing of Japan was a gross violation of international humanitarian law. It clearly states that using nuclear weapons on civilians in any situation would violate international law. Is estimated over 226,000 civilians died and has America been brought to justice over this heinous crime. The person who sanctioned it; then, President Harry S. Truman be found guilty similar to the Nuremberg trial of the Nazi Germans and sentenced to death?

Presently in the US, black people are constantly harassed and murdered by white police officers, we have seen this day in day out on television. Henceforth, you can imagine what white immigrants must have done to the indigenous inhabitants of America who were completely wiped out by European migrants when there were no TV cameras or critical journalists to witness them. To date US justice has not prevailed for black people in education, employment and the list goes on. 

The brutal killing of George Floyd in America by a police officer, by putting his knee on his neck so he couldn’t breathe. Is merely a recent example that was witnessed by the world because of modern technology. Otherwise, it too would have passed into oblivions without witnesses. As pointed out by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination long ago, African descendants in the US, Canada, Germany, France and the UK face systemic racism on health, employment, education, fair trial and other rights.

Let’s look at Germany true values

In Germany: As early as the beginning of the 20th century, German colonists slaughtered indigenous Namibian tribes and stole their land. Between 1904 and 1908 Germans carried out systematic genocide by having five concentration camps, “camps of death”. 

The German military killed over 100,000 indigenous people, including three-fourths of the Herero people and over half of the Nama people. United Nations Economic and Social Council Commission on Human Rights said in a report that this is the first genocide in the 20th century. During WWII, Nazi Germany slaughtered almost six million Jews, including one million children.

Let’s look at France’s true values

In France: Historians have discovered evidence, to show that the French army massacred 5.5 million people in Algeria during the colonial period, and stole their land, which is a crime against humanity. It’s been nearly 80 years since hundreds of black West African soldiers who fought for France’s freedom against Nazi Germany during World War II were killed in cold blood by their fellow white French officers in Senegal in 1944. 

In what is now known as the Thiaroi massacre; this is the story of how France treated its black soldiers and took their lives because they demanded for their rights. How was this then covered up and erased from the school curriculum? Was it in attempting to deny the truth and rewrite history? Was it to lighten the nation’s conscience burdened with guilt and culpability?

Let’s look at Canada’s true values

In Canada: The indigenous people of Canada have been constantly undermined and discriminated against by the non-indigenous European immigrants who settled in the continent of North America.

There is a deep rift between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in Canada. It’s a divide that goes back hundreds of years when Europeans arrived in North America. This is when the discrimination began and the theft of their ancestral land. It didn’t stop at just taking land from the indigenous people, they brought with them a policy of physical and cultural genocide to snuff out the so-called Indian problem. 

The first Indian Residential schools started opening in the 1870s at the beginning of what some have called the darkest chapter in Canadian history. What took place in Residential schools amounts to nothing short of cultural genocide. By 1920 the Indian Act was amended to make it mandatory for status Indian children to attend a Residential school. When their parents refused to send them, police showed up and forcibly took them. It’s estimated that 150,000 children were taken from their families and placed in these schools, where they were stripped of their culture and their language. 

The goal of this program was assimilation, to quote, “kill the Indian in the child”. It is documented that thousands of children died, with some estimates saying the mortality rate was as high as 60% in some of these schools. Those who survived have shared horrific stories of physical, sexual and emotional abuse. The last Residential school closed in 1996. The impacts of those horrific institutions are still palpable today.

Indigenous communities have shown incredible resilience in the centuries since the European migration arrived, but the impacts of intergenerational trauma and colonisation still run deep. In 2007 the largest class-action lawsuit was taken against the Canadian Government which reluctantly acknowledged the damage inflicted by Residential schools in Canada.

Modern-day war crimes

It is reported that some in the US, the UK and their allies violated the Geneva Conventions and brutally killed innocent civilians in Afghanistan, which constitutes war crimes.

It is recorded that the US and the UK, among others, used some test tube of washing powder and staged a video as evidence to launch wars against sovereign countries including Iraq and Syria, which caused untold casualties of innocent civilians, tore apart and displaced numerous families. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Syrian crisis. In Syria alone, 350,000 people have been killed in the war, their families have been destroyed and their lives greatly affected. Orchestrated according to historians by Western forces including America Shouldn’t the perpetrators be sanctioned?

This year also marks the 10th anniversary of Libya’s civil war. France, the UK and the EU, among others, launched the war in Libya, creating a large-scale humanitarian disaster, which is the root cause of the current migrant and refugee issues and an important factor leading to regional turbulence. More than 400,000 people remain displaced within Libya. More than a million people are in urgent need of assistance. Shouldn’t the perpetrators be held accountable?

These countries show no remorse for the human rights, atrocities committed by them and the turmoil they created in other countries; they even go further to impose unilateral sanctions on others in the name of human rights, severely jeopardising the rights to life, health and development of people in relevant countries.

Weaponising vaccines

In the face of the epidemic, these above-mentioned most developed countries have turned a blind eye to their people’s rights to life and health, leading to losses of tens of hundreds of lives. In pursuit of “vaccine nationalism”, they’ve hoarded vaccines far in excess of their population’s needs, leaving developing countries struggling with insufficient vaccines.

We can’t help but ask: how could people have any right if they lost their lives? The United States and the West have been trumpeting protecting human rights, but who and what right on earth are they protecting? In what way are they respecting and protecting human rights? Shouldn’t they feel ashamed?

The new media age

These few countries are obsessed with lecturing others on human rights. However historic facts have proved that they are neither qualified nor capable of doing so. Historians have stated; we hope they will understand that you can’t tell a lie and expect to get away with it especially with the dawn of the new media age, where everybody has access to information on their phone.

A clear example of this would be the demonstrations that mushroomed all over the world in disgust of what happened to George Floyd who was illegally killed by a white police officer. It went viral everywhere in the world causing demonstrations because they had access to information and at the same time, they found it absolutely unacceptable that in 2020 an innocent black man can be killed because of his colour in America.

Weaponising the Human Rights Council

The time to intimidate emerging nations is long gone. In the old days, they had something called gunboat diplomacy where they could threaten with violence to get their way. Now, they are weaponising the Human Rights Council to be a precision-guided missile to exert influence on specific countries. Also gone are the days when several so-called scholars and state media could unscrupulously malign nations in collusion with impunity. Any nation worth anything must robustly defend national interests and dignity. It’s a courtesy to reciprocate what we receive. 

There are no longer any excuses for discrimination, prejudice, ignorance and arrogance. Never try appeasement. That’s what British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain did with Adolf Hitler in the 1930s and it ended up with the Second World War. Historians and aficionados have now widely discredited it as a policy of weakness.

 

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A perspective from a Sri Lankan Canadian

Each time, a Canadian politician talks about Tamils of Sri Lanka, they are being racist.

There are hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankan immigrants who left their motherland to come to the West. They belong to Sri Lanka Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim and Burgher communities. The main reason for them to leave Sri Lanka was the 30 years of Tamil Terrorist war in the country. Some of these immigrants landed in Canada. Some through the proper channels and others as refugees. During the peak times of the war, Canada allowed more Tamils to migrate to Canada than the other races of Sri Lankan origin. Even though we were all equal victims of the same war, the Canadian governments took sides at the time. Due to this unfair favoritism by consecutive Canadian Governments, there are more Tamil immigrants in Canada compared to Sinhala, Muslim and Burghers.

 

All Sri Lankans: Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim and Burgher were equal victims of the Tamil Terrorist war

• When Canadian politicians refer to the hardships of ONLY the Tamil community, they are racially discriminating the Sinhala, Muslim and the Burghers who were equally impacted by the same war: https://www.ontariopc.ca/statement_from_ontario_pc_leader_patrick_brown_regarding_tamil_memorial_week
• When politicians equate dead Tamil terrorists to honorable military heroes, they are insulting the national heroes: https://srilankabrief.org/2014/11/canadian-tamil-mp-ndcf-likens-ltte-heroes-day-canadian-remembrance-day/
• When Canadian politicians promote the lie of Tamil Genocide, they are racially discriminating the Sinhala, Muslim and Burghers who were killed by the Tamil terrorists: https://www.ontariondp.ca/news/statement-ndp-leader-andrea-horwath-supporting-passage-bill-104-tamil-genocide-week-act
• When the Canadian Politicians attend events where the dead Tamil terrorists, Tamil terrorist flag or the Tamil Terrorist Suicide Flower are displayed, they are supporting the glorification of terrorism and violence in Canada: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/liberal-mps-mark-tamil-tigers-death/article4308473/

So, the question is, why are some Canadian politicians being racists? The answer is the Tamil vote. 

                                                                                                                                          This is:    

Racism for Votes in Canada

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While the international community is preoccupied demanding to know how & how many LTTE were defeated instead of being happy that LTTE was defeated, Sri Lanka has chosen to concentrate instead on developing Sri Lanka & giving a life to those that had been living in fear of LTTE. Gokulan a former child soldier became a singing sensation and now Sri Lanka is proud that we have another sensation – V Viyaskanth the 18 year old cricket sensation from Jaffna. Had Prabakaran & LTTE prevailed Viyaskanth would be bowling grenades and batting with an AK47 instead of the amazing leg spinner he has become.

Vijayakanth Viyaskanth was born on 5 December 2001. Months before the Norwegian brokered infamous Cease Fire Agreement of February 2002 that officially gave territory to terrorists. The CFA was used to not only regroup but carry out a massive propaganda campaign to collect funds and plan to attack the Sri Lanka Armed Forces with venom. It was also a period that the LTTE increased recruitment of child soldiers as evident in UNICEF figures inspite of claiming to release child soldiers. It was as a result of closing the Mavil Aru anicut and committing a war crime by cutting off water to some 40,000 farmers in the East that the Armed Forces was called in to open the anicut. This eventually led to the liberation of Eastern Province of LTTE. By 2006, Vijayakanth Viyaskanth would have been just 5 years old. LTTE was militarily defeated in May 2009 when Viyaskanth was just 8 years. LTTE recruited children as young as 7years to be child soldiers denying these Tamil children their right to live happily with their parents and their fundamental right to education and freedom of movement.

If LTTE was not defeated in 2009, Viyaskanth would have been turned into a child soldier with no hope of ever becoming a cricket sensation.

It is believed that 30% of LTTE comprised children. Just imagine how many of them faced death as children for no reason, forced to kill and commit suicide biting a cyanide capsule. Aunty Adele that vicious Australian nurse comes to mind. She was the main trainer of children from 1970s to late 1990s when she returned to UK and where she lives happily. The UK that has banned LTTE in UK seems not bothered that the woman who trained children to kill and commit suicide is living in UK and no attempt is made to even question her role in LTTE.

How many LTTE child soldiers had their dreams dashed – how many of these LTTE child soldiers could have become lawyers, engineers, doctors, accountants, teachers, principals, entrepreneurs & sports stars? Instead hundreds and thousands of them ended up holding a gun, biting a cyanide capsule and living in the jungles. What kind of life was this for children? The silly tamashas that LTTE diaspora hold annually are just sham shows just for publicity when in reality not a pound or dollar have gone to the families of these dead child soldiers.

LTTE Diaspora – Indoctrinating hate into the minds of innocent children

Do these Tamil children living overseas singing happy birthday for Prabakaran know what life was like for the Tamil children who were Prabakaran’s child soldiers? These kids are blowing candles – Prabakaran’s child soldiers were blowing people to pieces

The LTTE Diaspora overseas who carried out the propaganda for LTTE should feel ashamed. While their children went to private/public schools, university and landed themselves top jobs and wore branded clothes and went on holidays – back home fellow Tamil children of poor and low caste homes were kidnapped, taken to bogus LTTE ‘orphanages’ and trained to kill and commit suicide. While LTTE diaspora enjoyed life digging into the LTTE money kitty and educating their children, the low caste and poor Tamil children had to suffer in the jungles of Mullaitivu. The only clothes they wore were the LTTE uniform that was often unwashed for months.

19 May 2009 must be celebrated annually by GoSL & citizens of Sri Lanka as freedom for Tamil children. No longer are they kidnapped and turned into LTTE child soldiers.

Had LTTE prevailed instead of being defeated in 2009, this young cricket sensation would have been no cricket star but a 18 year old child soldier.

For all those in the international community bragging about reconciliation and accountability – a question for them is what have their finger pointing and demarches produced other than giving the opportunity for LTTE Diaspora to light the LTTE Flower over UK Parliament!

Sri Lanka on the other hand has proudly produced plenty of stars like Gokulan and Viyaskanth. Of the 594 child soldiers who surrendered to the Sri Lanka military in 2009, all were given a Presidential Pardon and then put through school and given training in whatever livelihood they wished to enter.

11 years after LTTE defeat, Tamils can be happy to see how North has progressed from what North was under LTTE rule. When LTTE was making $300m annual profits, what comforts did LTTE or the LTTE diaspora give the Tamil people living in the North. Only a handful that supported LTTE enjoyed all the fruits of the LTTE terror reign. At least one family member lives overseas but it was only after LTTE defeat that they could freely help their families back home. Previous times all living overseas, whether they liked it or not had to give tithes to the LTTE kitty on a monthly basis. So whether LTTE diaspora or LTTE supporters like to admit it or not, their lives changed for better after LTTE demise. The only lot disheartened by LTTE defeat are the selfish lot who preferred to enjoy the LTTE kitty only amongst themselves without sharing with the rest of the Tamil community in particular the poor & low caste.

Returning to our young 18 year old cricket star Vijayakanth Viyaskanth, who made his debut for Jaffna Stallions in the recently concluded IPL cricket tournament, all of Sri Lanka wish him for a bright future. We are all fond of and proud of the other cricket sensation Muttiah Muralitharan. These are all national treasures.

While petty minds attempt to divide people, Sri Lanka would rather concentrating on building people rather than building obstacles.

Shenali D Waduge

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By Ranjith Galabada

The History

The excavations of archaeologist Prof.Raj Somadeva, on the trail of Balangoda human (Homosapiens balangodensis) – the skeletal evidence of anatomically modern homosapiens that lived 50,000 years ago in Sri Lanka are unravelling a fascinating history that had been suspected all along. Sri Lanka has had a developed human presence much before the Indian Prince Vijaya’s expedition in 600 BC. Prince Vijaya married a Prince known as Kuveni who was living in SriLanka. Later Vijaya brought another lady from North India as his queen. In fact, the archaeologists believe modern humans existed in Sri Lanka as far back as 125,000 before present (BP) through the Ice Age.

An indigenous Stone Age culture can be traced back to 10,000 BC, a few hundreds of this Veddha people, related inter alia to the indigenous tribes of Australia, have survived, just, until today. The first Sinhalese arrived in the country in the sixth century BC – probably from northern India. Buddhism, later to become a powerful religious influence in the country, came in the mid-third century BC. A great civilization grew up around the cities of Anuradhapura (a kingdom from 200 BC to AD 1000) and Polonnaruwa (1070 to 1200).

 

Tamils and Foreign Invasions in Sri Lanka   

1. Tamil military leaders were powerful as far back as 200 BC, and a successful Tamil invasion took place from AD 432.
2. In 237 BC Island was ruled by two south Indians holding the throne at Anuradhapura.
3. In 145 BC a Tamil General named Elara of the Chola dynasty ruled the country from South India for 44 years.
4. In the modern period, a crucial date was 1505, the arrival of the Portuguese who soon occupied parts of the coastal areas.

5. After 1656 the Dutch defeated the Portuguese on land and at sea, and foreigners secured a tighter grip of the island, though Kandy, hidden in deep jungle, continued to rule itself, along with some strange customs. In 1660 a young sailor from London named Robert Knox was held in Kandy for nineteen years.
6. In 1796, the British — concerned about revolutionary France’s ambitions — wrested the island from the Dutch. As a bonus, the coveted natural harbour at Trincomalee became a Royal Navy staging post. In 1802 Ceylon was declared a British Crown Colony.

7. In 1815 the last king of Kandy was deposed and exiled, though guerrilla wars spluttered on.

Tamils Settlement in the Country

In 1805 tens of thousands of Tamils were imported from south India to work on first the coffee and then the far more successful tea plantations by the British. The ‘new Tamils’ did not integrate well with the existing minority Tamil population who settled down in 1400, because, firstly the incomers were considered “low caste’’ by the Northern Tamils who had forgotten their beginnings as indented labour in the tobacco plantations. Furthermore, the newcomers soon almost equalled the numbers of indigenous Tamils.

 

 

The picture below shows how British’s treated Tamils who were brought by them to work for them.

Therefore, the claim made by Tamils in the North and by Diaspora Tamils who live in the Western countries is totally incorrect and should be rejected. UK is the country to be blamed for supporting the false territorial claims of the Tamils and introduced the divide and rule policy in the dominions of the British Empire. Otherwise Sinhalese and Tamils lived in this country peacefully as one nation – most of them do so even now, especially in the south.

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York University of Toronto, Ontario, is one of the largest universities in Canada with over 300 student clubs. York University provides access to cutting edge research in 25 Research Centres and Institutes that help transform the future in the fields of global health, digital learning and sustainable business solutions. 

McMaster University of Hamilton, Ontario is recognized as one of the best universities in Canada, that once ranked as the 5^th best university in Canada in the 2012-2013 academic year, according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. 

 

However, did you also know that these educational institutions are also breeding grounds for Tamil Terrorism? While it might be difficult to believe that such reputable Canadian educational institutions would encourage and allow glorification of Tamil Terrorism, it is unfortunately the case. 

York Tamil Students’ Association is
dedicated to serving the cultural, recreational social, educational and
organizational interests of the Tamil Community in a non-profit basis. The
President of the Association is Mithilen Mathipalan. Here’s the logo of the
association below.

York Tamil Students’ Association also has its own Instagram account, @yorkutsa. When taken a closer look at the Instagram account, it was clear that this students’ association is rather dedicated to glorifying and celebrating a proscribed terrorist organization in Canada known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and its terrorist members which includes deadly suicide bombers that carried out numerous attacks against innocent Sri Lankan civilians for 26 years (1983-2009). This organization was banned in 2006 by the Canadian government. However, York University Tamil Students’ Association proudly display the banned Tamil terrorist organization’s flag during their cultural events (see pictures below). During a multicultural event, the flag was displayed at a booth and also displayed in a multicultural week parade. This makes any sane, law abiding individual question, “Does Canada’s multiculturalism=terrorism?”

 

Notice, how the logo of the York Tamil Student’s Association is symbolic of the same Tamil Terrorist elements. The logo depicts the same image of the tiger in the Tamil Terrorist flag (LTTE) (see the red and yellow tiger flag below). The logo also depicts the map of the mono-ethnic and separatist state named Tamil Eelam (see the top right image below), which the LTTE was trying to create by waging a war against innocent Sri Lankan civilians for 26 years.

An excerpt from the caption of the top right post (I am Thamizh) above on @yorktsa Instagram page, mentions: “We take this day to remember the efforts of our Thamil Martrys of the LTTE (Proscribed Terrorist Organization in Canada) who fought for the livelihood. There will be student and community speakers and performances to help in commemorating the event”. The bottom left post of the female LTTE cadre is one of the many individuals who participated in the LTTE Tamil Terrorist cause.

McMaster Tamil Student’s Association is no different. According to McMaster Students Union, McMaster Tamil Student’s Association aims to plan cultural and social events that unite both students and faculty to embrace their identity, celebrate their heritage, serve their communities while advocating humanitarian values. Here’s the logo of the association.

Again, notice how the logo of the McMaster Tamil Student’s Association includes the map of the monoethnic and separatist state of Tamil Eelam, aimed to creating by the LTTE Tamil Terrorist Organization. Both Instagram accounts make the effort of providing a spotlight to the Tamil terrorist flag and to individual members of this terrorist organization as evidenced by the images above. 

 

McMaster Tamil Student’s Association has Instagram account called @mcmastertsa. A closer look at this account, depicts the work carried out by this association. Again, this includes terrorist glorification events such as Maaveerar Naal, which is an event dedicated to celebrating suicide bombers and LTTE cadres that carried out ruthless atrocities against innocent Sri Lankan civilians. Their images of the terrorist members of this banned organization are proudly displayed. The banned Tamil Terrorist flag has also been proudly displayed in the events conducted by this association (see pictures below). The Canadian flag is also being raised along with the banned Tamil Terrorist flag in the same premises. 

 

An excerpt from the caption of the top left post (Major Sothiya) above on @mcmastertsa Instagram page, mentions: “MacTSA is not affiliated with any militant group. Our goal is to convey the narrative and history of Tamil Eelam”.

However, the question arises, “If MacTSA, is not affiliated with any militant group, why does the association, spotlight members of a proscribed terrorist organization in Canada, that is responsible for killing thousands of innocent Sri Lankan civilians, indiscriminate of ethnicity?” Why is MacTSA attempting to fool McMaster university authorities, students and the general Canadian public, by celebrating and glorifying terrorism in the disguise of celebrating history of a mono-ethnic state that a ruthless terrorist organization banned in Canadian soil, once attempted to create?

Terrorism is celebrated and glorified in the disguise of multiculturalism at York and McMaster Universities. The authorities of these educational institutions have never raised any concerns or questions regarding the glorification Tamil Terrorism and violent suicide bombers and terrorists who carried out massacres against innocent Sri Lankan civilians being celebrated in university premises. This deeply questions the credibility and integrity of these 2 educational institutions.

 

Is Tamil terrorism, a part of Canada’s multiculturalism? Is Tamil terrorism, what authorities at York and McMaster universities aim to teach their students? Is it possible to celebrate another culture by glorifying suicide bombers and individuals of a proscribed terrorist organization? Is this, what you call “multiculturalism”?

 

LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) are responsible for killing thousands of innocent civilians in Sri Lanka irrespective of ethnicity, race or religion for 26 years. Victims of Tamil Terrorist bombings and suicide attacks at the Colombo Central Bank, at the Bandaranaike Airport, religious places of worship including mosques and Buddhist temples, schools, railways, public transport were all funded in Canada. Canada has been an unofficial state sponsor of terrorism against innocent Sri Lankan civilians and deeply hurting the Sri Lankan-Canadian community as a result.  The Canadian government openly promotes separatism in Sri Lanka by recognizing so called Tamil Genocide Day, Mahaveerar Naal (celebration of Tamil Terrorist suicide cadres), bogus war crimes against the Sri Lankan Armed Forces, while blaming the Sri Lankan government for getting rid of Tamil Terrorist violence as the guilty party.

 

Glorification of violence is one of the key steps taken to keep terrorist ideologies alive so that they never die or diminish. Canada’s York and McMaster universities certainly aim to keep the Tamil terrorist ideology alive by allowing the glorification of a proscribed terrorist organization in Canadian soil. This creates an absolute mockery out of Canada’s true multiculturalism, anti-terrorism laws and the reputation of these educational institutions.

 

References

Six Reasons to Choose York U. (2017, November 24). Retrieved November 23, 2020, from https://yublog.students.yorku.ca/blog/2017/01/11/six-reason-to-choose-york-u/

McMaster ranked 5th best university in Canada | CBC News. (n.d.). Retrieved November 23, 2020, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/headlines/mcmaster-ranked-5th-best-university-in-canada-1.1134906

Yu Connect. Tamil Students’ Association. Retrieved November 23, 2020, from https://yorku.campuslabs.ca/engage/organization/yutsa

McMaster Tamil Student’s Association. (n.d.). Retrieved November 23, 2020, from https://msumcmaster.ca/initiative/mcmaster-tamil-students-association/

Is Canada an Unofficial State Sponsor of Terrorism? (2014, May 23). Retrieved November 24, 2020, fromhttps://mackenzieinstitute.com/2014/05/is-canada-an-unofficial-state-sponsor-of-terrorism/

Image references

Instagram accounts: @yorktsa @mcmastertsa

The post York U & McMaster Become Canadian Breeding Grounds For Eelam Tamil Separatists! appeared first on Sri Lankan Canadian Action Coalition Ontario Bill 104.

The post Formal Complaint against Trustee Robin Pilkey, Chair of the Board and TDSB Board members appeared first on Sri Lankan Canadian Action Coalition Ontario Bill 104.

14th May 2019

Dear Sirs/ Madames:

I write to you on behalf of Sri Lankan residents and Sri Lankan parents whose children attend schools with  Toronto District School Board (TDSB) to direct your attention to the following email  (Email) that has been originated by  TDSB.

Review of the Email indicates that TDSB as an organization is approving and condoning the information disseminated in the seminar as it is evident that TDSB is encouraging the students and staff to attend the event.

I trust you are aware that, being educators yourselves and/or as responsible office holders for a field that holds accountability of shaping future generations and young minds, that information you disseminate should be true and correct.

If you or your agents take responsibility in promoting a certain event or segment of information ,it is your paramount responsibility to verify the accuracy of information or the reliability of the message the event is proposing to promote.

I trust you all, being affiliated with the field of education, are aware of the definition genocide. I have attached the Guidance note provided by UN (United Nations) for your ease of reference and further review and strictly direct your attention to implications outlined in the note associated with arbitrary use of  the term genocide.

Genocide Convention provides the guidelines for establishing genocide and as per the convention the only authority  that is able to make a finding of genocide is UN or the International Court of Justice. I have attached the Guidance note provided by UN (United Nations) for your ease of reference and further review.

“Article VIII

Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III.

Article IX

Disputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application or fulfilment of the present Convention, including those relating to the responsibility of a State for genocide or for any of the other acts enumerated in article III, shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice at the request of any of the parties to the dispute.”

There has been no finding of genocide in Sri Lanka.  The issue is controversial and falls clearly with in political propaganda initiated by certain factions  to achieve political goals.

Sri Lankan community  has provided its formal objections on the issue to the municipalities and the provincial government. I have attached the above materials to allow you to get a full  sense of the controversial nature of the matter.

You as educators are disseminating false and unsubstantiated information  with little thought to accountability of your actions.  It is irresponsible and discriminatory towards thousands of Sri Lankan parents whose children are attending your schools. It is a breach of trust the parents have placed in you to educate their children responsibly and not fall prey to factions who attempt to promote their political agendas.

We request that TDSB withdraw sponsorship of the matter . Please note that TDSB shall be held accountable for promoting unsubstantiated and partisan information without proper verification  if TDSB proceeds with their support for this seminar and the matter will be escalated to seek redress through all available channels.

Your Truly

Anjana Bandara

Barrister & Solicitor

The post Letter to the Toronto School Board by Anjana Bandara appeared first on Sri Lankan Canadian Action Coalition Ontario Bill 104.

    Mayor John Tory                                                   Mayor Patrick Brown

    City Hall, 2nd Floor                                               City of Brampton

    100 Queen Street W                                             2 Wellington Street West

    Toronto, Ontario                                                    Brampton, Ontario

    M5H 2N2                                                                 L6Y 4R2

    Dear Mayors John Tory and Mayor Patrick Brown,

    Re: Proclamation of May 18, 2019 as “Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day”

    I am writing as a Canadian of Sri Lankan Sinhalese origin to express our deep disappointment and disbelief on your proclaiming the 18^th of May, 2019, as         “Tamil Remembrance Genocide Day” on one sided information presented to you from extremist members of the Tamil community that extended support         to the internationally designated terrorist group known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) proscribed by the UN Security Council, USA, UK, EU,         Canada, and India amongst a total of 32 countries, and without consulting the other members of the Sri Lankan community from the Sinhalese, non-                political moderate Tamils, Indian Tamils, Moors, Malays, Burghers, etc. residing within your two cities. 

    We find that the rules governing the issue of such proclamations strictly prohibit such where it relates to:  (1)  Matters of political controversy; and (2)             Events or organizations with no direct relationship to the City.  Furthermore, this is bound to create friction among the proponents and opposition within         the Sri Lankan community which has been striving to heal the underlying differences and come together in amity and friendship. The word ‘Genocide’ has     been defined by the United Nations, and that august body has not considered the actions taken by the security forces of the legally and duly elected                 government of Sri Lanka against the internationally designated terrorist group known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which was engaged in         an armed insurrection including suicide terrorism to break up the state of Sri Lanka, in order to establish a separate mono-ethnic Tamil separate state called     “Eelam” through a continuous wave of death and destruction as coming within the scope of the term ‘genocide’.

    We also wish to point out the false statements presented by those requesting the issue of the proclamations which apparently have been accepted without     question in your determinations:

(a      (a)    The Tamils are not recognized as a Nation, and form a part of the Nation of Sri Lanka which is a multi-lingual, multi-religious state.  The Tamil nation         exists outside Sri Lanka in the State of Tamilnadu in South India where over 75 million Tamils live.  In fact, the Tamils were not even recognized as a distinct     ethnic group in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) till the census of 1911, as they were previously regarded as the Malabars who had been brought as indentured labour         from the Malabar coast of India for work in tobacco, coffee and tea plantations by European colonial powers.

(b         (b)The Tamils arrived as peaceful settlers around the 11^th and 12^th centuries, whereas previously they only attempted to invade the land to pillage and             plunder but were driven back every time from the small pockets they captured  by the indigenous Sinhala people.  In the 13^th century they succeeded in         establishing a small kinglet called Jaffnapatam confined to the Jaffna peninsula and a narrow strip of land extending to Mannar on the northwest coast             paying tribute or taxes to the main Sinhala king whose seat was in Kotte or Kandy.  This tiny kinglet lasted about 150 years till such time as the  King of             Kotte sent a military expedition under the command of Prince Sapumal to regain suzerainty over the terrain of Jaffnapatam.   Tamils who were brought in         to grow tobacco by the Portuguese and Dutch colonial regimes that held sway over the coastal areas from the 16^th to the 18^th centuries were settled in the     northern and eastern areas where they came to form the predominant group in the region.  It was never the traditional homeland of the Tamils as the             Sinhalese settlements predated the entry of Tamils by over two millennia as the place names clearly establishes the Sinhalese ancestry in the region.  Even     today, more Tamils live outside the north and east amidst multi-ethnic communities and make up roughly 12 percent of the total population.

(c       (c)   The British took over the Dutch possessions in 1796 and the Sinhalese ceded power in terms of  the Treaty called the ‘Kandyan Convention’ of 1815.         The Sinhalese began to resist the British who disregarded their treaty obligations and took over the lands of the Sinhalese without a penny in                             compensation. At this point, the British colonial ruler commenced discriminatory treatment of the Sinhalese and favored treatment of the minority Tamils     under their divide and rule policy. The colonial administration encouraged Christian missionaries to establish schools in Jaffna and other Tamil areas with         few and far between for the others. At the time the British left granting independence to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1948, the number of First Grade  schools with     libraries and science laboratories in the Tamil areas exceeded that in the rest of the country, as a result of which the Tamils came to dominate the public         service and professions.  Following independence and transfer of political power through the exercise of universal franchise to  the Sinhalese who                     comprised 78 percent of the population, and steps taken by the national governments to open more schools and bring about some equity affected their         level of domination which was regarded as discrimination by the Tamil community.

(d      (d)  It is to the credit of the Tamil community that they have continued to hold leading positions even after independence.  The first Ceylonese Army                 Commander was  Anton Mutukumaru who was a Tamil, six of the twelve Deputy Inspectors General of Police, several Judges of the Supreme Court, Heads     of Government Departments, senior Diplomats, leading members of every profession were from the Tamil community.  Every single government formed         after independence have had Tamils holding cabinet positions.  Even today, Tamils hold key positions in the government, supreme court, central bank and         other key institutions, making the allegation of discrimination highly questionable.

(e      (e)  Even many of those Tamils who destroyed their passports enroute to seek refugee status in Canada, bypassing their original homeland of Tamilnadu         separated by just 25 kilometers of ocean to which they are linguistically and culturally linked, approached the Sri Lankan High Commission office in Ottawa     to obtain travel documents by the thousands to visit Sri Lanka the land which they claimed had persecuted them.

(f       (f)    The Tamils who loudly claim discrimination at the hands of the Sinhalese mounted a massive campaign against the ‘Prevention of Social Disabilities Act’     of 1957, as it would prevent the high caste Vellalas from blocking the entry of so called low caste Hindus ( designated as untouchables) from entering their     temples or kovils to exercise their fundamental  right of freedom of worship and entering schools to gain education.  One of the key leaders heading this         campaign was Mathematics Professor and Tamil separatist politician C.Suntharalingam.

    Influenced by the ‘We Tamil Movement’ of Southern India of the 1920’s to fight for an independent Tamil state in India from the British, the Tamils in then     Ceylon withdrew from the Tamil Congress which was part of the National Government formed immediately after independence to form the new separatist     party called the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (Tamil State Party) in the year 1949 just one year after gaining independence. The Tamil separatist movement        continued to grow building antagonism towards the Sinhalese and later formed the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) which adopted the infamous             Vadukkodai Resolution in 1976 to form a Mono-Ethnic  Tamil Separate State called “Eelam” encompassing the northern and eastern provinces comprising         1/3^rd of the land area and 2/3^rd of the nation’s coastline and oceanic economic zone exclusively as a Tamil dominated state.   The resolution envisaged the     use of armed force to establish the separate state leading to the formation of a number of armed Tamil militant groups to whom India provided military         training, funds and weapons to destabilize her small neighbour of Sri Lanka.

    The LTTE launched attacks on the other Tamil militant groups to gain ascendancy and later became the leading terrorist group employing suicide terrorism     and coming to be recognized as the ‘Sole Representative’ of the Tamil community including by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) elected to represent Tamils     in the National Parliament. Contrary to what has been stated, it was the LTTE that carried out attacks against Tamil political leaders, Tamil academics and         school principals, Tamil police officers including reputed Tamils such as Mayor Duraiappa, TULF leader Hon. Amirthalingam, Rajini Thiranagama university         professor, Neelan Tiruchelvam leading intellectual, the Hon. Lakshman Kadirgamar, distinguished Minister of Foreign Affairs and a host of other Tamils             deemed dissidents to their cause. They have been described as the most ruthless terrorist group by the FBI in their website.

    Thereafter, the LTTE began to attack the apparatus of the state responsible for internal security, isolated military camps, assassination of political leaders         including Ranasinghe Premadasa, President of Sri Lanka, Gamini Dissanayake, Presidential candidate,cabinet ministers including  Lalith Athulathmudali, C.V.     Gooneratne, Jeyaraj Fernandopulle, T.Maheswaran, the Navy Commander Fernando, attempted assassination of Chandrika Kumaratunge, President of Sri         Lanka, Army Commander Sarath Fonseka and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse. In February 2002, the government of the day entered into a                     Ceasefire Agreement (CFA)with the LTTE appointing the Nordic countries to monitor the situation,  and commenced peace talks using Norway as the                 facilitator and the USA, UK and Japan along with Norway as Co-Chairs of these talks.  The LTTE did not negotiate in good faith as they used the talks to buy     time to rearm and conscript youth including children to their fighting ranks – which is a war crime, withdrawing from the talks after six rounds to seek their     goal through military means. According to the Nordic Monitors, the LTTE had violated the CFA on over 7,000 instances including the killing of more than 400     military and civil personnel without incurring any penalties, whilst the Sri Lankan Military had been in violation on about 450 occasions mostly relating to         harassment of civilians at military check points.

    The LTTE also attacked economic targets such as the Central Bank, Petroleum Storage facilities, The International Airport at Katunayake destroying six             commercial aircraft belonging to Sri Lankan Airlines, and regularly planted bombs in public transit, shopping malls, bus terminals, rail stations, killing large     numbers of civilians making the population fearful of going about their normal business. They attacked remote rural villages in the north and east to                 ethnically cleanse the region and drive out the resident population from areas claimed for their separate state.  They even attacked the holy shrine of             Buddhists at the Sri Maha Bodhi in Anuradhapura killing about 140 including monks and lay devotees  who were engaged in meditation and other                     devotional activities.  They attacked a bus carrying 33 Buddhist monks who were proceeding on pilgrimage at Aranthalawa using machine guns and                 machetes, and also bombed the Sri Dalada Maligawa in Kandy which houses the Tooth Relic of the Buddha in the early hours killing about 20 worshippers     and causing damage to this World Heritage Site recognized by UNESCO.  They attacked Muslims at prayer in Kattankudy killing nearly 180 worshippers             inside their mosques. The killing rampages continued unabated until such time as the state decided to combat force with force.

    By mid-2005, the LTTE had garnered a huge amount of funds through extortion of the Tamil expats (vide HRW report of March 2016), drug running, human     smuggling and other illicit as well as legitimate means sufficient to buy necessary weapons for their land, sea and air forces to launch their final war of             liberation and even stockpile weapons in floating warehouses aboard ships parked off the main sea lanes out at sea. They attacked unarmed military                 personnel on home leave for the new year and started hostilities in earnest by shutting off the sluice gates at Mavil Aru in August 2006 stopping the flow of     drinking and irrigation water to 30,000 farmers living downstream.  The Sri Lankan state called on the Nordic Monitors to intervene to restore water, and as     the LTTE refused to do so for over 12 days, the government ordered the military to act with force to resume the water supply.  The Sri Lankan state                     abandoned the CFA and carried out coordinated action by its security forces to rout the LTTE by retaking the east, and then moving up the west coast                 evicting the LTTE military camps causing them to retreat.

    As the LTTE forces retreated towards their strongholds in the northeast they forced the Tamil civilian population to move with them from west to east to         exploit their labour, conscript new fighters and form a human shield. The battle progressed rapidly with the LTTE losing ground and fighting cadres till they     became completely surrounded by the Sri Lankan forces in a narrow strip at Putumathalan, in Mullaitivu district beside the Nandikadal lagoon.

    Contrary to what is claimed as genocidal attacks by the Sri Lankan forces, the number of genuine civilians killed is unknown as none of the published                 figures distinguish between combatants, LTTE Auxiliary Forces Personnel, and genuine non-combatant civilians. The UN Resident Representative’s office in     Colombo reported that a total of 7,721 were killed between end August 2008 and May 13, 2009 which number the UN Under Secretary General for                     Humanitarian Affairs, Sir John Holmes, did not accept stating that it could not be verified as the UN was not on the ground other than lower rung Tamil             employees whom the LTTE refused to release. Amnesty claimed a total of 10,000 being killed, the UK Sunday Times reporter who only overflew the last             battle ground when he accompanied UNSG Ban ki Moon on his inspection tour on May 25, 2009 reported that 20,000 had been killed in the last stages (i.e.     January 1 to May 19, 2009), while UNSG’s so called Panel of Experts on Sri Lanka sitting in New York estimated tens of thousands of persons being killed         estimated at 40,000, the same number reported on by the Int’l Crisis Group.  The UNSG’s PoE received its information from some 4,000 persons, mainly             Tamils living outside Sri Lanka, instructed that the data collected be locked up for the next 20 years till 2031, when a decision would be made to release             same or keep these locked for a further period. Gordon Weiss who was the UN Spokesperson in Colombo later inflated the number killed to 40,000 in his         book “The Cage”, which number he lowered to 10,000 when he was being questioned by a Sri Lankan audience in Australia, probably with a view to profit     from his book sales to members of the expat Tamil community numbering over a million. He has been described elsewhere as an Unreliable Witness.  That     pro-LTTE reporter Frances Harrison is still counting the dead, having stated that 70,000 to 140,000 may have been killed. Yasmin Sooka who was appointed by Ban ki-Moon as         one of the three members of the Panel of Experts on Accountability on Sri Lanka, close friend of Navi Pillay, who is also a South African Tamil just like Navi     P, who attends all the propaganda meetings organized by the pro-LTTE groups is on the same page as Frances Harrison claiming over 110,000 persons being     killed in the last stages. She certainly benefited by her openly partisan stand, receiving a grant of 25 million Euros from the EU for a South African NGO             headed by her.

    In 2012, the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) carried out a census among the residents of the north to determine the number of persons who had been             killed in the final stages using Tamil school teachers and public servants as enumerators and arrived at a figure of 7,432 excluding those who had died of         natural causes. Strangely, on adding up the monthly number of such casualties reported in the propaganda arm of the LTTE, namely the Tamilnet, the total     killed for the period January 1, 2009 to May 19, 2009 was 7,398 which was below the GOSL census count.

    The UNSG’s PoE which claimed 40,000 had been killed also stated that half the LTTE fighters did battle in civilian attire thereby blurring the distinction             between combatants and civilians. Furthermore, they had based their conclusions mainly from one sided information provided to them by pro-LTTE                 elements, which material they recommended be locked away for a period of 20 years till 2031. Today, Sri Lanka is being hounded by the west and the UN         on the basis of this report produced by the UNSG’s PoE, an internal document prepared purely for the guidance of the UNSG, which concluded there were     ‘credible allegations’ – not credible evidence, which was apparently leaked by the UNSG’s office to the UNHRC, which Navi Pillay sought to table at the             UNHRC sessions although it was not a UN sanctioned document.

    Another interesting statistic is the total number of injured persons among the Tamil IDPs according to the ICRC responsible for ferrying them by land and         sea for medical attention was 18,439 which is lower than the 40,000 supposedly killed during the last stages. Normally, the injured (WIA) is between 2-3         times the number killed, which means that the number injured should have been 80,000 – 120,000.

    Amnesty and HRW commissioned a report from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to determine the number killed after             analysis of the high resolution satellite imagery of the final battleground, as the latter were only able to come up with a total of 1,346 burial spots in three     burial sites within the Civilian Safety Zone (CSW), which detailed report is carried in their website. As this report did not support the bogus numbers                 swirled around by LTTE propagandists, Amnesty and HRW did not proceed with their planned report to press for action against Sri Lanka. The AAAS report     was also able to identify some 65 or so craters which they determined had been made by Mortar Shells (not artillery) along the perimeter of the CSZ close     to the Nandikadal Lagoon where the LTTE fighters were concentrated and close to the coast where the Sea Tigers operated. Even the buildings without             roofs initially thought to have been targeted with artillery fire turned out to have been dismantled by the LTTE to cover their bunkers or hide their long             range weapons, while the building walls remained undamaged.

    The, while tSri Lankan forces abandoned air attacks and use of Artillery/MBRL in the latter part to prevent harm to the civilian population, while they faced a continuous barrage of         artillery and mortar fire from the LTTE resulting in the loss of around 2,500 soldiers and a further 5,000 or more becoming injured. The LTTE too would have     lost at least an equal number of combatants due to the intensive battles at the end stages. If one takes out 2,500 from the UN number of 7,721, one is left     with 5,221. Of this number, several were killed by the LTTE which ordered their cadres to fire on escaping civilians, and even unleashed suicide bombers         and artillery fire on the escaping civilians who earlier formed a human shield. Some others killed would have been members of the LTTE’s Auxiliary Forces     that supplied ammo, removed injured and dead fighters, or were engaged in digging trenches or building defensive berms, and yet others from the Makkal     Padai, their civilian fighters. Once you adjust for the LTTE’s own killings, auxiliary forces personnel, Makkal Padai forces that were killed, you will be able to     ascertain the number of genuine civilians who were killed in the crossfire and ongoing battles.

    The LTTE was offered several chances to surrender but they did not pay any heed as they expected the international community led by the USA to                     intervene in the ongoing battles and rescue them and obtain asylum for them in an African country such as Eritrea from where they could continue their         separatist struggle in Sri Lanka. In fact, two 48 hour ceasefires were put into effect by the Sri Lanka military in February and April 2009 to enable the                 civilians to get out of harms way and move into areas controlled by the army where they would be safe.  However, regrettably the LTTE did not allow any of     the civilians to move out and even fired on those who attempted to flee killing them, effectively blocking the safe removal of the civilians who were being     used as a human shield. Despite the attempts of the LTTE to put the lives of the Tamil civilians in danger, the Sri Lankan Security Forces succeeded in                 eliminating the Tamil Tiger fighters and rescuing 295,873 Tamils including some 11.800 former Tiger cadres that downed their weapons to safety. They were     housed in Welfare Camps, provided all meals, medical/ psychological care, education, vocational training, and resettled in their former places of residence     after clearing the land of 1.5 million landmines laid by the LTTE to hamper the advance of the country’s armed forces. The former Tiger cadres were                 enrolled in a rehabilitation program, given new life skills that would enable them to lead independent lives and released to society.   ARE THESE ACTS OF         GENOCIDE AGAINST THE TAMILS? 

    The Justice Maxwell Paranagama Commission on Missing Persons in Sri Lanka was assisted by a team of international legal and military experts in matters     relating to International Human Rights Regulations, and War Crimes issues in respect of the military operations against the LTTE, where they concluded that     the Sri Lankan forces had not violated International HR or committed war crimes. These experts were internationally recognized authorities, many of whom     had served as legal advisers or prosecutors in the International Criminal Courts.  The team of experts was led by Right Honourable Sir Desmond de Silva,         QC. (UK) who was Chairman of the Legal Advisory Council, together with Professor Sir Geoffrey Nice QC. (UK), Professor David M. Crane (USA), Mr. Rodney     Dixon, QC. (UK/ South Africa), Professor Michael Newton (USA) Vanderbilt University, William Fenrick (Canada), Professor Nina Jorgensen of Harvard/ The     Chinese University of Hong Kong, Mr. Paul K. Mylvaganam (UK) and Major General Sir John Holmes, DSO, OBE, MC (UK).

    Given the facts as outlined above, we call on Mayor John Tory of the City of Toronto and Mayor Patrick Brown of the City of Brampton, and the Councillors     of the respective Cities to review their decision and withdraw the subject Proclamations made based on one sided and erroneous information.

    Yours sincerely,

    Mahinda Gunasekera

The post Letter from Mr Mahinda Gunasekera appeared first on Sri Lankan Canadian Action Coalition Ontario Bill 104.