2066 Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . K1J 6G1

17 February 2012

John Argue

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, Toronto

Dear John:

Re:  A Brief:  An Observation on Dr. Pakiasorthy Saravanamuttu’s Talk on 7 February 2012, in Ottawa

I promised you to provide a post-mortem according to my observations on Dr. Pakiasorthy Saravanamuttu’s (PS) talk on post-War Sri Lanka, “Human Rights and Reconciliation Process in Sri Lanka: Domestic and International Dimensions”, at Amnesty International Headquarters in Ottawa on February 7, 2012.  I have been quite busy with the manuscript for my next book of poetry, and hence this delay.

Knowing that PS is a Tamil, I understand why he is an ardent supporter and batting for the Tamils in the North and East of the island which they claim to be their ‘homeland’.  You did notice, I hope, that PS didn’t have to bat for the Tamils in the South, in particular those in the capital Colombo of which he is one, as they will turn around and tell him,  “We are alright  Pakiasorthy, why don’t you keeping lobbying around the world to claim the North and East for us as we are blazing ahead to colonize Sri Lanka’s capital region, Colombo and its surroundings as 41% of the population of Colombo are our Tamil people and we have bought and own 75%  of the prime real estate in Wellawatte, the rich suburb of Colombo and keeping away the Sinhalese from renting annexes, flats,  and room in our houses.!”

John, I wonder what this blatant discriminatory Tamil exercise will take the Sri Lankan polity down the road.  Your guess is good as mine as ordinary human beings are no saints.  You might say that I am fear mongering, but I am not blind to these Tamil shenanigans and PS is part of this Tamil chauvinism, although they go crying around the world saying that they have been discriminated and their human rights have been violated.  I say all that is a crock of codswallop.

And having the meeting at the anti-Sri Lanka Amnesty International Headquarters started off with a double-whammy on Sri Lanka.  Well, then John, you might say the talk was sponsored by the “Friends of Sri Lanka” AI only provided the space and refreshments for the meeting.  Then the  obvious question that light’s up in my mind is , if that was indeed the case, I wonder how friendly are the Friends of Sri Lanka towards Sri Lanka?  Knowing how unfriendly AI is towards Sri Lanka, I wouldn’t have touched you guys even with a barge pole.

Then, of course, AI’s Director General, Alex Neve tells us during his introductory remarks that AI is “a friend of Sri Lanka”.  John, you know and I know that is a load of Bull.  Friends don’t go with hammer and nails around the world, bicycling the atrocious Chanel 4 propaganda video – Sri Lanka Killing Fields, without having the honesty and gumption to show the video “Lies Agreed Upon”, in tandem, which peels layer by layer like onion skins the Channel 4 video proving that it was a dishonest and an atrocious cut and paste Tamilnet clips video to nail Sri Lanka to the wall, on alleged war crimes during the last five months of the war.  You know what I think about AI don’t you on that?  So, Alex, should never try to challenge my intelligence with that kind of Bull.

And by the way, Amnesty International is screening this Channel 4’s hoaxy video at the Arizona State University this weekend.  And Alex tells me/us that AI is a ‘friend of Sri Lanka’.  Who the hell does he think we are, a bunch of dumb twits who believes in his Fairy Tales?  Ha!  “AI is Friends of Sri Lanka”, my foot!

John, let me be quite clear, you and I know what AI’s mission on Sri Lanka is, and you know as well as Alex by now know that my mission is to stop this barrage of unfair criticism on Sri Lanka which are poisonous impediments to Sri Lanka’s reconciliation process after a 27-year long bloody war that hemorrhaged that island  nation with over 100,000 deaths, destroying every conceivable infra-structure in the North and East, which was aided and abetted by foreign countries like, India, Norway, France, Germany, Canada, US and the UK.  I smell a dirty stinking rat here as these are the same countries who are trying to charge Sri Lanka of War Crimes, for the very reason that Sri Lanka single handed whipped the butts of the Tamil Tiger terrorists and annihilated every one of their leaders in the muddy waters of the Nandikadal lagoon.  But what that act did was, that the Government gave back to its 22 million people their ‘right-to-life’ which was hijacked by the Tamil Tigers for 27 long years.  This is the paramount human right that the Sri Lankan Government gave back to its 22 million people at the end of the war that Amnesty International has still got to acknowledge, and so has Canada for that matter.  What’s wrong with you guys?  Are you at AI sick in your heads or what?  I suppose AI’s philosophy is, let’s go after Sri Lanka, as there will be 50,000 Tamil dollar bills waiting for us at the end.

John, I have taken my gloves off and I am outside the squared-circle and I am in a street fight with Amnesty International. I will be relentless and as you know I have been relentless challenging you and Alex, who lost its squeaky clean innocence the moment you greased your palms with that $50,000 Walk-a-Thon money from the Canadian Tamil Congress (CTC) last September, a pro-Eelam group whose once-upon-a-time Director of Communications is serving a 25-year prison term in the US for providing material support to the Tigers, a designated terrorist group.  That was pitiful, wasn’t it John?  I am also told that these same guys celebrated a decadent $100 ticket Pongu Tamil beef and whisky evening on 21 January in Toronto, while their people are still struggling to normalize their lives in the North and East of Sri Lanka after being harassed by their Tamil Tiger terrorists.  These are the guys who are shedding crocodile tears crying at the feet of the Canadian parliamentarians to help their people in Jaffna, who will be lucky if they can afford to  have a beef dinner with a glass of whisky at least once a month.  Figure that one out John, and once you do let me know.

The start of PS’s talk didn’t bode well with me when he was mischievous when he said that his CPA (Centre for Policy Alternatives) was not an advocacy Group.

Asoka Weerasinghe’s  (AW) Observation:  If you are not an advocacy group, then what the heck are you doing in Ottawa meeting the parliamentarians  of all three major political parties lobbying just before the UNHRC meeting late this month? There was a lot of mischief in that statement wasn’t there?  You, PS, better stop pulling wool over our eyes and challenging our intelligence right now.

PS :  He elaborated on 3 areas in his talk during the post conflict period.

1.      Human Rights violation: Incarcerating the liberated Tamils in camps, and their resettlement.

2.       Political Settlement – Talk to politicians and people to end the problem.

3.      Accountability – national unity & reconciliation, war crimes on both sides.

AW’s observation:  You heard me telling him – “I am a bit resentful with your choice of words which had negative connotations to the efforts made by the Sri Lankan government.  The words that annoyed me were “incarceration”, “militarization” and “colonization”.  And I will make my observations clear while I go along to explain why PS got my goat as he was disingenuous throwing those words at the audience to try and get at the Government of Sri Lanka as a nasty, repugnant, can’t believe you lot.

“Incarceration” which provides images of the Holocaust before the Jews were sent into the gas chambers.  I asked him, “What the heck did you expect the Government to do with the 300,000  Tamils? Let them out from the welfare camps when we all knew that there were over a million landmines buried all over, which would have popped their lives one after the other?”

PS’s response:  What I meant was that these Tamils had no freedom of movement nor freedom of speech.

AW’s observation:  John the format did not give me a chance to come back and tell him, “Pakiasothy, you are in a vulgar hurry to condemn Sri Lanka in front of one of the worst Human Rights violators, Canada,  who have done in the people of the First Nation Reservations and in some Inuit Reservations up North.    Ask Alex Neve and John Argue of Amnesty International and they will tell you all about it.   Especially about the people of the Attawapiskat First Nation who would move heaven and earth to change places with the 300,000 Tamils who were liberated by the Sri Lankan Government and looked after so well. What you failed to tell this audience is that the Sri Lankan Government performed a class act in human rights, a miracle in fact, preparing a million meals a day to feed these 300,000 liberated Tamils with three hearty meals  – breakfast, lunch and dinner each day, to sustain them and keep them alive. That they managed to screen and register these people, and give day passes to go in and out of the camps, and that is not “incarceration” in my lexicon.  What a liar you are. You are on a Mission to destroy Sri Lanka, and I am on a Mission to skin layer by layer like an onion of lies off people like you and Amnesty International.

You might as well acknowledge that Sri Lanka performed miracles to screen and register 300,000  liberated Tamil refugees in 12 months when Canada took nine months to screen and register the 492 smuggled Tamils who landed on the west coast on MV Sunsea.  And these are the Canadians who were howling at the Sri Lankan Government that they were not quick enough to screen and register them, and also advocating letting them be released from the welfare camps immediately! “

John, aren’t we Canadians a bunch of arrogant, simplistic fools.

John I would have loved to have been given a chance to ask PS this question and let the audience hear his response. 

Question: “Why are some elements of the so called civil society, including you, determined to resurrect the pain and agony of a terrorist war through investigations, when the country has been totally at peace for over two and a half years, and the economy and development are galloping ahead benefiting all our people, and that includes your Tamil people?  Is peace too difficult to stomach or is your peace mongering business, which is bringing you millions of dollars through international funding a year in jeopardy?”

PS:  He went at length to tell the audience that the Sri Lankan Government still have military camps in the North and East after the end of the war in May 2009.  He said that there was 1 military person for every 8 Tamils in Jaffna, and in the Wanni that there was 1 military person for every 4 Tamil persons.  And that the Tamil people were quite upset which was not helpful for the reconciliation process.

He also showed his concerns that the Military personnel will be joined by their families that will change the demography of the North.

And one more thing on the “militarization” of the North.  He pointed out, or rather complained that along A9 there are boutiques run by the military taking away entrepreneurships from the Tamils.

AW’s Observations:  John, let me deal with the latter first and I wish the audience heard my observations and be judge and jury on his complains, but then the format was not conducive for such explanations and PS walked off having accomplished his mission, and I was not given the opportunity to accomplish my mission to skin PS’s untruths layer by layer like an eye- stinging onion.

First and foremost, PS should have explained the demographics of – 1983 vs 2012 so that the  non-Sri Lankan Canadian audience could comprehend as to what went on and as to what is going on.  He should have told the audience that, when the Eelam terrorist warring-trouble erupted in June 1983, the Tamil population in the north was 12.6% and trying to claim one-third of the sovereign territory bordered by 66% of the coastline, for their mono-ethnic, racist, separate Tamil state, Eelam.    (Did the audience know this, did you know this?).  In 2012, the population had dwindled to 3.9% (World Watch 2011 stats), as  the rest of the Tamils flew out of the cuckoo’s nest searching for greener pastures  in far away prosperous western countries bypassing their legitimate ‘home land’ Tamil Nadu which is populated by 61 million Tamils  their  legitimate kith and kin.  And Tamil Nadu is just a 22 miles stretch of salt-water away, across the Palk Strait. (Did the audience know this, did you know this?).

The Highway A9 that PS was talking of is a 199 mile stretch of Highway which connects Kandy, a central city to Jaffna, a city at the northern tip of the island.  The stretch that PS is concerned, I presume is the 110 mile stretch which passes through the Wanni to Jaffna, passing Vavuniya, Omanthai, Puliyankulum, Mankulum and Murikandy on its way to Jaffna.

But here is the problem that PS  sneakily failed to explain.  Since the Tamil population has dwindled drastically along that stretch of land, and that not many Tamils would  want to be boutique owners, and it was imperative that the government take responsibility to distribute food using military personnel, where Tamils are not interested  in selling rice, dhall (red-lentils),  coconuts, vegetables, milk, tea,  et cetera.  So why is PS bellyaching and crying foul when all what the Sri Lankan government is doing is to see that its Tamil people have adequate food for their consumption and stave off hunger  by providing them with  nutritious foods.  PS should stop complaining and this is why I  am disappointed not getting a chance to peel off layer after layer like onion skins of his disingenuous crap in front of the Canadian audience that afternoon.

 The government is also aware that NGO’s like that of PS’s, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others are ready and waiting to pounce on them on the world stage saying that the Sri Lankan government is not sending food up north and are starving the Tamil people and wanting to take their truck loads of foods along A9 to feed the Tamil people.  Sri Lanka has smartened up to be conscious of the games that you nasty NGOs play wanting to destroy Sri Lanka and PS happen to be one of your nasty team players.    And after all John, participating in such  a ‘Let’s pounce on Sri Lanka’ games is a means for AI’s survival, so that its employees like you and Alex can put a plate of food every evening in front of the wives, husbands and children, by requesting more funds from the sponsors/donors to contribute to your pay cheques,  saying that  Amnesty International wants more money to monitor Sri Lanka and  to take trucks of food up north as Sri Lanka is starving her Tamil people.  Right, John, your AI is a crude and an unholy business under the cloak of Human Rights, isn’t it? 

Here is the litmus test, why the government of Sri Lanka’s military personnel are manning the boutiques along A9 which PS seems resentful of.  Sri Lanka doesn’t want to see history repeat again which will debilitate the moral of 22 million Sri Lankan people who want to get on with their lives peacefully in harmony with other communities.  The Tamil Diaspora does not come into this equation nor do they belong there, as they are outsiders and foreign country citizens.

 It was between 6:00 and 10:00 in the morning of June 4, 1987, India’s large Soviet built AN32s, five of them loaded with food that were not requested by the Sri Lankan Govenment, for a drop over Jaffna were already winging their way towards Bangalore just as, from a nearby air base, four French Mirage 2000s took off for the same destination.  The Mirages were chosen as escorts because of the travel range and their air-to-air radar.  There were 35 journalists in these aircraft half of them were Indians.  The first AN32 took off precisely at 3:55 in the evening heading straight to Jaffna.  This city was 450 km away.

Soon the AN32 aircraft packed with dry rations in brown cartons and green canvas bags were cruising at a height of 2,000 feet.  The four Mirage 2000s were circling 500 to 1000 feet above the slow flying transport aircraft.

By 4:50 in the evening the AN32s were over Sri Lanka violating the sovereign airspace of Sri Lanka.  This was aggression on the part of India.  The lead aircraft started to drop its height to 1,500 feet above ground level over the drop zone.  Five minutes after 5:00 the Jaffna town appeared in sight.  The huge rear doors of the AN32s opened and started to discharge its cargo.  The cargo started to parachute down, about 7 km north of Jaffna, and the plane headed back to Bangalore.

But what was hilarious about this bully boy-act by India to help Tamil Nadu’s  kith and kin in the Jaffna peninsula, was that the quantity of food that was dropped was 25 tonnes which was hardly enough to feed 800,000 Tamils in the Jaffna peninsula.  So the Sri Lanka government does not want that aggression performed by neighbouring India one more time although PS and the TNA politicians would welcome it even though geo-politics in this region has changed immensely with China having descended on the scene. 

So, John, that is the very reason why the military personnel are working the food boutiques along A9 to feed the Tamils in the north and PS should stop whining and going  around the world to deploy his baggage of lies and unwarranted concerns.  (Did the audience, other than Elliott Tepper and George Grande know all this?  Did you know all this?)

Now coming to his complain about the “militarization” of the north with the presence of military camps after the end of the war which happened on 19 May, 2009.

PS can go around whining to foreigners as much as he wants to about what is happening in Sri Lanka’s North, but what is happening there is the result of the natural law of Cause and Effect.  PS with a Ph.D might as well accept it, without being too stupid about it.  There are “causes” that are in play right now which the Sri Lankan government has to be conscious and consider as means to uphold her sovereignty and integrity of its territory and its peoples.

 The “Cause” were - pressures from Tamil Nadu’s chief Minister Jayalalitha constantly threatening to invade Sri Lanka’s North to create a separate state for their kith and kin, the Tamils;  the existence of an Eelam Government in exile (Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam) and its front organizations collecting monies to establish their Eelam which is still happening in Canada;  when the experience in the past is that when the Cease Fire Agreement (CFA) was signed in 2002 and had the government soldiers confined to barracks and the Tamil Tigers turned marauding terrorists carrying Kalashnikovs, plundering, killing, terrorizing the people, kidnapping Tamil children for their Baby Brigades and suicide bombers,  grabbing land, constructing seven airstrips two which were long and wide enough for night landings of huge tansport planes,  and the whole gamut of war related  preparations, and the  Government soldiers couldn’t do sweet nothing to safeguard the sovereign territory and its peoples;  and it is during this CFA period  that the east coast was an ‘Open Sesame” coastal area where 11 ship loads of  sophisticated armoury were sneaked in to strengthen the Tamil Tiger’s war capacity, and the soldiers confined to barracks were incapacitated   to do much about it, and that is why the “Effects” of having military camps with military personnel to guard their country’s sovereign territory.  What’ wrong with that, may I ask PS?

John, I truly suspect PS to be an Eelamist, still working to create their separate state Eelam, clearing the deck,  wanting to get rid of the soldiers from the North who are really the caretakers of the Sovereign territory.

PS seems to be concerned that the families will join the soldiers in the North whereby it would change the demographics.  How, so, I would have liked to have asked PS.

I don’t for one moment believe that the North belongs to the Tamils when all of the island should be the home for all Sri Lankans, no matter what ethnic group they come from.  And if you tell me , but, then Asoka, 99% of the population in the North are Tamils!

My response to you and PS  is, that Tamil purity came about on 29th October 1990, after having ethnically cleansed the North of the Muslims when 100,000 Muslims were asked to get out within 24 hours at gunpoint from the 5 districts of Jaffna, Mullaitivu,  Kilinochchi, Vavuniya and Mannar, robbing all their belongings and pauperizing them over night by Prabhakaran, the Tamil Tiger leader, or else, making Idi Amin look like an angel.  At least that guy had the heart to give the Ugandan-Indians three months to get out.

Prior to that, between 1971 and 1981, the Tamils ethnically cleansed the north of the Sinhalese when they kicked out 27,000 Sinhalese who  had lived in the northern peninsula for generations.  And in August 1977, they ethnically cleansed the Jaffna University when they stoned and chased out 400 Sinhalese undergraduates and lecturers, who were brought south by the army and police in convoys of buses.  That is how PS and his people achieved that Tamil purity up north, which is false and cosmetic, that was not told by PS to the Canadian audience that afternoon.  It is pity that I did not have an opportunity to ask PS of this, as I would have challenged him that historically, archaeologically, ethnographically and ethnologically, the Tamils have no right to claim the North and East as their “home land’.  (Did the audience know this, and did you know all this?)

But what is true about demilitarization is that once conditions of normalcy have been re-established to the satisfaction of the government as a policy which will ensure the withdrawal of security forces from all aspects of community life, but the presence of the military as guardians of a sovereign state will be there as is the military presence of the Indian and Pakistan armies along the Kashmir boarders as well as by the Canadian forces in the Canadian Arctic.  The bottom line is to safeguard the sovereign territorial integrity.  PS can go on singing and dancing in front of his  anti-Sri Lanka foreign interlocutors, that doesn’t carry enough weight to abandon the security of the sovereign territory of a nation, where once there were Tamil terrorists walking and planting claymore mines in the streets and the Tamil Tiger rump is still active abroad like in Canada.

What was not mentioned by PS is that over 600 Tamil speaking  Police Officers have been recruited since the war ended to provide law and order in the North.  And Units of the Attorney General’s Department will be set up in the two provinces to provide guidance to the Police.  And that is progress.  In a constitutional democracy you cannot be in a vulgar hurry as is so in Canada.

The question I would have loved to have asked PS was –  "Why are you not advocating the prosecution for war crimes of those who raised funds, like the Tamil Diaspora, to support the Tamil Tigers and who publicly advocated their cause since the Tamil Tigers recruited  over 5,000 children for their Baby Brigade, killed thousands of innocent civilians by deploying suicide bombers, hacked innocent villagers to death, killed dissenting politicians, mainly Tamils.  Would you say that Canada should prosecute the Tamil Tiger supporters for aiding and abetting war criminals?"

John, as to his complain of the Sri Lankan Government is colonizing the North, with the Sinhalese, because the families of soldiers will be joining them, I don’t buy his premise that the North and East is a Tamil territory and being colonized by the Sinhalese.  In Canadian parlance, families joining their soldier husbands, is a process of family reunification.  All what you have to do is ask  a Tamil in Scarborough or Markham, who fought their way to have their mother, father, wife, husband, brother and sister join them on the family reunification program. That is humanistic and is acceptable.  PS should stop griping about it.

If he is indeed talking of “colonization” of the North, I wish I had the opportunity to ask him this simple question – “Do you not believe that you and your Tamil people are surreptitiously colonizing the capital Colombo, which  is situated in the west of the island, as 41% of its population are Tamils, every three shops out of 4 along the mile long shopping drag in Pettah, in the heart of Colombo are owned by Tamils, and 75% or the rich suburb of Wellawatte is owned by Tamils and have an unwritten  policy not to rent the annexes, rooms and flat to the Sinhalese.  If this is not “colonization”, then what the heck is it Pakiasothy?”

John, this are my observations about this meeting, and it is not a happy one, as 50% of it was a fraudulent exercise, and the other 50% I will give Pakiasorthy credit for being an information  beacon.  I could have written a thesis on him and his talk that day proving that it was a fraudulent exercise to get at Sri Lanka and get his mono-ethnic, racist separate state, Eelam,  pure and simple.

I hope you will get something out of my essay and have an opportunity to learn a few facts from it too.  I just don’t like liars and the one’s who want to hurt my Mother Lanka.   And I am having an amazing romance with her lovely, innocent peoples of all ethnic groups and I don’t want anyone to hurt them unfairly.  As I told you earlier, it is a no, no, no bloody way.

Take care and when in Ottawa look me up.  And let me repeat myself to you as a brotherly friend, get out of Amnesty International, it doesn’t suit your persona.  You shouldn’t tarnish yourself as a God damn liar, nor support God damn liars.

Regards

Asoka (Weerasinghe)