Canada accepted refugees but did not provide information and now MP Anandasangaree reading hypocritical petition on missing persons!

Pro-LTTE Tamil terrorist Canadian MP Gary Anandasangaree and other Tamil terrorist  sympathizers had launched  petition seeking certain actions by Canadian government in respect of alleged disappearance of a large number of Tamils (60,000 – 100,000) said to be relatives of Canadian Tamils of Sri Lankan origin assumed to have been subjected to enforced and involuntary disappearance by the Sri Lankan authorities.

A veteran peace activist Mahinda Gunasekara of Canada has written a comprehensively detailed out letter explaining the bogus claim made by the LTTE Tamil terrorists.

The full text of the letter sent by Gunasekara is as follows;

October 17, 2020

Hon. Francoise-Phillippe Champagne, MP
Minister of Foreign Affairs
House of Commons, Ottawa

Hon. Karina Gould, MP
Minister of International Development

Copy to:

Mr. Rob Oliphant- Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs
Ms. Kamal Khera -Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Int’l Development

Dear Hon. MP F-P Champagne and Hon. MP Karina Gould,

Response to Petition # 432-00052 by MP Gary Anandasangaree and Others

I am writing to point out that the subject petition seeks certain actions by Canada in respect of alleged disappearance of a large number of Tamils (60,000 – 100,000) said to be relatives of Canadian Tamils of Sri Lankan origin assumed to have been subjected to enforced and involuntary disappearance by the Sri Lankan authorities.

Firstly, the numbers quoted are not those by the Canadian Tamils nor the affected families, but attributed to Amnesty International which is an INGO based in New York.

This petition is being presented 11 years after the armed conflict between the democratically elected government of Sri Lanka and various armed Tamil militant groups waged an armed conflict extending to over three decades was concluded on May 19, 2009. The Tamil militant groups other than the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) re-entered the democratic process following the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987 which paved the way for the establishment of Provincial Councils where certain powers were devolved to the peripheral units in terms of the 13^th Amendment to the Second Republican Constitution of 1978.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was designated an international terrorist organization by the UNSC in September 1987 and was similarly designated and banned by 32 countries including India, USA, UK, EU, Malaysia and Canada, and named as the most ruthless terror outfit in the world by the FBI.
Sri Lanka appointed the Justice Maxwell Paranagama Presidential Commission to look into the alleged reports of persons said to have gone missing during the three decade long armed conflict between Tamil militant groups that pursued a violent campaign to establish a mono-ethnic racist Tamil state in the north and east of the island and the armed forces of the democratically elected government of Sri Lanka during the period 1976 and 2009. In addition, the Sri Lankan authorities have gone further and established an Office of Missing Persons to assist in tracing such persons and/or provide compensation in the event of not being able to find them in order to bring closure.

1.0       Based on the latest information gathered by the Justice Paranagama Commission, they were    presented with a total of 19,000 complaints relating to missing persons of whom 14,000  from Tamil residents of the north and east, and 5,000 from family members of security forces personnel who are missing in action during the period from 1976 to 2009.

2.0       The administrative aspects of tracing those reported as missing will have to be conducted by the Police based on photos of the missing and information relating to the date, time and location they were last seen or heard of by a family member or other individual. If the time lapse has been fairly extensive, the possibility of finding the missing person becomes more difficult. In addition, priority should be given to  checking on persons alleged to have surrendered to the army and police who are said to be missing either after release or in custody.

3.0       Other aspects that need to be considered in the search strategy are the following:

a).  Did the missing person seek to join the LTTE or other Tamil militant separatist force?

b).  Did the missing person leave to India to join and train with any of the separatist Tamil militant groups?

c).  Did the missing person lose his/her life in the internecine warfare among the Tamil militants?

d).  Did the missing person seek to obtain refugee status in a western country?

4.0       Many of the Tamil persons who sought to migrate to the west arrived without ID papers or came with forged documents. The number of such cases ran into thousands in Canada, as they were given   welfare and the refugee process fast tracked to reduce the backlog and shorten the wait times that ran from 4-5 years. One reported as having been murdered by Sri Lanka’s security intelligence services such as  Kathiravelu Thayapararajah of the US funded NGO called the Vanni Tech was subsequently arrested in India on arrival with his family in a smuggler’s boat. Another Tamil person involved with the JVP insurrection had moved to Australia and was latterly arrested in Sri Lanka and deported back to Australia where he had acquired a new identity with a Sinhala name, i.e. Mudalige.

5.0       Large numbers who were involved with the LTTE had avoided arrest at the conclusion of the battle in May 2009 and travelled by smuggler’s boats to Canada, Australia, or other means to Europe where they claimed refugee status, some having alleged rape, torture, etc. Those who travelled to South India to seek refuge too number over 100,000. Some who sought this mode of escape could have drowned at sea and remain unaccounted for, just as much as some may  have perished in the 2004 tsunami and claimed as missing on account of the conflict.

6.0       Yet others had been abducted by the LTTE and trained as suicide bombers or storm troopers who may have perished in action, while yet others who attempted to escape from LTTE control may have been killed by the organization. UNICEF alone recorded over 6,000 such abductions by the LTTE and other Tamil terrorist groups. LTTE also killed a large number of IDPs who attempted to escape their control in the last armed confrontation.

7.0       Some may have died in battles with the Indian Peace Keeping Forces during the period 1987-1990 and buried in an unmarked grave.

8.0         There is also evidence to the effect that the LTTE killed their disabled fighters towards the end of the final battle as it was inconvenient to care for them. In fact, there were no disabled fighters emerging after the final battle in May 2009.

9.0       Members of the armed forces reported as missing most likely had been captured by the LTTE and extra-judicially eliminated and their bodies disposed of without reference to the ICRC. There were some soldiers and  sailors who had been captured and held in dungeon prisons whose blood was drawn to treat injured LTTE cadre which came to light when some escaped from their prison environment.

Sri Lanka has asked the countries that granted asylum to the Tamil persons that escaped from Sri Lanka fearing conscription by the LTTE or military action against terrorism within the island to provide information of the persons so admitted, but have been unsuccessful in receiving the data as the countries concerned have not been agreeable citing privacy reasons.  Without such information, it will of necessity be impossible to determine what really may have happened in each such case.

Yours sincerely,

Mahinda Gunasekera

Copy to:

(1)  Mr. Rob Oliphant, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs

(2)  Ms. Kamal Khera, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International  Development

Picture credit: The Star