Foreign Affairs Committee on March 30th, 2009

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Dr. Matthews, I think my question is probably more directed to you, but I'm sure both of you would have some thoughts on it.

Dr. Matthews, you spoke about the polarization of the Tamil and the Sinhalese communities, and then you spoke about the polarization even within their own groups. Both of you have spoken about the several peace initiatives that have been attempted by the international community, which both of you have outlined in your remarks.

I wonder if you can speak to this issue of the Norwegian agreement that was the longest standing peace initiative or peace process that was put in place. Is there any one nugget we can take from that and start building on?

Dr. Matthews, perhaps as part of this—I won't make it a second question—I note that you talked about confidence-building. We often have to take confidence one piece at a time, and this is a long-term process.

So all wrapped up in that, my question is, first, about the Norwegian peace and, second, about confidence-building.

[Prof. Bruce Matthews]

Chandra Kumaratunga, who was then the president, invited Norway to come in to Sri Lanka to do this. You won't find the present president at all interested in having Norway or any other international group perform the same function.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

But is there any one piece of that peace initiative that we can build on?

[Prof. Bruce Matthews]

Why don't you take a crack at that, David? I really don't see, right off the top of my head, that there is.

[Prof. David R. Cameron]

I think there's a lesson for Canada in the Norway experience, but it's not a nugget in the peace process itself. The thing that struck and very much impressed me was Norway's commitment of resources of very senior political and administrative talent, and their “stick-to-itiveness”. They just kept on keeping on, day after day, week after week, year after year, investing a lot of time, energy, and intelligence in trying to support this process and see it through to a conclusion. I salute Norway for that, and I think the lesson for Canada is that there may be—not necessarily in Sri Lanka, but if you start thinking strategically about the world—niche moments and opportunities like this one in which a very major commitment from a relatively small country, and Norway is far smaller than we are, can make a very significant difference. A country of that sort can play a role that the big powers cannot play. I look at this as something that we in our aid and development policy and planning should think about quite carefully.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much to both of you.

Yes.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

The news is just coming that the Sri Lankan government is considering a humanitarian pause to the fight.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

A humanitarian pause? Maybe they're listening to our committee. I didn't know we were broadcasting live over there.

We appreciate that update, Mr. Obhrai.

Mr. Matthews, is this in response to that?

[Prof. Bruce Matthews]

It's not in response to that, but in response to the question about caste and the internal struggles of these two groups.

This is an extremely important issue that very few people outside Sri Lanka know anything about. I'm not going to enter into it now in any detail, except to say that caste is a phenomenon of the Indian subcontinent that spread over into Sri Lanka. It is a topic, like your sex life, that you do not discuss in public; it's a very private thing. But in the context both of the Sinhalese population and of the LTTE, there have been internal caste wars, and they are definitely part of the complex background of this, which we often ignore. That just shows you how culturally entrenched this is, that even economic issues become exposed to a cultural interpretation, which makes them all the more volatile. It's almost as if nothing can escape the black hole of bringing any apparatus or part of what it is to be a Sri Lankan today into this ethnic maw. But certainly the caste thing is a complicated part of it, and I wanted to mention that it's something we don't know much about.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much. We will suspend for about thirty seconds, allowing our guests to take their exit and our next guests to take their seats, please.

We're continuing our committee hearings on the situation in Sri Lanka, in the second hour. We just heard the breaking news that the Sri Lankan government is considering a pause for humanitarian relief in the northern part of Sri Lanka to allow some humanitarian effort there.

In this hour, we will be hearing from the Sri Lanka United National Association of Canada.

I invite you to introduce yourselves, and then you can make a short opening statement. Then we'll go into the first rounds of questioning. Each party has seven minutes, and we try to keep the first round to about ten minutes each.

So if you wouldn't mind, Mr. Weerasinghe or Mr. Gunasekera, introduce yourselves and make your comments. Thank you.

[Mahinda Gunasekera, President, Sri Lanka United National Association of Canada]

My name is Mahinda Gunasekera. I'm the current president of the Sri Lanka United National Association.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I would like to thank you for giving us this opportunity.

As you know, Sri Lanka is a small island. It has a total land mass of roughly 25,000 square miles. It has a multi-ethnic, multi-religious population counting nearly 20 million, of whom about 78.4% are today from the Sinhala community. The Sri Lankan Tamil community has been reduced, from the prior number of 12.6% to just under 8%, due to large-scale migration from the country. The Indian Tamils, who were brought in by the British for work on the plantations, are roughly 5.4%. The Moors, who are Muslims, are about the same population as the Sri Lankan Tamils, also roughly 7.8% to 7.9%. There is a very small percentage of Malays and Burghers, the descendants of the Dutch.

I've come to the main grievances that we've heard from the Tamil community. The first issue is language.

Sinhala was made the official language, replacing the alien language of English, in 1956. With Sinhala spoken by 78% of the population as the official language, allowing the reasonable use of Tamil, including the right to free education in Tamil from kindergarten to university, was still considered discrimination against the Tamil population. English, introduced by the colonial administration, was spoken by less than 6% of the population, with the vast majority not having access to English education even after 133 years of British rule.

The linguistic rights of the Tamils were gradually enhanced. Their language was later elevated as a national language by the Second Republican Constitution of 1978. It was subsequently further upgraded to an official language following the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987 and placed on a par with Sinhala.

The grievance relating to linguistic rights was sorted out by 1978, within the short space of 22 years, and could therefore not become a cause for the armed insurrection that was launched in the 1980s.

The other question that was raised was the citizenship of the Indian Tamils, the indentured labourers brought in by the British. They had been brought over by the British colonial power as indentured labourers for work on the newly established tea, coffee, and cocoa plantations set up on land confiscated from Sinhala peasants and landowners without a penny in compensation being paid to the displaced Sinhala people.

These Indian Tamils, who did not consider Sri Lanka their homeland, were migrant workers who returned to their native Tamil Nadu in southern India after short periods of employment, and hence did not qualify for citizenship in newly independent Ceylon, now Sir Lanka. They lacked the stipulated residential qualifications for citizenship, which was seven years. Indian Tamils who failed to qualify for citizenship and remained stateless had their citizenship amicably settled between Sri Lanka and India under the Sirima-Shastri Pact of 1963.

The other issue was the alleged discrimination against Tamil students. The claim that Tamil students were discriminated against by the introduction of standardization of marks in the 1970s is yet another canard.

The scheme of standardization was introduced as an affirmative action program to offset some of the disadvantages faced by students from rural schools, which lacked quality teachers, libraries, laboratories, etc., as compared with better-facilitated and long-established city schools. This scheme required students from the city schools to score higher averages to qualify for admission to the universities. It equally affected students in the city schools located in the predominantly Tamil Jaffna peninsula and other southern cities such as Colombo, Galle, and Kandy.

Today, following the destruction of the education system in the Jaffna region owing to separatist violence, Jaffna students are benefiting from this very standardization scheme. The district is now considered a deprived region, where lower marks will qualify for admission to the university.

Yet another issue was the so-called settlement of Sinhalese on newly developed state lands. The Tamils have no claim to an exclusive homeland within the territory of Sri Lanka. Their national homeland is in Tamil Nadu in south India, where 65 million Tamils live. After independence, new development projects were undertaken to reclaim the land overrun by jungles. One such project was the Gal Oya project, which was initiated with U.S. technical assistance. Landless peasantry and unemployed people who had an agricultural background but were living in densely populated areas were settled into food production on very small allotments of land on 99-year leases. No Tamils were willing to take these subsistence-sized plots in mosquito-infested areas where malaria was widespread at the time, as they enjoyed more lucrative employment in both the government and private sectors.

The Tamil separatist movement began, not in 1976 after the passing of the resolution, but as far back as 1918, when the Justice Party of Tamil Nadu in south India campaigned to establish a separate country, called Dravidistan, in India.

Prior to the grant of independence in 1948, the British established a special commission in 1945, headed by Lord Soulbury, to hear the claims of the constituent groups on the island. The Tamils did not speak of their claims, if any, to a traditional homeland encompassing the north and east, which they recently invented following their moves to establish the separate monoethnic Tamil state called Eelam. They only sought balanced representation in the Parliament of the newly independent Sri Lanka, where the Tamil-speaking minorities would be guaranteed 50% of the seats, while the 78% Sinhalese would have to contest in order to fill the remaining 50% of the places. Lord Soulbury rejected this 50-50 demand as an insidious move to make a minority a majority, and instead introduced universal suffrage with voting rights for all persons over 21 years.

In the present situation, the total number of internally displaced civilians forced to move with the retreating Tiger forces is estimated at between 250,000 and 400,000 by various INGO and UN agencies. Now it appears to be not more than 120,000, of whom nearly 55,000 have already moved out of the diminishing sliver of land held by the LTTE to safety and welfare facilities in government-controlled areas, despite armed attacks on escaping civilians by the Tamil Tigers. Apparently the international non-governmental groups have been exaggerating the number of IDPs to receive enhanced funding for the operations and retain their high-paying jobs with various perks in this tropical isle. In fact, certain INGOs and a UN agency were not agreeable to releasing the displaced civilians in Muttur township, as they claimed they had negotiated funding for a period of three years, whereas the government had de-mined and restored the place, enabling the people to move back to their homes in 40 days.

After the rapid advance made by Sri Lanka's military to regain the use of territory illegally held by the Tamil Tigers, it has become clear that neither the LTTE nor any other non-governmental groups had made any worthwhile contribution to uplift the living conditions of the civilian population in the Vanni during the past 20 years. However, it has come to light that these INGOs, either willingly or unwillingly, provided a great deal of assistance to the Tamil Tiger military machine in acquiring highly sophisticated military hardware; ultra-modern communications equipment; technical know-how to develop various weapons, including submarines; chemical weapons; airstrips to land heavy cargo planes; and a lot more.

These INGO groups have hidden agendas. Some of them are known to surreptitiously engage in converting poverty-affected Sinhala and Tamil civilians to Christianity by providing allurements or bribes to qualify for assistance, and even getting these unethically converted people to openly smash images of their Hindu gods or Buddhist statues, giving rise to unnecessary friction within those rural communities.

One such project was code-named the Mustard Seed Project by World Vision, which too claims to be doing community development work in Sri Lanka.

Most of these INGO and NGO groups that are funded from overseas, including Canada, have a very hostile and confrontational approach to the Government of Sri Lanka, while they are known to maintain friendly ties to the LTTE.

As a result of this behaviour of the non-government groups that disburse Canada's foreign aid in the country, the close ties the people of Sri Lanka had with Canada are tending to go sour.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Can I interrupt and ask how much more you have? We're well over 10 minutes.

I've also looked at the other presentation and it looks like it's going to be well over 10 minutes.

Can we try to keep it to 10 minutes?

Perhaps you could close off as quickly as you can.

[Mahinda Gunasekera]

Yes, okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We will keep the statement and we'll enter the whole statement into the--

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

It will be in the text of the meeting.

[Mahinda Gunasekera]

The people of Sri Lanka have suffered the pain of three decades of terrorist violence, not knowing if their lives would be snatched by a Tamil Tiger, a suicide bomber, a bomb planted in a bus, train, or shopping centre, or a remote-control claymore bomb, as they went about their day-to-day living.

Today the peace-loving citizens of all the constituent communities see a new era emerging as the security forces regain their land and eliminate the Tamil Tiger killers.

It has been noted that Canada has always advocated a federal model to resolve ethnic differences, thereby perpetuating the ethnic divide. That will lead in the future to more of what has been experienced, as it would encourage the separatist forces to use their semi-autonomous devolved unit as a springboard to separation, for which an armed struggle has been waged for the past 30 years, including suicide terrorism.

A workable alternative, which is currently being discussed by expatriate Sri Lankans and patriots in Sri Lanka, is to afford the minorities a new deal to share power at the centre, and at the same time scale back the proposed devolution units made up of the present districts, which could easily be serviced through the existing district secretariats without unduly fattening the bureaucracy. The minorities that complain of majority community domination at the centre, which wields the greatest amount of power, could now be drawn into parliamentary select committees and special experts committees for each and every ministry, where they will play a role in the day-to-day governance by having a say in the development of policy, planning, implementation, and monitoring stages with respect to every single program undertaken by government.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We'll move to Mr. Weerasinghe.

[Asoka Weerasinghe, Member, Sri Lanka United National Association of Canada]

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, good afternoon.

I'm grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to express my concerns on recent events in Sri Lanka. I intend to clarify some of the misconceptions about this ethnic crisis, this terrible war between a legitimately elected, democratic government, a member of the Commonwealth, and a non-elected group, the Tamil terrorists, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, also known as the Tamil Tigers.

Since 1983 the Tamil Tigers have been creating mayhem for Sri Lanka. For the past three decades this tiny island has been in crisis, hemorrhaging its people, its resources, and its soul. Only now, when the Tamil Tigers are about to be eliminated, only now after 26 years are some countries, including Canada, taking an interest in this terrorist war.

Such interest prompted Canada to have an emergency debate on Sri Lanka in Parliament on February 4. Watching the debate on CPAC, I found it an amazing piece of theatre. It was mostly Sri Lanka government bashing and not the bashing of the Tamil Tigers, who are indeed a killer cult. There were moments of hoax theatre when five Liberal members of Parliament accused the Sri Lankan government of genocide. No doubt those members have found out since then that the charge was unfair, unwholesome, and incorrect.

The Tamil Tigers, the LTTE, have been banned as a terrorist organization in 32 countries, including Canada. They have assassinated two heads of state--Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India, and President Ranasinghe Premadasa of Sri Lanka--and 32 other politicians in Sri Lanka, including three mayors of Jaffna and the country’s foreign minister, all Tamils. Of the 32 assassinated politicians, 18 were moderate Tamils.

The LTTE are the terrorists who perfected the body pack for the human bomb and exploded the 379th human bomb in Mullaitivu, a few metres from an army front line on March 17. On January 11, 2008, the FBI described the LTTE as the most dangerous and deadly extremist outfit in the world. The FBI has credited them with perfecting the use of suicide bombers, inventing suicide belts, and pioneering the use of women in suicide attacks. The FBI says that this rebel group's ruthless tactics have inspired terrorist networks worldwide, including al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The Tamil Tiger terrorist group, now proscribed in Canada and for over a quarter century an existential threat to the integrity of Sri Lanka’s democracy, is now on the ropes. Eighteen months back they controlled an area of Sri Lanka that exceeded 15,000 square kilometres. They have now been pushed back by Sri Lankan armed forces to a sliver of land about 25 square kilometres, an area less than what we can see from Parliament Hill here in Ottawa.

A long intransigent, uncompromising group, the Tamil Tigers are now groveling and begging for a ceasefire. The long-suffering people of Sri Lanka have seen this all before. Six times the Government of Sri Lanka, yearning for peace, agreed to ceasefires. Six times the Tigers reneged. No government wants to go back to the ruinous business of war. But during each of those six ceasefires, the Tamil Tigers rearmed themselves and recruited sufficient cadres to continue, including, I must add, children under the age of 14--in fact, 6,300 of them, according to UNICEF.

There was no stopping these ruthless aggressors. The years 1985, 1987, 1989, 1995, 2000, and 2002 all saw ceasefires. The Tamil Tigers--and I emphasize it was the Tamil Tigers--always resumed war.

The last ceasefire, negotiated by Norway, between February 2002 and January 2008, is a classic case in point. It lasted longer than the others. According to the Scandinavian ceasefire monitors, by July 14, 2006, the Tamil Tigers had violated the ceasefire 7,308 times. During the same period, the Sri Lankan armed forces had violated the ceasefire just under 200 times. So it's no wonder the Tamil Tigers agreed to that sweetheart deal worked out in Oslo.

During the last ceasefire, the Tamil Tigers brought in 11 shiploads of arms. The 12th shipload got away when the Norwegian head of the Scandinavian ceasefire monitors, General Trygve Tellefsen, tipped the captain of the ship that the Sri Lankan navy was after them. This ceasefire saw the Tamil Tigers bring in four Czech Zlin 143 propeller aircraft, which were turned into night bombers. They graduated to become the first international terrorist outfit to have an air wing.

It was during this ceasefire that the Tamil Tigers built seven airstrips, two of which were long and wide enough to land large cargo transport planes.

The internationally respected journal on military intelligence, Jane's Intelligence Review, says these transport planes were very likely to have flown in arms. It was during this ceasefire in 2002 that the Norwegians helped the LTTE to build strong high-tech communication systems by bringing in six tons of electronic equipment as diplomatic cargo, including V satellite equipment for satellite communications. It was during this ceasefire that the Tamil Tigers started manufacturing submarines and suicide craft. Ladies and gentlemen, it was during this ceasefire that the Tamil Tigers developed their vast Tamil Tiger criminal enterprise—credit card fraud, shakedowns, heroin, human smuggling—raking in hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it from Canada.

Everything the Tamil Tigers did during that ceasefire was to further a military victory over Sri Lanka. Certainly, Sri Lanka also built up its armed forces. Would Canada not do so if it were under such constant threat? Sure enough, as soon as the Tamil Tigers felt they had the capability of defeating Sri Lanka’s army, their leader, Prabhakaran, restarted the war. It was interesting to see Tamil Tiger attitudes change over the course of the ceasefire. At first they feigned interest in a negotiated settlement. During the last session in Geneva, members of the delegation, given visas by the Swiss and Norwegians, spent all their time raising funds amongst the Tamil diaspora. They did not even bother turning up at the negotiating table, which embarrassed the Norwegians who had facilitated that meeting.

I'm going to skip some of my presentation because the time is running out.

Surrounded closely on all sides by 50,000 soldiers and sailors, what is this megalomaniac Prabhakaran up to? In the narrow strip of land he controls, there are about 500 hard-core cadres, maybe a thousand children and old persons he has forcibly conscripted into carrying armaments, and approximately 50,000 Tamil civilians who have been taken hostage. There is clear evidence that the Tamil Tigers have built bunkers and sited their remaining long guns right in the middle of the hapless human shields. The Sri Lankan government has declared a large swath of seaside land a safe zone and is doing its best to protect this civilian population. Indeed, destroying the Tamil Tigers could happen in a single day because the core is no further from army positions than we are from Aylmer, Quebec.

I bristle, and Sri Lankans bristle, when foreigners declare their sympathies for these poor Sri Lankan hostages. Make no mistake--Sri Lankans care about them more than you do, more than anyone does. It is, therefore, with astonishment that I observe Sri Lankan Tamil Canadian demonstrators saying absolutely nothing about the Tamil Tigers releasing their human shields. The constant theme is “ceasefire”, you may have noticed. And, of course, one of our Liberal MPs spoke at such a demonstration on March 5, saying “I'd like to let you know I’m helping you guys. I’m behind you because you are fighting a right cause.” He of course conveniently forgot that it was some of his clan extremists who brought down Air India Flight 182, killing 312 Indo-Canadians on June 23, 1985, the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history.

Of course, as I explained to you in the beginning, the entire thrust of the recent Tamil Tiger propaganda campaign has been to save the leadership; save these nasties to fight another day; to blow up ten thousand more civilians; to assassinate moderate Tamil leaders; to kill democratically elected leaders; and to further destroy my beautiful motherland. No, it will not happen. And if I have my way, I will never let it happen.

You might ask whether I believe that peace is possible in Sri Lanka. My answer is an emphatic yes. The eastern province is a case in point, which had democratic elections for its provincial council seven months after the Tamil Tigers were wiped out. Its people elected a former Tamil Tiger child soldier, Piliyan, who gave up terrorism in 2004, as their chief minister. The development of the eastern province is going full speed ahead, and the people are content. This certainly will happen in the northern province too, once the Tamil Tiger curse is eliminated.

So the answer is, I repeat, yes, peace is possible in Sri Lanka.

Mr. Chairman, I've cut my statement as much as I can. Ladies and gentlemen, permit me to thank you once again for giving me the opportunity to address you all.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Wow. Thank you. We appreciate your comments. Again, we will enter the complete statement into the record.

We'll move into the first round here, and we'll go to Mr. Patry or Mr. Rae.

Mr. Patry, go ahead.

[Bernard Patry, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you.

Merci beaucoup. Thank you very much, Asoka and Mahinda.

I just have three very short questions.

Why doesn't the Government of Sri Lanka lift the embargo on food, medications, and essential articles?

Why aren't any NGOs allowed in the region?

Why are no independent media allowed to do their work in the region?

Those are my three questions. They're very simple questions.

Thank you.

[Mahinda Gunasekera]

There is no embargo. The food is being shipped. Some of the food shipments have been attacked by the LTTE. Even a cargo ship that came to drop off food for the displaced civilians was attacked by artillery, and the ship had to be taken back to deep water. In spite of all these difficulties, food is being delivered.

What was the second question, sir?

[Bernard Patry, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

It was about the NGOs and the work of the NGOs and the media.

[Mahinda Gunasekera]

The NGOs may have complained earlier, but today I find that NGOs are worried that some of their staff who were not allowed to come over have been conscripted by the LTTE, and even their families are not being allowed free movement. So I suppose the decision of the government that it was difficult to guarantee their security was right. Even the NGO staff are being held back and conscripted to fight for them.

[Bernard Patry, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

On the media, why is no independent media allowed to work?

[Mahinda Gunasekera]

I suppose it would have been madness for any media person to have gone into that conflict zone. However, the media subsequently have been taken to areas that were safe for them to visit, even media from Canada, such as a National Post reporter and Rick Westhead of the Toronto Star. They and several other media people from other countries have visited the conflict zone.