Mr. Speaker, I address not only our fellow parliamentarians in the House of Commons. I wish to address our fellow Canadians of Tamil descent, who gathered on the Hill here today, and in fact, Tamil Canadians from across our great country who are watching this historic emergency debate.
I feel tremendous empathy for our Tamil Canadian brothers and sisters. Like many of them, I am the child of political refugees to this country. Many of my parents' and grandparents' family members and loved ones were killed, often in the most brutal of ways, in their struggle for a free and independent Ukraine.
Freedom and independence are sought when continuing injustices take place. This has been the historic struggle of many peoples, many nations. In the past century, tens of millions of lives have been lost to ethnic intolerances, ethnic hatreds, ethnic cleansings and genocides, yet humanity seems not to learn from these tragic lessons.
For decades now, Tamils in Sri Lanka have struggled with intolerance and injustice. In the resulting frustrating and horrific violence, tens of thousands of innocent Tamils, as well as Sinhalese and Muslims, have been killed. How many of the anguished Tamil-Canadians who gathered here today before the Peace Tower have lost loved ones and friends?
Just over a year ago, along with many Tamil Canadians, we mourned the assassination and loss of Thamilselvan. Thamilselvan embodied Tamil aspirations. He was a soldier who became a peace negotiator. Despite having borne witness to decades of horror, he laid down his gun in the search for peace. The targeted assassination of a peace negotiator by the Sri Lankan government began a well planned out descent into the horrors of war.
At the time, I condemned the assassination and stated the following at the November 5, 2007, memorial for Thamilselvan:
Sri Lanka stands at the edge of a precipice, with a potential to descend into a new hell. How many thousands more to be victimized to satiate the hatred in people's souls? How many more women and men, brothers and sisters, children, are to be sacrificed on the altar of war?
These were the words of warning I spoke over a year ago, yet the Conservative government was deaf to these warnings, deaf to the pleadings and anguish of thousands of Tamil Canadians. A year ago, Tamil Sri Lankan infants, children, men and women were on the precipice. In these last weeks they have been pushed off the ledge and find themselves in the midst of the horror, in the midst of the hell of war.
Meanwhile, our Prime Minister has been silent for over a year, and I note he has not been here for the debates this evening. Has he even taken the time to look at the—