The Background to Ontario Provincial Bill 104 proposing an Education week about an alleged Genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Political activity in Canada that is detrimental to Sri Lanka's short-term and long-term Interests are discussed here..

 

This document gives the background to the attempt to legitimize the claim that  a Tamil Genocide Happened in Sri Lanka, and the attempt to create a Tamil Genocide Education week, implicitly claiming  a Tamil Homeland in Sri Lanka, and also making  other serious allegations against Sri Lanka via  municipal and provincial legislatures.

 

The pre-oration to the Bill 104 by MPP Vijay Thanigasalam can be found in the link:

http://www.eelamview.com/2019/05/17/tamil-genocide-education-week-act-debate-ontario-legislature-bill-104/

The pre-oration claims that:


• a). 146,679 were killed in the last days of the Eelam war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tamil Tigers that ended in 2019 May
  
• b). Conditions of Starvation were inflicted on them, amounting to Genocide
  c). Imposing measures to prevent births within the group of people held (some 300,000) by the LTTE within its cordon.
  
• d). That in 2013 birth control measures were surgically implanted in Tamil women or forced denial of treatment in selected hospitals.
  
• e). Tamil children had been take away from their homes.
  
• f). That these amount to Genocide.
  

However, no proof of these claims is adduced, and the fact that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Al Hussein had in 2015 already ruled that the actions of the Sri Lankan Government during the last Eelam war, though highly regrettable, did NOT AMOUNT TO GENOCIDE is ignored.

UN Human Rights High Commissioner Zeid rejecting claims of a genocide of Tamils (Abridged Report) on 16th Sept. 2015

 

1. Three Ontario municipalities have passed resolutions affirming “Tamil Genocide week” to use the week of May 19 th  every year to commemorate alleged genocidal actions said to have been committed by Sri Lanka against Tamils.
One of them, Pickering has realized its error and modified its stance.

 

2. A bill (named Bill 104)  has gone through its second reading at the Ontario Provincial legislature  to resolve a “Tamil Genocide Education Week”. This bill, tabled  by (an Ethnic Tamil) Member of the Provincial Parliament, Mr. Vijay Thanigasalam proposes to enshrine the claim of a  genocide of Tamils committed by Sri Lanka, as a resolution. There are other accusations against Sri Lanka in the bill.

 

3. Even though local governments and provincial governments do not have the power to deal with matters concerning a foreign government, they seem to take the point of view that they are looking after their Diaspora citizens and trying to pass these resolutions to legitimize their claims by the back door.

 

4. They have also taken the first steps to introduce similar resolutions in the Federal Parliament, with MP Hon. Garry Ananadasangaree organizing a Tamil Genocide week in May 2019 in the Federal parliament. There are moves to initiate similar bills in the UK, at various levels of government.

 

A submission to the standing committee can be found in the link:

Submission to Ontario Legislature on Bill 104 regarding an alleged genocide of Tamils

The submission uses views and writings Tamil leaders, Tamil writers, Western diplomats etc, and points out that:


a). According to the most recent(2018) and most comprehensive study by the British House of Lords led by Lord Naseby, the death toll in the last Eelam war is 5000-7000 and NOT 146,679.

b). 147,000 were killed by shelling and bombing, one may expect 2 to 3 times that many injured, i.e., 300,000 to 459,000 injured. Instead, only about 18,000 injured were found, corresponding to about 7,200 deaths, consistent with Lord Naseby's findings, and the findings of academic researchers who have studied the death toll.

c). No mass graves corresponding to a death of 146,000 within a few months have been found, even though the Sri Lankan Northen provincial Council led by Mr. Wigneswaran had been very interested in locating such graves to further his allegation of a Tamil genocide.

d). The leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), Mr. V. Anandasangaree had stated at the 2008 annual convention of the TULF that the LTTE engaged in mass killings of its injured cadre as they were considered a liability to the LTTE, and as a way of indicting the Sri Lankan Army. In fact, the movie footage from such killings were passed onto make the channel-4 movies claiming that the "No Fire Zones" were "killing fields" in Sri Lanka, directed by Cullum McCrea. Those movies have been analyzed and refuted in the study "Corrupted Journalism: Channel 4 and Sri Lanka".

e). The Tamil journalist D. B. S. Jeyraj, Tamil writer Sebastian Rasalingam, as well as the Jaffna University teachers for Human Rights have stated that while the army took steps to minimize civilian causalities, the LTTE sought to maximize civilian casualties to claim a humanitarian disaster and demand international intervention.

f). Wikileaks reveal that the US ambassadors Robert Blake, and Williamson have also sent dispatches saying that the LTTE sought to maximize civilian injuries while the army took steps to reduce civilian losses.

g). The Leaders of major Tamil political parties in Sri Lanka, e.g.,Mr. Sumanthiran of the TNA, and Mr. Sangaree of the TULF have rejected the Genocide claim, already in 2015, when Mr. Wigneswaran of the Northern Provincial Council Sri Lanka in 2015 called for an investigation alleging a genocide of Tamils.

h). UN Human Rights High Commissioner has rejected the Genocide claim in 2015

i). The claim of not supplying food to civilians held captive by the LTTE is based on an error in the Darusman report where the food supplied by the World Food Program (WFP) had not been counted in. It is shown that the WFP, the ICRC,a nd the Sri Lankan government provided about 4 times the four capita amount of food.

j). Abduction of children etc., were practiced by the LTTE and not by the army, as documented by many organizations including the UTHR(Jaffna).

k). The population of Tamils in Sri Lanka had INCREASED at about the same rate per capita as for other Ethnicities, during the time 1948-2011, or even during the war period 1981-2011. Hence, in contrast to other genocides (e.g., Canadian aboriginal people), the alleged Tamil genocide is shown to be false by demographic data.





5. The bill, if passed, will provide funding to Tamil Ethnic organizations in Ontario to  include these ideas to school curricula and teach a falsified history to school children and in Universities, indicting Sri Lanka and causing ethnic strife.

 

6. They will also include teaching about Tamil Eelam etc., thus compromising the Unitarity and sovereignty of Sri Lanka by including it in school and University curricula.

 

7.  Hence Sri Lanka's objections, as well as the objections of other non-Tamil Canadians from Sri Lanka,  to this bill 104 must be presented to the Ontario Provincial Legislature. As such, many Sri Lankan organizations have made submissions to the standing committee reviewing the Bill 104.

 

The bill has now been passed, with the committe stage bypassed as never before, without taking up submissions. How the Bill was passed

8. So we ask that Sri Lanka makes its representations to the Canadian Government, and the Ontario Legislature, at the very  highest diplomatic level possible, as the long-term  implications of these Tamil Genocide bills are very adversarial to Sri Lanka.

 

[chandre.dharma@yahoo.ca]