Canadian High Commissioner Shelley Whiting is a
conscientious woman, she would have us believe.
She has decided to boycott this year’s ‘Victory Day’ celebrations. She
has offered her reasons. She is upset
that Canada’s suggestion that Sri Lanka retires its Victory Day Parade has
fallen on deaf ears. She believes that this Parade ‘perpetuates roles of
victors and vanquished within the country’.
The Government of Sri Lanka is clear on who the
‘vanquished’ were. The LTTE. Terrorism.
The Victory Day Parade does not in any way ‘perpetuate the role of the
LTTE’. How Whiting came to that
conclusion only she would know.
What is hilarious about this lady’s objection is the
fact that Canada has spared no pains to ‘perpetuate the role of the
vanquished,’ i.e. the LTTE. Whiting’s
condemnation of the LTTE is nothing more than tokenism given Canada’s long
standing refusal to cooperate with Sri Lankan authorities to bring to book
known terrorists, sanction of any and all pro-LTTE events on Canadian soil, and
objection to help find allegedly ‘disappeared’ persons who are currently in
Canada. She talks of Canada banning the
LTTE and proscribing the World Tamil Movement.
She says nothing of outfits run by known LTTE fund-raisers,
propagandists and other criminals that now function under different and new
names but still proudly wave the Tiger flag.
Half-blind, is she or selectively so, one wonders. So, when she says begs people not to rush to
judge and erroneously conclude that her decision is informed by some misplaced
nostalgia for the LTTE, one can say ‘hmmm….’
‘I will thinking and remembering all those who lost
loved ones over the thirty year conflict,’ Whiting tells us. That’s very humane of her. And pragmatic. Why go all the way to Matara and suffer
through what to her would be boring official duties, listening to speeches made
in a language she doesn’t know when she can stay at home and mourn, eh? She could be playing bridge or poker,
watching a movie or having a small tea party with the like-minded and we
wouldn’t know.
Anyway, since she is invested in thought, reflection
and recollection, we can ask her to speak on others who lost loved ones, not in
Sri Lanka or Afghanistan (where she was stationed before coming to Sri Lanka),
but in her native Canada.
Has Whiting thought of a woman called Loretta
Saunders, we wonder. Loretta Saunders
was an Inuk woman who researched missing and murdered Aboriginal women in
Canada. She was, until her body was
found in a province neighboring her native Halifax, Nova Scotia, one of 825
lost Aboriginal women. She is now in a
different category, ‘lost or murdered’.
Did Whiting commiserate with Loretta’s loved
ones? All we know is that Whiting’s
Canada has refused to conduct a domestic inquiry into these missing Aboriginal
women. ‘No need,’ says the
self-righteous Prime Minister Harper, the man who is upset about alleged
atrocities committed by Sri Lankan security forces, allegations easily sourced
to the most unreliable ‘witnesses’, i.e. LTTE cadres, sympathizers and
apologists. Something is being
‘perpetuated’ in her country, but Whiting doesn’t seem to be upset. Is she going to scrap Canada Day celebrations
in Colombo this year because her government has pooh-poohed calls for
investigation from both Canadian as well as international bodies, one wonders.
The point is that Canada has a long history of
violence against its native peoples. That appears to be sanctioned by
successive governments simply by the non-provision of institutional mechanisms
to stop it or lethargy on the part of law enforcement officers that can only be
described as racist. The racism doesn’t
begin with inaction though. It is part
and parcel of the policy regime of Canada.
Canada talks ‘humanitarian’ but lives ‘racism’. It was a nation founded on injuries to
native peoples and it is a nation that continues to injure. Whiting’s bleeding-heart justification of
boycott, for this reason (and of course for her utter and undisguised humbuggery
with respect to ‘victims’ and ‘loved ones’) would be hilarious if it were not
tragic.
She is condescending and
erroneous, double-tongued and myopic. ‘A
bad egg’ would be a compliment because she is representative of ‘True Canada’,
not because she is the top diplomat of that country in Sri Lanka, but
articulates in her silences and cockeyed missives the racism that thrives in
her country.
It is no surprise then that this boycott provokes
observations such as the one below (by Fred Fernandez):
I read with interest the statement made by the
Canadian High Commissioner that she will not participate in the Victory Day
Celebrations because she is very keen that Sri Lanka should enjoy Peace and
Reconciliation as soon as possible. While welcoming her interest in
ushering Peace into Sri Lanka, may I request the Canadian Government through
its peace loving Ambassador here, to kindly support the peace process further
with the following initiatives as well.
(a) Stop fund raising by
ex-LTTErs who are today masquerading as human rights activists in various parts
of Canada. It is well known that these funds are used by them to
“enlist” certain Canadian politicians to bash Sri Lanka.
(b) Help the Sri Lankan
authorities to identify the many LTTE cadres who are in lists of missing and
dead in Sri Lanka, but who are actually living and working in Canada, so that
the data bases of who are alleged to be missing could be accurately updated.
(c) Grant a separate
State to the Tamils of the world including those in Sri Lanka as already mooted
by several Tamil Organizations in the recent past, and as explained in the
article appearing at http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2014/03/23/time-to-establish-a-self-governed-tamil-state-in-canada/
The Canadian High Commissioner’s boycott of
the Victory Day Celebrations and the Canadian Prime Minister Harper’s boycott
of CHOGM in 2013 would be truly meaningful when the above initiatives are also
implemented by the Canadians.
The third suggestion is of course tongue-in-cheek,
but the points are valid. Neither
Whiting nor her government is serious about either peace or reconciliation in
Sri Lanka. It’s easy to show
heart-bleed. Easy to stay home twiddling
thumbs while claiming ‘I am mourning’.
One is judged less on word than on deed.
In ‘deed’, Ms Whiting and Canada have done little. Not for Sri Lanka and
not for Canadian Aborigines. Indeed, the
record shows that Canada has covered itself in the glory of subverting
reconciliation. Ms Whiting can reflect
on that since she’s party to that achievement.
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