Give Lanka a fair hearing

The majority of the Tamil Diaspora in Canada are die-hard supporters of the now defunct LTTE terrorist outfit and are still under the delusion of the dream separate state projected by the late LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.

Although the LTTE was militarily defeated and its leadership vanquished almost five years ago, the LTTE rump continues to live in the fantasy world created by Prabhakaran. At the height of LTTE terror, Canada readily offered political asylum to the Tamils and this helped a large number of Tamils to obtain Canadian citizenship.

Having established their base in Canada, the LTTE sympathisers in the Tamil diaspora took advantage of their vote base to exert undue pressure on local politicians there. Some Canadian politicians seized the opportunity in their lust for power to thrive on the votes of the adopted Tamils in that country.

Sri Lanka and Canada had always maintained cordial relations in the past, but regrettably, the LTTE rump and a few unscrupulous Canadian politicians who depend heavily on the Tamil votes put a spoke in the wheel during the past few years.

This went to the extent where even the Canadian themselves could do nothing about. Not only Canadian politicians but also its judiciary seems to be extremely sympathetic and moreover, inclined towards the Tamil diaspora. There is no doubt whatsoever that Canada's decision to boycott the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Sri Lanka last year was deeply influenced by the LTTE rump.

It's an open secret that the LTTE, even after it was proscribed as a terrorist outfit in the US, Canada, UK and the European Union, set up several front organisations to continue its operations and fund-raising in those countries. The Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) and the Canadian Tamil Congress (CTC) are two such leading LTTE front organisations.

It is deplorable that the Canadian judiciary is blissfully unaware of any of these links when it delivered a verdict in favour of the CTC, which held many workshops and brainstorming sessions to support the LTTE's covert activities in Sri Lanka.

The CTC, which sued Sri Lanka-born terrorism expert Prof. Rohan Gunaratna for linking it to the LTTE, has been awarded 53,000 Canadian dollars by an Ontario court. Prof. Gunaratne, had told a press interview with a local newspaper in February 2011, that the LTTE is operating under the name of CTC, "the main LTTE front organisation in Canada".

The Singapore-based professor had also said that the Canadian government is aware of this and was conducting its own investigations. The verdict of the defamation case filed by the Toronto-based CTC was delivered against Prof. Gunaratna.

In his judgement, Justice Stephen E. Firestone of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has ruled in favour of the CTC, awarding it 37,000 Canadian dollars in damages and imposing 16,000 Canadian dollars as costs.

Justice Firestone, had said that Gunaratna's statements "were clearly defamatory, either directly or by innuendo, because they imply that the CTC is involved in the commission of violent and illegal activity. It is unequivocal and uncontroverted that these statements were, in fact, false and untrue".

The International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore which is led by Prof. Gunaratna, is one of the largest counter-terrorism research and training centres in the world.

He had exposed the LTTE's sinister terror acts and Tiger strategies to draw the attention of the international community. He also played a prominent and praiseworthy role to expose the LTTE's criminal and terrorist activities.

Prof. Gunaratna, a member of the Steering Committee of the George Washington University's Homeland and Security Policy Institute, is also Senior Fellow at the Fletcher School for Law and Diplomacy's Jebsen Centre for Counter Terrorism Studies and the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, Oklahoma.

A former Senior Fellow at the United States Military Academy's Combatting Terrorism Centre at West Point, Prof. Gunaratna holds a Masters in International Peace Studies from Notre Dame, US, where he was a Hesburgh Scholar and holds a doctorate in international relations from St Andrews, Scotland, where he was British Chevening Scholar.

Hence, a person of his standing would never say things without concrete proof. Nevertheless, the LTTE rump in Canada is so powerful that it could exert considerable influence on anybody or everybody.

Although the CTC claims that it is a representative body of over 300,000 Sri Lankan Tamils in Canada, its conduct and operations have been highly questionable. It acted as the LTTE's operational and fund-raising arm in Canada after the terror outfit was proscribed in that country.

Hence, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice's decision is baffling, to say the least, and gives a fresh lease of life to global terrorism. It goes without saying that the CTC openly supports LTTE terrorism in Sri Lanka. It evidently turned a blind eye to all Tigers' terror acts which brutally killed tens of thousands of civilians in Sri Lanka.

The CTC has been conducting a sinister campaign to mislead the international community, by projecting a dismal picture of the Security Forces. The LTTE rump in Canada and Europe had deftly exaggerated the number of civilians killed in the battle against terrorism to discredit the Security Forces to woo international sympathy.

Surprisingly, the verdict was delivered just a month ahead from the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) sessions in Geneva next month where the US plans to bring its third successive resolution against Sri Lanka. Are these 'quaint' happenings inter-connected to exert pressure on the international community to support the resolution against Sri Lanka?

In this scenario, it is obvious why the LTTE rump had targeted Prof. Gunaratna at this juncture. In a recent newspaper interview, Prof. Gunaratna had questioned the UNHRC's transparency. "Geneva is no longer an exercise in human rights but in geopolitics and superpower politics. After the colossal loss of human lives in Afghanistan and Iraq, the West has lost their moral right to point a finger at others," he was quoted as saying.

Prof. Gunaratna had questioned as to why Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper had not raised the issue of human rights during his recent visit to Indonesia. "If they intended to do so, they would have not been welcomed either by Indonesia. The people in those countries would have immediately labelled them hypocrites after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," he said.

According to Prof. Gunaratna, it was not human rights but domestic political compulsions that forced the Canadian, British, Mauritian and Indian leaders to take a certain stand at CHOGM. Save the Indian leader, all the others met the LTTE front and other sympathetic groups.

The LTTE rump has mobilsed the Tamil vote in the UK and Canada to exercise constituency pressure on Harper and his British counterpart David Cameron. It also pressurised the co-ethnics in Mauritius and Tamil Nadu. Sri Lanka has become an easy target of the West today and the country should fight tooth and nail by exposing the dual Western policy, as expounded by Prof. Gunaratna, a severe critic on the Northern Provincial Council's demand to withdraw the Security Forces from the North.

He said the Government should initiate an investigation against anyone calling for the withdrawal of the Army from the North as there could be a hidden LTTE hand in such moves.

Prof. Gunaratna's statements have proved to be an obstacle to LTTE front organisations in the West. Hence, they are making an all-out effort to get rid of those who point out the stark facts to the international community.

It is the prime duty of all right-thinking people, especially the loyal and moderate citizens in Canada, to raise their voice against these sinister forces. The LTTE rump should not be permitted to control Canada and influence its politicians with concocted stories to woo international sympathy.

It is earnestly hoped that moderate member countries in the UNHRC would study these developments closely and give Sri Lanka a fair hearing.