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SL slams Trudeau for outrageous claim
View(s):Sri Lankan Government yesterday summoned the Canadian High Commissioner Eric Walsh to the Foreign Ministry and later slammed the Canadian Government for what it called “unfounded allegations” by its Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in an “outrageous claim of genocide” pertaining to the past conflict in Sri Lanka.
In a strongly worded rebuttal, the Ministry urged Canada and its leaders to refrain from making pronouncements which promoted hatred, misinformation and extremist views, the Foreign Ministry asked Canada “to cease its unhelpful focus on Sri Lanka based on distorted facts” that runs contrary to the Canadian Prime Minister’s stated objective of safeguarding human rights across the world.
Rejecting the “Unsubstantiated narrative” of ‘genocide’ by politically-motivated anti-Sri Lanka elements:, the Ministry said these elements relied on recognition in Canada by spreading misinformation and a false narrative of hatred.
“For over three decades the people of Sri Lanka suffered from brutal terrorism waged by the LTTE”, the statement went on to say, adding that the conflict suppressed “the lives and democratic rights of all communities:, Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese”. It urged the Canadian Government and its leaders to leverage this platform to form bonds of friendship and harmony between people and to refrain from polarising communities in Canada and overseas.
Foreign Minister Ali Sabry told High Commissioner Walsh that the Sri Lanka Government condemned and rejected “outright” Prime Minister’s Trudeau’s statement earlier in the week coinciding with the 14th anniversary of the defeat of the LTTE and said it was politically motivated, divisive and purely for domestic political consumption in Canada. He said that the word ‘genocide’ was being arbitrarily used motivated by a small section of the Sri Lankan Diaspora in Canada.
Diplomatic sources said that Prime Minister Trudeau may not have seen this statement as he was travelling to Hiroshima for the G-7 summit, but as his office had issued the statement under his name, he would have to take responsibility for it. Sections of the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora now in Canada – and the United Kingdom, and voters in those countries have taken advantage of the electoral system to pressurise their MPs to issue anti-Sri Lanka statements under the guise of human rights.
Yesterday’s reaction by the Sri Lanka Government was one of the strongest and most swift refutations to a statement from one of the G-7 leaders.
The Sunday Times yesterday asked High Commissioner Walsh for a comment on the matter, but received no reply.
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