Response to Canadian genocide charge: Daya Gamage finds fault with FM

Former US State Department employee Daya Gamage yesterday found fault with our Foreign Ministry for what he called the government’s pathetic response to unsubstantiated Canadian charge of genocide against Sri Lanka.

Gamage asked whether the Foreign Ministry has conveniently forgotten that genocide was the LTTE’s policy platform when it mercilessly removed the Sinhalese and Muslims from the North?

Gamage was commenting on the following statement: “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs unreservedly rejects the reference to a Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day in the statement issued on 23 July 2023 by the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Canada’s continued reference to a false, distorted narrative of the past conflict in Sri Lanka is aimed solely at achieving local vote-bank electoral gains, and is not conducive to broader goals of communal harmony.

Sri Lanka urges Canada and its leaders to support Sri Lanka in its efforts to ensure stability, progress, peace and reconciliation among all communities in all parts of Sri Lanka, as well as among communities of Sri Lankan heritage overseas.

Gamage said: “Isn’t the FM aware that when the War was concluded in May 2009, there were 44% Tamils living among the Sinhalese away from the N-E? If the GSL or the Sinhalese used Genocide as a weapon, will there be over 50% Tamils living among the Sinhalese in the South away from the North/East with gainful employment and enjoying other social facilities? Since the July 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom – carried out by those associated with the JRJ regime who happened to be Sinhalese – there was not a single incident of anti-Tamil violence against the Tamils.

Why is the SL Ministry of Foreign Affairs reluctant to present these facts – and many more – to the Canadian Government to blast its ‘Genocide Propaganda’?

This is very pathetic that Sri Lanka is unable to collect its thoughts to educate the International Community.

These strong facts have never been used by successive governments here, and even to reply to the Canadian Genocide ‘proclamation’.