The Bob Rae saga

Secretary General Prof Rajiva Wijesinha has written to The Toronto Star in response to its coverage of the decision to prevent Canadian politician Bob Rae from entering Sri Lanka last week. Below are some excerpts from his letter and the full version can be viewed via the link below. - Sinhaya

In February this year, following an article he wrote that was full of falsehoods, I wrote a response entitled 'The devious self-righteousness of Bobby Rae', which spelled out exactly how fraudulent were his arguments. To quote a single paragraph from it – ‘Rae does record that the ‘Tigers were ruthless at killing their opponents in their own community’ and that they ‘use suicide bombers against civilians and recruit children into their army’ but he promptly goes on to claim some sort of justification for them in terms of their ‘support around the world’. He privileges this by talking about ‘the sense of the Tamil people that they have never been able to find justice inside a failed state’, as though to uphold himself the idea that Sri Lanka is a failed state.’ The article may now be read in full on the Online version of the London Free Press here.

Bob Rae does not seem to have changed in the interval. Ms de Silva's letter referred to his demanding a probe into 'an estimated 20,000 civilian deaths', which is nonsensical. For a member of parliament to make such claims on the basis of the extrapolations of a newspaper that has been obviously biased against Sri Lanka is at best irresponsible, and fully justifies Ms de Silva's plea that he not be allowed to enter Sri Lanka.

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