"..It has been reported that you have publicly participated in LTTE activities by personally and knowingly attending and speaking at pro-LTTE events such as PongoThamil in Madrid and London. In addition, you have publicly announced your support for B. Nadesan. As a prominent member of a political party that has historically and consistently shown support for the LTTE we can conclude that your actions constitute membership in the LTTE..." Canadian High Commissioner's Letter to Dr Vickramabahu Karunarathne, 18 September 2008

"Thank you for your letter dated 18 Sep 2008, which I found quite amusing. Firstly, let me correct some absolute untruths included in your letter. I have never been to Spain; and I could not attend Pongu Thamil meeting in London as I got the British visa after the event..". Dr Vickramabahu Karunarathne's Response to Canadian High Commission

Canadian High Commissioner's Letter to Dr Vickramabahu Karunarathne, 18 September 2008

Dr Vickramabahu Karunarathne's Response to Canadian High Commission

Comment by tamilnation.org  The sequential logic of the Canadian High Commission in Colombo beggars belief.

That Mr.Karunaratne has never been to Spain and did not attend the Pongu Thamil event in London is not the question. That the Canadian High Commission's  allegation that Mr.Karunaratne had 'personally and knowingly' attended these events was an allegation made with a reckless disregard to truth is also not the question. 

Again the question is not whether Mr.Karunaratne is right when he says that 'his party is a (Marxist) socialist party whilst the LTTE is a Tamil nationalist bourgeois party' or whether  Benedict Anderson  was right when he pointed out many years ago -

"..Nationalism has proved an uncomfortable anomaly for Marxist theory and precisely for that reason, has been largely elided, rather than confronted. How else to account for the use, for over a century of the concept of the 'national bourgeoisie' without any serious attempt to justify theoretically the relevance of the adjective? Why is this segmentation of the bourgeoisie - a world class in so far as it is defined in terms of the relations of productions - theoretically significant? ... A nation is an imagined political community... It is imagined as a community, because regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep horizontal comradeship. Ultimately, it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings." Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities - Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 1991 quoted in What is a Nation - Nadesan Satyendra

The question is also not whether Mr.Karunaratne is right when he says that the  "LTTE uses the method of terror in the course of the struggle" or whether UN Special Rapporteur, Kalliopi K. Koufa was right when he declared in 2004 -

"...The most problematic issue relating to terrorism and armed conflict is distinguishing terrorists from lawful combatants, both in terms of combatants in legitimate struggles for self-determination and those involved in civil wars or non-international armed conflicts." Terrorism and Human Rights  Final Report of the Special Rapporteur, Kalliopi K. Koufa,  25 June 2004

"Throwing a bomb is bad,
Dropping a bomb is good;
Terror, no need to add,
Depends on who's wearing the hood."
R.Woddis 'Ethics for Everyman'
quoted by Igor Primoratz in State Terrorism & Counter Terrorism

The real issues lie elsewhere. The real issue is whether 'public participation' in events such as Pongu Thamil constitutes evidence of membership of  the LTTE. The real issue is whether support for the struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam to free themselves from alien Sinhala rule constitutes evidence of membership of the LTTE.

The fact is that if Mr.Karunaratne had attended the Pongu Thamil ('pro LTTE') event in London he would have been in good company.

 If Mr.Karunaratne had attended the Pongu Thamil ('pro LTTE') event in London he would have been in the company of more than 30,000 supporters of the Tamil struggle for justice. - and he would have been in the company of  Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrats Foreign Affairs spokesman, Andrew Pelling MP (Conservative)  Virendra Sharma MP (Labour), Mike Griffiths MP (Labour),  Siobhan McDonnagh, Labour MP, Baroness Sarah Luxford MEP (Liberal Democrats) and Dawn Butler MP (Labour).

Again, it appears that Mr.Karunaratne did send a message to the Pongu Thamil event in London. And here he was in the distinguished company of  Tony Benn MP (Labour), Robert Evans MEP (Labour), Stephen Hammond MP (Conservatives), Simon Hughes MP (Liberal Democrats), Susan Kramer MP (Liberal Democrats), Joan Ryan MP (Labour) and Roy Padayachie (South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Communications) who also sent messages.

The Canadian High Commission in Colombo offends reason and insults intelligence when it asserts that participation in Pongu Thamil events such as those in London on 12 July 2008, constitutes evidence of membership of the LTTE.

Again it appears that in the eyes of the Canadian High Commission 'public support' for Mr.B.Nadesan, Head of the Political Wing of the LTTE constitutes evidence of  Mr.Karunaratne's membership of the LTTE! Presumably public support for US President Bush would in the eyes of the Canadian High Commision constitute evidence of the supporter's membership of the Republican Party.

Furthermore, in the eyes of the Canadian High Commission,  the fact that  Mr.Karunaratne has defended the right of self determination of the Tamil people, constitutes evidence of his membership of the LTTE - presumbly because it is a right which the LTTE has also defended.

The sequential logic of the Canadian High Commission is no different to the sequential logic of the murderous regime of President Mahinda Rajapakse - a murderous regime in whose eyes every Tamil who is committed to the vision of an independent Tamil Eelam that was articulated by the Gandhian Tamil leader S.J.V.Chelvanayagam in 1975 is a member of the LTTE and therefore  must  be hunted down and killed. The Canadian High Commission appears to have extended this principle to even those Sinhalese who may agree with that which the Gandhian Tamil leader S.J.V.Chelvanayagam said in 1975 -

"Throughout the ages the Sinhalese and Tamils in the country lived as distinct sovereign people till they were brought under foreign domination. It should be remembered that the Tamils were in the vanguard of the struggle for independence in the full confidence that they also will regain their freedom. We have for the last 25 years made every effort to secure our political rights on the basis of equality with the Sinhalese in a united Ceylon."

"It is a regrettable fact that successive Sinhalese governments have used the power that flows from independence to deny us our fundamental rights and reduce us to the position of a subject people. These governments have been able to do so only by using against the Tamils the sovereignty common to the Sinhalese and the Tamils."

"I wish to announce to my people and to the country that I consider the verdict at this election as a mandate that the Tamil Eelam nation should exercise the sovereignty already vested in the Tamil people and become free."

Mr.Karunaratne says that he was amused at the Canadian High Commission's letter. We ourselves are not amused. We are angry. We are angry that support for the goals of an organisation leads the Canadian High Commission to conclude that the supporter is a member of that organisation. We are angry at the refusal of the Canadian High Commission to recognise that support for the goals of an organisation is not support for all the methods that an organisation may employ. We are angry at the refusal of the Canadian High Commission to recognise that in any case, even support for an organisation,  is not membership of that organisation -  and that this is more so in the case of an organisation which restricts its members to those wearing a cyanide capsule and to those who have committed their lives to the struggle. We are angry at the brazen denial of reason by a representative of a country  which often holds itself out as the defender of fundamental freedoms. And, yes, sometimes, it is  right to be angry.

நெஞ்சு பொறுக்குதில்லையே - இந்த
நிலைகெட்ட மனிதரை நினைந்துவிட்டால் - Subramaniya  Bharathy