Re: Please Admit Tamil Refugees aboard the MV Sun Sea

August 11, 2010

Honorable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa K1A 0A2
Canada

Dear Prime Minister Harper:

We urge you to admit the refugees who have just come to Canada aboard the MV Sun Sea. While suspicion of members of this group is perhaps unavoidable, we ask that you allow the appropriate Canadian agencies to attend to this matter and investigate the Tamil migrants and (we expect) release them when they are found to be harmless.

This all happened before. In October 2009, the cargo ship Ocean Lady arrived in Canadian waters with 76 would-be Tamil migrants aboard.  Some voices loudly claimed that at least some of the Tamil asylum seekers were Tamil Tiger cadres seeking to establish a base for their terrorist organization on Canadian soil. Arms of the Canadian government--The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB)—appropriately interned and investigated the Tamil asylum seekers. By now these Tamil refugees have all been released, although a few of them are still under observation by the Canadian authorities. All of them are free to travel, settle, live, and be educated in Canada. So far, all of them have proven to be positive additions to the common wealth of Canada.

We are confident that a similar outcome will follow with the Tamil migrants on board the MV Sun Sea. We expect that they will be (correctly) interned and investigated by appropriate agencies of the Canadian government. We also expect that the investigation will find that these Tamil refugees pose no threat to Canada and that most or all of them will be released and allowed to travel, settle, and live in peace in Canada. God bless the refugees and God bless Canada.

Besides the disreputable Sri Lankan government, the sources of ill-will toward the Tamil refugees come from just a few sources who regularly turn up to be quoted by newspapers and broadcasters. These include Rohan Gunaratna, a security consultant based in Singapore, and James Clad, an academic and former US defense department officer. These two are like broken clocks: they always give the same information, and are never trustworthy. We suggest that Gunaratna, who dines with defense secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa when visiting Colombo, is a stealthy partisan and spokesman for the Sri Lankan government. Clad was US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia and appears to have been infected by a severe case of clientitis. In his official capacity, he provided weapons and other military aid to the Sri Lankan government. Now, he always sees Tigers when he looks at victims of his former clients and always says this to the press. We suggest that a healthy caution is required before acting on information from any of these sources.

We thank you for your attention to this matter and wish you and Canada only the best.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Tamils for Obama

Copies to Canadian Tamil Congress, Tamil Canadian,  Vancouver Sun, Toronto Globe and Mail, Washington Post.