Not many years ago -in 2010 to be exact- a particular past president of our country said his aim was to turn Lanka into ‘The Wonder of Asia’.Today in many ways, we have become a ‘Wonder of Asia’. Unfortunately NOT in the way or manner that president had imagined.   

Today, nearly 20-years later, our country is bankrupt, we are in a sense dependent on India’s good offices for ‘our daily bread’.Two days ago, Canada imposed targetted sanctions on two of our past presidents -Mahinda and Gotabaya Rajapaksa- for what it refers to as ‘gross human rights violations. Now, to make matters worse another of our past president’s -Maithripala Sirisena- has been found guilty by the Supreme Court of this country of failure to prevent the Easter Sunday terrorist attack which left over 250 dead and hundreds of others injured.  

He has been ordered to pay a sum of Rs.100 million as compensation to the victims of the Easter Sunday attack. Today we cannot but ponder on the fate of the ‘Wonder of Asia’.   

However, be that as it may, what was truly surprising was Canada imposing sanctions on two past presidents of this country for alleged human rights violations.The Canadian government added “...these sanctions send a clear message that Canada will not accept continued impunity for those that have committed gross human rights violations in Sri Lanka...”  

We in Sri Lanka are happy to hear that Canada is obviously setting a trend in chasing down gross violators of human rights and imposing targetted sanctions against them. To help them in their efforts we would like to bring to the notice of the Canadian authorities, a number of gross human rights violations of the not too distant past.   

In Iraq, the US and British governments colluded to falsely accuse the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussain of possessing Weapons of Mass Destruction (WDM) at the United Nations Security Council and invaded that country..  

The Watson Institute International & Public Affairs of the Brown University in its report ‘Costs of war’ says ‘No one knows with certainty how many people have been killed and wounded in Iraq since the 2003 United States invasion. However, we know that between 275,000 and 306,000 civilians have died from direct war related violence caused by the invasion.  In Afghanistan British charity ‘Save the Children’ reported on 21 August 2021 almost 33,000 children have been killed and maimed in Afghanistan over the past 20 years, since the American invasion of that country. An average of one child every five hours.   

US President George Bush and British premier Tony Blair were the two leaders who led the invasion of Iraq falsely claiming that country possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction. No WMDs were ever found in that country. The war also destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure.  

We hope that the Canadian government will impose stringent targetted sanctions on the two war criminals George Bush and Tony Blair.  

As part of its war effort in Vietnam, the US from 1961 to 1971, sprayed over 73 million litres of chemical agents on the country to strip away vegetation. Some 45 million litres of the poisoned spray was Agent Orange, which contains the toxic compound dioxin.  The 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibits the use of chemical and biological weapons in war.   

We are hopeful that even at this late stage, Canada will sanction Henry Kissinger the then US Secretary of State and advisor to then US President Nixon.  During World War II the US nuclear bombed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to ‘Brittanica’ the atomic bombings -Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945)- left tens of thousands killed in the initial explosions and many more would later succumb to radiation poisoning. The cities themselves were razed to the ground. Those killed and injured were ordinary men, women and children.

Civilians all...To date the US has refused to even apologize for exploding those dreadful devices on civilian targets.  

We are once again hoping Canada will use its good offices with its neighbour -the US- to at least secure an apology and pay compensation to the next of kin of the victims for its Crimes Against Humanity in Japan.  While the effort to hold nations responsible for the various crimes they commit using war as an excuse is applaudable, exempting the leadership of white dominated regimes for similar crimes, smacks of racism  War Criminals are war criminals and should be exposed as such irrespective of their race, colour or ethnicity.