Ottawa rips Sri Lanka for deporting ‘security threat’ Bob Rae

“It is absurd to suggest that Mr. Rae represents a threat to Sri Lankan national security, or is a supporter of LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam],” said Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Emma Welford.

“We have registered to the Sri Lankan government our dismay and displeasure concerning this unacceptable treatment of a Canadian parliamentarian. Mr. Rae received consular assistance throughout this ordeal.”

“He is barred from entering the country. He is being deported. . . . We have intelligence information that he is supporting the LTTE,” chief immigration controller P.B. Abeykoon said, according to Agence France-Presse in Colombo, the country’s capital.

“To describe me as ‘an LTTE supporter,’ as an army spokesman has done today, is a lie, pure and simple,” Mr. Rae said in an e-mailed statement.

On a May 19 blog entry, Mr. Rae vowed to go back to the affected areas. “But it is hard not to cry at what has been lost, how much life has been destroyed, and what must still be done to bring justice to the peace that is being proclaimed so loudly.”