Allegations of ‘foreign interference’ by Sri Lanka over Tamil Genocide Memorial in Brampton, Mayor Brown says

Mayor Patrick Brown is calling on the federal government to “take a hard line” against the Sri Lankan government following allegations of “foreign interference” in Brampton.

The mayor’s comments are in response to a letter from Sri Lanka’s Consul General in Toronto sent in May calling for the city to scrap a planned Tamil Genocide Memorial – a monument to those killed in that country’s decades-long civil war.

“We will not be intimidated by the foreign interference in local affairs by the genocidal Sri Lankan government,” Brown said in a statement on social media, calling for the government to hand over “the war criminals responsible for the Tamil genocide to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.”

Consul General Thushara Rodrigo said moving ahead with the construction would “severely disturb the unity and reconciliation efforts among all affected Sri Lankans,” in the letter published by the Tamil Guardian.

The Consul General said completion of the monument would give “a false version of recent history” and “reverse the reconciliation efforts of Sri Lanka.”

Brown fired back at the Sri Lankan government, saying it “can try to stop the Tamil community from remembering their loved ones and heroes, but they cannot do that in Canada.”

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“It is an act of foreign interference that they attempt to obstruct memorial and remembrance events in Canada,” he said, calling on Ottawa to “take a hard line against the ongoing foreign interference of the Sri Lankan government.”

Brown revealed this year that he had been briefed by Canada’s spy agency about “examples of foreign interference in Brampton and Peel Region” following a report that found India, Pakistan and Iran “engaged in foreign interference activities” in Canada.

China also “allegedly interfered in the leadership races of the Conservative Party of Canada” – a race that Brown was disqualified from in 2022 over allegations he broke finance rules.

Brown told INsauga.com that funding for the memorial has been entirely funded by the city’s Tamil community.

According to a 2021 United Nations resolution, it’s believed between 80,000 to 100,000 people died in the decades-long civil war in Sri Lanka. Both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tiger rebel group have been accused of atrocities during the conflict.

The United Nations has been looking into alleged war crimes with the UN Human Rights Council accusing Sri Lanka of “obstructing accountability” in 2021. And while the Sri Lankan Consul General says there have been no findings of “genocide allegedly committed by Sri Lanka,” Ontario’s Bill 104 marks seven days each year ending on May 18 as “Tamil Genocide Education Week.”

The Sri Lankan monument and Brown’s comments on the conflict previously made headlines when an integrity commissioner complaint was filed against the mayor in 2021 after sparring with a resident over the memorial. Brown questioned if the speaker was a Brampton resident and asked if they worked with or had spoken with the Sri Lankan government “due to a perceived similarity in the language used,” the report found.

Brampton’s integrity commissioner found the mayor’s behaviour was less than “exemplary” but didn’t violate codes of conduct.

According to the monument’s official website, the Tamil Genocide Memorial aims to be the leading international landmark for public education on the atrocities faced by the Tamil people in Shri Lanka at the hands of Sinhalese governments over decades.