political imperialism

The continued protests of Canadian Tamils has drawn media attention as they blockaded the Gardiner Expressway last night. NDP and Liberal MPs came to the protest, promising to do more for Tamils in Sri Lanka.

This kind of behaviour from Canadian MPs is unacceptable. Jack Layton told CBC reporters that Canada has not been doing enough to stop the Sri Lankan government, and wants to put more government pressure on the Sri Lankan government to back down.

Who are we to demand this?

The Tamil Tigers are an ethnic army using violence and suicide bombers to fight oppression in Sri Lanka. If French Canadians decided to pressure the Canadian government into making Quebec independant but pursued this goal through use of terrorism and violence, of course the federal government would fight back to regain peace.

As long as the Tamil TIgers continue to use violence as a way to make their demands heard, the Sri Lankan government is entitled to fight back against a renegade army that threatens the stability of the country. The current protests demonstrate that the idea of political imperialism is growing amongst both civilians and politicians. The notion that we have the duty or right to pressure and interfere in another country's domestic affairs is ridiculous. Unless the government is unjustified in using force, there is no rational for foreign states to dictate the ways in which they are to deal with their domestic threats.

What Canadian politicians need to remember is that we are not the United States. Stephen Harper is not George W. Bush (and thank God for that!). We are not in charge of policing the world and it is not our right to make demands on a sovereign state just because we dissaprove of the ways in which they deal with their domestic issues.