Item: Lock and load!

Item: a 74-year-old woman is to be deported to Sri Lanka after a not very bright Immigration and Refugee Board adjudicator found her to be a terrorist.

(This isn’t the first time an IRB bonehead can’t be bothered to learn history. Another recently ordered the deportation of an El Salvadoran national—for being a member of the party that now forms the government of El Salvador.)

After her husband was assassinated during midnight mass at a church in Sri Lanka on Christmas Eve 2005, Canada welcomed Sugunanayake Joseph.

Former foreign affairs minister Bill Graham spoke at a memorial service for her husband, Joseph Pararajasingham, a Sri Lankan MP, calling him a “man of peace.”

…In a Feb. 17 decision, adjudicator Oksana Kowalyk found that by a series of associations, Joseph was, in effect, a member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Although neither Joseph nor her husband had formal membership in the LTTE, he was one of 22 Sri Lankan MPs who formed a coalition in 2001 known as the Tamil National Alliance, which pushed for peace negotiations between the government and the leadership of the Tamil independence movement.

The Tamil National Alliance functioned as the LTTE’s alter ego in Sri Lanka’s parliament, Kowalyk concluded in her decision.

And by supporting her husband’s activities as a member of the MPs’ coalition, Joseph also furthered the LTTE’s objectives, Kowalyk found.

The adjudicator based her conclusions in part on a letter from Amnesty International Canada, which described the Tamil National Alliance as a “proxy” for the LTTE.

But she also ignored portions of the letter in which Amnesty International stated membership in the Tamil National Alliance could not be regarded as de facto membership in the LTTE, argues Raoul Boulakia, Joseph’s lawyer, who is asking the Federal Court to review the ruling.

In an interview Thursday, Gloria Nafziger, Amnesty Canada’s refugee coordinator and the author of the letter, said “it would be simplistic” to call the Tamil National Alliance a proxy for the LTTE.

A little judicious selectivity on the adjudicator’s part, it seems. Harper appointee?

Item: Conservative candidate’s open support for the Tamil Tigers? No problem.

Stephen Harper insists the Conservatives maintain “a strong position against the Tamil Tigers” despite a party candidate’s role in hosting a televised tribute to the banned terrorist group in November.

IOKIYAC. Otherwise, kill or deport.

[H/t reader Sassy, co-blogger Marie Ève, b/c]