The foreign minister of Sri Lanka attempted to compare Justin Trudeau’s accusation that Indian government agencies were involved in the murder of Nijjar to the Canadian leader’s comments about Sri Lanka earlier this year.

Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Ali Sabry weighed in on the recent diplomatic row between India and Canada over the killing of Canadian Khalistani leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, accusing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of making “outrageous allegations” and remarking that some “terrorists have found a safe haven in Canada.”

Mr. Sabry attempted to compare Mr. Trudeau’s assertion that Indian government agencies were involved in the execution of the chief of the “Khalistan Tiger Force” to the Canadian leader’s comments about Sri Lanka earlier this year.

“The Canadian Prime Minister has a habit of making outrageous claims with no evidence to back them up.” I’m not surprised…”They did the same thing with Sri Lanka, with a terrible, total lie, saying Sri Lanka had genocide,” Foreign Ministry Sabry told ANI news agency in an interview on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly’s current session in New York.

Sections of Sri Lanka’s Tamil community argue that the state’s violence against minority Tamils amounts to genocide, but successive governments have refuted the charge, even as Tamils in the island’s north and east complain of discrimination.

Sri Lanka “condemned and rejected outright” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s remarks on May 18 that the stories of Tamil-Canadians touched by the conflict “serve as an enduring reminder that human rights, peace, and democracy cannot be taken for granted.” The North American country, which has a sizable Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, has designated May 18 — the day the island’s civil conflict ended in 2009 — as ‘Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day’ since 2022, following a unanimously supported motion in the Canadian Parliament. @phalguni