ANNOUNCER

The International Community (IC) has accepted the reasonableness of the prolonged struggle of Eelam Tamils for their birth rights. It was the desire of the International Community that a permanent solution to the ethnic conflict should be arrived at in an atmosphere of normalcy and free of pressures of war. It is because we believed in the assurances you gave us that we travelled the peace path during the last 6 years.

Were you able to prevent the human suffering and destruction caused by a war that has been thrust on us?

Were you able to save us from the horrendous human rights violations and the deteriorating humanitarian problems?

It is in this backdrop that we Tamils living in Canada have rallied here in their thousands to bring to the attention of the International Community the great desire of the Eelam Tamils to liberate our Homeland and regain sovereignty.

We are united and resolute in our objectives and this Upsurge (Pongu Tamil) symbolizes our nationalist aspirations. We are determined and united as never before and we appeal loudly and clearly to the International Community to recognize the de facto state of Tamil Eelam that exists in our Homeland.

We, Eelam Tamils living in Canada through today’s Tamil Upsurge (Pongu Tamil) event –

Appeal to all the people around the globe and all countries, including Canada, that value human rights and justice to support and recognize the just and reasonable liberation struggle of the Tamil people.

We condemn severely the ban imposed on the World Tamil Movement which is a community based organization. We consider it as an assault on the basic rights of Canadian Tamils.

We call up on the International Community, especially our own Canadian government, to remove the ban on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) – the sole representative of the Eelam Tamils - and accept LTTE as an equal partner to solve the ethnic conflict.

We appeal to the International Community, including Canada, to impose immediately military, economic and diplomatic sanctions on Sri Lanka which is committing horrendous human rights and humanitarian violations against the Tamil people.

Since only liberation can win the rights of our kith and kin living in our Homeland to live in peace and dignity let us resolve to redouble our efforts to win their freedom. Let us unite behind the Tamil Eelam National leadership to see the birth of Tamil Eelam.

TORONTO - Waving the flag of the Tamil Tigers guerrillas, thousands of Canadian Tamils gathered this weekend for their first rally since the federal government shocked the community by outlawing a Toronto-based Tamil non-profit group under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

A statement issued by the event's organizers condemned the government for last month's decision to ban the World Tamil Movement as a suspected financial front for the Tigers, and called on Canada to recognize guerrilla-held areas of northern Sri Lanka as an independent state, called Tamil Eelam.

"There is no other solution to this conflict," said Brian Senewiratne, a medical doctor from Australia who was the keynote speaker, addressing the large crowd at Downsview Park from a giant stage.

The Sri Lankan-born physician, who showed video clips of helicopter gunships firing rockets, called the Sri Lankan government a "murderous, barbaric regime" that was at war "against the Tamil people."

He said the Tamil Tigers, also known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, were a legitimate liberation movement. "There is a very clear distinction between terrorism and freedom fighters."

"What I want to do is move you from watching things happen to making things happen." Canada's decision to ban the Tamil Tigers "has to be challenged," he said.

The rally was just the latest of many similar events that have taken place across Canada over the past decade but it came at a critical time: as the Tigers are apparently losing ground steadily on the battlefield and the Conservatives in Ottawa are taking a firm stand against Tamil Tigers activities in Canada.

Following a five-year RCMP investigation, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day announced in June that the government had placed the World Tamil Movement, which had offices in Toronto and Montreal, on Canada's list of outlawed terrorist groups because of evidence it was financing the Tigers.

The location of the rally was not announced until late Friday afternoon. The Sri Lankan United National Association of Canada had written to police asking them to cancel the event's permit because the Tigers are an outlawed terrorist group under Canadian law.

Participants were bussed in from around the region. They ranged from young children to the elderly, and carried signs that read: "O Canada you have a responsibility," and "Don't label us as terrorists."

Organizer Thiru Thiruchelvam said the location was only announced at the last minute because the event kept growing and they had to find a venue to accommodate the expected crowds.

"What we want is peace," said Thiruchelvam, who told how his 19-year-old son was killed by Sri Lankan government forces. "We are asking the Canadian government to get involved."

Sri Lankan Consul General Bandula Jayasekara denied Senewiratne's claim that Sri Lanka was at war with the Tamil people.

"The LTTE has killed more Tamil leaders than anyone else," he said. "Unfortunately the LTTE, a ruthless terrorist organization, has brought its ruthless war to Canada."

National Post Editorial Board: Terror-friendly Tamils on parade

Posted: July 07, 2008, 6:01 PM by Yoni Goldstein

Editorial board

It’s the sort of sight that too often makes Canadian politicians go weak in the spine: ethnic voters rallying for a parochial, unsavoury cause.

Over the weekend, thousands of Tamil Canadians gathered in a Toronto park to denounce Ottawa’s decision to outlaw the World Tamil Movement (WTM), which the RCMP believes is nothing but a fundraising front for the Tamil Tigers, a Sri Lankan-based terrorist group that has been outlawed in Canada since 2006.

Even by the standards of terrorist insurgencies, the Tigers are a brutal organization — a creepy cult-like outfit that habitually engages in massacres of civilians, and abducts children to fight on the front lines of its 25-year-old campaign against Sri Lanka’s government. Its leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, can fairly be described as the Hassan Nasrallah of South Asia.

Since much of the funding that enables the Tigers to fight their war comes from expatriate Tamils, the stakes in Canada are high. This nation is home to several hundred thousand Sri Lankan migrants of Tamil extraction. Many of them, small business owners in particular, have in the past been strong-armed by Tamil thugs into contributing war funds for the Tigers. (Those same entrepreneurs reportedly were told to shutter their stores over the weekend — to ensure a better turnout at the rally.) Should the Tories give in to the pro-Tiger lobby by legalizing the group, they would reopen the financial floodgates, which would in turn result in more weaponry for the Tigers, and therefore more dead Sri Lankans.

Since 1984, the Tigers have dispatched nearly 400 suicide bombers. The Black Tigers — the Tamils’ suicide-bombing wing — is not particular about whom it presses into service. Men, women and children are all seen as potential human bombs.

Last year, a female suicide bomber walked into Sri Lanka’s defence headquarters pretending to be pregnant. But her tummy bulge in fact contained explosives. She missed killing the Sri Lankan chief of staff, but managed to take out 11 others. Just last month, in two separate attacks, Black Tiger bombers killed 27 passengers on civilian buses. This is the sort of cowardly tactic commonly employed by the men and women who were hailed as “freedom fighters” from the podium at last weekend’s Toronto rally.

But over the last four months, the Tamils have suffered serious military losses. They have been largely expelled from their strongholds on the country’s east coast, while some of their bases and arms depots in the north have been overrun by government forces. One of their senior commanders was sniped by a government rifleman. And over the weekend, 40 Tigers died when Sri Lankan soldiers captured an LTTE operations centre, perhaps their largest.

A contributing factor to the Tigers’ poor battlefield performance may be traced to Canada’s own government: As Canada, and other nations, have worked harder to shut off the flow of money to the Tigers from inside Western nations, Colombo has been able to establish a decisive advantage for the first time in a decade or more. Stephen Harper and his Conservatives should be proud that they took a stand against Tiger fund-raising. The Liberals, under both Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, never had the political courage to stand up to Toronto-based Tamil voters. In some cases, Liberal glad-handers even showed up at Tiger-friendly events.

It is a shameful legacy, one that implicated every Liberal Cabinet member of the era — including several who loved to speechify against terrorism in other parts of the world. But Mr. Harper is cut from different cloth.

Canada has always been a nation of immigrants, one that welcomes newcomers from all over the world. But traditionally, the price of admission was that newcomers left their murderous old-world disputes at the door. In recent years, we have forgotten to charge this fee. The result: disgraceful displays such as last weekend’s rally — in which a group of Canadians unashamedly shouted slogans in support of a terrorist group.

It is enough to give multiculturalism a bad name.

Canadian Tamils hold rally, condemn Ottawa's ban

Stewart Bell , Canwest News Service

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