The Dominion - Sri Lanka

Once, We Welcomed Tamil Refugees

Tim McSorley — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 05:16:59 +0000

Twenty-five years later, Canada jails "boat people"

MONTREAL—"We thought we were going to die...because we were not seeing any land, or light, or any boat or anything."

Sooriyakumaran Sathananthan was among more than 150 Tamil asylum-seekers discovered in a pair of crammed lifeboats off the coast of Newfoundland in August, 1986.

The Tamil refugees, who had fled persecution in Sri Lanka, were quickly granted work permits by Canadian authorities.

Nearly a quarter-century later, when another boatload of Tamil migrants reached this country’s shores, Canada responded differently.

Of the 492 Tamil refugee claimants who arrived in August 2010 on the MV Sun Sea, nearly all were detained by Canadian immigration authorities; some remain in custody.

In the wake of the Sun Sea's arrival, the Canadian government has pledged to pass a bill that critics say will punish refugees deemed "illegal," with measures including a one-year mandatory jail sentence without judicial review.

"We see a very different government now," says David Poopalapillai, spokesperson for the Canadian Tamil Congress. "The compassion is not there."

Today, Sathananthan works full-time as a delivery truck driver in Toronto. Over the years, he sent remittances back to Sri Lanka, and sponsored several family members to come to Canada as refugees. He says he's happy to have built a better life for them. But his road to asylum was long and difficult.

In the early 1980s, still living in Sri Lanka, he was forced to drop out of school after the death of his father. He worked as a farmer to support his mother and four siblings, but life in the South Asian island country became unbearable when civil war erupted in 1983.

The government of Sri Lanka—under the control of an elite group of Sinhala Buddhist nationalists—had persecuted the Tamil-speaking population for decades. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, took up arms, demanding national independence. Atrocities were committed on both sides, with civilians caught in the middle.

"So many people died then," Sathananthan recalls.

He fled the country with his cousin to seek a better life abroad, first traveling to Yemen. But work there was scarce.

"That's when people said, you have to go to Canada," he says. "Your family will have a better life."

Sathananthan and his cousin flew to East Germany before crossing the Iron Curtain into West Germany. In July 1986, they embarked for Canada on the freighter Aurigae with more than 150 other Tamils.

Sathananthan said they spent about two weeks at sea before the captain of the crowded cargo ship set the migrants adrift in two lifeboats. For nearly three days they drifted with no sign of land.

"We didn't have any food, any water...we [were] thinking we were going to pass away," he says.

They were finally spotted by fishermen and brought ashore by Canadian officials on August 11, 1986. Upon their arrival, the migrants were met with enormous media coverage and an outpouring of public sympathy.

The asylum-seekers were released within days and quickly granted work permits.

"There was no aggressive detention," says Peter Showler, director of the Refugee Forum, an Ottawa-based think tank.

Two-and-a-half decades later, the federal government has adopted a harsh stance aimed at discouraging "illegal migrants" from entering Canada by sea in the wake of the MV Sun Sea's arrival, Showler says.

"The government clearly has admitted that they have got this aggressive detention policy because they want to deter additional boats from coming," he says.

As of May 30, 2011, the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) had ordered the deportation of four of the Sun Sea migrants, on the grounds that they were members of the LTTE, a group also known as the Tamil Tigers.

The Harper government listed the LTTE as a terrorist organization in 2006.

In March 2011, when the IRB ordered the deportation of one of the migrants—whose name cannot be released due to a publication ban—Public Safety Minister Vic Toews called the decision "an unmitigated victory for the rule of law."

Critics say the government is making criminals out of refugees, while downplaying the atrocities committed by the Sri Lankan state.

"When we're talking about violence committed by resistance movements, we're talking about violence that imperialism is quick to condemn, because state violence is never considered terrorism, when in fact it's the greatest form of terrorism," says Harsha Walia, an organizer with migrant justice group No-One Is Illegal.

Activists from the group began organizing to support the MV Sun Sea migrants even before Canadian authorities boarded the boat last August near Victoria, BC. The group opposed what Walia calls a climate of xenophobia fueled by the Harper government and mainstream media.

"There's a particular hysteria about boats arriving...coupled with the post 9/11 climate, and the criminalizing and the fear-mongering around terrorism," she says.

Janet Dench, executive director for the Canadian Council for Refugees, says the government has exaggerated the threat posed by the asylum-seekers to win political mileage.

"You condemn the Tigers for their bad deeds, but you don't take an equal position on emphasizing the abuses that many Tamils themselves have suffered at the hands of the Sri Lankan government," Dench says.

Lawyers for the Canada Border Services Agency have stated in IRB hearings that anyone who did business with the Tigers—including, in one case, a rice farmer who sold crops to the LTTE—should be considered inadmissible to Canada.

Critics say that since the LTTE acted as a de facto government in predominantly Tamil areas of Sri Lanka, with a military and police force at its disposal, it was practically impossible to avoid dealing with the group.

"Many of the Tamils who make refugee claims, they make claims against the Tigers," Dench says. "And yet you don't hear any sympathy for the Tamils who have suffered abuse at the hands of the Tigers, and they're asking for our protection on that basis."

The civil war that displaced Sathananthan and his family officially ended in 2009, amidst reports of mass civilian casualties at the hands of the Sri Lankan military and the LTTE.

Since then, the UN's refugee agency has noted improvements in the human rights situation in Sri Lanka.

But hundreds of Tamils suspected of affiliating with the LTTE are arbitrarily arrested annually and detained for months or years without charge, according to a report released in February 2011 by Amnesty International. Many are tortured in custody, the report adds.

Thousands of Tamil civilians live under military surveillance in "open air prisons" in the country's northeast, according to Ajay Parasram, a doctoral student researching Sri Lankan politics at Carleton University.

"I think that's especially concerning because really the civil war was about the systematic exclusion and subordination of the Tamil people," he says.

As migrants from Sri Lanka continue to seek refuge abroad, the federal Conservative Party has pledged to pass a bill that would keep people designated as "irregular arrivals" in jail for at least one year upon their arrival, without any chance for judicial review of their detention.

The Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and New Democrats vowed to oppose Bill C-49—which the NDP's then-immigration critic dubbed the "attack refugees bill"—when it was first introduced to the House of Commons by Vic Toews last October.

Harper now appears poised to impose the reforms, which he says will deter migrants who attempt to "jump the immigration queue."

Critics say the notion that asylum-seekers must wait in line for asylum violates international agreements including the 1951 Refugee Convention, of which Canada is a signatory.

"There's no queue," Poopalapillai says. "When you have the fear that you're being persecuted, you're being raped, you're being jailed, you're being gunned down, do you have the time to go...and ask for a visa?"

Groups of migrants designated as "irregular" by the government would also be barred from receiving permanent residency status for five years, leaving them in a state of legal limbo. University of Victoria refugee law specialist Donald Galloway calls the government's reforms "anti-humanitarian."

"What they're recognizing is that if somebody is found to be a genuine refugee, but hasn't been given permanent resident status, we can always take the refugee status away," Galloway says.

"You're not going to be able to get long-term work, you're not going to be able to get a credit rating in this country, you're not going to be able to settle down, or buy yourself a home," he adds.

He also noted that the bill would apply retroactively, giving the government discretionary power to name the Sun Sea migrants and others as "irregular."

"It seems that this is a level of viciousness, of anti-humanitarian venom, that we haven't seen before," he says.

Walia says activists should oppose C-49 while building an anti-racist culture.

"They're not just policies," she says. "They exist in climate of racism, xenophobia, and anti-migrant sentiment."

David Koch is a freelance reporter and a journalism student living in Ottawa.

Tamil children

tamil noise

Tamils Protest on Toronto Freeway - Photos

Geordie — Wed, 20 May 2009 03:33:39 +0000

Photos by James Clark, Megan Hope and Enid Godtree.

1. Thousands of Tamils converge on Toronto's Gardiner Expressway on May 10th for almost 4 hours shutting down a key artery in the City's road network. The protest was part of a series of actions in Toronto contesting the war in Sri Lanka and the Canadian governments actions or lack thereof.

2. People get a unique view of a section of the City normally over-run with cars going 80 kph. Tamils had previously shut down major sections of the City including a 4 day protest on University Ave.

3. One of many Tamil Tiger flags at the event. Tiger supporters were prevalent amongst the protesters, many of whom were calling for a separate Tamil state in addition to an immediate ceasefire.

4. Police tactics at the event were relatively non-confrontational. Protesters were allowed to come and go from the ramp and bring in supplies (coffee,food, blankets). Protesters who biked to the event to join the demonstration created the rare sight of bikes locked up to the guard rails on the Expressway.

5. One of many vigils. Protesters were totally peaceful.

6. Toronto Police, OPP and RCMP were called into the protest. Police discussing tactics with other units.

7. Riot Police form at one end of the protest.

8. A small group of police begin beating protesters before other police order them to stop. 4 are arrested.

9. Tamils agree to end the demonstration peacefully and march to Queen's Park (the Ontario legislature)...but not everyone gets away unscathed.

10 days later, the Sri Lankan government declares a conventional victory over the Tamils. The leader of the Tamil Tigers is declared killed.

Did Canada Help Dismantle Sri Lanka’s Peace Process?

Stuart Neatby — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:00:28 +0000

"Collective grief" of Tamil community paralyzes Ottawa

OTTAWA–Canada’s 300,000-strong Tamil community, the largest Tamil diaspora on earth, has been mobilizing for months in major cities in Canada to draw attention to the dire situation in Sri Lanka.

“There is a collective grief amongst the Tamil community in Canada right now,” says David Poopalapillai, national spokesperson for the Canadian Tamil Congress (CTC). In recent months this "collective grief" has brought sections of at least two Canadian cities to a standstill.

Since Sri Lanka’s military captured the port city of Kilinochchi, a stronghold of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the country’s northern region, the death toll within the mostly Tamil region has risen to alarming levels.

In response, Tamil-Canadians have organized fasts, parliamentary meetings, vigils, protests, and acts of non-violent civil disobedience to draw attention to what many see as a campaign of deliberate killings of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan government. This campaign included a march of more than 45,000 through downtown Toronto on January 30, the biggest march in Canada against an international conflict since Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon during the summer of 2006.

These actions form one of the largest and most coordinated acts of international solidarity in recent Canadian history.

On March 16, activists formed a human chain around busy streets surrounding Toronto’s Union Station, bringing swathes of the downtown core to a halt. Smaller demonstrations have taken place in most major Canadian cities.

Last Tuesday, April 7, in tandem with similar actions in England, Norway and other international communities, busloads of Tamil-Canadians converged upon Ottawa, arriving from Toronto, Montreal and elsewhere.

After a rally on Parliament Hill, approximately 500 protesters broke off into several coordinated groups and proceeded to squat several intersections in Ottawa’s small downtown throughout the afternoon and evening.

Rush hour traffic was largely brought to a halt.

Demonstrators, many of whom waved flags bearing the emblem of the LTTE, continued to block the intersections until 7:30 pm, when they were pushed back by police to the corner of Wellington and Metcalfe streets in front of Parliament Hill.

There they have remained, their numbers swelling to thousands over the Easter weekend.

“Our community is dying there, it’s going to be wiped out if we let this happen,” said Kumughan Nallarhenm, who drove from Toronto to Ottawa with his family last week to protest in front of parliament. “So I cannot sit idly reading at my home or going to the office.”

Nallarhenm’s sentiments were shared by most of the Tamils who have clogged Wellington Street in front of Parliament Hill over the last week. Many either have family in Northern Sri Lanka or know individuals trapped in the area.

Sahabthan Jesuthasan, a student at York University and member of the Coalition to Stop the War in Sri Lanka, has several family members in Kilinochchi.

“When the government ‘freed’ the area, we stopped hearing from them. We found out later that their house had been shelled and bombed,” he explained, adding that the lack of independent monitors in the most heavily affected areas of the conflict have made identifying the whereabouts of his relatives impossible.

“What’s worst is not knowing what happened to them. Nobody knows what’s going on.”

Until very recently, Canada has played a small role in Sri Lanka’s conflict.

Sri Lanka’s civil war began in 1983, following the destruction of many Tamil-run businesses during riots by Sinhalese nationalists on the eve of local elections. Tamils responded at first with non-violent protests, which were largely ignored by the Sri Lankan government. The LTTE subsequently managed to harness the frustrations of the country’s Tamil minority. Since then, violence on both sides has been responsible for over 70,000 killings along with other human rights abuses over the course of the 27-year war.

Assassinations of political leaders and bombings of heavily crowded urban areas have become a characteristic of the conflict. Prior to January, the LTTE had managed to function as a quasi-state entity in several northern cities, operating courts, tax administrative offices and even a bank.

A peace process, brokered by the government of Norway, began in 2002. By 2006, in the midst of already fragile negotiations, Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse began a concerted international public relations campaign focused upon casting the LTTE as the main barrier to peace.

Backed by former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Donald Camp, the campaign overlooked the Sri Lankan government’s own history of discrimination of ethnic Tamils and its funding of paramilitaries in the North. The campaign included the launching of a pro-government website modeled after the Tamil website tamilnet.com.

Canada was the first country to respond to this campaign, following the advice of lead editorials by the Globe and Mail and the National Post.

The newly-elected Harper government officially placed the LTTE on its list of terrorist organizations in April 2006. Then Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day announced that LTTE supporters were “not welcome” in Canada during the press conference announcing the ban.

“The LTTE’s repeated use of violence,” said former Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mackay, “is unacceptable and seriously calls into question its commitment to the peace process.”

Mackay made no mention of any use of violence carried out by the Sri Lankan government over the course of the civil war. The ban was followed by several RCMP arrests of Canadian citizens, who were alleged to have aided in fund raising for the LTTE.

No such actions have been taken to censure other nationalist elements in Sri Lanka, such as the Buddhist National Sinhala Heritage Party, which many international observers credit with pushing the Rajapakse government to adopt a more hard-line nationalist vision.

Subsequent to Canada’s decision, the EU placed the LTTE on its own terror list in May 2006.

In June 2006, the peace talks collapsed. The Rajapakse government began a renewed offensive against the Tamil Tigers. Despite UN calls for a ceasefire, the Sri Lankan government resumed its military campaign early this year.

This campaign has included aerial and artillery attacks of so-called “safe areas” into which civilians fleeing the conflict have been sequestered.

UN Human Rights chief Navi Pillay has estimated that 2,800 civilians have been killed since January, although some have claimed the toll has reached 3,500.

The Sri Lankan government has barred entry of journalists and humanitarian organizations such as the Red Cross into the region. UN officials have warned for months of a food crisis in the northern region that may affect hundreds of thousands of people. It is estimated that between 150,000 and 190,000 civilians have remained in the inappropriately named “safe areas.”

"Sri Lanka's so-called 'no-fire zone' is now one of the most dangerous places in the world," said Brad Adams, the Asia director for Human Rights Watch, in a recent report.

“What actually happened was that the LTTE ban brought about by the Canadian government and also by other governments gave a strong boost to the Sri Lankan government to go for a military solution,” says Poopalapillai.

Poopalapillai said that Canadian Tamil organizations were not consulted prior to the LTTE ban.

The CTC, along with other Tamil organizations, have called upon Canada to impose economic and political sanctions upon Sri Lanka, and to remove its consular officials from the country until a ceasefire is declared. Many in North America have also begun a legal campaign to declare an injunction against a $1.9 billion International Monetary Fund loan to the Sri Lankan government. Many Tamils believe that part of the loan would be used to finance the Sri Lankan government’s war effort.

The international protests have begun to have an effect.

The Sri Lankan government declared a two-day ceasefire over the Easter weekend, and both Conservative Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon and the leaders of the NDP and Liberal parties have made statements in recent days calling for stronger action to support a ceasefire.

Organizers say the protests, which have included several hunger strikes, will continue until Canada adopts a major shift in its policy towards Sri Lanka.

Stuart Neatby is a former managing editor of The Dominion.

Tiger and Tower

Tamils protest parliament

Voices of Tamil-Canadians on Parliament Hill

Stuart Neatby — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 04:29:29 +0000

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The following are words from Tamil-Canadians who have been part of an ongoing protest in downtown Ottawa since Tuesday afternoon. The Tamils protests have continued day and night, bringing downtown traffic to a standstill. Demonstrators have focused upon attacks carried out by the Sri Lankan government in the so-called "safe zone" in the northwest region of the country, within which are situated as many as 190,000 civilians and internally-displaced people.

Photo #1: Senathan Nadarajah

"Since January, hundreds have been killed every day, including civilians – women and children! The dead are being left on the ground. There is no burial. The bunkers are full of blood because it is the rainy season so people cannot go inside the bunker. The Safety Zone is not being respected. The Sri Lankan Defense Minister Gotabaya Rajapaksa has been saying that hospitals are a legitimate target, which is a war crime under the Geneva Convention."

"We have asked the Canadian government peacefully over the last four months by writing letters and petitions, gathering in numbers peacefully but nothing has happened. After the news [last week] that 1800 people had been killed, we could not stand it any longer. So we had to come and bring it to their attention. Until the Canadian government takes political and economic action and declares an embargo on Sri Lanka, the Sri Lankan government is not going to listen."

Photo #2: Kumughan Nallarhenm

Tamils Paralyze Downtown Ottawa

Stuart Neatby — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 05:42:05 +0000

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Approximately 500 Tamil protestors from Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and elsewhere converged on downtown Ottawa, blocking several major intersections and bus routes. Beginning with a rally on Parliament Hill, protestors broke off into several coordinated groups and proceeded to squat several intersections throughout the afternoon and evening until approximately 7:30 PM, when they were pushed onto the sidewalks by police. Up until late tonight, 100-150 demonstrators continued to rally at the corner of Metcalfe and Wellington in front of Parliament Hill. Many said they would continue an "indefinite protest" until the Canadian government brought "forth an immediate ceasefire in Sri Lanka."

Protestors decried the heavy civilian toll in the so-called "safe zone" in northern Sri Lanka, which UN Human Rights chief Navi Pillay has estimated at 2800. Many decried the banning of access of NGO's and journalists from the 14 kilometre-wide "safe zone" by the Sri Lankan government, within which 100,000 civilians are trapped.

The demonstration was vocally supportive of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam(LTTE). In recent days, the Sri Lankan military has claimed that it has killed hundreds of LTTE fighters, and that the rebel force has been cornered.

Although the recent death toll has been overwhelmingly composed of Tamils, various human rights groups have accused the LTTE of committing human rights abuses over the course of Sri Lanka's 26 years of civil war.