Scarborough students, local rally protest situation in Sri Lanka

MIKE ADLER

November 27, 2009

Six months after its armed leadership was defeated and killed, the struggle for an independent Tamil state in Sri Lanka continues in Scarborough.

More than a thousand Tamil-Canadians filled the Metropolitan Centre for Great Heroes Day ceremonies Wednesday, Nov. 25, night, each greeted as they entered the Finch Avenue hurch hall by red and yellow streamers and the Tamil Tiger flag. Organized by area high school and university Tamil student associations, the evening included a flag-raising, candle-lighting and the laying of flowers at a mock tomb to remember Tamils who died in Sri Lanka's three-decade civil war.

Finished with performances of poetry, music and dance, it followed the form set in 1989 by Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam leader Veluppillai Prabhakaran for three days of annual remembrance. Prabhakaran was killed as the war ended in May, and survivors of the fighting have been held in camps ever since.

But "no matter where oppression is, a liberation struggle will start again," said Sahabthan Jesuthasan, a York University student from Etobicoke who was among the event organizers Wednesday. "The difference this year is a lot more of the Tamil youth know more about the issue," he said, expecting people would leave the hall "united under one cause, and that's the right of self-determination."

Other youths, said Jesuthasan, are preparing to involve as many of Canada's Tamils as possible next month in a vote on a 1976 resolution he said formed the basis of the struggle. "This is done so we can prove to everyone how united the Tamil people is."

Canada is among the countries listing the Tigers as a terrorist group. The federal government says money from the Tamil community in Scarborough and Markham was funneled to the Tigers for years, helping to continue the war. Many at Wednesday's ceremony wore black and either wore a button depicting a karthigaipoo - a distinctive-looking flower associated with the Tigers and Heroes Day - or actually held the flowers, flown in for the ceremony from Holland.

At Albert Campbell Collegiate not far to the east, hundreds of students covered their mouths Wednesday with red tape as a "vow of silence" to protest the continued internment of Tamils in Sri Lanka. Many gathered in the school cafeteria at 7:45 a.m. and recited a pledge that they would "stand up" and "not be idle" while the situation in their homeland continues, said Shoban Jayamohan, a spokesperson.

"The students felt they have to step up the game to bring awareness to this issue before it's too late," he said.

The protest surprised principal Roy Hu, who said though the school may be a place for sharing opinions, a political protest can become divisive. "The school is for learning, first and foremost," he said. "If we're looking at politicizing something, that has to be done outside the school."

But Jayamohan said teachers did not stop the protest and added many non-Tamil students at Albert Campbell put on the tape and changed into black clothes when they saw their Tamil schoolmates were wearing that colour. The protest was a humanitarian appeal - "strictly facts, not political" - because conditions in the camps are dangerous and monsoon season is coming, he said.

A Facebook group connected to students at Albert Campbell and Middlefield Collegiate in Markham, however, had asked students to wear black on Wednesday as part of Heroes Week. The group also told them to wear a karthigaipoo button until Friday, to wear red and yellow Thursday to mark "our courageous leader Prabhakaran's birthday" and to wear red and black on Friday.

Canadian Tamil Congress spokesperson Manjula Selvarajah said the community "may be doing a whole bunch a different things" to express support for the detainees. At a Wednesday press conference, Selvarajah read a statement she said was from a Scarborough man recently released from an internment camp, in part thanks to Canadian government action on his behalf.

The man describes life in a tent shared with 20 other people after he was wounded by shelling during the last days of the war. "The first two weeks, we would be lucky if we ate one meal per day. There was barely any drinking water," the statement says. "We stayed in the camps surrounded by armed guards, not knowing what will happen to us next."

Selvarajah said the man is a Canadian citizen who was visiting family in Sri Lanka and does not want his name released now for fear of what may happen to his relatives there.

Sri Lanka has been criticized for conditions in the camps and this month said remaining detainees would soon be released. The Scarborough-based Congress, however, said many are being sent to "transit camps" instead of to their homes.