A Time and a Place

Canada is host country to the largest population of ethnic Tamils outside of southern Asia, living in the capital of the province of Ontario. Tamils, a cohesive ethnic group, lack a geographic area of their own, a dilemma shared by Kurds within the Middle East. Indigenous Sinhalese represent the major population in Sri Lanka, and the government represents their interests largely while repressing the national aspirations of Sri Lankan Tamils.

While a token number of Tamils have been accepted in government circles, the situation for most Tamils remains precarious; they are harassed, and they are subjected to conditions less than salutary as a nuisance minority from among whose ranks rose a violent backlash against Sri Lankan authority when the Tamil Tigers became an irregular militia whose guerrilla tactics caused incidents of bloodshed on both sides.

It was the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam that inaugurated the vicious practise of suicide bombing, since adopted by other groups, most notably Muslim extremists, as an effective terrorism tool for violent political Islamism. Their fierce opposition to the government of Sri Lanka and their penchant for destruction and death-dealing to get their message of separatism across, gave reason for Canada to name them as a terrorist group, along with other western countries.

Despite which, because of their numbers in Canada - about 200,000 - and their reputation as representing fairly model citizens within Canada, adapting to Canadian lifestyles and values, they were seen as a political voting bloc among whom political parties curried favour for votes. To the extent that meetings and celebrations would be attended by Toronto-area Members of Parliament, with the symbols of the Tamil Tigers in full display.

The current government, along with others appealed to the Sri Lankan government, in its last concerted battle to rout the Tamil Tigers from their lairs as an ongoing threat to the country, when it fought its own discriminatory and deadly war, matching the tactics of the Tamil Tigers in battle. Both the Tigers and the government forces appeared oblivious to the vulnerable presence in the midst of their to-the-death battles, of large tracts of civilians who fled in panic before them.

The Sri Lankan government has since been accused of having heedlessly caused the deaths of countless Tamils during the fierce fighting against the Tamil Tigers, even as the Tigers held civilian Tamils as hostages. Since the defeat of the guerrillas, although the government pledged it would treat Tamils equally to the Sinhalese majority, that has not happened, and they remain an oppressed minority.

Because of this history and the fact that the government of Sri Lanka refuses to accept the findings of the United Nations, which declared it to have acted against the human rights of parts of its population, responsible for possibly tens of thousands of deaths, and since it has continued to discriminate against the Tamils in Sri Lanka, Canada has protested that the heads of Commonwealth meeting should not be held in Colombo in November.

As a signal of Canada's displeasure that Sri Lanka's failings in observing and honouring the Commonwealth's human rights standards obviously should mitigate against the country hosting the event, and as well acting as head of the Commonwealth for the following two years, Canada is considering boycotting the meeting, and it will be alone in so doing, among Commonwealth partner-countries.

Tamils across Canada mark the fourth anniversary of the end of the Sri Lankan civil war on May 18. During that war they had mounted protests in public squares, and protest marches took place anywhere they felt that attention to their fears of the slaughter of innocent civilians might move the Canadian public to exert pressure on the Canadian government to act in some unspecified measure beyond merely condemning Sri Lanka. A demand unlikely to elicit any response other than exerting diplomatic pressure.

Since the discrimination, harassment, detention and persecution of Tamils continues, the Canadian-Tamil community now looks far more favourably upon the government of their adopted country which has taken an absolutely moral stand of objection, alone among all the member countries of the Commonwealth.

There is a time and a manner in which reaction can be effective, and in this particular instance, Canada has reacted as it should.