By JUSTIN SKINNER&
GEORGE KAGAME
Thousands of Tamil Canadians and supporters packed the street in front of the Sri Lankan consulate on St. Clair Avenue West Wednesday night to protest what they call a genocide of the Tamil community in Sri Lanka.
The crowd gathered on Sri Lanka's Independence Day, 61 years after Sri Lanka was freed from British Imperial rule. Rather than celebrating the country's independence, however, the crowd braved the cold to take part in a candlelight vigil to call for an end to the war that has been taking place in Sri Lanka.
With chants erupting calling for justice and peace, the crowd took up a large swath of St. Clair AVe. and spilled up Yonge Street.
Neethan Shan of the Canadian Humanitarian Appeal for the Relief of Tamils said February 4 was, in fact, a sad day for the Tamil community despite their home country receiving its freedom.
"61 years ago, we were passed on from one oppressor to another," he said. "We were much better off under (British rule)."
Shan said Sri Lanka should be excluded from the United Nations and should not be allowed to have a consulate in Canada until it stopped killing Tamils. He discounted the Sri Lankan government's claims that the violence is a war being perpetrated by both sides.
"They may call it anything else, but what they have is nothing more than a war on Tamils," he said.
For many of those who took part in the vigil, the violence in Sri Lanka hits very close to home. Jeyam Krishna, who moved to Canada over 20 years ago, still has family in the war-torn country.
"My relatives are there and we don't hear any news about them," he noted, saying information trickling out of Sri Lanka is often supplied by the Sri Lankan government and filled with bias.
"So many innocent people are losing their lives in the war and I don't know how my relatives are doing," he said.
JP Jurarajah also has family in Sri Lanka and, like Krishna, he is unable to track down their whereabouts or learn of their welfare.
"There are no independent stories coming out of there, so we need to get some government pressure there so that we can know the real story," he said.
Speakers at the candlelight vigil spoke of the need for an end to war and called on the Canadian government to take action and do what it can to push Sri Lanka to end the killing.
James Clark of the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War said his organization would not stop speaking out until the violence in Sri Lanka ended. He said the acts being perpetrated against Tamils were unconscionable, with hundreds being killed over the past few weeks.
"This is not justice and peace; this is terrorism and it has to stop now," he said.
He added that Canadians should all show their opposition to the actions being undertaken by the Sri Lankan government.
"The issue of justice and peace for Tamils in Sri Lanka is not just an issue for the Tamil community, this is an issue for all Canadians who want peace and justice," he said.
The statements made at the protest ran counter to claims made by members of the Sri Lanka United National Association of Canada (SLUNA) at the Marriott Residence Inn on Tuesday. At that conference, members of SLUNA said the violence was the result of an ongoing war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
"There's no genocide in Sri Lanka, just killings as a result of a war on both sides," said Sri Lankan-born peace activist Noor Nizam at that conference.
Sinhalese-Canadian student Shan Perrera concurred, saying that the LTTE was using propaganda to turn international sympathies against the Sri Lankan government.
"(LTTE) are the wealthiest and most ruthless terrorist organization in the world," he said.
- with files from George Kagame
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