Vol. 74/No. 2      January 18, 2010

The Tamils fled Sri Lanka on a ship that was seized by Canadian officials off Canada’s West Coast. Alleging that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) owned the vessel and that many of the Tamils were members of the LTTE, Ottawa arrested the refugees and locked them up in a Vancouver detention center.

The LTTE is an organization that fought a decades-long war against the Sri Lankan army for Tamil independence. Early last spring the army decisively defeated the last of the LTTE fighters and locked up 300,000 Tamils in concentration camps. The camps will be closed by January 31.

Canada is home to up to 200,000 Tamils who fled discrimination and repression at the hands of the Sri Lankan government and army. Ottawa has been complicit in the repression of the Tamils by officially designating the LTTE as a “terrorist” organization.

Over the past year groups in the Tamil community, mainly centered in Toronto and Montreal, have organized large street demonstrations against the murderous repression by the Sri Lankan army. Today they are demanding that the 76 Tamils in detention be admitted to Canada as refugees.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) is carrying out the “investigation” of the Tamils. In November the Sri Lankan government asked the Canadian High Commission in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo for access to the refugees, saying that they could help the Sri Lankan intelligence services track down remaining LTTE activists abroad.

Ottawa is using special sections of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which permit the CBSA to keep its information secret, including the names of the refugees detained, and at the same time to jail people if there is a “reasonable” suspicion that an individual could pose a “security threat” to Canada.  
 
 
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