Last Tuesday, Gayathri Naganathan was helping set up a 24-hour public fast to draw attention to a war in Sri Lanka that has left as many as 300,000 civilians caught in the crossfire. As she went about her business, a student passing by commented that it was “interesting” that the Tamil Students’ Association was demonstrating against human rights abuses. Naganathan asked why, and the student replied that he had read that morning in the National Post that the Tamil Tigers were “slaughtering civilians” in Northern Sri Lanka.
“And then before we could even get into a discussion he walked away,” said Naganathan. “Automatically, because we’re the Tamil Students’ Association, we are terrorists?”
At about the same time that Naganathan was getting ready for the TSA’s fast, the former president of the Canadian Tamil Students’ Association was in a Brooklyn courtroom, pleading guilty to organizing a $900,000 weapons deal to provide guns and surface-to-air missile launchers to the Tamil Tigers. The group, known officially as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and Canada. The 29-year-old Sathajhan Sarachandran was arrested in an undercover investigation conducted jointly by the FBI and RCMP.
Coming at a time when Tamil community groups are mobilizing to protest violence and social injustice in their home country, public speculation stirred by the confessions has forced the groups to continually reiterate that they do not support the LTTE.
Thousands have protested over the past few weeks, in front of the Sri Lankan consulate and provincial legislature, making human chains and filling University Ave. with their signs and slogans.
Despite Sri Lankan conflict’s ethnic lines, dividing the country’s Sinhalese Buddhist majority from the Tamil Hindu minority, the Toronto protests have pointedly avoided politics. Tamil-Canadians and their supporters refuse to take sides, saying that right now the only important thing is to stop the violence.
“Somehow because of the current trial, people just assume that anyone who’s taking a stand on a humanitarian issue that’s happening is automatically a terrorist,” said Naganathan.
A Globe and Mail article published last week characterized Toronto’s Tamil community as deeply connected with the LTTE and called Scarborough the “capital of Eelam.” The article anonymously quoted a letter the paper received denouncing various 24-hour public fasts in Toronto as “an attempt by Tiger supporters to ‘safeguard their Mafia LTTE leadership’ and raise funds for an ongoing fight.”
“I’m a Tamil Canadian and I can tell you that I’m not directly influenced by the Tamil Tigers,” said Naganathan. “It’s really disappointing to see especially the media jump on board with this fanaticism of terrorism,” she added. “Because that’s not the truth.”
Naganathan has said that coverage of Sarachandran’s trial takes away from the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka. “The genocide that’s happening in Sri Lanka is comparable to Rwanda, and the international community is turning a blind eye,” she said.
Milly Thanagarajah, a 28-year-old who took time off work to protest, expressed outrage over being associated with the Tigers. “Canadians think we all belong to the Tigers,” she said. “That’s like saying all Caucasians are in the Ku Klux Klan. I don’t even have a speeding ticket.”
