16.4.2008
By
Walter Jayawardhana
During
the last week end the Canadian offices of the World Tamil
Movement- a front organization of the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been shut down under a warrant
issued by a Federal judge. The week end shut down of the
World Tamil Movement offices in Ontario and Quebec for
alleged fundraising for the designated terrorist group
has been highly praised by the editorial of the National
Post newspaper.
"The
raids -- which proceeded after police acquired a warrant
from a Federal Court of Canada judge demonstrate just
how much has changed on the national security front in
the nearly two-and-a-half years since the Conservatives
were elected", the editorial said.
Comparing
the present , with what happened when the Liberal Party
was in power the newspaper said, " so eager were
Jean Chretien and Paul Martin to placate the Tamil voting
blocks in Scarborough and other urban Liberal strongholds
that they refused on numerous occasions to add the Tigers
to Canada's list of outlawed terror groups. This made
it difficult for police and security services to move
against front organizations they felt were acting as money
conduits for the Tigers."
Paul
Martin was a Canadian Liberal Party Prime Minister who
attended a fund raising dinner for the World Tamil Movement
before that time when he was a Finance Minister, resulting
in world wide protest demonstrations by expatriate Sri
Lankans.
The
editorial pointed out, "so eager were Jean Chretien
and Paul Martin to placate the Tamil voting blocks in
Scarborough and other urban Liberal strongholds that they
refused on numerous occasions to add the Tigers to Canada's
list of outlawed terror groups. This made it difficult
for police and security services to move against front
organizations they felt were acting as money conduits
for the Tigers."
The
editorial lamented, "The Tigers' terror campaign
is often overlooked in the West because their attacks
are not directed at Western targets. Still, the Tigers
are a very nasty bunch. Over the past two decades, their
civil war with the Sri Lankan government has resulted
in a combined total of over 60,000 deaths.
The
following is full text of the editorial:
Over
the weekend, counterterrorism police in Ontario and Quebec
shut down the Canadian offices of the World Tamil Movement,
an alleged fundraising front for the Tamil Tigers. The
raids -- which proceeded after police acquired a warrant
from a Federal Court of Canada judge -- demonstrate just
how much has changed on the national security front in
the nearly two-and-a-half years since the Conservatives
were elected.
The
Tigers are a vicious terror group seeking the independence
of northern Sri Lanka. But until Stephen Harper came to
power, they were not even designated a terrorist organization
for purposes of Canadian criminal law.
The
Tigers' terror campaign is often overlooked in the West
because their attacks are not directed at Western targets.
Still, the Tigers are a very nasty bunch. Over the past
two decades, their civil war with the Sri Lankan government
has resulted in a combined total of over 60,000 deaths"
The
Tigers have abducted thousands of children to act as human
shields for their bases or to serve as soldiers in their
militias. Their agents have assassinated heads of government
in both Sri Lanka and India. And their "Black Tiger"
suicide squads have conducted over 200 suicide bombing
attacks, more than the three main Palestinian terror groups
facing Israel, combined.
In
one particularly ghastly action, the Tigers swept through
villages on Sri Lanka's eastern coast following the 2004
Boxing Day tsunami and press-ganged more than 100 orphans
into paramilitary service. According to Israel's Institute
for Counter-Terrorism, the Tigers are "unequivocally
the most effective and brutal terrorist organization ever
to utilize suicide terrorism.
A
large part of the budget needed to sustain the Tigers'
terror reign comes from Canada's 300,000 or so Tamils.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars each month leave the
bank accounts of Tamil-Canadian families and businesses
--much of it extorted under threat of violence -- to finance
recruitment, training and supply of the Tamils' terror
army. As the National Post and several human rights organizations
have reported over the years, the Tigers are not above
holding Tamils in Sri Lanka hostage until their Canadian
family members pay the $2,000 a month in "war tax"
demanded of many families and the upwards of $100,000
demanded of businesses.
Yet
so eager were Jean Chretien and Paul Martin to placate
the Tamil voting blocks in Scarborough and other urban
Liberal strongholds that they refused on numerous occasions
to add the Tigers to Canada's list of outlawed terror
groups. This made it difficult for police and security
services to move against front organizations they felt
were acting as money conduits for the Tigers.
Not
coincidentally, the investigations that led to last week's
raids stepped up just after the Tories kept a promise
from the 2005-06 election to ban the Tigers. For their
part, Liberal ministers, while in office, often ignored
RCMP and CSIS warnings about suspected Tiger-front groups
and attended their fund-raisers and community events anyway.
Most
recently, Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal MP for Etobicoke
Centre, and Jim Karygiannis, Liberal for Scarborough-Agincourt,
both made speeches at the Canadian memorial service held
after the 2007 killing of a senior Tiger commander.
We
hear the grumblings all the time from small-c conservatives
that the government of Stephen Harper is not different
enough from the Liberal governments it replaced. Well,
here is one front -- one very crucial front -- on which
they are very different: They take national security far
more seriously, and are prepared to withstand tremendous
pressure from ethnic lobbyists to make Canada safer. This
month's raids are the fruits of that vigilance.