Tigers found a haven in Canada

Canada is a major source of fund-raising for the Tigers' military budget, having provided millions of dollars per year since the 1990s, according to a 2006 report by Human Rights Watch. According to Human Rights Watch, some Tamil-Canadians were told that if they did not give money, then they could not return to Tiger-held areas in Sri Lanka to see their families.

Namu Ponnambalam, a Toronto-based Sri Lankan, said the Tigers seek to eliminate democratic voices in the Tamil community.

Ponnambalam said the group's knowledge of an individual's family in Sri Lanka and Canada can instil fear in the ambivalent. As one Tiger supporter warned him: "We'll look after you when you come home."

Its 2006 report identified a tax imposed upon Tamil-Canadians visiting Sri Lanka of $1 Canadian (Dh3) per day for the length of time they have lived in Canada.

Amid the strip malls and industrial areas of this city's east end stands the former office of the World Tamil Movement, a front for the LTTE.

The only sign of past occupancy is a real-estate lockbox clamped to the mailbox, crammed with copies of Viduthalai, a nationalist Tamil daily newspaper.

But the abandoned building indicates how the relationship between Canada, its Tamil community and the Tigers is changing.

Since the riots in Sri Lanka in 1983, tens of thousands of Tamils have migrated to Canada. Of the estimated 300,000 Tamils in the country, the largest community in the diaspora, more than two-thirds live in the Toronto area.

"Canada has done good for Tamils," said David Poopalapillai, a national spokesman for the Canadian Tamil Congress. "Took them in and gave them new hope and new life." The Tigers arguably received a greater boost. Its network purchased properties, including a temple, and relatives of the leadership settled in Toronto's east end.

Martin Collacott, who served as Canada's ambassador to Sri Lanka from 1982 to 1986 and is currently a senior fellow with the Fraser Institute, a conservative think tank, said his country was exceptionally generous to Tamil refugees.

The Immigration and Refugee Board granted almost automatic approval to Tamil males aged 10 to 45 years and unmarried Tamil females aged 13 to 30 years old from the areas of Sri Lanka controlled by the Tigers, he said.

Collacott said the age and gender profiles happen to be identical to those of the guerrillas. The immigrant profile gave the Tigers cause to believe they are the sole representatives of the Tamil community in Canada.

Contributions came from non-profit organisations and companies operating as fronts, and donations were solicited from individuals by going door to door, Human Rights Watch said in its reports, citing companies and Canadian authorities.

Many Tamil-Canadians willingly support LTTE, but a significant minority feel they have little choice but to give money.

"To build a one-man leadership, they had to kill off the other leaders," he said. According to Ponnambalam, the Tigers are the dominant force among the Tamil community because of their violent actions, not because of popular support.

Tiger enforcers in the Toronto area have burnt the car of one man, attacked a Tamil-Canadian journalist and intimidated the editor of a Tamil newspaper into ceasing publication. And the suppression of dissent has spread into practices of extortion.Ponnambalam said although the report did not name the targets of extortion, it identified the problems of fear and intimidation within the Tamil diaspora in western countries.

"It gives us enough support to say how bad the situation is in Toronto," he said. Coincidence or not, three weeks after the publication of the Human Rights Watch report, Ottawa listed the Tigers as a terrorist group.

Collacott called it a watershed because Canada's intelligence agency had recommended the move to the governing Liberal Party more than once but was rebuffed. He pointed out that Liberal members of parliament attended events promoting the Tamil Tigers. "The Liberals, their main interest was getting votes," Collacott said. "And since these were delivered largely by Tiger supporters, they didn't care about moderate voices within the Tamil community."

Nonetheless, in June last year Ottawa listed the World Tamil Movement, formed in 1986 as a non-profit organisation, as a terrorist group for being the leading front for the Tigers in Canada.

Ottawa said it wanted to protect law-abiding, hardworking Canadians, especially Tamils, from the banned group's activities.

Collacott applauded the decision as a way to staunch the flow of funds to the Tigers from Canada.

"I don't think the (Sri Lankan) civil war could have continued as long as it did without support from Tamils in Canada that the Canadian Government did not prevent," he said.

Still, for Ponnambalam, the dominance of the Tigers in Canada has not been solved in spite of the Government's actions.

(The National)