When Tigers are caged
The past few weeks have seen four major public demonstrations in
Ontario by Tamil-Canadians demanding that the federal Government do
something to stop what they describe as a genocide against their people
by the Government in Sri Lanka.
Three of those demonstrations were legal. The first was a sit-in on
Parliament Hill in Ottawa that lasted more than two weeks and did not
attract much attention, even from the Tamils’ usual political patrons in
the Liberal party.
It was only after the demonstrators folded up the flags representing
the terrorist organization the LTTE that politicians would even
acknowledge them the Tigers, although a banned organization, are
believed to have a large presence in the Canadian Tamil community.
Two other peaceful protests one that saw demonstrators block a
downtown Toronto street and another in Queen’s Park, outside the Ontario
legislature, also failed to move governments or opposition parties,
provincial or federal, to give into Tamil demands to intercede on behalf
of the estimated 50,000 civilians who are trapped in the Tigers’ last
redoubt in Sri Lanka.
The Tigers are soon destined to fall to Government Forces unless
ill-advised international voices can intimidate the Government from
finally wiping out the pox that the LTTE has become on the face of
humanity.
In a world that has no shortage of ruthless terrorist organizations,
the LTTE is without peer for violence. In fact, the 50,000 Tamil
civilians at risk in Sri Lanka today are at risk only because the Tigers
are holding them as hostages and human shields to stay the hand of
Government Forces.
There is strong speculation that the civilian casualties being
protested in Ontario and elsewhere are, in fact, being inflicted by the
Tigers on their own Tamil people to inflame world opinion.
This week, Canadian public opinion became inflamed, or, perhaps more
properly, heated up a little bit, by a fourth Tamil demonstration that
was neither legal nor peaceful — the takeover and shutdown of the
Gardiner Expressway in Toronto.
That angered many people — motorists because it is immensely
inconvenienced them; police because it endangered lives, including the
lives of children dragooned into the demonstration; and Canadians in
general who wondered who these other Canadians are who wave terrorist
flags from an old country here in their new one.
It also got the attention of opposition politicians, who are now
demanding that Ottawa intervene with the Sri Lanka Government.
Unfortunately, they got it exactly backwards. Ottawa, Government and
Opposition alike, and the Tamil-Canadian demonstrators have the wrong
target they should be demanding that the all-but-defeated Tigers lay
down their arms and surrender, ending this bloody, brutal civil war once
and for all.
WE |