Feds eye seizure of Tamil property under anti-terror act

Stewart Bell, National Post
Published: Tuesday, March 03, 2009

The government took the first steps Tuesday toward taking over property in Ontario and Quebec that it says is controlled by a terrorist group involved in South Asia's longest-running civil war.

Federal prosecutors in Toronto and Montreal filed applications in the Federal Court of Canada saying they were seeking the forfeiture of the property of the World Tamil Movement, an outlawed terrorist organization.

It is the first time the government has used the forfeiture provision of the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows the Attorney General to seize "property owned or controlled by or on behalf of a terrorist group."

The list of items the government wants to strip from the World Tamil Movement of Ontario and World Tamil Movement of Quebec fills 300 pages and includes everything from bank accounts to golf shirts bearing the Tamil Tigers emblem.

If it is successful, the government would be allowed to keep the items or sell them and use the proceeds either to compensate victims of terrorist activities or fund anti-terrorism initiatives.

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Tamil Tigers suicide pilots celebrated in Toronto

Stewart Bell, National Post
Published: Monday, March 02, 2009

TORONTO -- A Toronto banquet hall was the scene of a "martyrs' prayer event" held on Monday night in honour of two Tamil Tigers rebels killed during a recent suicide attack in the Sri Lankan capital.

RCMP and Toronto police officer showed up with video cameras and filmed as the Tamil Tigers flag was raised and several hundred people laid flowers at a makeshift shrine to the dead guerrillas.

Police have been trying to clamp down on pro-Tamil Tigers functions around the city since the group was added to Canada's list of outlawed terrorist organizations, but the officers did not interrupt the event and left after an hour.

A spokesman for Jason Kenney, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, called the event "deeply disturbing. Without reservation, without hesitation we condemn the glorification of terrorists like the Tamil Tigers," Alykhan Velshi said.

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Then & Now

Photos of Tamil Nadu politicians found in LTTE camps

Mon, Mar 2 06:25 PM

Colombo/New Delhi, March 2 (IANS) Sri Lankan troops inching into Tamil Tiger territory have found photographs and videos showing politicians from Tamil Nadu in the company of guerrilla leaders, it was announced Monday.

The defence ministry said soldiers combing abandoned bases of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) made the startling discovery, some of them showing at least one leading Indian Tamil politician in a cheerful mood with LTTE boss Velupillai Prabhakaran.

These included MDMK leader Vaiko, a long-time MP and a vocal supporter of the LTTE, as well as P. Nedumaran, who has known Prabhakaran since the early 1980s when the LTTE chief was a largely unknown figure.

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Link to an additional report

How to Kill Civilians in the Name of "Human Rights": Lessons from Sri Lanka

(By: Michael Radu, February 2009)
Michael Radu, Ph.D., is Co-Chair of FPRI's Center on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, and Homeland Security. His most recent book is The War on Terrorism: 21st-Century Perspectives (ed., with Stephen Gale and Harvey Sicherman, Transaction, 2008); his Europe's Ghost: Tolerance, Jihadism and Their Consequences is forthcoming from Encounter Press.

Sri Lanka, an Indian Ocean country the size of West Virginia, has a diverse population-81 percent is Sinhalese, most of them Buddhist; some 11 percent are Tamils, who are generally Hindu, either immigrants from India or native. Eight percent of the population are Muslims. As is so often the case in the former British Empire, the native group most adept to Western education and adaptable to British interests-in this case the Tamils-were disproportionately represented among the educated at the time of independence (1948), and thus resented by the majority. Free elections repeatedly brought to power Sinhalese populists/socialists. Tamils were pushed aside and the majority language declared the only official one. The result was, and to some extent remains, Tamil resentment and demands for autonomy, at least in the northern (Jaffna) and Eastern (Trincomalee) areas where they predominate.

Key to understanding why the LTTE lasted for so long and why India was involved in Sri Lanka on and off at various times is the fact that some 60 million Tamils live in three southern Indian states, primarily Tamil Nadu, and many of those support the LTTE out of ethnic solidarity. Equally, if not more, important, there is a large (ca. 800,000) Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, mostly in Canada, the UK, Australia, the U.S., and Southeast Asia. This diaspora is radicalized and, like most diasporas living in safety, more radical than co-nationals in the country of origin. It still provides the funds, propaganda support, and public relations vital to the LTTE's survival.

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Hypocrisy of the West

US, Britain Dancing Naked
By Nacholibre (February 26, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian)

(February 26, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) When Bin Laden blew down the Twin Towers in New York in one single attack, and when the US intelligence erroneously reported that Sadam Hussein has WMDs, the US lost no time in harnessing support of Britain and other world leaders to destroy the whole of Iraq, and Afghanistan. Did the US heed the UN call not to attack Iraq in the first place? No it didn’t . In that instance, the UN was reduced to the mere state of a neutered dog, which could produce nothing than a feeble whine against the US and its allies.

Cut to the Sri Lankan conflict, the US and Britain think there is a choice. They are of the opinion that the Sri Lankan State should stop the war and cut some slack for the cornered terrorist leaders of the LTTE including Prabakaran. Why? Their argument is most humane and simple. They say the war causes civilian casualties, and therefore, the State should stop hunting down the terrorist remainder and talk to them! By God, what a wisdom the US and Britain have!

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The subtle terror of the International Relief Organizations

By Christian Eckert

(February 28 , Kogal, Sri Lanka Guardian) The war against the LTTE terrorism in Sri Lanka is heading towards its bloody end. The Sri Lankan security forces, as united and, thanks to Chinese and Pakistani arms deliveries, strong in numbers as never before, have corralled the last still-fighting cadres of the LTTE in a 72 square kilometer patch of their utopian state of Tamil Eelam. As thousands of civilians wait, caught between the fronts, for the next development, yet another dilemma becomes more and more clear: there had been an unholy alliance between many international relief organizations active in the hotly fought-over north and the terrorist LTTE.

Numerous 19-foot containers of the INGOs, sent to Tamil-Tiger areas shortly after the Tsunami, were not returned, and the relevant INGOs never questioned nor did the freight companies complained. Now it is clear why – they were used by the LTTE to construct subterranean bunker systems. The LTTE has used those containers also as components for cleverly disguised plane hangars. Seven landing strips, constructed using the most modern western know-how, were also found.

55 electricity generators from Sweden, intended for use in hospitals in and around Jaffna, were found in the deserted shelters of the LTTE-Tigers, withdrawing under the Sri Lankan offensive. These generators were sufficient to supply the whole population of the north with electricity – instead they supplied the fighting units of the LTTE. Tiger leader Velupilai Prabhakaran, suffering from diabetes, not only had a hospital constructed especially for him in one of the headquarters, as well as ordering a bullet-proof vehicle to be constructed for him use, which has also been discovered. For the refurbishing of the vehicle, special metal sheets were used that had been ordered by one of the INGOs for the purported purpose of reconstructing destroyed bridges in the north.

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About Writer:Christian Eckert (50), born in Germany, raised in Vancouver Canada is a vetran media personality and a working journalist in Germany. He has been visiting Asia, specially Sri Lanka for the past 30 years. Eckert is a 2004 Tsunami survivor in Sri Lanka. Form the Tsunami devastated south of the Country, Christian Eckert walked three days from Galle to the German Embassy in Colombo and returned home with a desire to help the needy in Sri Lanka. Since then he has been actively working with many humanitarian projects with Sri Lanka.Christian Eckert just returned back to Germany from a long trip to Sri Lanka. During his stay he travelled extensively in the country. The Story filed to Sri Lanka Guardian is a view of a foreign Journalist that most western media don't like to expose in their own country.

UN Security Council fight for Sri Lanka

James Bone in New York

The UN Security Council took up the fighting in Sri Lanka for the first time on Friday as a senior UN official reported that dozens of people, at least, were being killed every day. Council members, meeting in closed session, appealed to the Sri Lankan government to exercise maximum restraint and to the Tamil Tiger rebels, or LTTE, to lay down their arms and abandon the use of violence to pursue their political aims, the council president said.

Sir John Holmes, the UN's humanitarian coordinator, reported on his recent trip to the island under the agenda item "other matters" after Russia dropped its objections to the Security Council discussing the conflict between government forces and Tamil Tigers.

Sir John said 200,000 civilians were trapped by the fighting, and cited "credible reports" that the Tamil Tigers had shot at some trying to flee. He said he had urged the government to call a temporary halt to hostilities or establish a humanitarian corridor to allow people to leave, if it could be agreed.

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See the videos below

UN Security Council Briefing Videos - Japan Part2

Informal comments to the Media by the President of the Security Council
and Permanent Representative of Japan, H.E. Mr. Yukio Takasu, on the situation in Sri Lanka.

UN Security Council Briefing Videos - Japan Part1

Informal comments to the Media by the President of the Security Council
and Permanent Representative of Japan, H.E. Mr. Yukio Takasu, on the situation in Sri Lanka.