OTTAWA—When the Tamil community in Ottawa and Toronto heard rumours of poisonous gases killing 1,200 of their countrymen in Puthukuciyurucu in the northern part of the island on Saturday, they flocked to Ottawa seeking help from the federal government.
RCMP and local police had to close parts of Ottawa’s downtown core Monday and Tuesday as hundreds of demonstrators carrying Tamil flags and chanting slogans swarmed the streets around Parliament Hill. Protests were resumed on Wednesday morning but did not block traffic.
Arul Ananth, a 21-year-old Ryerson student from Toronto, said the demonstrations are in response to “the genocide that is happening back home in Sri Lanka.”
Ananth said the main goal of the demonstration was “to get the Canadian government to recognize that there is an issue happening back home, and hopefully for them to intervene and call a ceasefire and stop the fighting between the Sri Lankan army and the civilian LTTE (Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam).”
Eelam is the northeastern part of Sri Lanka that the LTTE wants recognized as a separate state. A civil war between the Sri Lankan army and the Tigers has been ongoing on for almost 30 years. The LTTE maintain they are trying to protect Sri Lanka’s ethnic Tamil minority. Canada has classed the Tamil Tigers a terrorist organization.
