Protest Ottawa’s Ban on Tamil Tigers!

On April 10, “public safety” minister Stockwell Day announced that the government had placed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on its ever-expanding “terrorist” list. Two days later, the RCMP staged a jackboot raid on the offices of the World Tamil Movement (WTM) in Montreal, soon followed by raids on WTM offices in Toronto. The cops seized files, mailing lists, computer equipment, bank records—even flags and clothing bearing the LTTE emblem—and temporarily shut down the weekly paper Ullaga Tamil (World Tamil). For days afterwards, anyone trying to phone the WTM’s Toronto office had their calls answered by police. Police also raided a large shop in Toronto’s heavily Tamil St. Jamestown area, seizing CDs and DVDs.

These attacks are an ominous assault on democratic rights and a direct threat to Canada’s large Tamil immigrant population. The 250,000 Tamils in this country, the largest concentration outside South Asia, are mainly refugees from murderous pogroms orchestrated by successive Sinhala-chauvinist governments in Sri Lanka. The bloodbath peaked in 1983, leading to civil war and the effective partition of the island on ethnic lines. Many thousands of Canadian Tamils sympathize with the LTTE, which runs the de facto Tamil mini-state in the north and east, and its objective of an independent Tamil Eelam. They now find themselves in the crosshairs of Ottawa’s racist “war on terror.”

The government’s ban on the LTTE under the Anti-Terrorism Act is part of its drive to criminalize political activity by immigrants and minorities. Other groups illegalized under this draconian law include the Communist Party of the Philippines, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the left-wing Colombian FARC guerrillas. Under its provisions, anyone who knowingly provides financial support to a banned organization can be jailed for up to ten years, while those who fundraise or otherwise “facilitate” its work face 14 years in jail. When Ottawa introduced this legislation following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, we warned that it was seizing on the so-called “war on terror” to restock its arsenal of domestic state repression. As we wrote:

“This arsenal is aimed at the whole of the working people and their organizations. In the first instance, the targets are immigrants and refugees, from the Middle East and elsewhere. But immigrant workers today form key battalions of the working class, and have come increasingly to the fore in important labor battles. In its own defense and that of all the oppressed, the labor movement must oppose Ottawa’s racist anti-immigrant laws and demand full citizenship rights for the foreign-born.”

—“For Class Struggle Against Canadian Imperialism!,” SC No. 131, Winter 2001/2002

The Toronto area in particular has large numbers of Tamil workers, concentrated in the restaurant and hotel industry. It is in the urgent interest of all working people to oppose Ottawa’s police-state crackdown on the LTTE and defend Tamil organizations against state repression. While no charges have yet been laid in connection with the recent police raids, there is a deadly danger that the ban on the LTTE will be followed by further state-sponsored attacks on Tamils. Indeed, as was shown in the case of Maher Arar—a Canadian citizen deported by the U.S. to Syria’s torture chambers with the direct complicity of Canadian authorities—under the “war on terror” you don’t need to have any political connections to find yourself caught up in the worldwide network of secret torture facilities, detention flights and “renditions” set up at Washington’s behest after September 11. Hands off the LTTE, WTM and their supporters! Labour must defend immigrant rights!

In targeting the LTTE, the Harper government is seeking to project a “get tough” image for both domestic and international consumption. But the Tamil community has long been in the sights of the capitalists’ government, cops and media. The previous Liberal government had already barred LTTE supporters from raising funds in Canada. For months, bourgeois newspapers of all political stripes have run feature stories and editorials portraying pro-LTTE Tamils in Canada as violent thugs and gang members. The media have also heavily publicized a recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report that accused the LTTE of “intimidation, extortion and physical violence” in the Tamil diaspora. The HRW report, which was denounced by numerous Canadian Tamil organizations, could not have been better timed to give the government a “human rights” cover for state repression.

The U.S. had long urged Canada to follow its lead and ban the LTTE as a “terrorist” group. Following the Canadian ban, the European Union has now frozen all LTTE assets in preparation for formally designating it as “terrorist.” This comes in the context of a rapid re-escalation of attacks by the Sri Lankan government and the collapse of a ceasefire that had been in effect for the last three years. An April 27 statement by the Canadian Tamil Congress warned that by banning the LTTE, Ottawa has “given its tacit endorsement to the Sri Lankan government to continue to oppress the Tamils,” citing “the Sri Lankan air force’s sporadic bombing of Tamil areas within two weeks of Canada’s decision to list the LTTE.”

The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), including its Canadian section the Trotskyist League/Ligue trotskyste, has a long and principled history of defending the right of Tamil self-determination. In 1983, we organized and joined protests in Canada, the U.S., Australia and several European cities, calling to “Stop the massacre of Tamils in Sri Lanka!,” “For the right of Tamil Eelam!,” “U.S. out of the Indian Ocean!” and for a “Federated socialist republic of Eelam and Lanka.” Against the racist demagogy of the Canadian rulers, we have fought for an end to deportations and asylum for Tamil refugees.

Our defense of the oppressed Tamil people derives from the internationalist, proletarian and revolutionary outlook of Marxism. As such, we have a very different political perspective than the petty-bourgeois nationalist LTTE, which has met the horrific attacks on Tamils by the Sri Lankan state and pogromists with its own indiscriminate massacres of Sinhalese and Muslim villagers in areas of mixed population. As we wrote in the wake of the 1983 pogroms:

“What is desperately needed is the building of an internationalist Trotskyist party in Sri Lanka, necessarily substantially based among the exploited Tamil masses. The struggle against the hideous national oppression of the Tamils and communalism is central to reforging such a party. Lasting national and class justice for the Tamils will only be secured through permanent revolution—rule by the workers and peasants—and a socialist federation of South Asia, which can liberate all the many oppressed peoples of the region, including the almost 60 million Tamils in India.”

—“Massacre in Sri Lanka,” SC No. 59, Fall 1983

This perspective is necessarily linked to the fight for socialist revolution in the heartlands of world imperialism. Here in Canada, that means forging a Marxist workers party dedicated to mobilizing the fighting power of the multiracial proletariat on behalf of all the oppressed and with the aim of sweeping away the racist and exploitative capitalist system.