Protest Roundup of Tamils!

In a further chilling escalation of the bourgeoisie’s “war on terror,” 14 people of Tamil background were rounded up late August in a cross-border FBI-RCMP sting operation. They are accused of “conspiring” to assist the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), including by obtaining military equipment to aid its struggle against the repressive Sinhalese-chauvinist government of Sri Lanka. The arrests follow the Canadian government’s designation of the LTTE as an illegal organization under the Anti-Terrorism Act earlier this year. The U.S. had banned the LTTE nine years earlier.

Among those caught up in the terror sweep are four recent graduates from the University of Waterloo engineering school. Among them is Suresh Sriskandarajah, a former president of the UW Tamil Students Association, who faces extradition to the U.S. on charges of “providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.” Amid the witchhunt atmosphere, the university administration, joined by the UW Federation of Students, is now undertaking a forensic audit of the Tamil student group. We protest this ominous attack on the right to political advocacy on campus.

The Canadian government’s ban on the LTTE, followed by raids on Tamil community groups and now this wave of arrests, is part of a drive to criminalize political activity by immigrants and minorities. Other groups banned under the Anti-Terrorism Act include the Communist Party of the Philippines, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the left-wing Colombian FARC guerrillas.

The arrests in Canada and the U.S. come in the context of stepped-up military actions by the Sri Lankan government aimed at driving the LTTE from its strongholds in the largely Tamil northeast of Sri Lanka. While our Marxist political views are very different from those of the petty-bourgeois nationalist LTTE, we stand in their defense against the Sri Lankan army and government, whose attacks have led to the massacre of tens of thousands of Tamils since the early 1980s and forced hundreds of thousands more into exile, including at least 250,000 in Canada. This is part of our defense of the right to Tamil Eelam, an independent Tamil homeland.

The workers movement must come to the defense of the arrested Tamils. Free them now! Stop the extradition of Suresh Sriskandarajah! Drop all the charges! Down with the Anti-Terrorism Act!