Asylum for All Tamil Refugees!

The Harper government has whipped up a racist furor over the arrival of nearly 500 Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka off the B.C. coast. On August 12, the government sent a naval warship armed with guided missiles to intercept the barely seaworthy cargo ship carrying the refugees, which had left Thailand in May and had already been turned away from Australia. RCMP and Border Service cops as well as the military boarded the vessel and took all the migrants, who include 55 children, into custody. They are now being held in Vancouver-area detention centres.

Demonizing the refugees as potential “terrorists,” Harper said he “will not hesitate” to strengthen laws to prevent more ships coming to Canada, and the government vowed to work with Australia and other countries to stop them from even setting sail. Australia already sends its navy to intercept refugees on the high seas, turning them back or redirecting them to Indonesia, which incarcerates them in Australian-funded detention centres. Those captured in “Australian waters” are imprisoned behind razor wire on remote Christmas Island. Five refugees died and scores were injured last year when their boat exploded after it was seized by the Australian navy. More recently, the Labor Party government there suspended the processing of all new asylum claims by Tamil as well as Afghan refugees and signalled its intent to ramp up deportations.

Since the arrival of the Tamil migrants in B.C., the bourgeois media has joined with the government in fuelling anti-Tamil hysteria. A Globe and Mail editorial (14 August) claimed that Ottawa “has very good reasons to ensure that Canada doesn’t become the top destination for Sri Lankan refugee ships. For behind this enterprise is criminality—human smugglers and, very possibly, Tamil Tiger terrorists.” An editorial in the Toronto Sun (22 August) titled “We’ve been duped by the Tamils” called to “lock them up, load them up, and ship them out.” Neo-Nazis including the Aryan Guard staged provocative race-hate rallies in Alberta and B.C., calling to “Send them back.”

On August 16, the Canadian Tamil Congress issued a letter written by the refugees, which stated:

“We have undergone severe hardships with very little or no access to basic necessities such as food, water, sleeping space, medicine and sanitary facilities. We have traveled for almost four months with much suffering and pain. We have come here, to this wonderful country Canada, to protect ourselves and our family members from the murders, disappearances and violence that still exist in our native country.”

Following last year’s murderous military offensive by the Sri Lanka government, which destroyed the remnants of the Tamil mini-state in the north and east of the island, some 300,000 Tamils were interned in prison camps and interrogation centres. Many thousands more have sought to flee the country, seeking to join the large Tamil diaspora in Canada and other countries.

As Marxist internationalists, we have long defended the just cause of the oppressed Tamil people and champion their right to self-determination. Throughout the war in Lanka, we called for military defense of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) against the chauvinist Colombo regime and its armed forces. We denounced the Canadian government’s ban of the LTTE under “anti-terrorist” legislation in 2006. At the same time, we gave no political support to the nationalist Tigers. Our perspective is the fight for Marxist workers parties throughout South Asia that can unite the working people and oppressed in the struggle for workers revolutions. That is the only road to liberation from the poverty, oppression and national chauvinism that are endemic to capitalist rule and visited with particular savagery on the masses of imperialism’s neocolonies.

We demand that all those now detained in B.C. be released immediately and that all Tamil refugees be given full asylum! The fight to end the racist deportations and for full citizenship rights for everyone who has made it here is part of the struggle to sweep away the brutal rule of capitalism through socialist revolution.