The must recycle or something.
In Canada, the LTTE – Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or Tamil Tigers – are designated as a terrorist organization. Fund raising for them is illegal, and they are meant to be on the far fringes of society. But in Toronto, a city known for allowing the Hezbollah flag to be hoisted in front of the Israeli Consulate while Muslims scream for the death of a Jewish child, terrorists are just part of the cultural mosaic.
The Tiger flag flies at the corner of Queen & Yonge, in the heart of Downtown Toronto, just after lunchtime today.
Tiger cub.
In Canada, freedom of speech and freedom of association applies only to terrorists. If you hold un-politically correct ideas, like Marc Lemire or Mark Steyn, you are a criminal.
RG:
That’s the Tamil Eelam flag–a common mistake, but you shouldn’t be making it. Here’s the LTTE flag. The former is to LTTE as the fleur-de-lys flag is to the FLQ. Which is to say, it doesn’t belong exclusively to LTTE but to any Tamil who wants an independent state. Which, given the thousands of them that have been slaughtered by the Sinhalese majority over the past couple of decades, isn’t an unreasonable goal.
We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do…
Sorry–buggered up the link to the LTTE flag, but you get the idea.
Thanks Dawg.
RG
I think we owe it to the Tamils to credit them for their contribution to mankind, including suicide bombers, child soldiers and the systematic rape and torture of their prisoners. I smell a Nobel Peace Prize coming soon!
Let’s give them a state!
Dawg, you are being a tad disingenuous..the red background on that flag denotes support of the militant wing of the LTTE (you know, the people who invented the suicide bomb belt, support political assassination and maintain torture camps?)
I take it from your last comment that you support the ideals of those who fly the flag?
How many of those in attendance were forced to participate by LTTE operatives in the GTA , who threaten bodily harm to those who don’t cow tow to their demands? The thugs even threaten to reach out and touch those family members who live overseas.
I also heard way too much of born and bred in Canada Tamils talking about ‘our’ liberation and what ‘we’ should do make that happen.
‘I’ don’t have to do anything, except call out those who carry flags indicative of their support for violence and terrorist tactics.I kept an eye out for Jim Karygiannis, but wisely he stayed home this time.I know it must have pained him greatly to do so, what with supporting terrorism so imbued into the DNA of Liberal MP’s….
Hmm…..maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way. Why not give them their own state?
Maybe they’d pack up their crap and get the hell outta Canada, and take their terrorist ways with them. Make us all happy.
Thought experiment: Try to come up with a terrorist group the Dawg wouldn’t have time for.
Interesting little issue here. Free speech and public safety. Who will win? Not having a job, myself, and hanging out with ex-bourgeois who are losing their homes, wives, and self-respect due to the current economic crisis, I can only reflect on that saying by Winston Churchill: an empty stomach makes a poor political advisor. Indeed, for all those trades unionists out there who are not being served by the hired help in the union offices, who now grumble and chafe, the thoughts of direct action (a la mode of the Tigers) is begining to look attractive. There sure do talk about it alot. They talk about doing hurtful things to union office workers who do not do much to help their employers, unionized workers, and spend their efforts pushing things like … immigration rights for suspected terrorists, or spliting the hairs about thw correct heraldry of insignia associated with terrorist organizations. I guess when you lose your job, your home, your car, your wife, and your Canadian dream, you get grumpy. Kinda like the Tamils being shafted over by the whoever the oppressor is in Ceylon.
Amazing what being ruined does to people. I can empathize with the sufferings of the Tamils, much as I have to listen to the plots and anger of screwed over union workers, screwed over not by the people who screwed over the Tamils, but by the union movement workers who do not do squat for union workers. So if the hat is being passed around for a few bucks to buy a few blasting caps, be it in Columbo or some other place where people are being oppressed, I can understand. And when it gets close and personal, as it does in Ceylon, I know it will not happen here in Canada, because we have laws that people respect (like the one about terrorist organizations). Yup. You bet your life, Dr.Dawg.
So, who cares what the red in the flag means?
They are scum.
Kursk:
The Tamil Eelam flag is separatist, but here) weren’t terrorists, and hoped to achieve a separate state by peaceful means. It’s their flag too.
It’s all a tangled tale, and I can’t pretend to be an expert on it. But I think it’s wrong to assume that all Tamil separatists are terrorists, just as not all (or indeed very many if any) BQ and PQ members are FLQ supporters.
I saw a car in Brampton flying one of those today.
Has it ever occured to these jerks that the place to settle this is Sri Lanka not Canada?
If you want to fight go back to where you came from. If you want a new start and a better place for your kids stay here but don’t bring your hate to my country.Simple as that.
Canada, or more specifically Toronto, is home to around 250,000+ Sri Lankan Tamils making it not one of the largest but THE largest collection of Sri Lankan Tamils outside of Sri Lanka. This is because of Canada’s famously gullible refugee system and the Singh decision of 1985 which gave Charter protection to anyone on Canadian soil citizen or not. Because of this even Americans or Danes can file a refugee claim.
The Sri Lankan Tamil community is largely a refugee community. The question is are they legitimate refugees and should Canada have accepted so many of them? I say no to both.
As to the question whether Sri Lankan Tamils are real refugees we have to take into account that Sri Lankan Tamils in Canada routinely return to Sri Lanka in significant numbers, a fact the Sri Lankan consulate will point out evidenced by applications for return visas. I’d say this is typical of most “refugees” Canada has granted asylum to like the 50,000 “Canadians” in Lebanon. If these people are truly in fear for their lives then why do they go back to Sri Lanka so often?
Further, Sri Lanka has consistently ranked high in nations producing family class immigrants to Canada while also ranking high as a refugee producing nation. It appears the refugee claim wasn’t just for the individual but to benefit the entire family as a vehicle to immigrate to Canada via the refugee stream.
If you disagree with the above the next point we have to consider is why there are more Sri Lankan Tamils in Canada then there are in India particularly the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu is culturally and linguistically Tamil and is so close to Sri Lanka you could practically swim to it. Naturally this should have been the preferred destination for Sri Lankan Tamil refugees fleeing war and acts of persecution since it is similar to their homeland and close to family still in Sri Lanka. The reality is that wasn’t the case at all. Sri Lankan Tamils instead chose to fly half way around the world to a country with no historical, linguistic, or cultural ties to Sri Lanka.
Canada was targeted by Sri Lankan Tamils, and others, for immigration purposes by posing as refugees and I say bogus ones at that. Regardless of the news reports coming out of Sri Lanka, Tamils are not as persecuted as they make themselves out be. With Canadians’ ignorance on their side Tamils in Canada will not tell you that the capital city of Colombo is 1/3 Tamil (in other words the option of internal flight is open to them); that Tamil political parities (similar to our Bloc Quebecois) operate in Sri Lanka and have sent members to office; that some Tamils had Buddhist and Muslim friends in Colombo but then became “persecuted” when it came to time to file a refuguee claim in an advanced industrialized nation like Canada, the U.K., or Australia.
They won’t tell you about the history of the LTTE which is an organization formed and run by violent tyrannical gangsters who have sent representatives to Toronto’s streets disguised as “refugees”. And if Martin Collacott, Canada’s former High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, is to be believed then were the LTTE successful in establishing an independent homeland it would be totalitarian in character with routine suppression of freedoms and human rights.
I am not denying that the Tamils have been persecuted in Sri Lanka but progress has been made. However such talk doesn’t bold well for a refugee claim so Canadians are to be fed incessant talk of “genocide” and persecution. The issue is more complex then what the Tamil community is making it out to be.
And Dr. Dawg may be delighted to know that it isn’t just the Sri Lankan government that is killing innocent Tamils. Civilians trapped in the war zone were fired upon by LTTE gunmen as they tried to flee the territory for safety, this we are told by eye witness accounts from those who survived it.
With that said I have to say the Tamil community have lost a lot of credibility with me. I don’t deny their grievances but I do feel their claims of persecution and “genocide” are over exaggerated and self serving.
Wow you guys really are out there. The LTTE are definitely terrorists, but your “go home” attitude is pretty pathetic, obviously if any of them go home they face either a dangerous govt or a dangerous terrorist govt, both sides are dangerous to Tamils. How would you like it if I whined about your entitlement complexes and suggest you go back and overcrowd Europe and around the Baltic sea?
It is being thrown around quite liberally that the Sri Lankan government is “dangerous” to the Tamil people. Of the news reports that I have read in the Toronto Star concerning Sri Lanka’s civil war the grievances that the Tamils have been voicing is discrimination over government jobs and the fact that Tamil is not an official language. If these are their complaints then they should consider themselves the lucky bunch of the many refugees around the world that are in real danger of losing their lives.
Can you give any examples of how “dangerous” Sri Lanka’s government is to Tamils?
Dr Dawg sez, “The TULF … hoped to achieve a separate state by peaceful means. It’s their flag too.”
Nice, peaceful people, who just happen to have a pair of rifles on their flag. Makes perfect sense to me.
I ran into this protest today, knowing nothing about it beforehand. Initial reaction? What are these people DOING? Where are the police? I encountered a few hundred Tamil Tigers’ demonstrators at University Avenue and Queen Street, and had to jump off my streetcar to get to where I was going on time.
My take: Get your LTTE politics off MY streets. Get your LTTE politics off Toronto streets and off Canadian streets.
When I asked a police officer I encountered a few minutes later what the HECK a terrorist group was doing marching on Toronto streets, he expressed his frustration too. He said that Mayor (would that be aka, Moron?) Miller and the City Council gave the LTTE permits to parade in the city.
I said I’d be writing to the Moron to complain, though I didn’t have much confidence in my action, given that Miller had never even acknowledged other of my correspondence. The police officer said that Miller and the folks at City Hall rarely responded to police complaints, either.
Figures. Where’s Batman when you need him?
I worked with a lady whose brother and father were assasinated in Sri Lanka. the brother was the deputy Prime Minister. She escaped to the nieghbour’s basement as her house was being burnt down. I am not sure about the others but I’d say she is a real refugee. She has never been back. I don’t hold with supporting ANY terrorist group no matter what their problem is. Neither should anyone else in Canada. If you come here and become productive,intergrated members of our society you are welcome. If not go where your ideas are accepted,we want none of it here
Maybe it isn’t the official LTTE flag, but the preponderance of banners calling the LTTE the saviours of the Tamils and the posters with the smiling Prabhakarn looking benevolently down at the crowd clearly tell us who this rabble supports.
http://www.torontosun.com/news/2009/03/16/8773216.html
This is to TypicalRightwingBlog.
The subtle difference, which apparently escaped your superiour intellect. is that Pax isn’t holding protests that snarl up rush hour traffic for hours protesting something that Canada has no connection to.
Bet your Typical Left Wing Brain missed that.
In Toronto the REAL “terrorists” drive SUVs downtown and park them on the street so they restrict the pedestrian protest traffic.
To Only Me:
In the case of the woman you described I imagine that she is of the Sinhalese majority since you say her brother was the Deputy Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. That being the case then why is she a refugee when she is of the ethnic majority and of the political class? That’s like granting asylum to the Ghandi family after Rajiv Ghandi was assassinated by an LTTE suicide bomb. As a matter of speaking most political assassinations of Sri Lankan government ministers are blamed on the LTTE. I am certain she could have found safety in Sri Lanka if not there then India. There is no excuse for her to come to Canada as a refugee outside of economic reasons and our abusable refugee system.
I also researched political assassinations of the Sri Lankan civil war and I don’t see any assassination of a Deputy Prime Minister. I’m not saying it didn’t happen but so far it appears the story she told you isn’t holding water. Perhaps you got the details wrong. Can you give me a name?
But since you are giving anecdotal examples I’ll give you one. I remember catching Daniel Stoffman on TVO when he was promoting his book “Who Gets In.” On the show he described a situation immigration officials faced at Pearson International Air Port in Toronto during the height of the Sri Lankan refugee influx into Canada (acceptance rates were at 80-90% for Sri Lankans). The immigration officials noticed that they kept getting the same story over and over again from Sri Lankan refugee claimants. So they decided to look into the matter much like what is being done today with the influx of Czech Roma refugee claims. The officials concluded the stories were unfounded and so they began to refuse claims based on the familiar story. The story literally changed over night and officials were getting barraged by a different group similar persecution claims. If that is true then it is clear Canada was targeted by Sri Lankan Tamils for immigration purposes by abusing the refugee system. The fact that Canada is home to THE largest collection of Sri Lankan Tamils testifies to that. If they came as immigrants then there is no problem. But abusing the refugee system is disgraceful and I don’t know how anyone can defend that.
Again it’s all anecdotal but isn’t that what a refugee claim is anyway? When the refugee system is based on trust and the general ignorance of IRB board members coupled with the most gullible refugee system in the world how can I blame anyone for cooking up a bogus refugee claim to get into the country. In a sick way we Canadians deserve it.
With that said we should expect to see high ranking LTTE officials on Toronto’s streets sometime soon if not already as Sri Lankan government forces defeat the LTTE. A wife of one high ranking official has already filed a claim and three LTTE leaders were caught at the U.S./Mexico border on their way to Canada.
I think you missed my point in my response, Glenn..thanks for your service however…
[...] TORONTO really does love its terrorists!; Tamil Tigers! Freedom Fighters! LTTE! Freedom Fighters! Our [...]
Dear “TypicalRightwingBlog”, The tired, tired chant of the left trying to claim that I’m somehow an immigrant and how would I like to “go back to Europe”? My family has been in Canada for almost 400 years and I’m proud to say that they cleared and settled this (still) wonderful country. There’s no where to “go back to”. This is MY country.