Angry in the Great White North

Commuters in Ottawa are forced to put up with the third day of traffic disruption cause by angry Tamil protestors:

Police officers are lining streets in downtown Ottawa again today, as Tamil protesters shut down a major street for the third day in a row.

The group of Tamil activists wants the Canadian government to intervene in what supporters call the Sri Lankan government's genocide against Tamil people.

There are numerous news stories covering the protest, but one thing I've noticed common to many of them is the relative youth of the participants.  In this story, so-and-so is quoted, and when I check the name, I discover the person is a high school school student.  In that story, someone else explains why the Tamil Tigers is not a terrorist organization, and I discover this person has barely started university.

Some are explicitly identified as "youth activists":

"Right now the emotions of a lot of the Tamil-Canadians here in Canada are running on high . . . this is the first time it's actually got to the point where we've disobeyed law," Tamil youth activist Sahab Jesuthasan told CTV Ottawa during an earlier rally on Parliament Hill.

It happened so often that I started to wonder about the role of youth as Tamil political activists.  It is already well known that the Tamil Tigers uses children as soldiers.

In Canada, children and those barely older than children are used to fill out crowds and present a fluent English-speaking face of the crowd.  Their parents, most of them immigrants, and living in Tamil enclaves in Scarborough, have not had to learn English, planning to return one day to Sri Lanka.

But is that all that these kids are used for?  I think so, but then I found a disturbing link.

In backtracking these names, I ended up more than once at the TYO - Canada, the Canadian branch of the Tamil Youth Organization.  For instance, one of the people interviewed was a featured contributor to this issue of the TYO newsletter Reach.

When I checked on the registration of the TYO - Canada domain, canadatyo.org, the registrant is a person by the name of Rupan Ananthan.  He is very active on message groups, repeatedly leaving a link to the same news story, over and over again.

It is the story of the very public suicide of Rajah, a Tamil, who immolated himself in Malaysia:

27-year-old Eezham Tamil, Raja, living in Malaysia for 3 years set fire on himself and died Friday leaving a note in his diary saying "I am burning myself to death resting my hopes on global Tamils to save the Eezham Tamils. I plead American President Barack Obama to bring in a ceasefire in Sri Lanka." This is the first act of self-immolation committed by a person of the Eezham Tamil diaspora. Three people in Tamil Nadu have already died by self-immolation in support of Eezham Tamils.

"My name is Rajah, born on 27 May, 1982. I came to Malaysia seeking employment on 02 October, 2006 and I found a good job. Why am I burning myself to death? For permanent ceasefire and immediate peace talks in Sri Lanka," reads a note from his diary.

"American President Obama should go to Sri Lanka immediately," was the desperate message of the letter.

Is Ananthan, the person who registered the Tamil Youth Organization website, repeatedly posting this story as a way of warning people, especially young people, about the dangers of fanaticism?

It doesn't seem so.  Ananthan's name comes up again, and again in the context of a Tamil living in England immolated himself as a form of political activism:

A TAMIL from Harrow poured petrol over his head and burned himself to death in protest at the civil war which is devastating large parts of the population of Sri Lanka.

Murukathasan Vanakulasingam left his family last Tuesday to fly to Switzerland and take part in a mass protest against the attacks on Tamils by the Sri Lankan government.

But on Thursday night, hours before he was expected to fly home and return to his job, the 27-year-old computer science graduate set fire to himself outside the gates of the United Nations headquarters in Geneva.

His family is proud of what he did:

His brother Velmurugam, 24, said his brother should be remembered as a martyr who died for the people of his country.

He said: "He wanted to protest about what he was seeing happen in Sri Lanka, but nobody knew he was going to do this.

"We are sad because we have lost a life, but we are very proud of what my brother has done."

What does Rupan Ananthan think of this?

Rupan Ananthan, says...
8:53am Thu 19 Feb 09

I salute to Martyr Murugathasan.

How many more life Tamils need to loose to get the international community [to act].

International community must take the responsible for all of these lost live.

Are they having United Nation for the secured arm supplies for the GENOCIDE.

If the mandate of the UN which is say United Nation is the bi-product of the WWII to protect the peoples' and ethnics' right, WHY THEY NOT ACT TO STOP THE GENOCIDE AGAINST TAMILS IN SRI LANKA. Rather then act against GENOCIDE the UN countries supply war equipment and the such as CLUSTER booms, which banned on more than 92 countries and has a sanction to produce it, multi barrel rockets and the flammable booms.

Martyr Murugathasan REST IN PEACE, Your thirst will come to true. Tamils Will live with peace in their own country!!

Martyr Murugathasan killed himself in Geneva just a few weeks ago hoping that a fiery horrible death on foreign soil would prompt countries to support the Tamil cause. 

Martyr Rajah killed himself in Malaysia just a few weeks ago hoping that a fiery horrible death on foreign soil would prompt countries to support the Tamil cause. 

There have been other suicides and attempted suicides:

Seven Tamils - including Murugathasan - have burned themselves to death in the past month to protest about the treatment of their people by Sri Lanka's Sinhalese government. Most were in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, but on 14 February, another British-based Tamil allegedly tried to set himself on fire outside Downing Street, but was arrested before he could do so.

Rupan Ananthan, who lives and works in Canada, who is involved in the politicized Tamil youth movement, who has made it a point to praise these suicides and to spread news of these two deaths, is asking if more Tamils are going to have to die to get the international community to act.

Is he talking about Tamils dying in the fighting in Sri Lanka?  Or is he talking about the deliberate suicides, and in particular those outside of Sri Lanka?  Which deaths are the ones Ananthan thinks will prompt foreign intervention?

Police are keeping on eye on the Tamil protesters in Ottawa, who insist that their goal is...you guessed it...to get Canada to intervene:

Police are not saying whether they plan to remove the protesters, who insist they won't allow the street to be reopened until they get an indication from the government that it plans to intervene in Sri Lanka's war.

I hope the police are keeping an eye out for any gas cans.  Just in case.