Raging 1983 Revenge War and a Diaspora’s dilemma

EXCLUSIVE

"Trapped into the WTM-LTTE den, the Canadian Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora is a community that is being exploited by clever crooks and downright desperados in the name of liberation for their people in Sri Lanka. But what really is happening is that these felons and fraudsters have been amassing fortunes for themselves for some years now. The Tamil community, reduced to contemptible cowardice still believes that every cent collected from them helps to ensure that the LTTE will create a free state for their kith and kin in Sri Lanka. What really these dollars and cents do is helping these villains who parade as their leaders to build mansions for them and lead ostentatious lives. But in Sri Lanka, the Tamils may soon be history if this rot is not stemmed immediately; the Diaspora cannot afford to be cowards."(Click on Image)

A Special Lanka Guardian Report

by Satchi Sithanandan and Jacinta Cruz

(July 31, Los Angeles , Sri Lanka Guardian) There are almost two hundred real estate agents among Canada’s Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora. Like family doctors, they are also family agents. They sell their clients at first an apartment, then a town house, after that a small bungalow and finally a mansion all of which, most of them at the stage of purchase do not generally afford. However, there are estate agents who can make that possible. The exceptions however are the priests of temples, real estate agents themselves and LTTE fund collectors and of course the sensible managers of their earnings, both decent and legitimate.

There are also the credit card and counterfeit currency fraudsters and money launderers who set up temporary business ventures to last the time they need to whiten their black currencies earned mostly through alien smuggling and drugs peddling. It is as if the community has sanctioned any activity that earns incomes however disreputable and disgusting they may be.

Wherever one goes among Toronto’s Tamil Diaspora functions, festivals or even demonstrations or visit some of the fish-stink Tamil grocery shops, the conversation is often based on complaints that the Tamils are not united in action against the Sinhalese not just in Sri Lanka alone. There is a 1983 revenge war going on in the minds of the Diaspora not realizing or do not want to realize that this mentality is only affecting their own folks in Sri Lanka. Pro-LTTE agents ensure that this obsession to take revenge remains fresh in the minds of the people.

First and foremost the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora must take to task those who advocate the ideas of the World Tamil Movement (WTM) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Canada or even the entire North America. It is these people who are primarily milking the community of hard-earned dollars demanding, and very often with threats, their contribution for what they call as the “Final War” in Sri Lanka. That this has not happened is expressive of either a timid community with no guts or one that is selfish with an attitude of gross indifference towards the well being of the larger community.

They seem not even bothered whether the financial contribution they make goes towards the LTTE in Wanni or pocketed by the collectors themselves. Many of them know that the latter is what is really happening and this is quite visible with the luxurious lifestyles of these WTM and LTTE supporters and the fund collectors.

They are generally categorized as the Markham Millionaires and that sadly has an element of truth. When a community is led by such people with their own selfish agendas, how can there be any unity? They are not focused on the issues in Sri Lanka and what is best for the minority Tamils and how the Government of Sri Lanka is dealing with their problems. They take cover under the LTTE and romp around arrogantly as its agents but in all their activities as for the Tamil liberation struggle, they hardly know their people in Sri Lanka and not even concerned about them.

The Tamil elite and the Tamil mass are two different entities and the largely urban based former has always dominated the latter and the latter has remained tame, timid and servile to the former. This is why the Tamils, also criss-crossed with caste factors, cannot be united. If the community was united at least on the question of discrimination they suffer, the campaign to collect funds to fight this issue would have been open, transparent and dynamic. There would have been singleness of purpose and the Tamil Diaspora would have been a powerful factor in forcing the Government of Sri Lanka to see reason and take measures to solve the ethnic issue.

Instead the people who hijacked the leadership of the Tamil Diaspora sang hosannas to the LTTE every time a moderate political leader especially among the Tamils was assassinated under the direction of the Tiger Supremo. The community has been virtually wiped out of its good leaders and the members of the Tamil National Assembly a company of traitorous sycophants have been described as the Simian band that dances to the churning chimes of the Wanni organ grinder.

The disunity among the Tamils one speaks of is not a cultural trait but forced on the community by the agents of the WTM and LTTE. This is also why despite they being banned organizations in Canada, they continue to function under various avatharams, arising from time to time under other names. This also strikes at the loyalty expected of all Canadian citizens and that in a country that gave them refuge and opportunities.

Hinduism has been sadly polluted by many rituals and ceremonies most of them money-making tugs and tweaks from the highly imaginative minds of avaricious Brahmin priests who have the total obeisance of their temple attendees. No questions are asked, the priests are never challenged even on Hindu dogmas and as a result the devotees are fleeced in the name of God by the wily priests. They seem to enjoy more infallibility than the popes of the Middles Ages. As to why Hinduism as practiced by the Brahmin priests are held on to tightly by the Tamils one cannot quite explain but this very fact gives support to the claim that Hinduism practiced by the Tamils is Brahmanism and not Hinduism almost like supporting the LTTE without understanding what real liberation means.

Although Tamils have come to Canada prior to 1983 and made their homes in this great country fired by the spirit of multiculturalism, it is during the last twenty-five years they have migrated in large numbers. They brought the scars of the 1983 communal riots with them and have not liberated themselves from the consequences of them. They seek vengeance but they are trying to achieve this on two fronts.

Firstly, they egg on their people in Sri Lanka to keep fighting no matter what their losses are and towards this they hold rallies, concerts and festivals stirring up emotional outbursts against the majority Sinhala people. Secondly, they enrich themselves by indirectly weaving disunity into the community so that each of them could collect in the name of “The Final War” that is allegedly being waged by the LTTE. Unless and until the Tamils in Toronto take up cudgels against the culprits among them and call on them to be transparent in their activities particularly in the case of funds collected, the community would only cause considerable damage to their Canadian citizenship status let alone the rich culture of our inheritance.

Bruce Fein: The Current Controversy

A current controversy raging like wild fire is about a US lawyer, Bruce Fein who was supposed to have held meetings in Toronto recently to collect funds to file a Grand Jury hearing against three US citizens who are active in the Government of Sri Lanka. They have dual citizenships. It has been claimed that Bruce Fein was retained by Tamils for Justice in the US but now seems to have set up a counter organization called Justice for Thamil after meeting with known WTM-LTTE supporters in Canada such as Bavan, Guhan and Usha Sriskandarajah, Suganath Pararajasingam, David Poopalapillai, Chitha Sittampalam, Karthigesu Sivasegaram, Garry Anandasangaree formerly known as Sathyasangaree during his university days, Nehru Guna, Dr M Sreetharan from the US and a few others.

Some of these named here like Karthigesu Sivasegaram, Chitha Sittampalam along with S Thiruchelvam of Tamils Information, Rajaratnam and the late Sam Doraiswamy have had their names tarnished by the way they handled their responsibilities with the Tamil Eelam Society. They are the very people who set the pace to make an industry out of the problems of the Tamils in Sri Lanka to their personal advantage. Their community activities are themselves proofs of how they have been indulging in cheats and tricks and even some Ontario government bureaucrats have been taken for rides by these men.

If there is any truth in the Bruce Fein controversy, apart from serious criminal aspects, there seem extremely pitiable lapses in matters ethical, moral and obligatory loyalties on several fronts. The Tamil community in particular and the Canadians in general must be informed by the individuals named here of their roles among their people. Also if they are associated with the WTM and the LTTE and especially if they have been part of the Bruce Fein efforts to raise funds they have to issue a public statement to that effect and have it published in a responsible and respectable newspaper. Even otherwise it is a matter for the RCMP to investigate without any delay.

Meetings have been held recently in Toronto, funds have been raised, American attorney Bruce Fein has been present at all these meetings but no public accounting is forthcoming and this is unacceptable. There are Tamil radio and TV stations as well as countless numbers of Tamil tabloids and why is that none of them are demanding that all funds collected at meetings held in public be accounted. The information we gathered is that a considerable amount collected were in cash. Unlike most of the door to door fund collectors, some of the people named in this feature hold positions of clout in the community. It is incumbent of them to come forward and lay bare the whole damn stinking saga of Bruce Fein that is very damaging to the Tamil Diaspora.

In our inquiries we stumbled across a guy who controls on behalf of the LTTE the goods Tamil shops are allowed to retail in their premises. They cannot obtain them on their own and this very person known as the Bearded Phantom came to Canada penniless but soon owned a large wholesale establishment on Birchmount and Eglinton in Scarborough believed to have been with black funds delivered by the LTTE. Ironically, he obtained his Sri Lankan travel documents helped by the Chief Priest of the Nainativu Buddhist Temple obviously a Sinhalese. The activities of Bearded Phantom are one example of how the LTTE and WTM have forced the Tamil community to the ways and measures they demand of them.

As we took off from Lester Pearson International Airport last week bound for Los Angeles, our next stop, we looked down on the vast expanse of Greater Toronto Area and did wonder how many mansions have been built in the name of Tamil liberation in Sri Lanka while countless numbers of Tamil families are living in the open exposed to the elements and vagaries of nature as internally displaced people and also as refugees in South India. Some Markham Millionaires may want to be totally oblivious as to how funds that should be helping their folks in Sri Lanka are being channeled into their coffers inshore and offshore in the West.
- Sri Lanka Guardian