Canadian Tamils prepare for referendum vote on independence

Sri Lanka's consul general in Toronto calls the move 'laughable'.

(MIKE ADLER )

Canadian Tamils from Sri Lanka are being asked to declare they still support an independent Tamil state in their homeland. A group called Coalition for Tamil Elections Canada says it's holding a supervised secret-ballot vote in Canada Saturday on Tamil independence, one that will lead, says one supporter, to "transnational government of Tamil Eelam" by April.

But some Greater Toronto residents are calling the referendum, coming just seven months after Sri Lanka crushed the Tamil separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to end a decades-long civil war, misguided or even dangerous.

The Saturday, Dec. 19, vote - in six Scarborough and four other Toronto locations - is on approval of the "political fundamentals" of the Vaddukkoaddai Resolution, a 1976 document declaring the Tamils' right to form a separate state.

It said Sri Lanka's constitution had "made the Tamils a slave nation ruled by the new colonial masters, the Sinhalese," Sri Lanka's largest ethnic group, and that an independent nation, Tamil Eelam, "has become inevitable."

By marking "yes" on ballots printed in Tamil, English and French, Canada's Sri Lankan Tamil immigrants will "re-mandate" the resolution, and their Canadian-born children will have a chance to support it too, said Veluppillai Thangavelu of Scarborough, a referendum organizer.

"This is a democratic way of testing the will of the people," he said. "That's not possible in my country."

A retired accountant, Thangavelu was a vice president of the World Tamil Movement (WTM), banned by Canada's federal Conservative government as a money-gathering front for the LTTE, which the government considers a terrorist group.

Its bank account seized, the WTM left its headquarters on Cosentino Drive and disbanded. But Thangavelu said the building's former library is being run by volunteers elsewhere and he hopes the ban will be lifted now that the civil war is over.

The resolution has nothing to do with the LTTE and the process to host the referendum in countries with a Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora started before the Tigers' defeat, he said.

"We are not telling the people how to vote," Thangavelu said, insisting a third-party company he could not name will supervise the vote and non-Tamil Canadian observers, including city councillors and MPs, will be invited to observe.

Calls to Scarborough contacts listed on the Coalition website produced little information Tuesday, Dec. 15. Its main Toronto voice mailbox was full.

In November, several Tamil student groups who took part in Heroes Week celebrations in Scarborough and Brampton remembering slain Tamil Tiger fighters and their late leader Veluppillai Prabhakaran were said to already have voted to express their support.

Reached earlier this month, Bandula Jayasekara, Sri Lanka's consul general in Toronto, said the referendum was "laughable" and its supporters, many of them youths, are "being misled."

"I don't think most of these people have even visited Sri Lanka," he said, suggesting Tamil Canadians with grievances should work for the betterment of all Sri Lanka's people.

"People who have been enemies for years made peace. It's time for these people to move on," Jayasekera said.

The Canadian Tamil Congress is not participating in the referendum but will watch the event with interest, spokesperson Manjula Selvarajah said last month.

Lenin Benedict, known as a dissenter in Scarborough's large Tamil community, said the resolution paved the way for armed struggle and charged some Greater Toronto Tamils want to stoke the fires of Tamil nationalism in order to collect money for the cause.

Noor Nizam, a member of Sri Lankan Canadians Against Terrorism, called a transnational government for Tamils a dream "that will never happen" but wondered why Canadian authorities would allow the vote. "Why is the government of Canada not putting their feet down?" he asked last week.