Vol. 73/No. 22      June 8, 2009

The panelists included three speakers invited by the Quebec-Tamil Women’s Association—Niruthan Nagalingam, Girija Kathiraimalainathan, and Thasha Murugatasan. Joe Young spoke on behalf of the Communist League.

Nagalingam explained how British colonial rule left a divided and underdeveloped Sri Lanka. This set the stage for successive regimes after independence to install and maintain systematic discrimination and repression against the Tamil minority, he said. This included removing Tamil as an official language of the country.

Kathiraimalainathan thanked forum organizers for an opportunity to detail the crimes that she personally knew of. She explained that many family members have no idea what has happened to their loved ones. “I ask everyone here to continue supporting the Tamil people and demand that media be allowed into the war zone,” she said.

Murugatasan spoke of the actions organized by Tamils, many of them young like her. “We spent 14 days in front of Parliament. I am proud of being Tamil,” she stated.

Young said, “We all need to protest the massacre of thousands of Tamils, putting the blame squarely where it belongs—on the rulers of Sri Lanka and their army. Those who bemoan the bloodbath, like the Canadian government, the Liberal Party, the United Nations, and others without saying who’s responsible, are in fact covering up for the Sri Lankan government and the imperialist governments that support them.” Young said that we must ask our unions to support the Tamils’ fight and pointed to participation of about 70 steelworkers in one of the protests in Toronto.  
 
 
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