TIME TO CONFRONT REALITY OF LTTE ACTIONS IN CANADA

The Star Phoenix (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan)
March 16, 2006 Thursday
Final Edition

Among the most disturbing aspects of the bungled Air India case was
that Canadian taxpayers and innocent citizens helped fund the worst
terrorist attack in this country’s history.

It is equally disturbing to learn that 21 years after that attack,
inept politicians, security and law-enforcement officials continue
to be complicit in the funding of a known terrorist group that has
a record at least as bloody as that of the International Sikh Youth
Federation and the Babbar Khalsa — the groups linked to the airplane
bombings that claimed 331 lives.

According to a report released Wednesday by the New Yorkbased Human
Rights Watch, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam — among the
bloodiest of terrorist organizations despite Canada’s apparent and
nearly unique inability to identify it as such — has been threatening
and abusing lawful Canadians to extort money for what it calls a
“final war” to gain independence from Sri Lanka.

Canada’s reluctance to recognize the LTTE as a terrorist group has its
roots in the former Liberal government’s willingness to sign a pact
with anyone, as long as it brought it votes. In a similar vein, federal
and provincial Liberal leaders, and even those from other parties,
attended rallies and fundraisers, and met on political stages with
those who were openly suspected of masterminding the Air India attacks.

Although Public Security Minister Stockwell Day was most vocal in
condemning the LTTE while campaigning in the last couple of elections,
he has yet to list the Tigers as a terrorist group.

Canada’s major allies, including the United States and Great Britain,
have proscribed the LTTE, and thus have more weapons in trying to
stem the flow of money that funds its bloody campaign.

And there can be little doubt the LTTE meets all the criteria of
a terrorist group. It virtually invented the conscription of child
soldiers and use of suicide bombers. In 1991 Thenmuli Rajaratnam,
a 17-year-old Tamil with connections to and support from the LTTE,
strapped a bomb on her back and used it to kill herself along with
17 others including Rajiv Gandhi, a leading candidate in India’s
federal election.

Canadians should find it chilling that 15 years after this attack, and
almost 21 years after the Air India bombings, this country continues
to dither when it comes to acting against this terrorist organization.

This is especially worrisome since Canada was a leading member of
the OECD task force that looked into ways to combat the financing of
terrorists. In 2002 — just months after terror attacks brought down
the World Trade Centre in New York — this group released a report
that detailed how terrorists are funded (typically through legal
entities such as charities), how they transfer money and what the
world had to do to shut them down.

Chief among its recommendations was the need for international
co-operation and solid police work.

Canada, rather than being the leader it should have on this front
given its experience with violent attacks from Armenian and Sikh
terrorist groups, continues to be considered the weakest link in the
G7, and has among the poorest records in the developed world.

According to Human Rights Watch, that record is so bad in large part
because Ottawa and Canadians continue to see these domestic acts of
terror as foreign problems. It was the same mindset that caused former
prime minister Brian Mulroney to send a letter of condolence to India
when Canadians were blown up in the Air India jet off Ireland’s coast.

In his book, Cold Terror, Stewart Bell details how Canada nurtures and
exports terrorism around the world. He notes it continues even after
the World Trade Centre attacks, and Canada’s loud proclamations of
participating in the “war on terror.” Bell suggests Canada has the
law-enforcement and security forces to help shut down these links,
but lacks the political will.

In the wake of his highly successful trip to visit front-line troops
battling the spread of terrorism in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Stephen
Harper should use the Human Rights Watch report as incentive finally
to shut down at least this wing of the war on our own turf.

As Air India should have taught us, the status quo is not an option.