NDP MP commemorates event honouring fallen Tamil Tigers, likens it to Remembrance Day in parliament | National Post
TORONTO — Canada’s public safety minister said Thursday he was “shocked and appalled” after a New Democratic Party MP rose in the House of Commons to commemorate Tamil Heroes Day, which honours fallen Tamil Tigers rebels.
Steven Blaney urged Rathika Sitsabaiesan, a Sri Lankan-born rookie MP, to apologize “to veterans and all Canadians” for her statement that called the day “an important event” and likened it to Remembrance Day.
But photographs of a Heroes Day event held Thursday in Markham, Ont., and posted on the Facebook page of the Tamil Youth Organization-Canada, showed the Tamil Tigers’ militaristic flag and visitors walking past a wall of portraits of men and women in rebel uniforms.
During their three-decade campaign for Tamil independence, the Tigers conducted hundreds of suicide bombings and assassinated moderate Tamil leaders as well as Rajiv Gandhi, the former Indian prime minister. They were crushed by Sri Lankan forces in 2009.
The Tigers have been a designated terrorist group under Canadian law since 2006, when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police dismantled the group’s branch offices in Toronto and Montreal, which had raised millions to support the conflict. A half-dozen Toronto-area men were convicted of supplying arms and equipment to the rebels.
Since the fighting ended five years ago, Heroes Day has become, for some, a day to reflect on the toll of the brutal civil war, which not only decimated the Tigers but also killed an untold number of civilians. But on his website, Sri Lanka-Canadian journalist D.B.S. Jeyaraj wrote Heroes Day “is not and has never been a national day of Tamil mourning.” Rather, it was “an intensely conducted partisan event ‘of the Tigers, for the Tigers and by the Tigers.’ ”
TORONTO — Canada’s public safety minister said Thursday he was “shocked and appalled” after a New Democratic Party MP rose in the House of Commons to commemorate Tamil Heroes Day, which honours fallen Tamil Tigers rebels.
Steven Blaney urged Rathika Sitsabaiesan, a Sri Lankan-born rookie MP, to apologize “to veterans and all Canadians” for her statement that called the day “an important event” and likened it to Remembrance Day.
But photographs of a Heroes Day event held Thursday in Markham, Ont., and posted on the Facebook page of the Tamil Youth Organization-Canada, showed the Tamil Tigers’ militaristic flag and visitors walking past a wall of portraits of men and women in rebel uniforms.
During their three-decade campaign for Tamil independence, the Tigers conducted hundreds of suicide bombings and assassinated moderate Tamil leaders as well as Rajiv Gandhi, the former Indian prime minister. They were crushed by Sri Lankan forces in 2009.
The Tigers have been a designated terrorist group under Canadian law since 2006, when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police dismantled the group’s branch offices in Toronto and Montreal, which had raised millions to support the conflict. A half-dozen Toronto-area men were convicted of supplying arms and equipment to the rebels.
Since the fighting ended five years ago, Heroes Day has become, for some, a day to reflect on the toll of the brutal civil war, which not only decimated the Tigers but also killed an untold number of civilians. But on his website, Sri Lanka-Canadian journalist D.B.S. Jeyaraj wrote Heroes Day “is not and has never been a national day of Tamil mourning.” Rather, it was “an intensely conducted partisan event ‘of the Tigers, for the Tigers and by the Tigers.’ ”
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