Thoughts from London

Western promises, promises: That’s all you get
Raise the flags, bring out the bands, sound the bugles. Canada has outlawed the LTTE. Wait a minute. Don’t gloat. Before you engage in premature celebrations hailing this as a signal triumph of Sri Lankan diplomacy and a victory for the forces of good, it might be useful to pause for a moment.

Before the moral intoxication of the moment overpowers the political establishment at home and the diplomatic panjandrums that inhabit the Foreign Ministry and our missions, it would be sobering to ponder what all this means in the real world and specifically to our corner of the globe.
If Canada was true to its professed claim to fight international terrorism - particularly after it too was shocked out of slumber by the horror of 9/11 almost on its doorstep - it should have banned the LTTE earlier.

But Prime Minister Paul Martin’s government led by the Liberal Party that appeared beholden to the Tamil votes in major cities such as Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver for their seats, placed self before nation and refused to act against the LTTE despite the mounting evidence of Tiger involvement in criminal activities.

This was not crime for crime’s sake. They had a politico-military objective - the strengthening of the LTTE’s political apparatus and war machine, at home and abroad.

While mouthing pious platitudes about fighting international terrorism, the Paul Martin government permitted, with an air of casualness, the blossoming of a terrorist network within its own borders, against the advice of Canadian security services, senior politicians, think tanks, security experts and leading media.

So the ban on the LTTE announced last week is what students of Latin would call nunc pro tunc, a ban that comes long after it should have.
Now that it has, the decision of the new Canadian Government is being hailed as a major victory.

It is, to an extent. Another country has added the LTTE to the list of foreign terrorist organisations and so alerted the world to the LTTE’s real nature. The question however, is this. If one’s intention is to eliminate a dangerous enemy, say a poisonous viper, one could hardly neutralise it by chopping off the end of its tail. If one were serious about eliminating the threat efficaciously one should chop off its head, source of the threat.
There is an important matter here. This ban applies only to the LTTE and not its front organisations and therein lies the major shortcoming in the Canadian government’s seeming anti-terrorist action.

Canada, which is home to the largest number of Sri Lankan Tamils outside their country of origin, has been a principal source of funds for the LTTE.
The number varies, but some estimates say that there are around 225,000 Tamils in Canada that had opened its doors to immigrants and asylum seekers more liberally than most other countries.

But that Canadian hospitality has been exploited. It is well known among observers that organisations such as the LTTE realised early enough the intrinsic value of multiplying the number of Tamil migrants and refugees in Canada, not to mention elsewhere in the West.

Several studies conducted by Canadian organisations and other institutes show that the LTTE was engaged in human smuggling so that it could get more Tamils into Western countries.

This served two purposes. Human smuggling became a profitable enterprise as its agents were able to charge prohibitive prices to get desperate Tamils into the West.

More importantly, many of these Tamils became subsequent victims of the LTTE, compelled to pay regular sums into Tiger coffers. It is the funds donated, coerced or extracted from the Tamil diaspora that has kept the wheels of Tiger finance turning.

It is estimated that the LTTE received around $10 million a year from fund raising in Canada alone. Attention needs to be drawn to the eyewash that Canada, like the UK, has engaged in over the LTTE ban.

One does not have to be an expert in counter-terrorism to know that funds for the LTTE are collected mostly through front organisations that label themselves charities or cultural/religious organisations.

About six years ago, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) named eight non-profit organisations operating in Canada as LTTE fronts.
CSIS said: “Most funds raised under the banner of humanitarian organisations in Canada such as the TRO are channelled instead to fund the LTTE war effort.”

Earlier, the US State Department had identified several Tamil organisations such as the World Tamil Movement, World Tamil Association, the Federation of Associations of Canadian Tamils and others as LTTE front organisations.

The prestigious London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) also named some of these organisations as LTTE fronts. Some of them operate in Canada and raise funds for the LTTE war effort by means fair and foul. The Canadian authorities have been aware of all this for several years.

Why then haven’t the Canadians tried to throttle one of the main sources of financing to an organisation that it has now named a terrorist group?
Canada participated at the Commonwealth Finance Ministers’ Conference about three years ago at which major decisions were made about money laundering for terrorist and other criminal activities and the need for inter-governmental cooperation.Canada is also a signatory to a UN Convention on combating funding for terrorist organisations.

If Ottawa considers the LTTE a terrorist organisation then surely it is incumbent on Canada to help cut off the sources of funds to such an organisation.

In fact, Canada’s move is as empty of real meaning as the promises held out by the British Government to curb LTTE fund raising here. Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera and his diplomatic baggage handlers might be enthralled by the promise made last month by the Home Office Minister Tim McNaulty that the UK would help curb LTTE fund raising here.

But most concerned people here know that this is a joke because the British Government has done precious little to honour its promises.
Even some of the funds belonging to the TRO when it was delisted as a charity last year was handed over to a newly formed organisation one of whose trustees was earlier a trustee of TRO.

For years - and even after Britain listed the LTTE as a terrorist organization - fund raising has been going on openly, sometimes by LTTE collectors and sometimes through front organisations that hold cultural and religious events as a cover, Sri Lankan Tamils say.

On occasions the Metropolitan Police, apparently forewarned about such events, have looked on while fund raising went on publicly. The police have an excuse. They say the Home Office has not made a policy decision on what to do in such situations although the UK’s Terrorism Act is very clear on what the police could do.

Australia serves as a marked contrast to UK and now Canada. Canberra has cracked down recently on what they suspected to be Tiger front organisations and even named organisations and individuals. But London, and now Ottawa seem to find solace in the path of least resistance. Our rather tepid and tame diplomatic approaches are partly to blame for this. Our political and diplomatic efforts are concentrated on a few capitals and often without much success.

When the EU placed restrictions on the LTTE during the UK’s presidency of the union it was believed that historical ties and perhaps some bowing and scraping to our former masters had helped.

But when the presidency changed hands and the pressure on the EU should have continued to make maximum use of worsening LTTE violence in Sri Lanka, our Foreign Ministry mandarins seem to be avoiding visiting Vienna. Maybe they are still learning to grapple with the intricacies of the Viennese waltz.

Back to Columns