FRONT PAGE
 NEWS .
 CLASSIFIED .
 DHAMMAWEB .
 SANDUN UYANA .
 ANTENNA .
 EVENTS DIARY .
 LONDON DIARY .
 FEATURES .
 LETTERS .

CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION CANADA STOPS MILLIONS OF STATE MONEY TO TAMIL EELAM SOCIETY OF TORONTO

By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles

Dealing another body blow to the Canadian financial empire of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam , Citizenship and Immigration Canada announced that it would stop paying federal taxpayer money to the Tamil Eelam Society of Canada that has received such funds in millions of Canadian dollars in the past.

The Tamil Eelam Society of Canada, has been receiving federal tax payer money allegedly to provide services for Sri Lankan migrants.

The Tamil Eelam Society of Canada has been recognized as one of the eight non-profit organizations that have served as Canadian fronts for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service , the equivalent of the CIA in that country.

A Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) spokeswoman was quoted by Stewart Bell of the National Post newspaper as saying that the Department had decided not to renew funding agreements with the Tamil Eelam Society of Canada .

Simone MacAndrew , a CIC spokeswoman in Ottawa told Bell, "Basically , our recommendation is not to renew them because they are not meeting our requirements". She would not specify what requirements and contracts she was referring to or their value, the National Post report said.

The Tamil Eelam Society of Canada received about 2 million Canadian Dollars an year from the Immigration Service to provide language and other settlement services to Tamil migrants and the Society leadership has been openly supporting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Sita Sittampalam , the President of the , Tamil Eelam Society of Canada , some months ago told an Australian Television documentary broadcast that they do in fact support the Sri Lankan terrorist group. He said, "We do support the LTTE. We support it as a means of getting our rights and our right to self-determination -we support the LTTE."

The National Post report said that the CIC spokeswoman did not say whether the move was related to the flurry of anti-terrorism methods being introduced since the Sept. 11 attacks. But the funding recommendation must still go before a review panel, she said.

The LTTE was designated a terrorist organization under federal financial regulations on Nov. 7. The National Post said, government officials accuse the Tigers of assassinations, suicide bombings, ethnic cleansing, torture and rape.

The National Post also said that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had claimed in an intelligence reports of theirs that a Tamil Eelam Society leader arranged for a n European LTTE representative - an assassin known as Shukla- to visit Canada in 1998 to broker a peace deal between rival Tamil gangs. According to the intelligence report, The truce quickly collapsed.

The Tamil Eelam Society also happened to be a member of the Federation of Associations Or better known as the FACT which gave a controversial dinner last year to cabinet ministers Paul Martin and Maria Minna. FACT has been long recognized as a front organization of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

The National Post report of Stewart Bell said the FACT president and the Tamil Eelam Society president were until recently the same person.

The report also presented the following facts about its ties with other Sri Lankan separatist organizations:

"The society has ties to other Tamil Canadian groups as well.

"The CSIS report says the society has shared addresses in the past with not only FACT, but also the World Tamil Movement (WTM), which a Federal Court judge has described as the Canadian arm of the Tamil Tigers. It has also shared an address with the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO).

"The TRO and WTM are both considered by CSIS to be actively engaged in fundraising for the Tamil Tigers guerrilla war effort in Sri Lanka. The money they raise in Canada is shipped to the LTTE's chief weapons purchaser in Thailand, CSIS claims.

"The society has been audited several times by Immigration, but no major problems were uncovered. Recently, however, Tamil community members have complained about the group's alleged affiliation with the violent Tamil separatist movement.

"Mr. Sittampalam said yesterday he was not aware of any decision to cut funding."Is that so? I don't know, we have not been contacted yet," he said. "It surprises me because we had discussions with them some time back and they did tell us that one or two classes are being pruned, that's what we were told, but we were not told any more than that."

Copyright © 1997-2001www.lankaweb.Com Newspapers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Reproduction In Whole Or In Part Without Express Permission is Prohibited.