Student banned from representing Tamil culture at multicultural assembly
Posted on May 11th, 2016
BY DALE CARRUTHERS, THE LONDON FREE PRESS Courtesy Toronto Sun
LONDON, Ont. — A student in London, Ont. is crying foul after his high school barred him from carrying a controversial flag at a multicultural assembly.
Kumar Makandu, a Grade 12 student at Central secondary school, had carried a Tamil flag at the annual assembly for the past two years but was told by administration leading up to the event on Friday that he couldn’t showcase the flag.
For Tamils, an ethnic group living primarily in northeast Sri Lanka, the flag is a national symbol representing the movement to create an independent state. It depicts a tiger jumping through a circle of bullets — though Makandu says it’s the sun — with two crossed bayonets.
Central principal Jim Robertson decided only the flags from internationally recognized countries would be included in the assembly after a student last year mistakenly thought the Tamil flag was connected to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a militant group that fought the Sri Lankan military in a bloody civil war from 1983 to 2009. The group was added to Canada’s official list of terrorist organizations in 2006.
We’re not trying to get into the politics of aspirational governments,” Robertson said. I don’t want students to feel threatened.”
But Makandu said there’s no connection between the Tamil flag to the Liberation Tigers, an organization the Canadian government put on its terrorism list in 2006.
If I can’t even bring my flag up, how can I share my culture?” said Makandu, adding he spoke to many of his fellow students prior to the assembly and they told him they had no problem with him carrying the flag.
Makandu showed up for the assembly wearing a shirt depicting the Tamil flag, but a teacher promptly asked him to take it off.
He did so, not wanting to create trouble, and walked under the Sri Lankan flag at the assembly.
It’s pretty upsetting that I can’t represent my culture in a multicultural country like Canada where we embrace other cultures,” he said.
May 11th, 2016 at 2:41 am
Ungrateful foreigners in Sri Lanka.
Colombo is theirs. They can live anywhere in the country, but Sinhalese in their own country, not supposed
to live or buy land in the north and east.
Tamils in jaffna brought there by the dutch to work in tobacco plantations.
Tamils in upcountry were brought by the british to work in tea plantations.
The rest are kallathonis who swam to safety in the 60s to save their lives from the severe famine
in tn.
If you had kingdoms, where are the remains of those? Can you find a tamil brick older than 400 years?
Oldest building in jaffna is the dutch fort. These so called kingdoms exist in www. and books only. If these traitor
foreigners go to Anuradhapura or Polonnaruwa you can see how old kingdoms look like.
Free education, free hospitals. While enjoying all the benefits, even more than the native Sinhalese,
the ungrateful foreigners have only one thing for the country and the Sinhalese. Hatred. Look at the face of
this traitor. Hatred all over written his face. Just like the tiger in sheep’s clothing r sampanthan. Always seething
with hatred. Mother Lanka is very very unfortunate to have traitors like these who have not an iota of gratitude
to the country they were born while sucking all the blood from the country.
Never happy
Never enough
Never grateful.
Why don’t you leave for where your heart is? Tn.
Even in tn they don’t get this much facilities. Still not happy. Traitors can study in Galle to be a doctor/engineer etc.
ALL FREE. Then after graduating you can even contribute to terrorists to kill the Sinhalese. Where else in the
world you get these sort of benefits you traitors? These traitors are nothing but a cancer to any society!
May 11th, 2016 at 10:13 pm
FOR THE INFORMATION OF WRITER DALE CARRUTHERS:
Tamils ARE NOT “an ethnic group living primarily in northeast Sri Lanka”- they are an ethnic group primarily native to the Tamil Nadu province of INDIA. They are aliens in Sri Lanka- and they behave like aliens in Sri Lanka. There are 78m Tamils in Tamil nadu and only 2m in Sri Lanka.
Also, there is no province called the ‘Northeast” province in Sri Lanka. There is the North and there is the East- totally separate provinces – both, parts of Sri Lanka where the primary inhabitants are Sinhala.
May 11th, 2016 at 11:05 pm
Bravo, Ramanie!
Precise and to the Point!
May 12th, 2016 at 8:43 pm
The Tamils and their Victim Mentality will never go away. There is no Tamil flag in Sri Lanka. Perhaps, in Tamil Nadu but not in Sri Lanka. Correct me if I am wrong.