EU Bans Tamil Tigers

A month after Canada added the Tamil Tigers to a list of terrorist organizations, the EU has banned the terror group, an action that will allow them to freeze Tamil Tiger assets in Europe. Britain,the U.S., India, and Australia already list the Tamil Tigers as terrorists.

This can't please Bill Clinton. You might remember that when the tsuami aid was distributed in Sri Lanka, Bill Clinton insisted that Sri Lanka share aid money with the Tamil Tigers, an action that renewed the war of terrorism that has killed 60,000 since 1972. Shortly after funding them with relief money, the Tamil Tigers engaged in two high profile political assassinations. Despite that, the EU has pretended that they are engaging in a "ceasefire". It's been a remarkably unsuccessful ceasefire. Two hundred have died alone in the last month since Norway has been interceding for them, ostensibly in an attempt to broker a "peace." (Translation: Buy time while they re-arm and re-equip, raise funds, and forceably conscript more child soldiers.)

The New York Times (via their wholly-owned, Paris-based International Herald) cynically noted that this could be "a major political setback for the guerrillas that could reduce their ability to openly raise funds among Tamils living in Europe." This is disingenuous because there is ample evidence that the Tamil Tigers don't solicit money but extort it from Tamil communities, a fact the leftwing Human Rights Watch has extensively documented in a 45-page report.

Rarely does any media outlet refer to the Tamil Tigers as terrorists as this CBC indepth report does. The story of the EU decision was headlined as "EU says Tamil Tigers 'terrorists'" by the BBC, who went on to note that the group used the peace talks as an opportunity to raise funds in Europe, something already widely known. Their clueless correspondents, however, state that Europe's Tamil diaspora is a valuable source of funds for the Tigers without any mention that much of it is involuntary and extorted through death threats, intimidation or other means. And the BBC minimizes the recent deaths by reducing the time frame to a few weeks.

Canada, however, has one of the largest Tamil populations and the Canadian intelligence service has warned that terrorists in Canada are a huge problem.   For years Toronto has seen deadly street fighting between rival Tamil gangs.

This is one of the reasons Canada banned them from fundraising and placed them on the terrorist list. But mostly, it was the change of government when the Liberals lost power. It was something the Tories had promised to do even before the election.   Of course, few media recall that former prime minister Paul Martin attended fundraisers organized by Tamil Tiger groups when running for office. Nor do they recall Bill Clinton's role in resupplying the terrorist group in the aftermath of the tsunami. Nor does the media seem inclined to follow up on the aid money that has apparently never gotten to Sri Lanka from a Canadian charity started by guess who? Maurice Strong of the U.N. Food for Oil program.

What a surprise.