Latest news with #TamilTigers
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Asylum seeker 'who recruited child soldiers' wins appeal to stay in Britain despite being refused refugee status in France because he's an alleged war criminal
An asylum seeker who allegedly recruited child soldiers has won an appeal to stay in Britain. The Sri Lankan, who remains unnamed after he was granted anonymity by the Upper Tribunal of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber, faces claims he 'enlisted children under the age of 15' to separatist terrorist group Tamil Tigers. The tribunal also heard he was working for the Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation [TRO] - a refugee charity - but was secretly supplying information. The French Justice system previously ruled he should be denied asylum due to allegations that he was a war criminal. And the Home Office agreed, refusing the man refugee status and attempting to deport him. He then won an appeal against the decision in 2023, with a judge citing a lack of evidence to support the accusations. The Home Office has now lost an appeal of their own, meaning the asylum seeker can remain in the country. British judges stuck with the ruling two years ago and said there is not enough evidence to say the allegations are true. The Home Office's original case referred to the French asylum court's verdict that he 'ought to be excluded from a grant of asylum under Article 1F of the Refugee Convention due to his alleged involvement in war crimes in this case the alleged recruitment of children'. But a judge found that the government department 'had not shown serious grounds for concluding that [the Sri Lankan] was guilty of the war crime of conscription or enlistment of children under the age of 15 or using them to participate actively in hostilities'. The judge added: 'I am not satisfied even on the evidence of his own admissions, accurate or otherwise, to the French that this goes far enough to show that the [Sri Lankan] was effectively collecting information which he knew was going to be misused, and misused specifically for the recruitment of child soldiers under the age of 15. 'Nor am I satisfied that there are serious reasons for considering on all the evidence adduced that the [Respondent] has been shown to have knowingly materially assisted in the recruitment of child soldiers under the age of 15, by the work done by the T.R.O. in gathering information, possibly subsequently used by the L.T.T.E. for that purpose.' Home Office lawyers argued at the appeal in London that the judge had not attached enough wait to the French court's decision. But, Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge Adrian Seelhoff disagreed, saying: 'The Judge assessed that evidence to see if it supported the [Home Office's] case that [the Sri Lankan], whilst working for the TRO, supplied details which the LTTE used to recruit child soldiers. '[The Home Office's] position before us was not that the Judge was bound to follow the French Court decision, but that he had not given adequate reasons for reaching a different decision or that he failed to attach weight to the decision. 'We find that the Judge did give adequate reasons for not following that decision, and for the weight he attached to it and that accordingly there is no error of law in the decision under appeal.
Global News
4 days ago
- Politics
- Global News
Public safety minister asks officials to ‘screen' him from conflict of interest
Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree has stepped back from national security decisions related to the 'Tamil community,' he has acknowledged in a statement to Global News. The announcement from the minister leading the government's initiative to secure Canada's borders amidst U.S. pressure gave little detail on what he has deemed off limits or why. But it came after Global News asked questions about his past actions and statements, some of which could put him at odds with the work of the border and national security agencies he now oversees. The statement sent by the minister's office late Thursday said Anandasangaree and his family were Tamil-Canadians, and he had been a lifelong advocate for that community. 'In an abundance of caution, and to ensure that there is no perception of any conflict, I have asked Public Safety officials to implement a screen on any national security issues relating to the Tamil community,' the minister said. Story continues below advertisement 'In all national security decisions, my upmost concern is the safety of Canadians. I will support law enforcement and national security agencies who do their work impartially, and effectively,' he said. A conflict of interest screen is a preventive compliance measure mutually agreed upon by a politician and the Ethics Commissioner. It aims to help MPs avoid conflicts of interest. It consists of a statement in which an elected official agrees 'to abstain from any discussions, decisions, debate or votes concerning the matter that forms the subject of the conflict of interest,' according to the Commissioner's website. 'A screen also seeks to minimize the possibility of conflicts arising between the public duties of the public office holder and their private interests or those of their relatives and friends.' But it likely means the minister will have no say in what has been a key area for the national security agencies in his portfolio. Anandasangaree came to Canada from Sri Lanka in 1983 and was a Tamil community activist, realtor and lawyer before becoming a Liberal MP in Scarborough, Ont. in 2015. His father, from whom he is estranged, was the leader of a Tamil political party in Sri Lanka, where a civil war between Tamil Tigers separatist rebels and government forces erupted in 1983. Story continues below advertisement After the war ended in 2009, Anandasangaree helped hundreds of Sri Lankan migrants who had paid human smugglers to ferry them to Canada's West Coast on board the ships MV Ocean Lady and MV Sun Sea. When the Sun Sea was heading for Canadian waters, he 'supervised the preparation of an injunction in the event Canada blocked the entry' of the ship, according to his LinkedIn page. Get daily National news Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day. Sign up for daily National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy The Associated Press reported that he said those on board would have legitimate refugee claims even if some were members of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers rebel group. He and his wife have also been critical of Canada's national security agencies, particularly when it comes to their handling of issues related to Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka. As an MP in 2020, Anandasangaree accused the Canada Border Services Agency and RCMP of 'intimidation and constant harassment' of the Sun Sea migrants. Both agencies now report to him. 2:03 Carney, Trump in direct trade and security talks With President Donald Trump waging a trade war he has justified partly over concerns about border security, Prime Minister Mark Carney has tasked Anandasangaree with hardening Canada's frontiers. Story continues below advertisement On June 3, Anandasangaree announced new legislation to 'strengthen border and immigration security' and 'combat illegal migration,' partly through expanded maritime patrols. Asked by Global News about his credibility to secure the borders given his past work with the passengers of the human smuggling ships, he responded that he had a history of 'supporting and working' with refugees. 'So I do believe I have the credibility to talk about issues at our border, those who come to Canada by irregular means,' he said at a news conference in Ottawa on Tuesday. 'There is a moment in history right now where we have the opportunity to respond to some of the concerns that exist with Canada, but also with the United States, and those are the steps that we're taking today.' But former CBSA officer Kelly Sundberg questioned whether the minister was the right person to lead a crackdown on those who flout Canada's borders. At a time Canada needs to reassure the Trump administration it is serious about border security, Anandasangaree's past could become an issue, he said. Sundberg said he was concerned the U.S. could interpret Carney's pick of public safety minister as a sign his government isn't really serious about the border. 'It's just the wrong guy to do it,' said Sundberg, a criminology professor at Calgary's Mount Royal University. 'Read the room.' Story continues below advertisement Many activists and lawyers help those seeking refuge in Canada. Anandasangaree is now minister of the agencies responsible for screening migrants like those he once advocated for, and deporting those who are rejected. Sri Lanka also remains a recurring topic for the national security agencies charged with ensuring that those seeking to live in Canada are not security risks or members of terrorist groups. The minister is additionally responsible for Canada's list of terrorist entities, which currently includes the Tamil Tigers, also known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE. Also on the list is the World Tamil Movement, the Toronto-based front organization that raised millions for the LTTE, partly through intimidation and extortion of Canadian Tamils. But in 2000, Toronto Now quoted Anandasangaree saying that the harassment was overblown. 'The real issue is the media attack on the community,' he reportedly said. In his statement to Global News, Anandasangaree said that during his decade as an MP he had never asked agencies to remove any groups from the terrorist list. 'Canadians have confidence in their national security agencies, and as minister of public safety I will preserve and protect that confidence,' he said. 0:35 New border bill has elements 'that will strengthen' Canada-U.S. relationship: Anandasangaree According to his LinkedIn, when the human smuggling vessel MV Ocean Lady reached the B.C. coast in 2009, Anandasangaree met with 74 of the 76 migrants on board and coordinated their release from detention. Story continues below advertisement The following year, he flew to B.C. when the MV Sun Sea arrived and was the 'first lawyer permitted to individually advise most of the 492 arrivals,' his LinkedIn page indicates. He was the 'principal coordinator for a global community response to the arrival' of the refugee claimants, and intervened in cases that 'had broader social concerns.' The ships sailed from Thailand but those on board were originally from Sri Lanka, and the incident raised national security concerns for Canada due to fears that LTTE members fleeing the aftermath of the war could be on board. A handful of them were linked to the LTTE by Canadian immigration officials and the RCMP, but many were civilians and children. His LinkedIn page also says he is married to Harini Sivalingam, an activist and lawyer who has written critically about the arrival of the ships in 'white settler society,' as well as the government's decision to outlaw the LTTE and its primary fundraising front office. 'I am proud of Harini's work to defend and protect rights and freedoms for marginalized and vulnerable communities in Canada and abroad,' the minister said in a statement to Global News.
The Guardian
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Paris-based thriller offers fresh inside take on French-Tamil community
It has been hailed as one of the most innovative and surprising French gangster films this year: a suspense movie that tears through Paris's Tamil neighbourhood. The police thriller Little Jaffna, which opened in France this week, is set in the French capital's Tamil community, which has rarely been represented on screen – and never in an action film by a French actor, writer and director of Tamil heritage giving his inside take on the legacy of Sri Lanka's bloody ethnic conflict for younger generations living far away in Europe. Lawrence Valin, 35, who was born in the Greater Paris area to Tamil parents, wrote, directed and starred in his own film after feeling exasperated at never being offered leading roles in France and instead being cast in bit parts as a mystic or rose-seller and asked to put on a fake Indian accent. 'In France, the image we have of a French-Tamil person is a migrant – I wanted to change that, have a new representation, to show new role models,' Valin told Arte TV. Little Jaffna, which won this year's top jury prize and the audience award at France's major thriller festival, Reims Polar, is set among the many Tamil restaurants and boutiques in the area between Paris's Gare du Nord station and La Chapelle, known as Little Jaffna after the capital of the Tamil-majority Northern Province in Sri Lanka. Michael, a French police officer of Tamil heritage, played by Valin, is tasked with infiltrating a gang involved in people-smuggling and racketeering that channels funds to the separatist militant group known as the Tamil Tigers. The film is shot in Tamil and French on the streets of Paris. TV screens in living rooms and cafes show a backdrop of Sri Lanka's 26-year brutal and bloody ethnic conflict in which least 100,000 people were killed. The conflict officially ended in 2009, but its complex legacy remains. The film, a colourful exploration of Paris's Little Jaffna and a comment on civil war, is ultimately about the complexities of French identity and how younger generations deal with a conflict far away. The French culture magazine Telerama called it a mix of 'highly stylised action and geopolitical immersion'. The last major feature film centred on Tamils in France was a decade ago when the French director Jacques Audiard – who made the recent trans Mexican cartel musical, Emilia Pérez – won the Cannes film festival Palme d'Or for Dheepan, about three Tamil refugees on a housing estate outside Paris. Audiard said at the time that he wanted to show characters radically different from his own experience. This time, Valin wanted to show the Tamil community in Paris from the inside. He chose the thriller format because he wanted to find a gripping way to introduce French cinemagoers to the Sri Lankan conflict, he said. But he has acknowledged that a violent police drama was far from a portrayal of all Tamils in Paris. 'I thought that a thriller, an action film, suspense – all those universal codes of cinema we know – is what would bring people in to watch the film,' Valin said. 'They'll come to see it saying that above all it's a good thriller. Then, as a kind of doggy bag, I send them home [with an insight into] the Sri Lankan conflict, and this community. For me it's a way to open doors. I've made a first film, and that now allows a generation of younger film-makers to make their own films, saying: 'If he did it, I can too.''
The Independent
04-04-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Sri Lanka's target to be free of land mines by 2028 is under threat as US reviews aid
Thavarathnam Pushparani fought on the front lines for the now-defeated Tamil Tiger rebels against the Sri Lankan forces in its decadeslong separatist war and later took to clearing the land mines on the same battle lines. But the Trump administration's suspension of aid threatens Sri Lanka's demining operations, pushing the livelihoods of thousands like Pushparani into uncertainty. What is more uncertain for Sri Lanka now is its obligation to rid the island nation of mines by 2028 under the Ottawa Treaty, which it ratified in 2017. Pushparani has experienced the civil war in its full fury. In her family, her husband, father and two brothers died fighting for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, as the rebel group was formally known. Two other siblings are missing. She was born in eastern Sri Lanka and while still in school, her family had to move to the northern parts of the nation after a countrywide ethnic pogrom against minority Tamils by majority Sinhala mobs in 1983. The incident stirred up emotions among many Tamil youth who joined militant organizations to fight for an independent state for the Tamils. Pushparani too joined the Tamil Tigers while still a teenager in school. 'Because the whole of my family was with the organization they arranged my marriage. My eldest daughter was born in 1990 and the younger one was born in 1992. My husband died in battle in 1996 and my children were raised in the "Sencholai" home, run by the organization," said Pushparani. She was reunited with her children when the fighting ended in 2009 and started working with demining groups for a living. Funds pending review Demining operations in Sri Lanka started in 2002 during a ceasefire period and the U.S. has been the major donor among 11 countries supporting the effort, contributing about 34% of the $250 million grants received for the projects so far. The U.S. contribution was 45% of the grants received last year, according to M.M Nayeemudeen, director of the state-run National Mine Action Center. Thanks to the international generosity, the demining operations continue to date despite being interrupted for a few years because of the break down of the ceasefire. They have so far managed to clear more than 2.5 million anti-personnel, anti-tank, small arms ammunition and unexploded ordnance. Out of 254 square kilometers of land that originally needed to be cleared, only about 23 square kilometers are left to deal with. Whether that can be achieved by the 2028 deadline will depend on continued funding. Nayeemudeen said once the aid suspension was announced, Sri Lanka's foreign ministry appealed and the U.S allowed the usage of its allocated funds pending a review, a decision on which is expected on May 1. 'We hope that on completion of the 90-day review period that commenced from Jan. 24, 2025, the U.S government funding assistance will continue," said Ananda Chandrasiri head of Delvon Assistance for Social Harmony, one of the four demining groups operating in the country. "Otherwise it will create a grave problem for Sri Lanka to achieve mine-free status by the end of 2027 as targeted ... A huge reduction of staffing levels of the four operators would be inevitable.' 'It looked like perfumed powder' There are around 3,000 workers, most of them recruited from among the civil war-affected communities. With the uncertainty, some groups have already started terminating their staff, Nayeemudeen said. Sri Lanka's civil war ended in 2009 when government troops crushed the Tamil Tiger rebels, ending their quarter-century separatist campaign. According to conservative U.N. estimates, about 100,000 people were killed in the conflict. Civilian properties were demined, but large areas were still contaminated when hundreds of thousands of civilians who were displaced by the conflict came back to resettle. Mine awareness campaigns were held, but there were many accidents. Kumarakulasingham Dinojan has lost his left hand below his wrist and has damaged fingers in his right hand from a mine blast. As a 9-year-old boy, he tried to open a metal container that he found in the woods. His brother, who was playing with him, also suffered wounds. 'My grandmother went into the woods to get firewood and we also followed her. We did not know that she had reached home through another way. We found a container which looked like a perfumed powder, and when we tried to open it, it exploded,' said Dinojan. There were people who were injured or killed trying to open mines and use the explosives for fishing. Vidya Abhayagunawardena, coordinator of the Sri Lanka Campaign to Ban Land Mines, said it's critical for Sri Lanka to ratify Protocol V on Explosive Remnants of War. He also called for the enactment of domestic legislation to enforce the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, ratified in 2016, to bolster the legal rights of the country's disabled population. Dinojan's older brother, Vilvaraj Vinothan, said his brothers becoming land mine victims made him take action and become involved in mine clearance. He has worked with the Mine Advisory Group for six years. 'Only when the land was being cleared that I understood how we should deal with the mines," he said. "That's when I decided to help, knowing it would benefit the entire community." Pushparani is grateful that her demining income has allowed her to fulfill her family's needs. She financed one daughter's university education and her marriage. However, she also cares for a daughter injured in crossfire and an elderly mother. 'The reason for my choosing demining for livelihood is not only because of poverty. I also have a desire to see this land to be free of mines,' she said. 'I don't want to see our future generations being injured or affected by war. I can say that I am carrying the burden of both my family and of the country on my shoulders.' ___
