The war at home: the 2009 Toronto Tamil demonstrations

Abstract

At their peak, demonstrations in 2009 organized by the city of Toronto's Tamil community reached over 45,000 demonstrators, representing fully one quarter of the city's Tamil diaspora population. This paper analyzes protests conducted by the Canadian Tamil community in the cities of Toronto and Ottawa during the winter and spring of 2009, in response to the accelerated conflict situation in Sri Lanka. A comparative approach is used to qualitatively measure the degree of political influence that the Canadian Tamil community has acquired since their arrival in Canada. The paper then uses existing protest analysis methodologies to analyze the months-long protests, together with the context provided in the first section. The paper concludes by arguing that the protests were successful in influencing Canada's foreign policy process, but ultimately failed to compel the Government of Canada to meet all protest demands.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank all those who contributed to the substance of this paper and, in particular, Dr. Phil Triadafilopoulos and Dr. Val Marie Johnson for their support and effort.

Notes

See Cheran and Vimalarajah (2010) for a detailed discussion of the complexities of the term “diaspora”, which has been understood by some in the Tamil community as having an intentionally detrimental application through purposely severing their community abroad from Tamils in Sri Lanka. No such connotation is intended here.

Statistics Canada 2006 census data, as presented by the City of Toronto's Neighborhood maps reveals a very large proportion of Tamil community members in many north-eastern Toronto neighborhoods. When overlayed with federal electoral riding boundaries, Scarborough-Agincourt, Scarborough-Rouge River, Scarborough East, Scarborough Centre and Scarborough Southwest all contain neighborhoods largely dominated by the Tamil community. All of these ridings had been held by members of the Liberal Party for at least the last two elections prior to the 2008 election. See www.toronto.ca for boundaries and neighborhood statistics.

The 2 May 2011 Canadian federal election dramatically altered Canada's political landscape and included a loss for the Liberal Party of three ridings in Toronto's Scarborough region; two were won by the NDP and one by the governing Conservative Party (Elections Canada 2011). While these results are well after the time-period covered by this article, the “loosening up” of the grip of the Liberal Party on these seats has already resulted in more sympathy for Tamil issues on the part of the Conservative Government (Clark 2011), further bolstering the literature on the relationship between political influence and the spatial concentration of diasporas.

While protest messaging was directed toward the Obama Administration, the analysis of the impact on America's foreign policy is outside the scope of this article.

A 2011Panel of Experts report to the UN Secretary-General confirmed what had been reported during the final stages of the conflict, that indiscriminate, heavy shelling of Tamil civilians in “No-Fire-Zones” was committed by Sri Lankan Army soldiers. The report also confirmed the use of civilians and civilian infrastructure as human shields by the LTTE, and included the widespread use of women and children. Sexual violence was committed against women by both sides. If proven, these allegations would constitute War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.

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Matthew Godwin

Matthew Godwin holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from Dalhousie University and a Masters of Public Policy from the University of Toronto, School of Public Policy and Governance. University of Toronto, School of Public Policy and Governance, 666 Spadina Ave., PH6, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2H8, Canada.