Perth Tamils join Australians protesting amidst attempts to bail out genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 October 2011, 22:57 GMT]
While Her Majesty the Queen was inaugurating the Commonwealth sessions in Perth, Australia, a few hundreds meters away, hundreds of Tamils have joined over a thousand of 20 diverse groups of the mainstream population of Perth to protest against Mahinda Rajapaksa attending the Commonwealth Sessions. The protest of the diaspora Eezham Tamils and global civil society took place while some Establishments guilty of abetting the crimes are keen in bailing out genocidal Sri Lanka by diplomatic manoeuvres in Perth and by hijacking the polity of Eezham Tamils elsewhere by simulating that everything is coming to normalcy and is under ‘control’. The outcome of Perth Meet will show to what extent the Commonwealth boasting of its origins from the ‘cradle of democracy’ could prove its effectiveness in checking States globally turning into anti-people Establishments, commented political observers.

While the diverse groups had their separate calls for issues ranging from Aboriginal Rights and Refugee Rights to Climate change and renewable energy, they all vociferously joined the Tamils when the Tamils demanded to suspend Sri Lanka from the Commonwealth, to stop the Genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka, to Recognize the Independence of Tamils, to arrest the War Criminal Mahinda Rajapakse and similar slogans.

After the initial separate gatherings of the various groups with their demands by voice and by holding banners and placards for about half an hour, then the representatives of the different groups addressed the combined gathering of over 1000 peoples. Ajanthy spoke on behalf of the Tamil community and Yogan of his personal experience of the War.

Ajanthy said the Commonwealth “does have teeth,” which had been used to suspend four member nations – Nigeria, Fiji, Pakistan and Zimbabwe.

“The crimes committed in Sri Lanka are far more serious and much larger in scale than those attributed to the four members who faced suspension,” she said.

Referring to the civil war, which led to the death of nearly 500,000 and displacement if around one million people, she added: “We need Australians to support suspension of Sri Lanka from the Commonwealth, we need to stop the genocide of Tamils and support the independents of Tamils.”

Yogan said Rajapaksa had been given a “red carpet welcome” to CHOGM, but he was a war criminal who should be arrested.

“His place is not in the parliament, it’s behind the barb wire. Please Australia, put him into jail, don’t send him back home,” he shouted to the crowd, the Herald Sun reports.

Yogan, standing in front of a grisly banner showing dead and mutilated Tamil children, said he had lost 79 family members in the Sri Lankan civil war.

The Socialist Alliance convener of the CHOGM Action Network of the 20 groups, in a statement issued for the occasion stated that it recognizes that Tamils are an oppressed Nation within Sri Lanka, and supports their Right of Self determination.

While a consensus of mutual solidarity was developing in the commonwealth of Peoples, the Commonwealth of Heads of State were reported to be n a disarray over the Eminent Peoples Group Report.

The main proposal of the Report for a Commonwealth Commissioner of Human Rights is not likely to be accepted apparently at the insistence of the Indian Delegation. Probably that was a ‘motherly’ protection to Mahinda.

But former Justice Honourable Michael Kirby, a member of the Eminent Peoples Group is reported to have said that the non acceptance of the recommendation would make the Commonwealth irrelevant.