Stopping traffic draws international attention

Tamil protestors in London and Toronto have closed roads and brought traffic to a standstill in their cities, drawing the attention of local media which had been reluctant to cover the carnage in Sri Lanka and the protestors who have been taking to the streets daily.

Traffic in Westminster, in central London, came to a standstill as hundreds of people staged a sit-in around the Houses of Parliament.

Around 500 Tamil supporters calling for a ceasefire in Sri Lanka pushed past police lines in Parliament Square and they took up positions sitting in the middle of the road between the square and Whitehall.

Police diverted traffic and closed the approaches to Parliament Square from Westminster Bridge and Whitehall. The main Carriage Gates entrance to the Houses of Parliament were also closed off.

A total of 36 people were arrested.

Tamil supporters, including several hunger strikers, have been camped in Parliament Square since last month.

The latest protest comes after two days of shelling in Sri Lanka's northern war zone that has left over 1000 civilians dead.

Last week, representatives met Foreign Secretary David Miliband to urge him to do more to end the fighting.

Meanwhile, more than 5,000 Tamil protesters calling for intervention in the Sri Lanka civil war gathered on the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto, Canada, for six hours Sunday night, shutting the vital commuter corridor down.

Organizers agreed to move from the freeway around midnight only after a representative in Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's office promised to bring up the demonstrators' cause in Parliament. But they continued to stay at Queen's Park.

The protesters are demanding international sanctions against the Sri Lankan government until it enters into a ceasefire with Tamil Tigers in the country's north.

In keeping with expectations of the demonstrators, Ignatieff said: "Our Party has raised, and will continue to raise, the plight of the Tamils in Sri Lanka in the House of Commons. We will continue to demand action by the Canadian government to address the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka.

"But the Liberal Party of Canada stands firmly against terrorism, and I restate our unequivocal condemnation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam," the statement continues.

"I urge Canadian Tamils to continue raising this issue publicly, and to give it the attention it deserves. But I implore them to do so legally and safely, by working with their elected representatives and through legal means of protest, and not through demonstrations that put public safety at risk," Ignatieff said.

Toronto police chief Bill Blair said that it was inexcusable and dangerous for Tamil protestors to bring children up on the Gardiner Expressway.

"I think that's quite reprehensible, quite frankly," Blair said. "Having children and elderly people up front in a demonstration like that, I think it creates a very dangerous situation."

At one point last night, out of concern for the children's safety, officers threatened to remove the kids. When asked about the tactic, Blair said: "There was a lot of conversation going on with people in the crowd."

The problem, he continued, is the low railing along the highway and the narrow lanes.

Sitting under a white tent on the lawn of Queen's Park, Gunam Veerakathipillai says he has been on a hunger strike for eight days. The 52-year-old Pickering resident say he won't eat anything until he has a written promise from the federal government that it will intervene to end the carnage in his native Sri Lanka.

"I have lost 18 family members to the Sri Lankan armed forces so I can't live a normal life anymore. Nobody seems to care and that is why I'm taking this very hard decision," said Veerakathipillai, lying on a mattress, his voice cracking. "I'm suffering but my suffering is nothing. My people are suffering a hundred times more than this."

Abee Raveendran, one of several dozen protesters at Queen's Park, drove to Toronto from London this morning at 2 after watching the shutdown of the Gardiner Expressway on the news. The fourth year health sciences student at the University of Western Ontario says she couldn't watch the news coming out of Sri Lanka and not do something.

"For three months we've been doing this and there's been nothing. Yesterday they really had no choice. When people take a stand like that, that's when people take notice."

"No one wants to cause an inconvenience but ... members of the (Tamil) community have seen their blood relatives massacred and killed in the most inhumane ways. If this happens after four months of peaceful protests, what else is there to do? That's a question the protesters are asking," said Senthan Nada, a spokesperson for the Coalition to Stop the War in Sri Lanka.