Exercising their right of free expression, 67 registered social welfare organisations of diaspora Tamils in France, took a pioneering democratic step of secret ballot on Saturday, 18 April, and unanimously declared support to the independence war of Eelam Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka, said Ki Pi Aravinthan in Paris to TamilNet.

The Paris declaration read that in supporting the cause of Eelam Tamils, it has infallibly adopted the will and spirit of the Vaddukkoaddai Declaration of 1976 that was overwhelmingly mandated by Tamil voters in 1977, and was in line with the ideology behind the declaration of American independence, the Republic of France in 1789 and the UN human rights declaration of 1948.

Two representatives from each of the organisations participated in the deliberations. Each organisation had a single vote.

The secret voting was presided over, counted and declared by three local government dignitaries, Mr. Serge Setterahmane, Adjoint au Maire (Deputy Mayor), Clichy la Garenne, Mme. Mireille Gitton, Adjoint au Maire (Deputy Mayor), Clichy la Garenne and Mr. David Fabre, Conseiller, Savigny sur Orge.

Mr David Joseph of British Tamil Forum and Edward Sebastiampillai, a former Member of Parliament of Sri Lanka were special observers for the occasion.

The results of the deliberations and the declaration will be sent to the President of France and to the ministries of foreign affairs and home affairs, the organizers said.

Talking on the significance of the mandate and the declaration, Mr. Aravinthan said that it democratically marks the phase of a new synthesis of components of the independence war: the will of the concerned people, the will of their diaspora and the armed struggle ensuing as a consequence of failure of all other means.

The Eelam Tamil diaspora rightfully has a say in this matter, as they are largely people who were forced to leave due to events followed the Tamil-rejected constitution of 1972 and the Tamil mandate for self-determination in 1977, Aravinthan said.

No democratic space was provided to Tamils by any government after 1977 for the free expression of their will on the national question. All subsequent elections took place under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) of 1979 and after the Sixth Amendment to the constitution in 1983, both banning secession, he observed.

As one cannot foresee any free elections taking place for Tamils to express their will for nationhood in the current scenario of the island, the stakeholders outside have a duty in upholding space for free mandate, through transparent democratic means, verifiable by the international community, Aravinthan said.

In his observation, the Paris meet of registered organisations in France for a secret ballot supervised by neutral observers was in a way an experiment in the line of electoral colleges.

The diaspora has to creatively adopt credible and democratic ways and means to mobilise the will and free expression of Eelam Tamils all over the world. It is something that we ought to pass to the next generation, said Aravithan, a former militant of 1970s and the only surviving associate of Sivakumaran, the pioneer of Tamil militancy.

More than 30,000 supporters of the Tamil community in Sri Lanka gathered Tuesday April 21 for a massive demonstration on Parliament Hill - the continuation of a two-week protest calling for sanctions against Sri Lanka for its handling of a decades-long civil war against Tamil rebels.

Demonstrators began arriving early Tuesday despite a steady drizzle, and thousands more arrived in busloads from both Toronto and Montreal throughout the day.

The sound of drumbeats filled the air as protesters waved signs and flags, chanted and listened to speakers.

CTV's Roger Smith reported from Parliament Hill the protesters want more action from Canada to help prevent further civilian deaths in the conflict.

"They want Canada to put more pressure through the UN and other organizations on the Sri Lankan government to declare a permanent ceasefire and negotiate with the last remaining Tamil Tigers ... some sort of negotiated peace agreement rather than attacking this last Tamil stronghold where there are these civilians," Smith told CTV Newsnet.

Protesters are also urging the recall of Canada's ambassador to Sri Lanka to protest Colombo's offensive against the Tamil Tigers.

"As Tamil Canadians, we ask the Canadian government to take a stance - to call upon an immediate and permanent ceasefire, to call out the Sri Lankan High Commissioner Ambassador out of Canada because they clearly don't represent . . . the 300,000 Tamil Canadians living in Canada," said Aranee Muru, with the York University Tamil Student Association.

The protesters are demanding that the Canadian government impose economic sanctions against the Sri Lankan government and expel the country's high commissioner.

Leading up to Tuesday's protest, smaller groups of Tamil supporters held demonstrations throughout Ottawa, which included stopping traffic on Wellington Street, an east-west roadway in front of Parliament.

Protesters had been criticized for carrying the flag of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which Canada has designated a terrorist organization.

But on Tuesday the protesters appeared to have put away the flag, which bears a Tiger head surrounded by bullets, with crossed machine guns underneath.

"I think the protesters are hoping some politicians will come out and talk to them today," Smith said.

"That has been something politicians have been unwilling to do because they're seen as associating with a terror group."

NDP Leader Jack Layton was among the politicians who responded.

"We need our government to speak out strongly, to use every tool available, and to do so now," said Layton to cheering from the crowd.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff did not speak at the demonstration. But he did meet with Tamil community leaders. No members of the governing Conservatives met with the protesters.

According to protest spokesperson Senthan Nada, the flag is a symbol of Tamil nationalism, not terrorism.

"Just like the Maple Leaf flag is the Canadian national flag, the flags that were flown are Tamil national flags, not Tamil Tiger flags," Nada told Smith in an interview that aired on Newsnet.

"The crossed machine guns and the bullets are to represent the struggle."

Nada said the protesters have a peaceful goal.

"The reason we are here is because the Parliament has reconvened and we want to come on Parliament Hill and the purpose is to show in numbers how many Canadian people are interested in saving human lives." 

Tamil Nadu chief minister and DMK president Muthuvel  Karunanidhi said he believed Sri Lankan president Rajapakse would keep his word and not resume combat operations against Tamil Tigers, despite the Sri Lankan military declaring there is no ceasefire in place.

Karunanidhi had gone on a six-hour fast on Monday, April 27 to demand a truce. He ended the fast after Colombo announced a halt in strikes against the LTTE.

"I'm totally satisfied with the Sri Lankan government's response to the fast I undertook on Monday. After a heavy shower there will be a drizzle that cannot be avoided and the present Lankan move of continuing the war is akin to it. I believe that Rajapaksa will keep his word. But I insist and urge that he must do as promised on Monday. In fact, I had offered to go on a fast nearly two months ago. VCK's Thol Thirumavalavan, DK's Veeramani and PMK's Ramadoss were present when I made that offer. But they prevented me from doing so," Karunanidhi told reporters at a news conference at the party headquarters at Anna Arivalayam here.

Asked whether the peace talks could be held in Lanka without the involvement of the Tigers, as they were on the verge of a collapse, Karunanidhi indicated that a solution to the ethnic crisis was not possible without the LTTE. “Even if you remove the vegetation from a land, it will blossom again by virtue of the fertility of the soil. This is evident from many freedom struggles.”

All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhgam (AIADMK) general secretary J Jayalalithaa pooh­poohed the fast observed by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) chief and Chief Minister M Karunanidhi on Sri Lankan Tamils issue as a mere drama which was enacted to divert the attention of the people.

“It is obvious India is providing the support to Lankan army in the ongoing war. Then whose attention Karunanidhi wants to grab by observing the fast?,” she questioned.

She charged that the Lankan army had exposed the help rendered by India to them in the war. “The geographical sketch of the Tamil people living there has been provided by the Indian army to their Sri Lankan counterpart. That is why their army has succeeded this far in the war,” she said.

“Therefore, in such a scenario, it is evident that the fast observed by the DMK is just a diversionary tactic to fool the electorate,” she said and added that “it was staged by Karunanidhi to escape the people’s wrath.”

Thousands of Tamils from all over Germany demonstrated in Berlin Friday 24 April in the latest of a series of protests worldwide against the ongoing violence in their home country.

Organizers in the German capital said between 6,000 and 7,000 Tamils took part in the peaceful protests, carrying placards with slogans and photos of children maimed in the violence of recent weeks.

However, Berlin police said the demonstrators numbered around 2,000.

"We are demonstrating again to press for the German government to do more to help Tamils in Sri Lanka," an unnamed Tamil spokeswoman was quoted saying.

Recent fighting has sparked a wave of international concern for the fate of 50, 000 people still said by the U.N. to be trapped in the conflict zone.

The U.N. also estimates that as many as 6,500 civilians may have been killed and another 14,000 wounded in the fighting so far this year, diplomats said.

Up to 300,000 Tamil demonstrators have taken to the streets in Canada, and there have been other protests in Paris, London and elsewhere.

Prior to the Tamil rally at Berlin's historic Brandenburg Gate, a group of around 250 people pelted the Chinese Embassy with eggs.

Tamil activists have repeatedly claimed that Chinese military hardware has been used by the Sri Lankan military to squash the Tamil insurgency.

Last week, the German government expressed major concern over the situation of tens of thousands of civilians trapped in a small war zone in northeastern Sri Lanka. 

Sri Lanka's military continues to massacre Tamil civilians while the Colombo government mockingly issues pious assurances that it is concerned for civilians. As we pointed out last week, this is taking place in plain sight of the international community, including those Western states that have long styled themselves as custodians of global liberalism. Yet there is still no international effort to restrain the Sinhala state.

This week the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, and his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner went to Sri Lanka to "urge" a ceasefire. Mr. Kouchner, interestingly, used to be a long-time advocate of humanitarian intervention. Applying once to be head of the UNHCR in 2005, he stated "we could open together a new era in the process of protecting all refugees and displaced persons in the world." None of this applies to the Tamils, of course. Explaining their failure to get the Sinhala regime to stop its onslaught into the packed civilians, Mr. Kouchner said: "We tried very hard - we insisted and we insisted - but it is up to our friends to allow it or not."

Mr. Miliband, it might be recalled, was at the forefront of Western outrage over Russia's onslaught into Georgia last August. He thundered that the UK would "not forget" Moscow's invasion and threatened dire consequences. Strangely, when Tamils are being bombed and machine-gunned by the Sinhala state today, Britain has only quiet diplomacy to offer. Interestingly, a common refrain that Western states tell the Tamils, confident the latter are gullible enough to accept it, is that they are quietly "putting pressure" on Sri Lanka.

It is clear this is far from true. Tamil journalist and activists who met this week with EU and American officials, British MPs and advocacy NGOs have been hearing consistent reports: Britain has long been blocking or neutralising other international efforts to sanction Sri Lanka. For example, Britain is refusing to allow the EU to formally take up the matter. Britain has also long been vehemently resisting suspension of the EU's GSP+ facility to Sri Lanka (a subsidy for EU firms manufacturing in the island - most of which are British). The UK has been taking lead in international missions vis-à-vis Sri Lanka, efforts that have produced no results whatsoever. Mr. Miliband's visit this week is a case in point.

As we argued earlier, Western states, looking at Sri Lanka through a 'security' lens, believe that the island's conflict will soon be settled by the Sinhala military's victory over the LTTE and that peace will thereafter follow. Underlining how disconnected from Sri Lanka's reality the West has become, Mr. Kouchner was this week, standing not far from an ongoing genocide, calling the Sinhalese his "friends" on one hand and, on the other, asserting: "the reconciliation must happen. I think it will be done."

Ironically, other Western actors, such as the International Crisis Group and Human Rights Watch, who have long opposed the Tamil struggle for self-rule, have in recent weeks been screaming for international action to stop the bloodbath. Those who think that the LTTE will be destroyed in the coming weeks and that then it is a question of 'peace building' and 'development' for the next few years are gravely mistaken. The foundations for a cataclysmic civil war are being inexorably laid today. The kind of polarisation that sustain not decades, but generations of struggle has become widespread and embedded. Quite apart from the euphoric jingoism that has been sweeping the Sinhalese polity and population since 2007, the wholesale massacres of Tamils since January this year has hardened resolve amongst the Tamils. 'Reconciliation', as almost all Tamils and Sinhalese know, is now an impossibility.

All of this has only been possible by the ideological blindness and hubris of Western states that, whilst caring little for the specificities of places like Sri Lanka, have nonetheless sought to roll out formulaic, patronising and shockingly naïve theories of conflict and conflict resolution. These have turned, unsurprisingly, on backing the state and hammering the armed non-state actor, irrespective of the grievances the latter represents.

Unless they are prepared to confront and discipline the Sinhala state, it is of little consequence what else the Western liberal states do now. However, it is their very failures to act against Sri Lanka’s massacres that are making clear to the Tamils the crucial importance of their own actions and efforts to safeguard their people’s future safety. And it is in this context that the Tamil nation is finally mobilising for the kind of protracted popular struggle envisioned by the authors of the 1976 Vaddokoddai Resolution.

Recent statements from international actors are indicating that In the United States there may be a change of policy in the making in relation to the Sri Lankan conflict whilst the other countries continue their policy of support for the state no matter what.

The LTTE also recognized and welcomed a refreshing attitude in US, different from the other countries.

Indicating the level of interest the United States is showing on the Sri Lankan conflict, the US Government recently held an interagency meeting to review the situation in the Sri Lanka.

The interagency meeting – the first if its kind on Sri Lanka – was attended by senior officials from the State Department, Pentagon, National Security Council, USAID, and several other agencies.

It is also reported that both President Barrack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton receive daily briefings on Sri Lanka.

In its latest statement, which is also the first statement on Sri Lanka by Obama’s White House, the United States drew reference to two key points – the concept of territorial integrity of Sri Lanka and possible war crimes against its leaders.

In the statement US emphasised that continued military end to conflict will end hope for a unified Sri Lanka and added that it takes allegations of violence very seriously.

On Wednesday April 22, Clinton commenting on the ongoing conflict stated that Sri Lanka has caused "untold suffering" as it fights Tamil Tigers.

"I think that the Sri Lankan government knows that the entire world is very disappointed that in its efforts to end what it sees as 25 years of conflict, it is causing such untold suffering," Clinton told lawmakers.

Few days before Clinton’s comments, the statement department released statement in which it called for an end to the military operations.

In the statement released on Thursday April 16, the US said it was deeply concerned about the current danger to civilian lives and the dire humanitarian situation created by the fighting in the Mullaittivu area in Sri Lanka.

It called on the Sri Lankan government and military of Sri Lanka, and the Tamil Tigers to immediately stop hostilities. 

It also called Sri Lanka to halt shelling of the safe zone, permitting international monitors to ensure the safe exit of the civilians. 

Indicating the strong view the United States has on humanitarian access to the conflict zone, the statement further said: “The government of Sri Lanka should also enforce international humanitarian standards in IDP camps, grant visas to international aid groups and permit entry into Sri Lanka of international monitors and media access to those camps.” 

“The Sri Lankan government, as the legitimate sovereign power, has before it an opportunity to put an end to this lengthy conflict,” the statement said. 

“A durable and lasting peace will only be achieved through a political solution that addresses the legitimate aspirations of all Sri Lankan communities.” 

The US also warned that further killing, particularly killing of civilians, will not end the conflict and will stain any eventual peace. 

The LTTE on Monday April 20, in a significant statement, recognized and welcomed a refreshing attitude in US, and pleaded the Sri Lanka government to listen to international opinion, to stop the war and enter into negotiations.

"The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam appreciates the genuine concerns expressed by the United States Government's statement dated 16th April 2009, on the escalating humanitarian catastrophe in the Vanni/Mullaitivu region."

"So far, while the rest of the world has concentrated on apportioning blame, the United States has stressed the importance of finding solutions to put an immediate end to the plight of the Tamil civilians being lured and attacked in the safe zone by the Sri Lankan Government."

"The LTTE urges the Sri Lankan government to stop its military actions, including shelling and bombing civilian areas and accept the call of the United States and other members of the International community for a ceasefire, which we believe will create a conducive atmosphere for talks on all relevant issues."

The LTTE statement issued from the political headquarters in Vanni also warned Colombo of dire consequences if the war is continued.

"The LTTE and the fight for our freedom will also continue. The methods may vary but Sri Lanka will never be able to live in peace as it imagines a military victory will bring. However, for the record, the LTTE would like to emphasize again that it is always ready to explore peaceful means to resolve the conflict”, the statement said.