தமிழர் புனர்வாழ்வு கழகம் சம்மந்தமாக கனடா நசனல் போஸ்ட் பத்திரிகையில் இன்று வெளிவந்த செய்தி

வணக்கம், திரு.மணி அவர்கள் இன்று கனடா தமிழர் புனர்வாழ்வு கழகம் பற்றிய ஒரு நீண்ட கட்டுரையை எழுதி இருக்கிறார். ஒருபக்கச்சார்பாக எழுதாமல் உண்மையில கனடாவில தமிழர் புனர்வாழ்வுக் கழகம் சட்டரீதியாக இயங்கிறதில எப்படியான பிரச்சனைகள் இருக்கிது எண்டு சொல்லி இருக்கிறார். கனடா தமிழர் புனர்வாழ்வு கழக தலைவர் கூறிய கருத்துக்களையும் கட்டுரையில சொல்லி இருக்கிறார்.

உலகத்தமிழர் இயக்கம் கனடாவில தடைசெய்யப்பட்டது போல தமிழர் புனர்வாழ்வுக்கழகமும் தடைசெய்யப்படக்கூடிய சாத்தியக்கூறுகள் இருப்பதாக திரு.மணி சொல்கின்றார். இதற்கு கனேடிய புலனாய்வுத்துறை, மற்றும் அரசு பக்கத்தால கூறப்படுற காரணம் என்ன எண்டால் தமிழர் புனர்வாழ்வுக்கழக மையம் வன்னியில இருக்கிது. அதை அங்கிருந்து கட்டுப்படுத்துவது விடுதலைப்புலிகள். எனவே, இந்த அமைப்பு உண்மையில ஒரு மனிதநேய அமைப்பாக இருக்கமுடியாது என்பதுதான்.

Charity financing terrorism: Sri Lanka, Stewart Bell, National Post

TORONTO - Liberty Square Shopping Plaza has a South Asian convenience store and a branch of the Toronto Public Library, but the tenant that has brought this busy strip mall international notoriety is upstairs above a jewellery store.

The Tamils Rehabilitation Organization works out of a cramped second-floor office with a big Canadian flag over the window. And while its official mission is humanitarian, governments in three countries suspect it serves a shadier purpose.

RCMP counterterrorism investigators and Canada Revenue Agency charity regulators accuse the group of having ties to the Sri Lankan separatist guerrillas called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, better known as the Tamil Tigers.

"We believe that there are reasonable grounds for concern that TRO (Canada) operates for purposes that conflict with Canadian public policy," the head of Canada's charities directorate wrote in a letter to the group. "More specifically, there appears to be reason to conclude that TRO (Canada) may be functioning as part of a support network for the terrorist organization Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam."

In the United States, meanwhile, the Treasury Department last year froze the assets of the Tamils Rehabilitation Organization office in Toronto, calling it part of an international network that "passed off its operations as charitable when in fact it was raising money for a designated terrorist group responsible for heinous acts."

Yesterday, Sri Lanka seized the organization's bank accounts in that country on the grounds the $800,000 balance, collected partly from "TRO branches in several foreign locations" was "mainly used to finance terrorist activities."

The Conservatives have not yet taken action and the group continues to operate in Canada, but one of the decisions facing the new Public Safety Minister, Peter Van Loan, will be whether to designate the TRO a terrorist "entity" under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which would force it to close.

Federal officials declined to say whether they were preparing to add the TRO to Canada's official list of terrorist groups. "It would be inappropriate for me to comment on which entities are under consideration for potential listing; the assessment process for new listings is ongoing," said Stephane Therien, a spokesman for Public Safety Canada.

Raj Gunanathan, the president of TRO Canada, said he fears that could happen, but he has long faced these kinds of allegations. They began as soon as the group set up shop in Toronto more than a dozen years ago. Since then, Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers have repeatedly visited his office.

"They used to come at least once a year," Mr. Gunanathan said in an interview. He said he told the intelligence officers to "please come and join our board, or send someone to join our board of directors, and then you will have no doubt about what we are doing."

The Tamils Rehabilitation Organization is open about what it does: It raises money in Canada and sends it to rebel-held territories of Sri Lanka. The money goes to the TRO headquarters, which is entrusted to use it to administer humanitarian aid.

The TRO headquarters in Sri Lanka, however, is controlled by the Tamil Tigers, a banned terrorist organization under Canadian law. While that might put the TRO on the wrong side of Canada's terrorism financing rules, Mr. Gunanathan argues there is no other way to provide humanitarian relief to the hundreds of thousands displaced by the civil war.

"Are we going to allow them to starve and die? We have to somehow provide them with the means of life. We have to feed those people," said the former Sri Lankan education official, who came to Canada in the 1980s after working as a teacher in Nigeria.

The Tamils Rehabilitation Organization grew out of the civil war that erupted in Sri Lanka in 1983, when the Tamil Tigers began an armed campaign for independence for the country's ethnic Tamil minority. As Tamil refugees fled to southern India to escape the fighting and ethnic riots, the TRO was formed to assist them. Later, the aid group moved into rebel-held areas of Sri Lanka to provide aid to war-affected civilians.

Offices soon appeared around the world, in cities with large ethnic Tamil communities such as Toronto. The group became a registered Ontario non-profit society in 1995. That same year it applied to the federal government for charity status.

The charity application was denied but the group applied a second time in 1997. Once again, the government refused, citing the "apparent close relationship" between the humanitarian group and the Tamil rebels.

Following the South Asian tsunami of 2004, Mr. Gunanathan submitted yet another application for charity status. On June 1, 2006, the Canada Revenue Agency replied with a 17-page rejection letter.

Signed by Canada's Director of Charities, Elizabeth Tromp, the letter said that "TRO (Canada) appears to operate within the overall structure of the LTTE."

Ms. Tromp's main concern appeared to be that the TRO office in Canada sends the money it collects to the TRO headquarters in rebel-held Sri Lanka. "The consensus of numerous and diverse sources we have reviewed indicates that the TRO raises funds in support of the LTTE," Ms. Tromp wrote in her letter.

Mr. Gunanathan said his organization had sent money to the TRO in Sri Lanka -- $1.2-million alone in the months following the tsunami--but it was used for schools, temporary shelter and food for those displaced by the war.

"If you work in the LTTEcontrolled areas, they of course control you. They are a de facto government," Mr. Gunanathan said. "That doesn't mean that these people give money for arms."

Shown an RCMP affidavit filed in Federal Court that called the Tamils Rehabilitation a "sub-organization" of the rebels, Mr. Gunanathan said he had not seen the document before.

The affidavit says the RCMP's counter-terrorism unit found evidence about the TRO while investigating another Canadian group suspected of links to the rebels, the World Tamil Movement (WTM).

While executing search warrants in 2006, the RCMP's Integrated National Enforcement Team came across receipts for two bank transfers to the TRO totalling $83,000. According to police, the receipts were marked: "donations to the LTTE in Killinochchi, Sri Lanka."

RCMP Corporal Shirley Davermann wrote that the money was "actually sent to the LTTE in Sri Lanka." But Mr. Gunanathan said he doubted the police account. "It's a false report," he said. "If anybody is sending funds to LTTE and they write 'We are sending money to LTTE,' it would be the height of absurdity for anybody to say."

The RCMP affidavit also describes links between the Tamils Rehabilitation Organization and the World Tamil Movement, which was shut down by the police earlier this year for allegedly funding the rebels.

For example, the TRO "representative" in Quebec was also the owner of the building that housed the WTM office in Montreal, police said. In addition, several World Tamil Movement officials have said publicly that they had solicited money for the Tamils Rehabilitation Organization.

"We find it significant that the World Tamil Movement, an alleged front organization for the LTTE, canvasses for and advises people to donate to the TRO," Ms. Tromp, the charity official, wrote.

The Tamils Rehabilitation Organization office at Eglinton Avenue and Kennedy Road in Toronto has nonetheless continued to solicit contributions. Donation envelopes were inserted into Tamil-language newspapers in Toronto last summer.

An offensive by Sri Lankan troops has made it impossible to get aid into the war zone at the moment, so the group is currently "dormant," Mr. Gunanathan said. He said the TD Bank had closed the group's Canadian account last year but it had since opened another at a different bank.

He said he had no plans to shut down.

"I'm a Hindu," he said. "What I do, I honestly feel I am helping humanity, which is like service to God."

மூலம்: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.htm...=974701&p=1