Hungary

Border guard’s refusal to shoot let the Iron Curtain drop

Arpad Bella, a former Hungarian border guard who in 1989 decided not to shoot hundreds of East Germans who broke open the Iron Curtain, thus beginning a month-long breach. The stretch of barbed wire and the colourfully painted gate are remains of the Iron Curtain border.

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On Aug. 19, 1989, Bella Arpad refused to obey his orders to shoot. The Hungarian border guard let thousands of East Germans storm into Austria, a defiant decision that would change history

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Every few weeks, a retired Hungarian military officer named Bella Arpad walks across the unmarked stretch of road that separates the border and has a drink with the man who used to be the Austrian border guard, back when Europe had borders and guards.

They reminisce about the time, 20 years ago, when this now-invisible border was part of the Iron Curtain, and Mr. Arpad, one of thousands of men under orders to shoot anyone who crossed it, inadvertently helped it to collapse.

His split-second decision in August of 1989 transformed this once-impervious barrier stretching from the Adriatic to the Baltic into something more like a bead curtain, and likely precipitated the events that caused the Berlin Wall to be opened on Nov. 9, 1989.

Monday’s Berlin Wall anniversary will be celebrated around the world, but the real end of the Iron Curtain took place on Aug. 19, 1989, when hundreds and then thousands of East Germans were permitted to pour across the mined, fenced and fortified barrier at the Hungarian-Austrian crossing – in large part because Mr. Arpad decided not to obey his rules of engagement.

“The rules said that I should have started shooting when East Germans tried to cross, and I had a split-second to decide,” he said as he took a walk the other day along the former border near his home in Sopron, Hungary.

“I could really be in a lot of trouble for the decision I made. In fact, my commander told me I was finished. It wasn’t a great experience for me, but it turned out to be right.”

During the walk, he ran into Laszlo Magas, the former peace activist who caused the rupture and made Mr. Arpad’s life briefly miserable. With a begrudging handshake, the two former foes recounted the day the two of them changed history.

By the summer of 1989, Hungary had effectively stopped being communist, its reformist leadership having followed Poland in making the transition to multiparty democracy and liberalism in a series of round-table meetings.

But the fortified wall along its western border with Austria was a problem, preventing valuable trade and commerce between two states that had once been a single, imperial nation. The Hungarians had shut down the electronic protection system and symbolically cut the barbed wire in June, and made agreements with Austria to start allowing Hungarians to cross easily.

Laszlo Magas, a Hungarian activist who was angered that his mother had been imprisoned for trying to cross the border, in August 1989 organized the Pan-European Picnic, a protest event at the border which caused all those East Germans to come flooding across.

Hungarians weren’t the only ones who wanted to cross. That summer, tens of thousands of East Germans, who were strictly forbidden to enter the West, had used their vacation weeks to drive south through Czechoslovakia to Hungary, a cavalcade of cheap Trabant cars chasing rumours of openings in the border, hoping to get around their country’s impermeable walls and decaying economy.

Mr. Magas, the activist, was infuriated by the wall and by Mr. Arpad’s soldiers, who had imprisoned his mother when she tried to cross the border years earlier. He decided to test the resolve of his government by holding an event billed the Pan-European Picnic right beside the crossing point.

He held the event on Aug. 19, the day Hungarian officials were to hold a symbolic opening of the border there. A handful of officials from each country were scheduled to open the heavy gate and shake hands at the border.

The picnic was meant to be a protest and call for freedom, but it was widely known in Hungary that it would involve East Germans making an attempt at the border.

“ If I fired, it would create a panic and a rush, and then we would have to use even more violence to deal with that, and a lot of people would be killed ”— Bella Arpad, former border guard

Miklos Nemeth, the prime minister at the time, has said that his government hoped to test the resolve of the Soviet Union, which still had a half-million soldiers stationed along the Iron Curtain. Its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had sent signals suggesting that he would no longer enforce the border between the Warsaw Pact countries and the West.

The Hungarians wanted a comparatively harmless way to gauge Moscow’s commitment to the Iron Curtain, and Mr. Magas’s picnic provided an opportunity. A few ordinary Hungarians would exercise their right to cross, they assumed, along with some slightly less legal East Germans, and officials were ready to watch.

They forgot, however, to tell Mr. Arpad and his soldiers. On the morning of Aug. 19, hours before the officials were to arrive, Mr. Arpad was shocked to see a crowd of 150 East Germans fast-marching toward the open gate. There was no time to stop them or make a phone call: He had to decide.

“We had very clear instructions to fire warning shots first, and to shoot individuals who tried to challenge us,” he said. “I knew I would be in very serious trouble if I disobeyed. But if I fired, it would create a panic and a rush, and then we would have to use even more violence to deal with that, and a lot of people would be killed.”

He decided to risk his career, and possibly even his life, by letting the East Germans pass. By the end of the day, 671 of them had entered the forbidden West, and thousands more would follow as the crossing remained sporadically open until Sept. 10, defying the entire purpose of the border.

His commanding officer severely upbraided him later that day in a screaming denouncement of his incompetence. But it became clear that there would be no further penalties: At the political level, the country’s reformist government was happy to have it open.

When Mr. Arpad walks over to his counterpart’s house down the street in Austria these days, his decision sometimes comes up. “He says, ‘I still can’t believe you didn’t warn me those Germans were coming,’” he said. “When I tell him I had no idea, he doesn’t believe me. It all just sounds impossible, even now.”

It was a day of drama: At one point, a crowd of East German families, all on foot, surged at the narrow crossing, causing a woman to drop her infant child and then to be pushed across the Austrian border. She looked back and, to her horror, saw one of Mr. Arpad’s soldiers grabbing her child. Then, the soldier, to everyone’s amazement, strolled over into Austria and handed the child to the sobbing mother.

The East German government was furious: Its iron-fisted control of its people had been mocked. And the breach was causing millions of East Germans to develop a new attitude to the Iron Curtain, and to freedom in general.

Though it was able to use Eastern Bloc diplomacy to close the boundary in September, by that time it was too late.

The open Hungarian border had turned the closed German one into an absurdity, one that brought thousands, then hundreds of thousands, then millions of East Germans onto the streets.

As a result, when a bureaucratic error caused East Germany to suggest that the Berlin Wall might become open on Nov. 9, the citizens knew it was time to storm the crossings, pry open the gates and flood across. After all, they’d been there before, and Bella Arpad hadn’t shot them.

Follow the Beyond the Berlin Wall series

• Justin McCurry, Tokyo
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 May 2009 13.39 BST

Japan
has come under renewed pressure to clamp down on its huge market in
child pornography following the launch of a campaign to ban a video
game in which players earn points by raping schoolgirls and forcing
them to have abortions.

Equality Now, a New York-based human
rights group, called on Japan’s government to immediately ban RapeLay,
a virtual game that can be played on Windows PCs, and to honour its
international commitments to end the sexual exploitation of children.

Amazon,
the online retailer, removed RapeLay from its UK and US sites earlier
this year after it was discussed at a UN conference on the sexual
exploitation of children in Rio de Janeiro last November. Amazon Japan
recently followed suit, but the game is widely available on other
online shopping sites.

Jacqui Hunt, the director of Equality Now’s office in London, said the game was “extremely problematic at many levels”.

“The
suggestion that the gamer has transformed the violent crime of rape
into an act of sex indicates all too well the danger of objectifying
and dehumanising women and normalising violence against them,” she said.

Equality
Now has urged its 30,000 members to write to the prime minister, Taro
Aso, demanding that Japan fulfil its obligations as a signatory to the
UN convention against all forms of discrimination against women.

Though
Japan is a lucrative market for games depicting sexual violence,
RapeLay was spotlighted as a particularly depraved example of the genre.

The
games, featuring high-resolution graphics and virtual interaction, are
often set in schools or train carriages, with players awarded points
for committing acts of sexual violence until the victims start to
“enjoy” the experience. The victims are usually dressed in school
uniforms, although their age is deliberately kept ambiguous.

The hentai [pervert]
theme is common in Japanese comics, animated films and video games,
many of which tap into the popular subculture of Lolicon, a Japanese
rendering of Lolita complex.

Japanese law bans the production and
sale of sexually explicit images of children under 18, but it exempts
animated and computer-generated images.

Illusion, the software
firm that produces RapeLay, has so far resisted calls to withdraw the
game, saying it complies with Japanese child pornography laws. “The
game is not intended for sale overseas, so we can’t comment further,”
an Illusion spokesman told the Guardian.

But campaigners
challenged the firm’s claim that it was targeting only the Japanese
market, where such games are considered “acceptable”.

“The age of
the internet means it’s impossible to confine anything to a specific
market,” said Hiromasa Nakai, a spokesman for Unicef Japan.

“People
in Japan have to realise that what might be acceptable in one culture
or context might not be acceptable in another. In any case, many
Japanese people have no idea what’s on sale on their own doorstep, and
RapeLay is only the tip of the iceberg.”

The game is just one of
tens of thousands of video games containing explicit sexual content
that can be bought online or at stores in Tokyo’s geek district of
Akihabara.

Pressure to tighten the law comes amid an alarming
increase in demand for child pornography. In 2007, just over 300
children under 18 were identified as victims, according to Japanese
police, up more than 20% from 2006 and the highest total since records
began in 1999.

While police prosecuted 25 child pornography cases in 1999, the figure had risen to 585 cases by 2006.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/11/japan-child-pornography

• Ros Wynne-Jones
• The Guardian, Wednesday 8 April 2009

Révérien Rurangwa, who was maimed by Hutu attackers, still bears the scars. The stump of his left arm gives him pain every day. Photograph: Adrian L/Edition Presse de la Renaissance, 2006

Some nights, when he can’t sleep, Révérien Rurangwa finds himself watching a clip of French news footage filmed 15 years ago, in April 1994. Broadcast three weeks after the start of the Rwandan genocide, it shows bodies laid out at Kabgayi hospital. The camera focuses on a child seated in front of a dead woman. He is shockingly injured, even under his bandages. He is missing an arm and his forehead is badly disfigured by swelling. His mouth is an agonised O. A dressing covers the place where his left eye should be, but what fixates Révérien when he watches the footage is the other eye, “a large, black marble petrified by disbelief”.

What shocks him every time is the realisation that he is watching himself. He is 15 years old in the footage, but looks like a child, a tiny scrap of a person seated quietly at the edge of what any human being can bear.

A decade and a half later, that person still cannot believe that his family’s Hutu neighbour, the owner of a local bar they sometimes visited, one day took his machete and calmly cut to death all 43 members of Révérien’s extended family.

Days before, on 7 April, he had watched the blue berets of the UN collect the 30 white nuns and two Spanish priests living among the community around his home town, Mugina. “They left everyone else to die because they were Tutsis,” says Révérien, his face still a mask of disbelief. “I saw them leave with their pots of flowers and their dogs. Couldn’t they at least have taken a Tutsi baby with them?”

On 20 April, his family were slaughtered one by one inside the goat shed they had hidden in for a fortnight, but Révérien survived despite horrific wounds. “I just couldn’t seem to die,” he says. “And when I asked them to kill me, they laughed and taunted me. They said, ‘Look at the cockroach crawling.’ They said, ‘Hey, dead-on-legs, can’t you go any faster?’ They took bets on how long I would live.”

Three weeks later, when the Red Cross came, he was still alive despite his wounds, hunger and dehydration, sitting among the burned bodies of his parents, sisters and other family members. “The killers had set fire to everything that was left,” Révérien says quietly. “So, I sat among their teeth, the only thing that was left of my family.”

This week marks the 15th anniversary of the start of the 100 days when a million mainly Tutsi Rwandans were killed in a systematic strategy that turned neighbours into killers. “Radio Death, we called it,” says Révérien. “We heard the transmissions on the radio: that the cockroaches must be exterminated.”

His scars have grown no less livid with time, and the efficiency with which he operates his right arm cannot fully compensate for the lack of the left. His face is a mask of stitched-together flesh. There is a sharp line across the bridge of his Tutsi nose where it was reattached after being sliced by a machete “to look like a Hutu’s flattened nose”. There is a scar that starts at his ear, and then another that curls across his forehead – his “kiss-curl”, or question mark as he likes to think of it. The scar that asks, “Why?”

Révérien wears his scars not with pride, but without apology either. They are his equivalent, he says, of the Jews’ yellow star or an Auschwitz tattoo; they mark him out as a witness and a survivor. They also have caused him to be beaten up in the street on several occasions by Rwandans who recognised him as “that Tutsi witness”. When we meet at a Swiss railway station in the country that gave him shelter after the genocide, people look at him guardedly.

Révérien has had offers of plastic surgery from fine surgeons, but turned them all down, even though he says he sometimes feels like the Elephant Man with a face a woman may never love. He feels he cannot excise the history that is engraved on his flesh, a living testimony to genocide. He believes he owes his dead family that much, at least.

“My family would not ask me to take revenge, but they would ask me to tell the story,” he says. “Now, I must be the narrator.”

Révérien tells me about “the last day I was happy”. His face twists into a tight little smile when he remembers a fishing trip with his schoolfriend, a carefree day in Rwanda – a beautiful land of mountains and early morning mist – moments before the country was disfigured. The next day, his neighbours were sharpening their blades and advancing up the grassy knoll in Mugina where thousands of Tutsi men, women and children stood huddled against their genocidal intent. The laborious murder of 25,000 people on that hillside took 14 days, by which time Révérien’s family were among the last alive, hidden inside the goat shed with only a rusty lock for protection.

The days that followed are chronicled in his book, Genocide, an extraordinarily visceral narrative far from the palatable version of films such as Hotel Rwanda. A story that, like Révérien’s scarred, quizzical face, challenges you to not look away.

With devastating detail, his book tells how his mother and other family members were killed not cleanly but by a thousand cuts, robbed of their clothes and left to die lingering deaths. How the Hutu women helped and the children followed behind, collecting jewellery. How the machete blows sounded like a blade slicing cabbage. How the wounded begged for a bullet. “I was my mother’s first son, and her last left alive,” Révérien says.

Drocilla Nyiramatama and her husband Boniface Muzigura’s other children were Sylvélie, 13, Olive, 11, Pierre Célestin, nine, Marie, seven and Claudette, five. Révérien was the eldest child, and it is the screams of little Claudette that he hears most in his sleep. “She survived the machetes,” he says. “She could have lived.” Instead he watched her die of dehydration, powerless to help. The water had run out three days before his family were discovered in their hideout. His mother’s last cries, as she bled to death, had been for water, and a wish that Révérien settle a small debt with a neighbour. “She owed 300 francs to one of those Hutus sharpening their blades as we fled our home,” says Révérien. “My mother wanted to die without debt and definitely without debt to a Hutu.”

Révérien undoes his shirt quickly with one hand, revealing the wounds across his chest and torso, lifting out the shattered shoulder that was battered with a studded club, and below it the stump that still aches every day.

The official line in Rwanda is that the nation must forgive and forget, that it is time to move on. Yet there has been no justice for Révérien or many hundreds of thousands of other Rwandans, dead and alive. His family’s killer is still alive, still running the same bar where Révérien sometimes went to celebrate some small good fortune with his parents.

In 1995, Révérien left Switzerland and took himself back to Mugina, where he walked into his attacker’s bar and stared him squarely in the face. “It was you who did this,” he told him. Then he went and reported him to the authorities, but after a brief spell in prison, the neighbour was set free. It was Révérien who had to go into hiding. Men twice came to kill him, and he was eventually smuggled out, via a convent, and returned to Switzerland. Such reprisals are not uncommon in Rwanda, where many Tutsi witnesses still live in fear. Staggeringly, there are over 700,000 men and women still accused of genocide, who even now are facing village courts under the Gacaca justice scheme. The aim is to promote local reconciliation, yet organisations including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have reported that the trials have also led to vicious attacks against survivors, witnesses and judges.

“They want to kill the witnesses,” says Révérien. “They wish the witnesses did not exist. A survivor disturbs the peace.”

Even in Switzerland, Révérien does not feel safe. “From day to day I fear being deported; the police can come round and send me to Rwanda without warning. My status today is that I have only a provisional ‘F’ permit. That means Switzerland reserves the right to deport me at any time. I have no right to work or study or register a car or a mobile phone. I cannot travel. So my struggle is not over. I am still living in fear.”

Révérien was due in London last week for the launch of the English translation of his book, but an application to travel failed. So we are in Geneva, the home of the UN that once betrayed Révérien’s country so badly. Now, he feels Switzerland is betraying him again.

“I came to this country to be healed and to have my wounds taken care of,” says Révérien. “Half my lifetime has been spent here. Now they say, ‘He needs to go back to his country.’” He fought through the courts for formal asylum in Switzerland, but his case was refused.

The past repeats itself over and over inside his head, in one long loop of horror. “I cannot go back to Rwanda because the person who damaged and maimed me is there. He wants to finish off what he started. It is very easy to find me and identify me with all these scars. They say, ‘There is that Tutsi from the television. The one who wrote the book.’”

We spend a day in Geneva talking. When we take a taxi together, the woman driver spins round in her seat, visibly shocked at Révérien’s appearance. When we take a tram, a man is aggressively rude when Révérien asks if it is going to the central station.

But, on the whole, Révérien says, Swiss people have been kind. He lives up in the mountains near Neuchatel, and for years would travel to college by hitchhiking. “You think of a one-eyed black man with scars, sticking out his only arm on a lonely hillside in snowy, white, pristine Switzerland, and you’d surely say, ‘He’s mad, that will never work,’” he says. “But you’d be wrong. Each morning it worked like clockwork.” In fact, hitchhiking has helped restore his faith in human nature, and an irreverent sense of humour. He smokes furiously, and laughs at his cigarette packet where it says: “Smoking kills”.

When, back in 1994, he was flown to Switzerland by the charity Sentinelle for medical treatment, he found himself in a country that was like Rwanda in negative – cold, white, clean, efficient, organised. “When I first arrived in Geneva, I spent many years in hospital,” Révérien says. “What hurt me most was the visiting hours, when all the families came to visit the other people, and nobody came to visit me. I had no one in the world.”

He misses his family immensely. “I don’t know if my mother would be proud of me,” he says. “I think she would see that I try to represent her every day I am alive.”

On the day she died, she had been wearing a beautiful red cotton dress with white piping on the pockets that Révérien had saved up to buy for her birthday from the market. “I hope one day to give her grandchildren. Normally when I decide to do something, I just do it. But it’s not like the book. I can’t do it by myself.”

Inside the cafeteria is an exhibition of photos of refugees from the current crisis in the Congo – many of them Hutus. Révérien peruses them dispassionately. He has no forgiveness to offer the man who killed his family. He is not interested in convenient western constructs such as closure.

“How could one pardon someone who has never asked to be pardoned?” he says. “It’s not up to me to propose this to them; people who killed night and day for three months. People who were tired from killing. People who still want to kill me today. People who don’t have any regret. How can one pardon these people?”

Nor has he found any peace or salvation in the Catholicism he was born into. “My mother died praying to God. Where was He? Why didn’t He do anything?” He laughs, a dry sound in his throat. “When you see the local priests coming with the machete and killing … When you see a church where 25 Tutsis died is cleaned up, and that the ones who pray in that church are the ones who killed … I am finished with God.”

He stands at the plate-glass window, looking at snow-capped mountains and the flat grey-green emptiness of the lake. “This UN did not protect us,” he says, gesturing around him. “But they did help the Hutus who fled from their killing when they were in the refugee camps. Now, the genocide is over, but they are still not protecting us, the people who really dare ask for justice.”

Révérien smiles, unexpectedly. “Many Swiss women have offered to marry me to end my problems,” he says. “But if I marry, I won’t do it for papers. I will only do it for love.”

And that is the most remarkable thing about Révérien Rurangwa: that despite everything that has happened to him, he still believes in love.

OMAR EL AKKAD

From Monday’s Globe and Mail

March 29, 2009 at 10:47 PM EDT

Against the backdrop of humming computers in the underground lab in Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies, a screen flickered, and the most politically explosive cyber-spy network in the world began to reveal itself.

It was March 6, 12:33 p.m., and Nart Villeneuve was getting frustrated. The 34-year-old international relations student and part-time tech geek had tried everything to track down a piece of malicious software that had infected computers around the world, including those in the offices of the Dalai Lama.

Finally, he turned to the ultimate hacker’s tool: He entered some of the code from those infected computers into Google. Just like that, he found one of the cyberspy network’s control servers, then another, and another. From that Eureka moment came a flood of information, almost all of it suggesting the ring originated in China.

A team of Canadian researchers revealed this weekend a network, dubbed GhostNet, of more than 1,200 infected computers worldwide that includes such “high-value targets” as Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Indian Embassy in Kuwait, as well as a dozen computers in Canada.

The revelation left government bodies around the world scrambling to determine what sensitive files may have been compromised by the cyberspy network, which even now continues to spread and infect, its authors apparently undaunted by all the extra attention.

The revelation that the vast majority of the attacks appear to originate from China has prompted an angry denial from Beijing, which slammed the report as nonsense.

But that hasn’t stopped the bombshell investigation from attracting the attention of myriad intelligence and law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Canada’s Communications Security Establishment.

Indeed, it’s hard to believe that what has now been revealed as a massive cyberbreach began just a few months ago in a room at the foothills of the Himalayas, with a Canadian researcher watching a ‘ghost’ steal a file from the Dalai Lama.

Greg Walton showed up in Dharamsala, India in September of last year to determine whether somebody was trying to spy on the Dalai Lama’s computer. With a background in international relations and computer science, the British-born 34-year-old had been advising the Tibetan government on security issues since the late 1990s. The Dalai Lama’s Geneva-based adviser had recently asked him to check whether Tibetan government computers had been the subject of an attack.

Greg Walton on how the malware might be stopped:

“We were granted unprecedented access to the private office and to the computer systems,” says Mr. Walton, who is one of three researchers at the Munk Centre’s Citizen Lab — along with Mr. Villeneuve and lab head Ron Deibert — who worked on the 10-month investigation in conjunction with the SecDev Group, an Ottawa-based consultancy.

What Mr. Walton found was a thoroughly compromised computer system, infected with so-called “malware” that allowed a mysterious outside entity to not only spy on the computer, but also extract data from it. Researchers watched someone, somewhere, extract a copy of a document detailing the negotiating positions of the Dalai Lama’s envoy.

“What we were witnessing was an international crime taking place,” says Professor Deibert.

Prof. Deibert discusses the researchers’ unique brand of ‘hactivism’:

Mr. Walton recorded the activity and eventually returned to Toronto with some 1.2-gigabytes of raw data — countless lines of often-incomprehensible code — for Mr. Villeneuve to sift through.

The researchers at the Citizen Lab weren’t new to this kind of thing. Last year, they revealed the logging of millions of text messages sent by users of a Chinese Skype service. Mr. Villeneuve had learned some tricks during that endeavour, such as searching for improperly configured servers and sifting through their directories for useful files.

He tried the same tricks this time, but nothing worked. The researchers knew there was a backbone behind the malicious software on the Dalai Lama’s office computers, but they couldn’t pinpoint it.

Then one day, a couple of weeks ago, Mr. Villeneuve came across a line of code that appeared to begin with a numbers that signified a date.

In an interview on Sunday, he was momentarily reluctant to disclose the seemingly elite hacker’s tool he unleashed on that piece of code in order to get it to spill its secrets.

Finally, he said: “I put it in Google, man.”

The obvious paid off. Soon, Mr. Villeneuve was led to a U.S.-based server that turned out to be one of the so-called “control” servers behind the malicious code. Whoever Mr. Villeneuve was following turned out to be very systematic in his approach, and the researcher found that changing a single number or letter in a piece of code led him to another control server.

Soon, the investigators found four control servers, each containing a list of all infected computers that have reported to the server, as well as code to issue and monitor commands to the infected computers. If the 1,295 infected computers in 103 different countries were the limbs, the four servers were the spine, and three of those servers were located in China.

Prof. Deibert is cautious not to allege that the Chinese government is behind the cyberspy network, saying he simply does not have hard evidence to support that conclusion. What the researchers do have is circumstantial evidence.

“The evidence that we have shows that the majority of the control servers were located in China,” says Mr. Villeneuve. “The interface to controlling the infected hosts on these servers in China was in Chinese. And the remote Trojan favoured by the attackers is a Trojan coded by Chinese hackers.”

One of the four servers, located in Hainan Island, also traced back to a Chinese government server.

(Chinese officials in Canada could not be reached for comment on Sunday, but Beijing has reportedly denied any involvement in the cyber spy ring, slamming the investigation’s findings).

Looking to learn more about how the infiltration network functions, the Canadian researchers launched a trap. They set up a “honey-pot” computer and downloaded as much malicious code onto it as possible. They watched as the mysterious entity at the other end of the cyberspy network took over, first asking for basic information, such as the computer’s processor and memory specifications.

Then the thief rummaged through folders such as “My Documents.” He also looked for geographic information, where the computer was located.

There was no doubt that this was not a random spy network. The list of infected computers tilted heavily toward pro-Tibet organizations and Indian embassies. The Tibetan headquarters are located in India.

The Canadian researchers were also presented with concrete examples where the virtual snooping had real-world implications. In one case, a young woman who works for a Tibetan outreach group was detained by Chinese intelligence agents at the Nepalese-Tibetan border and interrogated. During the interrogation, she was presented with transcripts of her on-line chats dating back years.

The researchers eventually concluded that about 30 per cent of all infected computers were so-called high-value targets, such as embassies, ministries and news organization machines.

They also traced 12 infected computers back to Canada, but could not pinpoint them. They could make an educated guess about their owners, though — the Canadian computer information returned to the malicious servers included the “name” a user gives their computer, and in many cases the name was a commonly used Tibetan first name, the researchers said, indicating the user is likely Tibetan in origin.

The honey pot computer was eventually instructed to download a copy of the GhostNet “remote access tool,” a piece of software that gives an external user the same level of control over a computer as if he were sitting directly in front of the machine. In effect, the entity using this tool could order an infected computer to do everything from turn on its video camera to copy documents to record audio. Not only was the cyber spy network targeting strategic computers around the world, it seemed, it also had the power to fully control them.

After 10 months of investigation, the Canadian researchers decided to go public with their data this weekend. Media outlets from around the world began calling, and governmental bodies began checking and rechecking their machines.

Other agencies, including the FBI, the U.S. National Security Administration and Canada’s Communications Security Establishment, also took notice.

“In air traffic control, we don’t have people flying with no flight path,” says Rafal Rohozinski, CEO of the SecDev Group and one of the co-authors of the investigation. He and his partners are trying to use their findings to spur governments into action on controlling this kind of information warfare.

“We need to begin thinking about ways of implementing arms control in cyberspace,” says Prof. Deibert.

On Sunday, Mr. Villeneuve looked at his computer screen and noticed no slowdown in the cyber spy ring. The infection, it seems, continues to spread.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090329.wcomputerspy0329/BNStory/Technology/

OMAR EL AKKAD

From Monday’s Globe and Mail

March 29, 2009 at 10:47 PM EDT

Against the backdrop of humming computers in the underground lab in Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies, a screen flickered, and the most politically explosive cyber-spy network in the world began to reveal itself.

It was March 6, 12:33 p.m., and Nart Villeneuve was getting frustrated. The 34-year-old international relations student and part-time tech geek had tried everything to track down a piece of malicious software that had infected computers around the world, including those in the offices of the Dalai Lama.

Finally, he turned to the ultimate hacker’s tool: He entered some of the code from those infected computers into Google. Just like that, he found one of the cyberspy network’s control servers, then another, and another. From that Eureka moment came a flood of information, almost all of it suggesting the ring originated in China.

A team of Canadian researchers revealed this weekend a network, dubbed GhostNet, of more than 1,200 infected computers worldwide that includes such “high-value targets” as Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Indian Embassy in Kuwait, as well as a dozen computers in Canada.

The revelation left government bodies around the world scrambling to determine what sensitive files may have been compromised by the cyberspy network, which even now continues to spread and infect, its authors apparently undaunted by all the extra attention.

The revelation that the vast majority of the attacks appear to originate from China has prompted an angry denial from Beijing, which slammed the report as nonsense.

But that hasn’t stopped the bombshell investigation from attracting the attention of myriad intelligence and law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Canada’s Communications Security Establishment.

Indeed, it’s hard to believe that what has now been revealed as a massive cyberbreach began just a few months ago in a room at the foothills of the Himalayas, with a Canadian researcher watching a ‘ghost’ steal a file from the Dalai Lama.

Greg Walton showed up in Dharamsala, India in September of last year to determine whether somebody was trying to spy on the Dalai Lama’s computer. With a background in international relations and computer science, the British-born 34-year-old had been advising the Tibetan government on security issues since the late 1990s. The Dalai Lama’s Geneva-based adviser had recently asked him to check whether Tibetan government computers had been the subject of an attack.

Greg Walton on how the malware might be stopped:

“We were granted unprecedented access to the private office and to the computer systems,” says Mr. Walton, who is one of three researchers at the Munk Centre’s Citizen Lab — along with Mr. Villeneuve and lab head Ron Deibert — who worked on the 10-month investigation in conjunction with the SecDev Group, an Ottawa-based consultancy.

What Mr. Walton found was a thoroughly compromised computer system, infected with so-called “malware” that allowed a mysterious outside entity to not only spy on the computer, but also extract data from it. Researchers watched someone, somewhere, extract a copy of a document detailing the negotiating positions of the Dalai Lama’s envoy.

“What we were witnessing was an international crime taking place,” says Professor Deibert.

Prof. Deibert discusses the researchers’ unique brand of ‘hactivism’:

Mr. Walton recorded the activity and eventually returned to Toronto with some 1.2-gigabytes of raw data — countless lines of often-incomprehensible code — for Mr. Villeneuve to sift through.

The researchers at the Citizen Lab weren’t new to this kind of thing. Last year, they revealed the logging of millions of text messages sent by users of a Chinese Skype service. Mr. Villeneuve had learned some tricks during that endeavour, such as searching for improperly configured servers and sifting through their directories for useful files.

He tried the same tricks this time, but nothing worked. The researchers knew there was a backbone behind the malicious software on the Dalai Lama’s office computers, but they couldn’t pinpoint it.

Then one day, a couple of weeks ago, Mr. Villeneuve came across a line of code that appeared to begin with a numbers that signified a date.

In an interview on Sunday, he was momentarily reluctant to disclose the seemingly elite hacker’s tool he unleashed on that piece of code in order to get it to spill its secrets.

Finally, he said: “I put it in Google, man.”

The obvious paid off. Soon, Mr. Villeneuve was led to a U.S.-based server that turned out to be one of the so-called “control” servers behind the malicious code. Whoever Mr. Villeneuve was following turned out to be very systematic in his approach, and the researcher found that changing a single number or letter in a piece of code led him to another control server.

Soon, the investigators found four control servers, each containing a list of all infected computers that have reported to the server, as well as code to issue and monitor commands to the infected computers. If the 1,295 infected computers in 103 different countries were the limbs, the four servers were the spine, and three of those servers were located in China.

Prof. Deibert is cautious not to allege that the Chinese government is behind the cyberspy network, saying he simply does not have hard evidence to support that conclusion. What the researchers do have is circumstantial evidence.

“The evidence that we have shows that the majority of the control servers were located in China,” says Mr. Villeneuve. “The interface to controlling the infected hosts on these servers in China was in Chinese. And the remote Trojan favoured by the attackers is a Trojan coded by Chinese hackers.”

One of the four servers, located in Hainan Island, also traced back to a Chinese government server.

(Chinese officials in Canada could not be reached for comment on Sunday, but Beijing has reportedly denied any involvement in the cyber spy ring, slamming the investigation’s findings).

Looking to learn more about how the infiltration network functions, the Canadian researchers launched a trap. They set up a “honey-pot” computer and downloaded as much malicious code onto it as possible. They watched as the mysterious entity at the other end of the cyberspy network took over, first asking for basic information, such as the computer’s processor and memory specifications.

Then the thief rummaged through folders such as “My Documents.” He also looked for geographic information, where the computer was located.

There was no doubt that this was not a random spy network. The list of infected computers tilted heavily toward pro-Tibet organizations and Indian embassies. The Tibetan headquarters are located in India.

The Canadian researchers were also presented with concrete examples where the virtual snooping had real-world implications. In one case, a young woman who works for a Tibetan outreach group was detained by Chinese intelligence agents at the Nepalese-Tibetan border and interrogated. During the interrogation, she was presented with transcripts of her on-line chats dating back years.

The researchers eventually concluded that about 30 per cent of all infected computers were so-called high-value targets, such as embassies, ministries and news organization machines.

They also traced 12 infected computers back to Canada, but could not pinpoint them. They could make an educated guess about their owners, though — the Canadian computer information returned to the malicious servers included the “name” a user gives their computer, and in many cases the name was a commonly used Tibetan first name, the researchers said, indicating the user is likely Tibetan in origin.

The honey pot computer was eventually instructed to download a copy of the GhostNet “remote access tool,” a piece of software that gives an external user the same level of control over a computer as if he were sitting directly in front of the machine. In effect, the entity using this tool could order an infected computer to do everything from turn on its video camera to copy documents to record audio. Not only was the cyber spy network targeting strategic computers around the world, it seemed, it also had the power to fully control them.

After 10 months of investigation, the Canadian researchers decided to go public with their data this weekend. Media outlets from around the world began calling, and governmental bodies began checking and rechecking their machines.

Other agencies, including the FBI, the U.S. National Security Administration and Canada’s Communications Security Establishment, also took notice.

“In air traffic control, we don’t have people flying with no flight path,” says Rafal Rohozinski, CEO of the SecDev Group and one of the co-authors of the investigation. He and his partners are trying to use their findings to spur governments into action on controlling this kind of information warfare.

“We need to begin thinking about ways of implementing arms control in cyberspace,” says Prof. Deibert.

On Sunday, Mr. Villeneuve looked at his computer screen and noticed no slowdown in the cyber spy ring. The infection, it seems, continues to spread.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090329.wcomputerspy0329/BNStory/Technology/

ELIZABETH CHURCH

From Monday’s Globe and Mail

March 23, 2009 at 4:08 AM EDT

Toronto city government made food vendors miserable and even considered to ” fine the homeless for taking bottles out of blue bins ” At the same time Alberta plan “to end homelessness”

I did not feed him cereal after he did not finish his usual amount of formula cuz I thought he was too full to have anything more. Since then he refuse to take formula anymore until my husband figured out that he might miss his solid treat 5 hrs later.

Oh my lord, I really don’t know how much longer would he wait until he got his juice&cereal; usually we have to feed him every 3 hr since he’s so easily get hungry and such a big boy!

I dunno what to say of him, little budy definitely got his preference now.

A
while back, I was given the task of teaching a Grade 12 remedial class
in physics. Since the failure rate always hovered around 50 per cent, I
was told to expect the same. Besides, most of the incoming students had
failed high-school physics and thus were expected to do so again. I
refused to accept this cynical outlook.

On the first day, I told the students: Attend all lectures, complete
all assignments and tests, and you will be guaranteed a passing grade.
Hard work will be rewarded. Having taught remedial courses in chemistry
and math, I knew the key was to make the subject matter relevant to
everyday life.

Isaac Newton’s equations of motion made more sense when used to
calculate the braking distance of a speeding Mazda RX-7 (or the
distance a human body would be thrown without a seatbelt). Gustav
Kirchhoff’s laws of circuits were plain to see when I almost
electrocuted myself during a lab class. X-rays and camera filters were
a natural segue into light scattering and polarization. By the end of
the course, students had analyzed an MIT article on airport-screening
machines based on costs, energy efficiency and civil liberties. Their
assignment: “You’re the airport manager. You decide which machine is
the best purchase.” Intelligent, nuanced arguments buttressed each
student’s conclusion. In the end, only one constant no-show failed.

The key ingredient to their success: confidence. Why think students
don’t have it in them to understand physics? Why imprison them to the
past? Before parting ways, I advised: Never believe you can’t tackle a
challenge.

The power within should never be underestimated. Yet, there are some
who believe that biological determinism trumps the human spirit. A few
academics now say women don’t have the genetic makeup for math. Obscure
scientific theories and dubious experiments are given as proof – much
like 19th-century European tests that “proved” the inferior
intelligence of blacks by comparing the skull size of black Africans
and white Europeans. (Guess whose skulls were always bigger?)

Biological determinism is a blunt tool used by elites to thwart the
aspirations of those whom they wish to control. Mirroring this are
those religious elders who insist that women don’t have the
intellectual capacity of men. They dismiss demands for equality as
espousal for sameness. Within many Muslim cultures, there is the
accepted ideology that women lack intelligence, are too “emotional” and
“weak.” Yet, there is no theological proof for these assertions.

Syed Abul A’la Maududi, an influential 20th-century Indo-Pakistani scholar, argued in the misogynous tract Purdah and the Status of Women in Islam
that the dearth of female Nobel Prize winners was proof of their subpar
intelligence (reasoning echoed by the archly secular Shah of Iran to
Barbara Walters). According to his logic, then, the lack of Muslim
Nobel Prize winners proves the subpar intelligence of Muslims – a
conclusion that belies the astounding scientific achievements of the
Golden Age of Islamic civilization.

Those who insist that Muslim women are inherently intellectually
deficient willfully ignore their accomplishments across 14 centuries in
fields such as jurisprudence, theology and science.

Similarly, the sheer numbers of female mathematicians, physicists
and engineers challenge the “women can’t do math” mantra. Thankfully,
there are enough educators who don’t believe the cynics. I was
fortunate to have nurturers of the mind throughout my education in
Montreal. Not once did I meet discouragement. At Harvard, I pursued my
love of math and physics as one would pursue a love of music. Spherical
Bessel functions, Feynman diagrams and the like resonated in my spirit.
My doctoral thesis involved the application of mathematical physics to
statistical mechanics, resulting in a theory (albeit obscure) of
electrolyte solutions.

I, along with a growing female sorority, stand on the giant
shoulders of pioneers such as mathematician and physicist Emmy Noether.
Today, 19-year-old wunderkind physicist Alia Sabur is poised to go
where no man (or woman) has gone before. For those who tell us “you
don’t have it in you,” we say: We’ve done the math, and found infinity in the palm of our hands.

1. J R from Vancouver, Canada writes: That is very true about science grading. You must have got into a lot of trouble in that university or high school when you only failed one student. Grading, and also teaching, are designed to fail a bunch, give low marks to a few, mediocre marks to most, and good marks to a few. Teaching methods are usually tweaked to make sure the right people do well and the wrong people do poorly. We do not have an education system. We have a stratification system. There is no reason why everybody can’t get physics, or math, of literature, or anything else. Any teacher that gets high success rates for all or most of their students will be called in to explain why she did not fail more of her students, and be disciplined for doing a good job both in high schools and in universities’ undergraduate programs.

   • Posted 16/03/09 at 12:16 AM EDT | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment

2. J Mossat

from vancouver, Canada writes: When I obtained my physics degree I felt that the most stunningly talented students were women. Yet males (I’m male) made up about 80 % of the upper level classes. Why weren’t there more women? Perhaps it’s simply that they are discouraged and only those who are clearly brilliant leave no opportunity for critics to discourage them with the fiction that they can’t do the work.

Another problem with physics instruction is that many profs look upon teaching as a necessary evil and an interruption to their research, rather than an opportunity to share their passion, and it makes for a dreary experience. There were exceptions, to be sure, but they were in the minority

• Posted 16/03/09 at 1:25 AM EDT | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment

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Attack shows that Tamil insurgents still pose a threat despite a major army offensive that has pushed them out of nearly all strongholds in the northern part of the island …Read the full article

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1. Joe Palooka from Toronto, Canada writes: Interesting development. I wonder where the plane originated, given the government’s claim to have obliterated the Tamil terrorists’ air capabilities. In any event, let’s hope that the Tigers’ reign of terror will come to an end very soon.

   • Posted 20/02/09 at 12:09 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
2. Don’t forget to bring a towel from Toronto, Canada writes: They have a plane?
   Was is a red bi-plane?

   • Posted 20/02/09 at 12:25 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
3. A Piece of the Action from Canada writes: It ain’t over until the fat Buddha sings…

   • Posted 20/02/09 at 12:54 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
4. justice withoutprejudice from Scarborouogh, Canada writes: SB from Ontario from Canada writes: I hope it was not a Canadian made plane supplied by Scarborough Tamil Residents.

   As far as I know, this plane actually took off from Scarborough…fool…

   • Posted 20/02/09 at 1:27 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
5. Joe Palooka from Toronto, Canada writes: justice withoutprejudice: you appear to be an apologist for the Tamil Tiger terrorists. The LTTE is an internationally-recognised terrorist group. Which terrorist group regularly recruits (forcibly) child soldiers? Which terrorist group invented suicide bombings as a tactic? Which terrorist group engages in political assassination and extra-judicial killings?

   By the way, the Sri Lankan army is defending its government and peaceful citizenry from the LTTE.

   http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/shrilanka/terroristoutfits/LTTE.HTM

   • Posted 20/02/09 at 1:45 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
6. Christina D from Toronto, Canada writes: There will never be peace in that country. Peace will never be attained as long as people are oppressed. And, there will always be resistance, if not by planes, then in some form. Stop the war and the killings of innocent Tamil civilians and go back to the negotiating table. India must stop the deception and start working for peace in Sri Lanka immediately!

   • Posted 20/02/09 at 2:13 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
7. Visakha Devi from Toronto, Canada writes: If such a bombing happened here in Toronto or anywhere in the Western world, there would have been mayhem…torrent of sympathy for the injured and talk of dealing with terrorists….however, when such things happen in poor countries such as Sri Lanka, its all about how the ‘marginalized tamils are fighting for their rights’. Well those marginalized tamils living a good life in these western countries obviously contribute to the coffers of the LTTE which in turn has used their relations as human shields in their cowardly fight against all Sri Lankans. Now is the time to listen to the true voice of the Tamils…the civilians who have been living under the brutality of the LTTE for all this time and who have managed to escape…go to Youtube and check out numerous clips of the innocent tamil villagers who have fled the clutches of these barbarians… It is time for western countries to stop their double standards in the fight against all terrorism. This air attack in Colombo which is not the first, is like a different 9/11 for the Sri Lankans. Yes, no one was killed fortunately…however the trauma is evident. Stop finding reasons for the terrorist causes and help the Sri Lankan Government eradicate this menace that has been terrorizing Sri Lankan citizens for over 25 years.

   • Posted 20/02/09 at 2:20 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
8. Jesu Pifco from Canada writes: The only fools are the ones who take partisan stances on this tragedy.

   • Posted 20/02/09 at 2:48 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
9. Glynn W from Canada writes: Terrorists with planes!!!! This is the first?? Or is it? If so these guys are more sophisticated than Al Queda! WOW – To have planes, conceal them, have runways, dunno if they got air traffic control lol but nonetheless impressive!

   • Posted 20/02/09 at 3:02 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
10. justice withoutprejudice from Scarborouogh, Canada writes: Visakha Devi from Toronto, Canada writes: This air attack in Colombo which is not the first, is like a different 9/11 for the Sri Lankans. Yes, no one was killed fortunately…

    This is not an terrorist attack by some foreign group but an ‘all out war’ between Tamil Tigers and Sirlankan sinhalese army. If you think you’re eradicating terrorism then you got nothing to hide, just let all foreign journalists and independent observers to the conflict zone.

    1983 riots against innocent tamil civilians by the Srilankan gouvernment aided Sinhalese mobs is what you call Tamils’ 9/11.

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 3:18 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
11. Canuck with Questions from Canada writes: People who are not familiar with the Sri Lankan coflict need to know that Sri Lankan regime(16 family members of President run it) spends over 100 million dollars in Europe, UK, Canada and US for propaganda!!! They killed 9 journalists and chased away 29 of them in 2 years!! These are racist thugs in power.

    ‘Oscar’ and ‘Grammy’ nominated M.I.A explains the situation in a nutshell!
    http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200901/20090128_mia.html

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 3:22 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
12. Glynn W from Canada writes: Canuck with Questions – Chill man. I was only commenting on how these people manage an ‘air-force!’ I think it is pretty cool but thanks for your synopsis of the ills of Sri Lanka anyway.

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 3:26 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
13. Derek Holtom from Swan River, Canada writes: Did I not just see pics at the NP about a pro Tamil Tiger rally at York?

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 3:29 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
14. Christina D from Toronto, Canada writes: Visakha Devi from Toronto,

    ‘Yes, no one was killed fortunately’.

    You don’t seem to show the same concern for the thousands of innocent Tamil civilians who were murdered by the Sri Lankan military. You don’t raise any questions about that. It’s clear, for you, a singhalese life is more valuable than a Tamil life.

    You are inhumane and a hypocrite. Shame on you!

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 3:36 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
15. CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: Hey Christina

    How can you ask anyone to value a life of a tamil person when LTTE kills their own in suicide mission in the guise of ‘self sacrifice’ for a cause which the whole world has branded as terrorism. How canyou value a life when your LTTE has killed 53 tamil politicians during the time of conflict who did not see things the LTTE way. How can you value ‘heroic’ freedom fighters who hid behind the skirts of the very same people thery are supposed to represent (i am talking of the 200K people held as human shield) and shoot them if they decide to make a dash for safety. How can you respect someone who make your children fight for a reason they know about..Lets get something clear, the war is against the LTTE, and the fact the innocent are dying is a heartbreak on both sides, we all feel the pain – you want the kiling of innocent to stop, tell your beloved LTTE to release the 200K human shield, taht will drastically reduce the numbers..As for Canadian and western country involvement, they should bloody well stay away for once, Canada is guilty more than any other country for the atrocities committed by LTTE by allowing the funding of a recognised terrorist organisation and its shameful to see what the bleeding heart liberals would do for 350K votes!

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 3:46 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
16. Canada I love from Toronto, Canada writes: What? I thought the government had them surrounded? Where did the plane come from? I thought the government was winning? What is going on? It seems like the government can’t handle it, and they don’t want any help (Britain offered a convoy last week). LTTE is stupid, if they cared about their people, then they would not have done this. the SLA is going to take revenge by killing hundreds more. All those in the SLA camps are done for.

    God Help The Civilians.

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 4:03 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
17. Chris E. from Canada writes: Tamils should have a nation they can self-govern. Re-drawing maps to conform to ethnic settlement is how Europe took shape in the 20th century. Kosovo is the latest example.

    Bear this in mind when you allow immigration: someday, the immigrants may go from grateful guests to demanding separatists.

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 4:31 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
18. FELIX INPARAJAH from Kingston, Canada writes: cn w: Rational argument is not possible with emotionally charged individuals…like yurself. I think everyone who reads the comment section (including myself ) tend to be irritated by comments of a plainly emotional nature lacking any thoughtful contribution to this pernicious ethnic conflict. The question here is the Dignity of a people. Since you are so familiar with the history of the conflict you should be well aware that the minority Tamil leadership (Selvanayagam and Co.) sincerely tried to bring about change through satyagraha, which resulted only in violent reprisal by Sinhala mobs. A militant response was inevitable the moment the government implemented racist policies (Sinhala Only Act) designed to marginilize the minority Tamils. You speak of the Liberals Party of Canada voicing concern for the treatment of Sri Lanka’s minority as political exchange for Tamil-Canadian votes. You fail to see (in your emotional blindness) that Canada has taken quite a different path in confronting a very similar ethnic divide right here: Quebec. So, you see, it is not ’350,000′ votes that is at issue here, but how we, as Canadians tolerate and reconcile ethnic diversity. The regime of the ruling ex-colonial families in Sri Lanka is a MODEL of how NOT to resolve issues relating to the peaceful co-habitation of a region by ethnically diverse populations. I hope global policy makers recognize this fact.

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 4:46 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
19. Toronto S from Canada writes: In 1970 it was CEYLON the beautiful Island then we had the Island change its name under a new constitution to Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka with a state religion and a single state language followed by opressive riots against the minority Tamils. more than a million fled the country (300000 of them are here in Canada) there is one other million who had to vacate their houses and move out as internally displaced persons in Sri Lanka because the ARMY which consists solely of the Majority Sinhalese just expropriated their houses to form their scurity zones without any compensation. Presently there is more bombing which is creating more deaths and displaced persons . its about time the UN has a East Timor solution to this problem.Its no longer an internal problem of that Island

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 4:32 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
20. Chris J from Toronto, Canada writes: It’s saddening when you hear comments that condemn one side and fully support another.

    It’s quite clear that both sides are guilty of atrocities.

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 4:46 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
21. justice withoutprejudice from Scarborouogh, Canada writes: CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: Chris E – i am not really sure the parallels that you draw apply here for the following reasons

    1. Contrary to propaganda by LTTE, there is no oppression of tamils or anyother ethnic community in Sri Lanka, i can prove this factually from the day we cease to be a British Colony.

    CN W, First, stop talking rubbish…Most of the Srilankan tamils fled to neighbouring countries such as India and foreign countries such as Canada as refugees. There are about 1.5 million Srilankan or Eelam Tamils in Western countries now. This is a well known proven fact so I am not sure why you would go out of your way and make yourself look foolish. It’s about time all diaspora Srilankans start discussion on ways of strengthening law and order in that country and not trying to sweep all pressing issues underneath the carpet.

    Lame attempt I must say Mr. CN W…

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 4:50 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
22. justice withoutprejudice from Scarborouogh, Canada writes: Second, unlike Muslims and Burghers, Tamils had Kingdoms in North and East of Srilanka and long history compared to Muslims and Burghers.

    You can throw all your statistics and formulas you want, which was gathered by Srilankan gouvernment(sinhalese) census board, so I am not sure how much of that can be trusted. The fact of the matter is, Tamils built North and East of Srilankan with their blood and sweat, so even if there’s one single Tamil left in this island, North and East still belongs to Tamils. You wouldn’t let your bank take back your house even if you’re the only sole survivor left in the house, would you?

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 4:57 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
23. justice withoutprejudice from Toronto, Canada writes: Visakha Devi from Toronto, Canada writes:While you are living free over here, your sisters and brothers in the north and east have been marching against the LTTE, demanding that they lay down their arms. Those who have escaped from the areas controlled by the LTTE have horror stories to tell, of the torture, intimidations, death threats, etc. Even you who live here in Toronto have not been immune from the LTTE intimidations.

    Visakha Devi, If LTTE is the problem then 1.5 million tamils would have lived in central, west and south of Srilanka as they used to live before 1956, 1958, 1977 and 1983 riots.And guess where it all happened, right in Western and Southern parts of Srilanka.

    That’s why they instead fled to neighbouring and western countries to save their lives and like you said ‘live freely’. Now a days, even Sinhalese, like Sunday leader editor Lasantha’s wife, are fleeing the country even they can’t stomach the Rajapakses gouvernment anymore.

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 6:27 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
24. Abheetha Sinhaweera from Toronto, Canada writes: So let’s see… When USA & INDIA have asked the LTTE to lay down the arms in order to get a solution, free the innocent civilians, they quietly retreat and launch a air raid in Colombo. We all know what the Tamil supporters of LTTE in Canada would say about this, and frankly it doesn’t matter to anyone! What I would like to see is the response from LIBERALS who had the nerve to bring up a fake Genocide in the Canadian parliament. Unlike the what they were crying about this killings took place not even in the war zone. Are the Bob Raes, Marian Minnas and Jim Kariganins going to condemn this, and say the LTTE are the TRUE genocide? Or do they still want a ceasefire so that these murdering LTTE thugs could re-arm them selves more?

    This is the exact reason why the SL government HAVE NOT, WILL NOT & SHOULD NOT give in to any international sympathizers shedding crocodile tears for a terrorist group. While it’s worthwhile finding out how these barbarians manage to take off from a 100 Sq. KM area that forces are closing in, they should intensify the attacks on the LTTE and eradicate the CANCER!

    This will not discourage anyone in SL, the Army or all of us who want to see and end to terrorism in Sri Lanka. In fact it should give us plenty of courage and reasons to finish them off! The day is not that far…!

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 5:08 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
25. CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: Felix, i get your gist, however, i am not too happy that 5 of my comments has been removed, seems silly to keep typing if it gets struck off.. We are making headway, i agree, whereever the British has been they left behind a mess, inevitably resulting in conflict and meyhem.. However, again i beg to disagree on tamil repression, during the time i was in school, any tamil can go to any tamil school whereas sinhalese couldnt go to a tamil school as they teach only in tamil. Tamils can go to any university in Sri Lanka, sinhalese cannot go to university in North and East..Most of the govt jobs and jobs at foreign missions were held by tamils, our foreign minister was a tamil until he was killed by LTTE.. Agree, if there is a perceived repression by the youth, there is a chance of armed conflict, as we Sinhalese know too well during the JVP issues that we had..Again i have to go to the simple solution, youth exuberence should not result in dragging a country into a war. When the whole world group these actions as terrorist activities, it should be evident to all concern that there is something fundamentally wrong with what this organsiation represent. My view was the same when JVP was around as well, anyone challenging the ‘democratically’ elected government will need to face repurcussions. Anyone killing for an idiology needs to face the consequence, there are ways and means of resolving conflict, when you resort to barbaric means, there is a time someone will call the bluff, and the end result is what you see, innocent dying, Sri Lanka is not the only place and will not be the final place as well.. My wish is that LTTE has to go, there is no room for truce, peace talks, devolution of power etc, tried it, it fails..We may not reconcile the harm done in our generation but hopefully the next generations will live in peace..

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 9:52 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
26. Visakha Devi from Toronto, Canada writes: Enough said, all LTTE supporters..you do not speak for the Tamil People of Sri Lanka. While you are comfortably situated over here, your brethren have been living under the rule of the gun of the LTTE in the north and east of Sri Lanka. While you are living free over here, your sisters and brothers in the north and east have been marching against the LTTE, demanding that they lay down their arms. Those who have escaped from the areas controlled by the LTTE have horror stories to tell, of the torture, intimidations, death threats, etc. Even you who live here in Toronto have not been immune from the LTTE intimidations. We only have to look at the various investigations conducted here by the RCMP and even journalists to see how tamils are forced to give money to the LTTE and to support them in numerous ways. So ENOUGH supporting these bloodthirsty maniacs. SUPPORT TO ERADICATE THEM! Then the talks can begin…

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 5:10 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
27. FELIX INPARAJAH from Kingston, Canada writes: Senthooran,

    You said it all my friend.

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 7:09 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
28. FELIX INPARAJAH from Kingston, Canada writes: Abheetha Sinhaweera, CN W, and Visakha Devi:

    I see that it necessary at this point to penetrate the circular reasoning you seem to have regressed into.

    I will make it simple as I am aware that due to the policies of the Sri Lankan government PRIOR to the existence of the LTTE, it is highly likely that you may have had a helping hand in gaining admission to the university

    1. The REALITY of the Global Tamil Diaspora is rooted in historic events such as, the Black July pogrom of 1983 which was itself the unleashing of underlying Sinhala resentment at the accomplishments of the minority Tamils in the British Civil Service and academia.

    Many prominent Tamils left Sri Lanka in this wave of ethnic hatred. Were the LTTE responsible for this provocation of the Sinhala masses. Unlikely…as they did not exist at the time. Please address this reality in any further discussion of this topic.

    Thank you.

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 7:36 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
29. Sujananth Thiru from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Canada writes: This war won’t end until Tamil people regain Tamil Eelam…..It’s been 61 years of oppression and 25 years of armed conflict and the Tigers have been in worst situation in the past only to come back stronger, more determined and with even more support from the Tamil people.

    Those people who comment here, who claims that there is no genocide, if there is no genocide why not allow international media and UN monitors to do their work without interference from the Sri Lankan government in the conflict zones? Are the government and the Sinhalese people scared that the world will find out about everything?

    This is what is happening and happened in Sri Lanka in regards to media:

    Listening Post – Conflict coverage in Sri Lanka – 13 Feb 09
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEqqg-sPmKA

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 7:44 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
30. Jo Blo from Canada writes: I wanna know what kind of airplanes the Tamil Tigers used and what sort of ordnance they dropped. I also want to know what shot them down. Was it a ZSU-24 battery I wonder. In which case, the planes would have been obliterated by a wall of steel. But I guess journalists assume we’re all too stupid to want to know these things, I suppose.

    But is sounds like the Sri Lankans were well organized with their air defense.

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 7:53 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
31. FELIX INPARAJAH from Kingston, Canada writes: CN W, Thanks for your response. No EVERYTHING obviously does not hinge on the riots of 83. What I am trying to convey is that the solution in not as one-dimensional as you keep re-iterating, namely: destroy every last LTTE cadre and its leadership. The current muddle of Sri Lanka is due in large part to the colonial activities of the British obviously who re-organized the three Kingdoms into one state, and then haphazardly left the political economy of the country in the hands of the majority. Do you not see that it was the racist policies of the Jayawardene regime that fueled militancy among the Tamil youth? Injustice is a natural source of uprising. The ruling elite of Sri Lanka, heavily invested in the war, I might add, have interests in the conflict. At any rate, what is important here is that thr LTTE was a reaction to unjust and racist policies crafted by the elite – with a view to their profit, not the peace and prosperity of the people: Sinhala and Tamil. Tell me, what would you do if you were denied entry to education, by Law, because you were Sinhala(which I am certain yu are btw ), what choice would you have BUT to challenge the obviously racist legislation? THAT is my point. There are much larger historical, political, social and economic forces at play now all complicating the situation. IT IS NOT AS SIMPLE AS: ‘LTTE are terrorists and we must kill all LTTE.’ Surely, yoiu see THAT?

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 8:14 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
32. FELIX INPARAJAH from Kingston, Canada writes: Jo Blo,

    This is the BBC report of the same news:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7902392.stm

    There is also audio from a security advisor who was in Colombo during the sortie.

    Hope it addresses your questions.

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 8:19 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
33. Martyn Whitt from Canada writes: Christina D from Toronto, Canada writes: India must stop the deception and start working for peace in Sri Lanka immediately!

    ——————————–

    Cute!

    However you may be interested to know that Tamils are of the Hindu faith and come from Southern India. The majority of India are it’s ruling class are also India. Tamils today are found in Northern Sri Lanka and Southern India, there is a state in India called Tamil Nadu in Southern India for instance.

    Did it ever occur to you that maybe India has better insight into the LTTE than you might have?

    Cute post though, really cute.

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 10:29 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
34. Martyn Whitt from Canada writes: The majority of India are it’s ruling class are also India.

    Cute Martyn really cute!

    Should read the majority of India and it’s ruling class are also Hindus.

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 10:37 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
35. Abheetha Sinhaweera from Toronto, Canada writes: Nice try Christina D and great catch by Martyn Whitt… It’s encouraging to see that not all Canadians are duped by the pro-LTTE propaganda here in the GTA. You make an excellent point about India having a better insight to LTTE. In fact they do want the LTTE leader for the killing of former Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi!

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 10:40 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
36. justice withoutprejudice from Toronto, Canada writes: CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: My view was the same when JVP was around as well, anyone challenging the ‘democratically’ elected government will need to face repurcussions. Anyone killing for an idiology needs to face the consequence, there are ways and means of resolving conflict, when you resort to barbaric means, there is a time someone will call the bluff, and the end result is what you see, innocent dying, Sri Lanka is not the only place and will not be the final place as well..

    Mr CN W, Please elaborate what would you consider ‘challenging’ the democratically elected gouvernment? You wouldn’t consider non-violent protests as challenging, would you? It’s the gouvernment who first resorted to violent means to challenge non-violent protests by unleashing terror from 1956 till 1983 on non-armed ‘tamil civilians’? So you can’t compare tamil arm resistsance with JVP resistance as JVP was the first one to resort to violent means to achieve their goals unlike Tamil politicians and leaders.

    If you want terrorism to end, you should stop first participating in it. Srilankan politicians are racist and corrupted. And Srilankan justice & police system are beyond corrupted.

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 10:41 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
37. Iain’s Opinion from Canada writes: Both sides are lying about civilian casualties.
    The Sinhalese were imported by BRITAIN many moons ago to be their administrators in their colony, then called Ceylon. The Tamils (first nations) were thusly dispossed of their homeland. The sinhalese were educated and elevated to positions of authority by ‘the crown’.
    I guess the Sinhalese are going to stomp on the Tamils and grind them into oblivion. If you all think this is ok, why do we in Canada negotiate settlements with our first nations instead of grinding them into the annals of history?
    Deplore the method, but the Tamils are fighting for what is theirs by right of first occupation. If it is invalid there, then it is invalid here.

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 11:06 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
38. Mister Peace from Streetsville, Canada writes: The cute and cuddly comments for LTTE are classy. Holy father in heaven, please help your wandering sheep and bring peace in their hurting heart.

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 11:06 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
39. Martyn Whitt from Canada writes: Christina D, apologies for the ‘cute’ jab, I was thinking about M.I.A.

    In theory I have no problems or issues with a seperate Tamil State, however not with the terrorist and brutal LTTE spearheading the movement-that will only cause more bloodshed in the future. If they could follow the Czech Republic/Slovak model of splitting the country (ie peacefully) what could the world do to stop them?

    Abeetha thank-you. I’m amazed at how many people who have lived in ‘the west’ for longer than a generation are so seduced by these despotic, and morally corrupt organizations. It’s as if it’s a badge of intellect and moral superiority to support literal death cults ideological without any regard or insight into what they actually represent, or what it represents to humanity in general!

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 11:06 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
40. justice withoutprejudice from Toronto, Canada writes: Martyn Whitt from Canada writes: Christina D, apologies for the ‘cute’ jab, I was thinking about M.I.A.

    In theory I have no problems or issues with a seperate Tamil State, however not with the terrorist and brutal LTTE spearheading the movement-that will only cause more bloodshed in the future. If they could follow the Czech Republic/Slovak model of splitting the country (ie peacefully) what could the world do to stop them?

    Mr. Martyn Whitt, As far as I know, Canada sent out her killing machine along with US killing machine to wipe out Al-Qaeda, didn’t you? So what makes you think Tamil moderate politicians will have any sort of chance against people with similar ideology as Al-Qaeda? Kill all Tamils because we just hate them…Tamil Tigers will fade away to back ground once normalcy gets restored in North and East…Just look at the type Tamil violent factions that’s around the Srilankan GOuvernment right now..They recently shot down a civil engineer because he won a road contraction from NGO organizations over them..So please provide us a plan on how exactly do you propose Tamil community deal with people like that?

    There are just so many tamil tiger bashers but so few tamil people saviours…

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 11:21 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
41. Jason Belly from Canada writes: Well, let’s see if the ‘concerned Tamil Diaspora’ in Canada will take to the the streets of Toronto in protest of the civilian deaths in Colombo and the escalation of the war by the LTTE Terrorists (yes, LTTE are indeed Terrorists as designated by the Govt. of Canada) from this usage of crop-duster aircraft to indiscriminately bomb and kill Sri Lankan civilians.

    The last time these ‘concerned Tamil Diaspora’ took to the streets of Toronto in protest for ‘Tamil civilian deaths’ (Read: LTTE terrorist deaths) I was stuck in traffic in downtown Toronto for nearly 1 hour and missed my Friday evening supper with my family (a much looked forward to event for me as a hardworking Canadian) and it was all due to this ‘concerned Tamil Diaspora’s’ LTTE Terrorists sympathies!

    Shame that the Govt. of Canada tolerated this Terrorist-subversive actions by these Terra-lovers at the expense of keeping us Canadians hostage to a crass, tomfoolery downtown Toronto on a Friday evening!

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 11:31 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
42. justice withoutprejudice from Toronto, Canada writes: Jason Belly from Canada writes:

    The last time these ‘concerned Tamil Diaspora’ took to the streets of Toronto in protest for ‘Tamil civilian deaths’ (Read: LTTE terrorist deaths) I was stuck in traffic in downtown Toronto for nearly 1 hour and missed my Friday evening supper with my family (a much looked forward to event for me as a hardworking Canadian) and it was all due to this ‘concerned Tamil Diaspora’s’ LTTE Terrorists sympathies!

    Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!! Could you please stop reposting your commnents over and over? From what I have read, I am sure your family wouldn’t have missed much that day..they would have had a quite dinner for sure..

    • Posted 20/02/09 at 11:55 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
43. CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: Iain – dont know where you learnt your history of Sri Lanka from, but it was the British who brought the tamils to Sri Lanka from South India to work on their tea palntations – NOT the other way round! Unlike Canadian justice to 1st nations, we havent restricted any tamils to any designated reservations, infact only 3% of the tamils live in the North and the East, the rest lives mainly in Colombo and N’ Eliya intermingled with Sinhalese and muslims..Please dont try to find similarities between whats in canada and whats in LK, and there is simply no way we are going to wipe them off the earth..india has 50 million tamils living 100miles from Sri Lanka, thats double the population of Sri Lanka, i very much doubt if they will sit back and watch their own being systematically destroyed…Listed to the CBS correspondent, who you might think is unbiased and his view of the LTTE..LTTE does not represent any tamil community, its just a terrorist organisation under the guise of freedom fighters..

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 12:06 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
44. Abheetha Sinhaweera from Toronto, Canada writes: I think Ian’s got his history lesson very wrong… Tamils were not the first nation of Sri Lanka, or Ceylon, or Serendib, whichever you prefer. By the way nice try equal the Tamils to First Nations of this great nation… While we are at it can you also enlighten us as to where the Brits imported these Sinhalese from…?

    You make these Sinhalese to be some amazing race, to multiply that quickly.. say between 1815 – 1946 Colonial rule, to become the 75% majority of the country, while the Tamil first nation (as you call them) dwindled to less that 20%. It also begs the question ‘what’s up with the Tamil’s (the first nation) inability to multiply at the same rate..?’. is it just the math or your story just doesn’t hold water…?

    Guess what Ian, learn your history from a real book, not from the LTTE’s gutter mouths. Better yet find a book called RAMAYANA. It’s a very important book written by the Indians, about the love story of Rama and Seetha. You will find that in book it says that Seetha was taken away by RAVANA, the king of Lanka, not Ealam. Yes it says Lanka, and how he flew across the ocean to India and back. They also says he was the king of Raksha. Ironically Sri Lankan history (Mahawamsa etc.) eludes to the Nagas & Rakshas who were the first nations of the island, not Tamils… So read it if you know how to, or better yet, do a search on YouTube and you will find Ramayana the cartoon version, cerated by the Indians for kids… I am sure that’s more inline with your intellect.

    Ramayana was written by the Indians of Hindu religion, just like the Tamils and NOT Sinhalese. So are you telling the world that your Indian brothers are wrong?

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 12:07 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
45. Martyn Whitt from Canada writes: Justice withoutprejudice.

    If there was grassroots support for a Tamil nation amongst the people, I would suggest that all the people and business do not remit tax to Colombo, and if there was threat of violent action against the people a simple volunteer army to defend those lands would do. All the while working foreign diplomatics to the plight and telling them of our simple plan (non payment of tax and defence). Think of it as civil disobedience with a volunteer militia to defend civilians.

    Terrorist attacks on civilians is NOT part of the plan, nor is taking the fight to the Sri Lankan nation-that’s where you lose me.

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 12:11 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
46. justice withoutprejudice from Toronto, Canada writes: You make these Sinhalese to be some amazing race, to multiply that quickly.. say between 1815 – 1946 Colonial rule, to become the 75% majority of the country, while the Tamil first nation (as you call them) dwindled to less that 20%. It also begs the question ‘what’s up with the Tamil’s (the first nation) inability to multiply at the same rate..?’. is it just the math or your story just doesn’t hold water…?

    So why don’t you explain to us then how there are so few natives compare to non-natives or European and Asian immigrants in Canada and US?

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 12:15 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
47. Martyn Whitt from Canada writes: And my suggestion is only valid if there was grassroots support for an independent nation by a majority of people in that area. I do not for a second claim to know that much about Sri Lanka to know either way if it would have grassroots support. My point is if they have the support, if the people really are that passionate and care, severe all ties with Colombo and build your own government and infastructure-not a terrorist organization.

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 12:16 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
48. CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: Truely a democratic and a gentlemanly way of resolving problems Martyn..unfortunately you can only do this with equal intellect, not animals who has a blatant diregard for their own (ex, suicide bombing, child soldiers, human shields, indiscriminate killing of civilians to name a few)..LTTE has to go, and maybe we can start a meaningful dialog then.. and a meaningful solution..

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 12:26 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
49. justice withoutprejudice from Toronto, Canada writes: Martyn Whitt from Canada writes: And my suggestion is only valid if there was grassroots support for an independent nation by a majority of people in that area.

    Martyn, you can get full details with regards to this question from the following web site.

    http://www.sangam.org/2008/03/1977_Manifesto.php?uid=2835

    The major tamil political party did in fact receive a mandate to form a separate nation in 1977 as it described in the following excerpt.

    ’1977: Tamil United Front, renamed Tamil United Liberation Front contested all the parliamentary seats in the traditional homeland of the Tamils; sought and received the mandate from the electorate by winning almost all the parliamentary constituencies with massive lead votes to proceed towards the implementation of the Vaddukoddai resolution, viz., to work for the creation of a sovereign, independent democratic, socialist, secular republic of Tamil Eelam.’

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 12:37 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
50. CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: Here is the real M.I.A in the eyes of another hip hop artist!

    http://blip.tv/file/1145537/

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 12:39 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
51. justice withoutprejudice from Toronto, Canada writes: Martyn Whitt from Canada writes: My point is if they have the support, if the people really are that passionate and care, severe all ties with Colombo and build your own government and infastructure-not a terrorist organization.

    That’s what exactly Tamil started doing by funding technical schools to state of the art hospitals in Northern and Eastern Srilanka. There were separte court systems, police system and even civil system to manage most of northern and eastern part of the country until the this fascist sinhalese gouvernment waged war on Tigers. Little by little, all tamils diaspora were trying to decomcratize Tigers and restore normalcy to civilians in Tigers land.

    These hooligans even burned so many libraries and bombed and occupied many schools every time Jaffna came under their control in 80′s and 90′s. These goons and thugs will never change in this life time. And we do not simply want to waste our time or don’t have time to sit around until these uncivilized race transform themselves into decent human beings.

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 12:46 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
52. CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: justice withoutprejudice – please let us know how many TULF leaders were killed by LTTE since this popular vote in 1977?, i can help you out – 7 and thats 7 out of 53 TAMIL politicans killed by LTTE and here are the dates and the names of those TULF leaders that were murdered

    20.03.88V Master TULF Organizer Kalmunai
    07.03.89S Sabarathnamoorthy TULF Ex-DDC Chairman
    13.07.89A Amirthalingam TULF Leader
    13.07.89V Yogeswaran -TULF MP for Jaffna
    05.07.97A Thangathurai TULF MP for Trincomalee
    29.07.99Dr NeelanThiruchelvam TULF MP
    07.11.00A N Sundaranayagam TULF MP Batticaloa District

    I dont know how many times i will have to say this, but this war is on terror, not on tamils or any other civilians..LTTE are terrorists and should be destroyed..

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 12:50 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
53. CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: justice withoutprejudice – how about the 11 ships carrying military ordinance during the 3 year Norwegian brokered ceasefire, the 12 th ship didnt make it did it bud? Thats where your funding went to pal, not schools and ‘technical’ colleges…As for how you get the funding, even the Canadians know the strong arming your LTTE does to your communities..Hey the CBS guy tells it all..

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Ne_uCzYco

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 12:55 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
54. justice withoutprejudice from Toronto, Canada writes: CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: justice withoutprejudice – please let us know how many TULF leaders were killed by LTTE since this popular vote in 1977?, i can help you out – 7 and thats 7 out of 53 TAMIL politicans killed by LTTE and here are the dates and the names of those TULF leaders that were murdered

    Mr CN W, glad you mentioned this. All these elected politicians, instead of working towards a Tamil nation, they instead chose to work for themselves. That’s why they got assassinated by some Tamil miliant group as at that time as there were just more than a handful of Tamil militant groups functioning in Jaffna. Do you notice how all these politicians got assassinated after you massacred at least 4000 innocent tamil civilans right in the heart of capital. And this carnage lasted for 3 days in case you have trouble recalling it.

    Do you think the Colombo tamil youth after experiencing as horrible event as 1983 july riots would sit there and watch while politicians like amirthalingam fills his pocket with blood money from Sinhalese politicians?

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 1:00 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
55. CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: And you say Govt. does not do anything to develop Jaffna, please look at this report of the EXPO held in Jaffna – any comments??

    another LTTE atrocity, the minister in the picture was killed by a suicide bomber shortly thereafter, when he was participating in promoting a marathon fo youths in the south..!

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 1:02 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
56. justice withoutprejudice from Toronto, Canada writes: CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: And you say Govt. does not do anything to develop Jaffna, please look at this report of the EXPO held in Jaffna – any comments??

    When did I ever say the Srilankan gouvernment does not fund Jaffna at all? All I was saying is, when you feel like it, you will fund Jaffna schools to Jaffna hospitals. You also, when you feel like it, you would bomb these same places in to rubbles without worrying about human civilian casualty in any way.

    You simply don’t have respect for Tamils as human beings. All my life I heard you sinhalese referred Tamils as ‘Para dhamela’ – Tamil dog. Now these Tamil dogs are sopfisticated enough to carry out air raids on military targets as well as blew up your Fast attack crafts.

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 1:08 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
57. CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: Mr CN W, glad you mentioned this. All these elected politicians, instead of working towards a Tamil nation, they instead chose to work for themselves. That’s why they got assassinated by ‘some Tamil miliant group’ -

    Some tamil militant group Sir? why cant you name the LTTE – and who was the judge and the jury, LTTE??, if you asked these politicians, they would have told you, they work for the eletorate who put them into office..since this is not convenient for your seperatist terrorists you bump them off….and you say they are working for a tamil nation, man, at the rate you are killing your own intellectuals,there will not be anyone left to govern because LTTE would have just killed you all..

    I have no trouble recalling any of the details and i freely discussed the 1983 riots in an earlier posting that has been yanked away and if you follow the trail with Felix from Kingston you will see references to the conversation…i see you have the LTTE knack for inflating numbers, your kinsman confirmed 2000 civilian caculaties at 4.20pm today and at 1.00am the next day, the number has become 4000! and we are talking of an incident in 1983!!

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 1:09 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
58. justice withoutprejudice from Toronto, Canada writes: I have no trouble recalling any of the details and i freely discussed the 1983 riots in an earlier posting that has been yanked away and if you follow the trail with Felix from Kingston you will see references to the conversation…i see you have the LTTE knack for inflating numbers, your kinsman confirmed 2000 civilian caculaties at 4.20pm today and at 1.00am the next day, the number has become 4000! and we are talking of an incident in 1983!!

    Mr CN.M, Okay, so let’s keep the number at 2000 then..Have even a one single person has received any sort of compensation from the gouvernment for losing their love ones in this carnage?

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 1:13 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
59. Abheetha Sinhaweera from Toronto, Canada writes: Justice withoutprejudice, So if you are saying the Tamils were the first Nation, where did the Sinhalese come from? Where did the Brits find them… Can you pin point a country, state or some geographic land in your Atlas. May be they came from the lost city of Atlantis.. what do you think?

    Also how come you only answer parts other’s comments that suits you, and tip toe though the ones that don’t suite you… Not much different from LTTE propaganda It shows your learning was done in the jungles of Mulaitiv under LTTE teachers…

    Do us a favour.. now that you are out of the jungle and living in a city, get a proper education PERIOD!!! (and for heaven’s sake get off the WELFARE, Canada is going on a recession!)

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 1:15 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
60. CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: The day is near where we can see what the govt. will do to the North and the East, we will chat at that time..

    As for the 2nd coment, i had as many tamil friends and muslims and we usedto call each other Demala and Thambiya, even called one yesterday that, not meant as derigarotary in anyways, more of affection and some of the names they call me are equally bad or worse..its all in the context of how sensitive you want to be Justice – Tamils and Sinhalese can and is living together..Sophistication and class doesnt come with body counts,

    it comes with class and upbringing, take a look at Lakshman Kadiragamar, Ken Balendra, these are sphisticated class acts!! Those are the people to emulate….Its like the MOB and CRIPS in Canada, they think they are so ‘cool’ but all they are are cowards and bullies, LTTE is just a glorified version of these puny heads, with limited intellect

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 1:19 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
61. CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: Should i turn the table and ask for compensation from LTTE for the atrocities committed against innocent civilians – 70K dead according to media, so a LOT of people has died..Let the past be the past, we can go back to beginning of civilisation balming each other, will not do anyone good..work on the future, stop the killing and work out the solution, LTTE is not the answer to Tamil peoples problems and as long as they are around committing acts of terrorism, you will never achieve what you want to achieve for your people…

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 1:23 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
62. justice withoutprejudice from Toronto, Canada writes: CN W from Toronto, Canada writes:
    Some tamil militant group Sir? why cant you name the LTTE – and who was the judge and the jury, LTTE??, if you asked these politicians, they would have told you, they work for the eletorate who put them into office..since this is not convenient for your seperatist terrorists you bump them off….and you say they are working for a tamil nation, man, at the rate you are killing your own intellectuals,there will not be anyone left to govern because LTTE would have just killed you all..

    As a tamil, it really doesn’t matter whether it was carried out by a LTTE or not. All I was trying to say is it was done by someone or some group who felt that Amirthalingam betrayed their goal of carving out a separate nation. Would it have been okay if it had been carried out by a non-LTTE group?

    The point I am trying to make here is that it’s your irresponsible successive mis-steps is what lead to all this mess in the first place. It’s your utter disregard to innocent Tamil civilan dignity is what triggered all this up rising and not LTTE.

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 1:26 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
63. CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: Beg to disagree, please go back and learn Sri Lankan history and look at how involved tamils were through independence to the modern day and how much influence some of your greatest intellects had in moulding Sri Lanka..As for the common tamil living in Colombo and South, i can guarantee LTTE is more of nuisance than help..I dont know what your love affair is with this organisation, but dont you think when the whole world brands this organisation as a terrorist group, that there has to be SOMETHING wrong in what they do..Dont you feel bad when your 14 year old children are constripted to fight..Dont you feel bad when a suicide bomber blows themself apart? Each life lost is of your own kind man, and what have they achieved, do you even know the number of suicide bombers LTTE has used, they are your PEOPLE that you are killing and you still think its someone elses fault!! – ou make your own destiny through choice, it is always easy to balme someone else for your own inadequcies..this i think is a futile conversation…

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 1:37 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
64. justice withoutprejudice from Toronto, Canada writes: CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: Should i turn the table and ask for compensation from LTTE for the atrocities committed against innocent civilian

    This is what you Sinhalese don’t seem to understand. They are non-state actor of this conflict. You have never even at one point in history gave chance to elected officials. It was the Sinhalese who drove most of the Tamils to the arms of LTTE because they didn’t get any sort of respect via political means. So you should blame yourselves for this mess. If you think you can bring about a solution by letting your guns do the talking, once again you’re making the same mistake you made in the 80′s and 90′s. This will create just more enemies and foes and not enough friends allies on other side.

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 1:37 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
65. CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: We will let the history judge us then..Annihialation of LTTE has to happen – its a terrorist organisation therefore should not exist. The world is in the 21st century now and its about time we quit looking back at the 80′s and the 90′s and take a look at the 2000′s to make the best of our lives for all Sri Lankans..No govt. has done what the current govt. has done against the LTTE, who knows, they might surprise you in the otherfront as well by treating everyone equally and fairly – not that i am saying you guys are not being treated fairly now, because i certainly do not see any oppression of tamils back home

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 1:44 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
66. justice withoutprejudice from Toronto, Canada writes: Abheetha Sinhaweera from Toronto, Canada writes:
    Do us a favour.. now that you are out of the jungle and living in a city, get a proper education PERIOD!!! (and for heaven’s sake get off the WELFARE, Canada is going on a recession!)

    It’s this kind of insensitive and disrespectful attitude towards Tamils what got us all this in this mess….And I hope the rest of Globe and Mail readers will understand real underlying issue that have plagued Srilanka for the last 50 years.

    R-A-C-I-S-M……R-A-C-I-S-M…..R-A-C-I-S-M…..R-A-C-I-S-M

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 1:46 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
67. justice withoutprejudice from Toronto, Canada writes: CN W from Toronto, Canada writes:The world is in the 21st century now and its about time we quit looking back at the 80′s and the 90′s and take a look at the 2000′s to make the best of our lives for all Sri Lankans..

    So it wasn’t the Srilankan gouvernment that bombed hospitals and killed 2000 civilians and many more injured after asking them to relocate to 2 different “safe zones”.

    Srilankan gouvernment is nothing but cowards…always has been ..and always will be….

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 1:50 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
68. CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: We are all adults here and i assume we are all men as well, so there is simply no need to be so sensitive..There are deep lying frustrations on both parts and it tends to manifest in different forms time after time. It could happen within your communities and our communities, does not automatically translate to racism though..

    I am bushed..so g’night all!!

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 1:52 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
69. CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: One more before shut eye, who are the cowards who is holding 200K civilians as human shields?? Even USA and Isreal with all their sophisticated equipment sometimes gets their targets wrong and end up killing innocent civilians so its no surprise that the Sri Lankan army making similar mistakes..But shooting your own people who wants to find safety..now what do you call that, a necessary sacrifice for the greater good?? keep thinking of greater good and more innocent will die..Seems we care about the living while you only care about a lost cause..!

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 2:00 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
70. Abheetha Sinhaweera from Toronto, Canada writes: justice withoutprejudice: By the way to answer your question “how there are so few natives compare to non-natives or European and Asian immigrants in Canada and US?”

    Because about 300,000 of your brothers and sisters came on a boat!!!!

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 2:02 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
71. CN W from Toronto, Canada writes: I am glad the Sri Lankan cowards in the govt., are beating the living crap out of the ‘heroic’ LTTE..its always fun when the school bully is beated to pulp by the school wimp isnt it – me for the underdog and i will give you 10:1 that the ‘hero’s are going DOWN this time..

    • Posted 21/02/09 at 2:04 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment