What should be the fate of the Sun Sea Tamils?
| 20:11 UK time, Thursday, 19 August 2010
What do you do with a boatload of Sri Lankan Tamils - 492 of them, to be precise?
That's the question currently preoccupying a large percentage of the government and media in Canada.
And the issue has become so controversial that even to describe them presents some difficulty. There are disputes over whether they are refugees or illegal immigrants; victims of war or people who have carried out terror attacks.
Here are the facts. The ship MV Sun Sea initially set sail from Thailand - not Sri Lanka itself - and initially headed for Australia, only to be turned away. It then began to cross the Pacific.
Around ten days ago, it first entered Canadian waters . It had long been known there was a large number of Tamils on board - initial reports suggested 200, but that figure has now been revised to 492.
Once it docked at Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt in British Columbia, the government detained all those on board. The refugee group No One Is Illegal has already criticised this decision, :
"A lot of the response to this boat isn't really rooted in a legal response, it's rooted in a deliberately created hysteria, in a prejudgment and a stereotype of them as terrorists."
There is no doubt the migrants endured much to make it to Canada - reports now suggest one of them died at sea - but Canada's Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has said that migrants had paid 50,000 Canadian dollars (£30,844) for the voyage.
Writing in Canada's Globe and Mail, - arriving in Canada claiming the need for protection from their home country, even though they were not at risk in the place they came from:
In essence, such claimants are saying they prefer to be a refugee in Canada rather than, say, in Thailand. The rest of us would call this immigration, so get in line like everyone else.
Complicating the issue is the disputed claim that some of those on board could be from the LTTE - better known as the Tamil Tigers - the military group that last year.
Canada views the Tamil Tigers as a terror organisation, and there has been criticism of the Conservative government for even entertaining the idea of allowing the migrants to stay.
Asoka Weerasinghe, :
My party does not deserve my valuable vote when they support rogue Tamil refugee claimants and let Tamil Tiger terrorists into the country. If you are feeling the wind of a back-lash on this very issue, then count me in.
takes an even stronger line:
If the MV Sun Sea were carrying 500 "migrants" from Afghanistan, home base for the Taliban and al-Qaeda, would we be allowing it to enter Canadian waters, or would we put firing a shot over the bow with a message that the next would be midships? Lock and load would be our approach.
So what should be done with the Tamil migrants? Should they be freed? Should they remain in detention? Or should they be deported? What are your thoughts on this case?
