posted April 28, 2002 07:53 PM            

Hammer

posted April 28, 2002 08:22 PM         

the big question is.. will all those tamil refugees leading luxurious lives in developed countries like canada come back to jafna if the peace process is successful?

posted April 28, 2002 10:27 PM            

They have paid too much money for LTTE already.

Fugees like Visva lost all his money for
gambling and unless Terra Prabha allow gambling in Jaffna, he will never go back.

posted April 29, 2002 07:22 AM         

Why does some LTTE Tamils risk their lives to go to Canada?

posted April 29, 2002 08:50 AM            

Hammer

Tamil gangs dispense their own justice
Meet the leaders of bloody turf war
Michelle Shephard
CRIME REPORTER
Sunday Special
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The man known as ``The Cat'' has dodged bullets more than once and now he is
busily dodging questions.
He answers mainly by slowly shaking his head or shrugging. Speaking softly, almost
timidly, he leans heavily on his cane, tugs modestly at his plaid shirt and continually
flashes a smile packed with startlingly white teeth.
Are you a prominent member of a Toronto gang?
Who are your enemies?
Who wants to kill you?
Finally, with a dismissive wave, Panchalingam Nagalingam, says police have it all
wrong and that he leads a dull, unremarkable life. He's a 28-year-old Tamil Canadian
trying to help raise a 2-year-old son, so why the interest in him?
His answers are not unlike those given by other reputed gang leaders.
Nagalingam is considered one of the old guard, a veteran of the decade-long Toronto
gang battle between Sri Lankans who escaped civil war in their country by
immigrating to Canada in the early 1990s.
In recent interviews, police investigators and Tamil community leaders, all
requesting anonymity, say the gang rivalry between the two main factions - the AK
Kannan and the VVT - has been steady over the last decade. Police believe some of
their members have imported heroin, concocted elaborate credit card fraud schemes,
robbed, assaulted and were assaulted. Some are suspects in major homicide
investigations.
Even though police state some gang members are responsible for heinous crimes,
the majority of members have never been convicted. Police claim that's because they
pay for good lawyers, they won't turn informant even to provide information on rival
gang members, and no one will co-operate as a witness.
Instead, they take matters into their own hands.
The Tamil slang word is ``pila'' and this is what drives the gangs. The word roughly
translates as ``machismo'' or is described as an arrogant attitude that won't let
them back down.
On the street it means the gang members swap violent incidents, rather than letting
the police and courts exact justice. One shooting is often followed by another,
retaliation building throughout Toronto and sometimes beyond into the closely linked
scene in Montreal.
A recent display of these testosterone-driven crimes followed a double homicide last
October. The killing enraged VVT gang members, who were furious about the public
and police attention it garnered. And the gunmen had hit the wrong target, killing
two teenagers - something that even gang members abhor.
``There are two courts, Canada's and God's court. One day they'll be punished
because they killed innocent kids,'' says ``Biggie,'' a 23-year-old who police say is
linked with the VVT.
What he doesn't say outright is that the gangs sometimes choose the journey to
God's court.
In reaction to the double homicide last October, the VVT shot back, according to
community and police sources.
First, they went after Nagalingam, the Cat, the 28-year-old man who has an uncanny
ability to cheat death.
In December, he escaped shots that were fired, police allege, by VVT members. They
narrowly missed his girlfriend and baby son as they sat in a car at their Markham
home. No one was hurt but in the aftermath, Nagalingam publicly challenged his
attackers. Through the media and his community, he told them to come to him and
leave his family alone.
In March, he was alone when he walked into an ambush as he left the Mimico
Detention Centre where he was serving a sentence on weekends.
He was shot six times, rushed to hospital and listed in critical condition. But he
miraculously survived and walked out of hospital, just as he had in 1994 after a
crushing car accident that killed three others. A crude scar now divides his chest into
two, the only physical reminder of the accident.
``I don't like to talk about (the shooting),'' Nagalingam says.
``Why would you be attacked?'' he is asked.
A shrug is his only answer.
A 23-year-old man, who police allege is a VVT member, was arrested and faces
various charges including attempted murder.
Jothiravi Sittampalam was next. He's the 31-year-old man known simply as Kannan
and is said to have started the AK Kannan.
He was tailed in April as he left the Brampton courthouse. When he arrived at an off-
ramp of Highway 404, his car was surrounded, shots fired wildly. The only injury was
a cut on one of his fingers.
``This was huge,'' said one officer who investigates organized crime. ``To go after
Kannan in such a brazen attack was bold.''
When asked last month about the attack following a court appearance on charges of
credit card fraud, Kannan just shrugs, refusing to answer. He then leaves the
courthouse through an illegal exit, activating a security alarm before jumping into a
waiting van to avoid a reporter and photographer. Before he drives away he pulls
alongside the photographer and tauntingly honks his horn.
His case is still before the courts.
Just last weekend, another alleged AK Kannan member was attacked. Thavam
Krishnan was swarmed by a group of armed men and beaten outside a doughnut
shop on Eglinton Ave. E., near Markham Rd. By the time police arrived at the scene
everyone had scattered - including 23-year-old Krishnan.
``Most people can't understand that shootings can happen simply because
somebody looked at somebody the wrong way in a bar, or somebody shows up in the
wrong territory, in another guy's area or somebody went after somebody's friend,''
says a senior organized crime officer. ``All it takes is one call on a c-phone and a
shooting will happen. It can be that basic.''
Police will not give the exact number of AK Kannan and VVT gang members they
have listed in their database and say they try to concentrate mainly on a ``handful''
of lead members.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
`If police could successfully put behind bars, for a very long time, a few key leaders,
I really believe the gangs would fall apart.'
- Prominent member of Toronto's Tamil community, requesting anonymity
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
``If police could successfully put behind bars, for a very long time, a few key
leaders, I really believe the gangs would fall apart,'' says one prominent member of
Toronto's Tamil community.
Since 1997, at least five killings remain unsolved, all with innocent victims who
police say were caught in the gangs' crossfire.
In 1997, 19-year-old University of Waterloo student Kapilan Palasanthiran was killed
in a drive-by shooting while studying in a doughnut shop.
In 1998, Freddas ``Jim'' BwaBwa was stabbed to death in St. James Town when he
tried to intervene in a fight. At least one of the suspects has gang ties. A year later,
in 1999, Sandy Ebrahim was shot in a York Region fast food restaurant parking lot.
Police believe the 16-year-old had been standing near the gang's intended target.
Last October's double homicide claimed the lives of teenagers Sujeevan Sritharan
and Rishikesan Selvarajah. They were killed as they sat in a parking lot of a
Scarborough building where gang members are thought to live.
Community sources say 18-year-old Sritharan was beaten up by gang members just
a week before he was killed, but on the night of the killing he was mistaken as a
member of the Guilder Boys, a gang affiliated with the VVT. The shooters were after
someone with the street name ``Nari,'' meaning ``fox,'' who drove the same model
of car.
In each case there are suspects, but no charges.
It was just after he arrived in Canada in 1992 that Kannan started his gang, police
and community sources say. The 31-year-old named the gang after his nickname,
Kannan, meaning god, and his love for the AK-47 assault weapon. But by the late
1990's, Kannan told community members and police that he no longer had any
interest in the gang. He got married, had children and started a trucking company.
He lives, according to court documents, in a middle-class Scarborough
neighbourhood near the Toronto Zoo. Most days, the blinds in the house are drawn.
His trucking company is registered to an address in another Scarborough
neighbourhood, near Brimley Rd. and Lawrence Ave. E., just south of the house.
Police question whether Kannan ever left the gang and community members said
that even if he wanted to, it would be difficult, since he would always be a target as
the one-time leader of the AK Kannan.
If Kannan does manage to ever step down as leader, sources say Nagalingam, the
``Cat,'' is moving up in the AK Kannan ranks as is another member, Sivakumar
Ariyarathnam.
The VVT's leadership has changed over the past few years but community sources
say two of the old boys - Suresh Kanagalingam or ``Koli'' and Kailesh
Thanabalasingham - are considered by most to be the leaders.
Koli (a nickname that originally started as ``goalie Suresh'' because of the position
he plays in soccer but later got changed to Koli, which means ``chicken'' in Tamil)
was charged last September following the beating and running down of a prominent
AK Kannan member with a car. His charge of attempted murder is still before the
courts. Now out on bail, he is scheduled to stand trial in December.
Like so many of the alleged gang members, Koli has been both a suspect and a
victim. In 1998, he made headlines when he was abducted from a Parliament St.
pizza shop. He surfaced days later, bruised and beaten but he would not say
anything to police. Thanabalasingham is not as high-profile, described as more of a
backroom figure who splits his time between Toronto and Ottawa.
Then there is Jeyaseelan Thuraisingam, the man who police say started the Seelapu
gang and is simply called Seelapu himself. Police and community sources say his
gang is aligned with the VVT. He said in an interview last month that he has left the
gang now and lives east of the city in farm country.
Toronto police now downplay any connections between Toronto's street violence and
the civil war in the members' homeland.
``The fact of the matter is people aren't involved in drive-by shootings in Toronto to
further a cause back in Sri Lanka,'' an organized crime officer said.
Yet traditionally, law enforcement agencies, especially the RCMP, have connected
some senior VVT members with Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a Sri
Lankan rebel group designated a terrorist group by the U.S. Having cited this
connection, police arrested two alleged gang bosses in 1998 and had them declared
a danger to Canada. They were then ordered deported under the Immigration Act.
Both Srirajan Rasa and Niranjan Claude Fabian are appealing these orders, denying
any connection to LTTE, according to court documents. Their lawyers also argue that
since Canadian newspaper accounts of their clients' alleged connection to LTTE have
been carried in Sri Lankan newspapers, the men will be tortured or killed if sent
back. The outcome of their cases will be influenced by the decision, now being
deliberated by nine Supreme Court justices, concerning Manickavasagam Suresh. He
too was accused of raising funds for LTTE and claims he will be killed if returned to
Sri Lanka. The decision on his case is not expected for months.
In Toronto, there are about 200,000 Tamils. But fewer than 100 are involved in
Toronto street gangs, police say. That 0.05 per cent of the population feeds the
racism and misconceptions the general public has about Toronto's Tamil community,
various leaders complain.
``It's street violence, it's a criminal community, not the Tamil community. In so
many ways it's exactly the same as the gangs that fight up at Kipling or other ones
in Scarborough or even the bikers,'' said a veteran organized crime officer. ``We
have to treat these gangs as organized crime because that's what they are.''

posted April 29, 2002 01:41 PM            

LTTE wants videos handed over

At a meeting with the owners of cinema theatres and video rentals in Jaffna, LTTE’s officer in charge of its TV programme, Mr. Seralaathan, asked the owners to hand over all material with adult and sexual content to the LTTE before the first of May. Puthuvai Ratnathurai, head of the LTTE’s arts and cultural institute said that such materials are destroying the younger generation and should be destroyed completely. The meeting took place at the Namagal Vithyalaya in Kokkuvil on April 20. After the opening of their political office in Kokuvil, LTTE is calling on various sectors of the Tamil community and businessmen for meetings.

posted April 29, 2002 02:51 PM            

Life in Jaffna (city of Million land mines) must be boring, no sex, no XXX, no food, no liqur.