How would you feel if you answered the door and there were 490 people on your front lawn with all their stuff expecting to move in?
I suspect you would snatch up the welcome mat, shut the door, pull down the blinds and pretend there’s nobody home.
Unfortunately, when the 490 are escaping the aftermath of a civil war and it took them two-and-a-half months to get here on a slow boat from Sri Lanka, the “we’re-not-home-call-tomorrow” option is not available.
So Canadian Border Services is now sorting through the people who docked in Victoria Friday the 13th, (!) on the MV Sun Sea, trying to separate the refugees from the terrorists fleeing the bloody civil war in Sri Lanka, which ended in May.
Whoever they are, terrorists or refugees, they’re already through the door, on solid ground here in Maple Ridge.
It’s highly likely not one of them will be sent back to Sri Lanka. There’s too much bad blood back home. The Tamils have been fighting a war of secession from Sri Lanka for decades. The Sri Lankan government maintains there are arms, drug and human smugglers in their midst, using ordinary citizens as shields, as the government insists is common in Tamil refugee camps.
Make no mistake, there were atrocities on both sides. But the Tamil Tiger guerrilla movement was declared a terrorist group by Canada’s (Liberal) government in 2006. If 490 members of the IRA or al-Qaida turned up at the front door, how would we feel? And do we really want to become the refuge for an outfit that has used suicide bombers to make its point on more than one occasion?
Still, there are lots of Tamil sympathizers in Canada, not to mention lots of professional multi-purpose sympathizers. So although Tamil Tigers are banned in Canada, and both the Canadian and Sri Lankan governments say there were Tigers aboard, all 490 are essentially home-free. With the grim record of atrocities on both sides, it will be impossible to send anyone back. It’s not the Canadian thing to do, eh?
Australia, not ready to become the destination of choice for the Tamil resistance, politely but firmly turned the ships away. Canada is a kinder, gentler nation. Either that or a bigger patsy.
So they’re our Tigers now. Save the Tiger, and all that. Oh, and there are two more ships about to head this way. Better set another few hundred places for dinner.
