Accordingly, despite the Canadian authority attempts to prevent activities of the terror outfit’s front organizations, those functioning secretly as well as legally on Canadian soil, the remaining leaders of the LTTE are continuing to re-build the image of the terror outfit internationally.

As an initial step, these front organizations of the LTTE in Europe and Canada have re-started collecting taxes and money from the Tamil Diaspora in the US, Canada and other European countries and also started to carry out abductions and extortions on a large scale to increase funding for future activities.Already, these front organizations led by the Canadian Youth Front started to canvass the Tamil Diaspora that all of them should consider the Tamil Eelam national flag as their flag in the discarding and of any other flags used by them earlier.

Intelligence reports revealed that a prominent Tamil National Parliamentarian, who fled the country was actively carrying out this campaign in Canada claiming that slain LTTE leader’s concept should be followed by the Tamil speaking people living in every country in the world.

In order to achieve this, millions of Tamil Eelam flags have been distributed among the Tamil Diaspora worldwide by these front organizations.

Although these front organizations are openly carrying out this latest campaign including extortion, the Canadian authorities had allegedly not taken any concrete action to prevent this as yet.

Even, the Sri Lankan government had not taken any diplomatic level action to prevent these developments despite intelligence warnings.

Sources in Canada said that top officials of the Canadian government were also allegedly backing these activities in order to give a life to the already paralyzed LTTE organization at international level.

Although the Canadian authorities earlier took some tough action to ban prominent and active front organizations of the Tamil Tigers based in Canada and also made several arrests, still it is unable to cope with this menace completely, resulting in the remaining Tamil Tiger representatives getting powerful there.

Meanwhile, in another development as the Sri Lankan government was preparing to hold a General election a fresh campaign has been launched by the LTTE proxies based in European countries, Canada and USA intimidating the Tamil Diaspora to put pressure on their relatives in the northern and eastern provinces in Sri Lanka to elect at least fifteen Tamil National Alliance members to the Parliament at the forthcoming elections.

The campaign is reportedly going on in almost every country, where there is a Sri Lanakn Tamil population. Accordingly, the campaign mainly gives a message that only TNA members would fight politically on behalf of the Tamil community and because of that a considerable number of members should be sent to the Sri Lanka Parliament.

State intelligence also reports that there was a trend now prevailing specially in the northern province to support the TNA as the confidantes of the people as most of the government allies including the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) are losing faith due to the failure by the politicians to deliver upon their promises. 

Reports said that some of these allies allegedly had taken a large sum of money from the people promising local and overseas jobs, but had not provided any as promised.

Sri Lankan illegal asylum seekers and Canada

In order to re-start the campaign against the Sri Lankan government, the LTTE’s remaining leaders are now gathering their prominent figures who played a significant role against the Sri Lankan security forces.

As the first step, a large number of such LTTE leaders and senior cadres were reportedly brought down to Canada in the recent past by illegal means, with or without concern for the Canadian authorities. 

This came to light, when the Canadian authorities arrested a prominent LTTE member, who was in the Interpol’s most wanted list among the illegal immigrants, who arrived in Vancouver on a vessel last month.

Twenty-six-year-old Kartheepan Manickavasagar was a most wanted LTTE cadre and he had managed to escape from the country while the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) was attempting to net him in. He is wanted by Sri Lanka for his alleged role in a procurement ring that smuggled electronic equipment to the Tamil Tigers.

Later a ‘red notice’ was issued by Interpol to arrest him because of his involvement with terrorism.

When the Canadian Authorities were screening illegal asylum seekers, the suspect was found among the group of 77 illegal asylum seekers in Canada. Manickavasagar was identified by the Canadian authorities and handed over to Interpol.

Currently discussions are underway between the Interpol and the CID officials to bring Manickavasagar to Sri Lanka.

The Cambodian-registered Ocean Lady, which arrived in Canadian waters on Oct. 17, had originated from the South Indian port on September 8. It was later found that the ship, originally named ‘Easwaran Prince’ belonged to the LTTE and used to transfer arms and ammunition to the outfit earlier. Before it’s departure with 76 illegal immigrants most of whom were Sri Lankan Tamils and believed to have arrived from Indonesia, where a large number of Tamil civilians are residing after fleeing from Sri Lanka through illegal means.

Indonesia is currently used as a transit point for illegal immigrants, before they are sent to Australia or Canada using sea route illegally.

Now the Anti-Human Smuggling Investigation Bureau of the CID and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are jointly conducting investigations into the asylum seekers.

A top CID official said that investigations were underway to ascertainwhy a group of small number of a illegal immigrants (76) had travelled in a large ship named ‘Ocean Lady’. CID believed that several other prominent LTTE senior cadres would be among this group and Canadian authorities are screening those illegal immigrants.

Latest investigations launched by the Canadian authorities revealed that the mastermind behind the arrival of the ship was a Canadian national Ravi Shankar Kanagaraja, who had close links with arrested LTTE international network chief K. Pathmanadan alias KP.

A man hunt was underway to arrest this mastermind, who reportedly arranged several earlier such ships to smuggle illegal immigrants to Canada, according to latest reports.With the arrest if the ship, RCMP Commissioner William Elliott said while it was too soon to conclude whether any of those who arrived aboard the ship posed a threat to Canada “the fact of their arrival, and the potential for others to follow, does raise security concerns.”

He had said despite the defeat of the LTTE, the rebels remained a terrorist group that “could potentially have a significant impact on Canada.”

Canada is “one of the few places in the world where LT TE terrorists and supporters might seek to hide in plain sight, and potentially launch terrorist operations,” he admitted.

However he had said that even if the LTTE did not target Canada specifically, “the outcomes could still be devastation,”. The commissioner said violence and intimidation had been used to collect “war taxes” in Canada for the Tamil Tigers.

Despite continuous action to prevent illegal immigrants entering the country the Canadian government is yet to take tough action against this menace in order to completely put a halt to this.

Canadian intelligence reports recently revealed that although the LTTE’s front organization activities were on the rise, the current Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government had not taken any concrete action to control the trend, as his government was adopting a hands-off approach which would automatically lead the terrorist organizations such as LTTE to use their soil as a strategic base to continue terrorist activities.

Sri Lanka government intelligence sources meanwhile, said that US based LTTE operative V. Rudrakumar, who is possibly the top most remaining active LTTE member following the recent arrest of the chief Tiger arms procurer KP, would continue to re-group the LTTE members internationally.

Although the Sri Lankan government wanted the US to take action against Rudrakumar, there was still no positive response to it. Sri Lanka also said earlier that the US government should ensure a member of a proscribed terrorist organizations who espousesed terrorism was made to face the full force of the law.

However, amidst a diplomatic row between the United States and Sri Lanka over attempting to question Chief of Defence Staff General Sarath Fonseka over alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka, the LTTE is on the process of regrouping and posing a threat on Sri Lanka as well as the world.

The attention of the Sri Lankan government should therefore be focused on this new development with the support from the other governments following its plans to wipe out the Tamil Tigers militarily.