Vancouver Activists Rally in Support of Tamil Refugees

22 September 2010

Activists yell to show their "love" to refugees inside the detention facility with a sign in Tamil that reads "We Welcome You. We Support You."

About 40 activists banged drams, clanked pots and pans, blew horns and made as much noise as they could. They wanted to get the attention of about 90 Tamil women and children detained inside the Burnaby Youth Custody prison, located about 300 feet away.

Why should they stay?

Activists blow horns, beat drums, shake tambourines, and make noise to show their support for the Tamil refugees.

Fathima Cader was at the rally. Now a law student at the University of British Columbia, she was born in Sri Lanka, but left with her parents when she was two years old. Cader has lived in Canada for about 10 years and took the Canadian citizenship test last week.

She says the Sri Lankan government devastated the Tamil areas of the country and now those people who were displaced have "nothing much to go home to."

"Your entire town has been demolished and there have been claims that after the war it's become safer," Cader said, "but actually what we're finding is that disappearances which have been really really common during the war -- Tamil men would just randomly disappear and their bodies would appear afterwards -- continue to occur now."