Posted by
Darko Trifunovic on Friday, November 28, 2008 4:46:07 AM
Charity
funding terror: Sri Lanka
Aaron
Lynett/National Post Raj Guna-nathan, President and Coordinator of the Tamils
Rehabilitation Organisation - Canada, poses in his office on the upper floor of
the Liberty Square Shopping Plaza at Eglinton and Kennedy Rd. Aaron
Lynett/National Post Raj Guna-nathan, President and Coordinator of the Tamils
Rehabilitation Organisation - Canada, poses in his office on the upper floor of
the Liberty Square Shopping Plaza at Eglinton and Kennedy Rd.
TORONTO -- Liberty Square
Shopping Plaza
has a South Asian convenience store and a branch of the Toronto Public Library,
but the tenant that has brought this busy strip mall international notoriety is
upstairs above a jewellery store.
The
Tamils Rehabilitation Organization works out of a cramped second-floor office
with a big Canadian flag over the window. And while its official mission is
humanitarian, governments in three countries suspect it serves a shadier
purpose.
RCMP
counterterrorism investigators and Canada Revenue Agency charity regulators
accuse the group of having ties to the Sri Lankan separatist guerrillas called
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, better known as the Tamil Tigers.
"We
believe that there are reasonable grounds for concern that TRO (Canada) operates for purposes that conflict with
Canadian public policy," the head of Canada's charities directorate
wrote in a letter to the group. "More specifically, there appears to be
reason to conclude that TRO (Canada)
may be functioning as part of a support network for the terrorist organization
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam."
In
the United States,
meanwhile, the Treasury Department last year froze the assets of the Tamils
Rehabilitation Organization office in Toronto,
calling it part of an international network that "passed off its
operations as charitable when in fact it was raising money for a designated
terrorist group responsible for heinous acts."
On
Wednesday, Sri Lanka
seized the organization's bank accounts in that country on the grounds the
$800,000 balance, collected partly from "TRO branches in several foreign
locations" was "mainly used to finance terrorist activities."
The
Conservatives have not yet taken action and the group continues to operate in Canada but one
of the decisions facing the new Public Safety Minister, Peter Van Loan, will be
whether to designate the TRO a terrorist "entity" under the
Anti-Terrorism Act, which would force it to close.
Federal
officials declined to say whether they were preparing to add the TRO to Canada's
official list of terrorist groups. "It would be inappropriate for me to
comment on which entities are under consideration for potential listing; the
assessment process for new listings is ongoing," said Stéphane Thérien, a
spokesman for Public Safety Canada.
Raj
Gunanathan, the President of TRO Canada, said he fears that could happen, but
he has long faced these kinds of allegations. They began as soon as the group
set up shop in Toronto
more than a dozen years ago. Since then, Canadian Security Intelligence Service
officers have repeatedly visited his office.
"They
used to come at least once a year," Mr. Gunanathan said in an interview.
He said he told the intelligence officers to "please come and join our
board, or send someone to join our board of directors, and then you will have
no doubt about what we are doing."
The
Tamils Rehabilitation Organization is open about what it does: it raises money
in Canada and sends it to
rebel-held territories of Sri
Lanka. The money goes to the TRO
headquarters, which is trusted to use it to administer humanitarian aid.
The
TRO headquarters in Sri
Lanka, however, is controlled by the Tamil
Tigers, a banned terrorist organization under Canadian law. While that might
put the TRO on the wrong side of Canada's terrorism financing rules,
Mr. Gunanathan argues there is no other way to provide humanitarian relief to
the hundreds of thousands displaced by the civil war.
"Are
we going to allow them to starve and die? We have to somehow provide them with
the means of life. We have to feed those people," said the former Sri
Lankan education official, who came to Canada
in the 1980s after working as a teacher in Nigeria.
The
Tamils Rehabilitation Organization grew out of the civil war that erupted in Sri Lanka in
1983, when the Tamil Tigers began an armed campaign for independence for the
country's ethnic Tamil minority. As Tamil refugees fled to southern India to escape
the fighting and ethnic riots, the TRO was formed to assist them. Later, the
aid group moved into rebel-held areas of Sri Lanka to provide aid to
war-affected civilians.
Offices
soon appeared around the world, in cities with large ethnic Tamil communities
such as Toronto.
The group became a registered Ontario
non-profit society in 1995. That same year it applied to the federal government
for charity status.
The
charity application was denied but the group applied a second time in 1997.
Once again, the government refused, citing the "apparent close
relationship" between the humanitarian group and the Tamil rebels.
Following
the South Asian tsunami of 2004, Mr. Gunanathan submitted yet another
application for charity status. On June 1, 2006, the Canada Revenue Agency
replied with a 17-page rejection letter.
Signed
by Canada's Director of
Charities, Elizabeth Tromp, the letter said that "TRO (Canada) appears
to operate within the overall structure of the LTTE."
Ms.
Tromp's main concern appeared to be that the TRO office in Canada sends the money it collects to the TRO
headquarters in rebel-held Sri
Lanka. "The consensus of numerous and
diverse sources we have reviewed indicates that the TRO raises funds in support
of the LTTE," Ms. Tromp wrote in her letter.
Mr.
Gunanathan said his organization had sent money to the TRO in Sri Lanka --
$1.2-million alone in the months following the tsunami - but it was used for
schools, temporary shelter and food for those displaced by the war.
"If
you work in the LTTE-controlled areas, they of course control you. They are a
de facto government," Mr. Gunanathan said. "That doesn't mean that
these people give money for arms."
Shown
an RCMP affidavit filed in Federal Court that called the Tamils Rehabilitation
a "sub-organization" of the rebels, Mr. Gunanathan said he had not
seen the document before.
The
affidavit says the RCMP's counter-terrorism unit found evidence about the TRO
while investigating another Canadian group suspected of links to the rebels,
the World Tamil Movement (WTM).
While
executing search warrants in 2006, the RCMP's Integrated National Enforcement
Team came across receipts for two bank transfers to the TRO totaling $83,000.
According to police, the receipts were marked: "donations to the LTTE in Killinochchi, Sri Lanka."
RCMP
Corporal Shirley Davermann wrote that the money was "actually sent to the
LTTE in Sri Lanka."
But Mr. Gunanathan said he doubted the police account. "It's a false
report," he said. "If anybody is sending funds to LTTE and they write
‘We are sending money to LTTE,' it would be the height of absurdity for anybody
to say."
The
RCMP affidavit also describes links between the Tamils Rehabilitation
Organization and the World Tamil Movement, which was shut down by the police
earlier this year for allegedly funding the rebels.
For
example, the TRO "representative" in Quebec
was also the owner of the building that housed the WTM office in Montreal, police said. In
addition, several World Tamil Movement officials have said publicly that they
had solicited money for the Tamils Rehabilitation Organization.
"We
find it significant that the World Tamil Movement, an alleged front
organization for the LTTE, canvasses for and advises people to donate to the
TRO," Ms. Tromp, the charity official, wrote.
The
Tamils Rehabilitation Organization office at Eglinton Ave. and Kennedy Rd. in Toronto has nonetheless continued to solicit
contributions. Donation envelopes were inserted into Tamil-language newspapers
in Toronto last
summer.
An
offensive by Sri Lankan troops has made it impossible to get aid into the war
zone at the moment, so the group is currently "dormant," Mr.
Gunanathan said. He said the TD Bank had closed the group's Canadian account
last year but it had since opened another at a different bank.
He
said he had no plans to shut down.
"I'm
a Hindu," he said. "What I do, I honestly feel I am helping humanity,
which is like service to God."
National
Post
sbell@nationalpost.com