The war at home: the 2009 Toronto Tamil demonstrations

Abstract

At their peak, demonstrations in 2009 organized by the city of Toronto's Tamil community reached over 45,000 demonstrators, representing fully one quarter of the city's Tamil diaspora population. This paper analyzes protests conducted by the Canadian Tamil community in the cities of Toronto and Ottawa during the winter and spring of 2009, in response to the accelerated conflict situation in Sri Lanka. A comparative approach is used to qualitatively measure the degree of political influence that the Canadian Tamil community has acquired since their arrival in Canada. The paper then uses existing protest analysis methodologies to analyze the months-long protests, together with the context provided in the first section. The paper concludes by arguing that the protests were successful in influencing Canada's foreign policy process, but ultimately failed to compel the Government of Canada to meet all protest demands.

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