Canada, Tamils, Muslims, Sinhalese and 

Sri Lanka: A Special TV Ontario Online 

Conversation Series

Posted by twnewsfeatures on 17 November 2013, 2:42 pm

The Agenda (A flagship current affairs program on TVOntario) with Steve Paikin and Daniel Kitts have focused all week on discussing Sri Lanka’s efforts to emerge from decades of civil war in a series of online conversations. They are as follows:

1.Sri Lanka: Human Rights Update (Fred Carver, the campaign director for The Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice.)

  2.Sri Lanka and Responsible Tourism | Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice

3.Sri Lanka: The Island Nation’s Muslims, with Fathima Cader

4.Sri Lanka: Harper, Tamils and Canadian Immigration Policies (Fathima Cader, who also spoke about Sri Lanka’s Muslims, shares her concerns over Canada’s treatment of Tamil refugees fleeing Sri Lanka.

5.Sri Lanka: Canada’s Sinhalese (Romesh Hettiarachchi and Prathap Perera

6.Sri Lanka: Canada’s Tamils (Bahi Kandavel, Vani Selvarajah, Siva Vimalachandran)

7.Sri Lanka: Postwar Tamil Activism in Canada | Amarnath Amarasingam, a postdoctoral fellow at York University’s Centre for Refugee Studies, who has researched the issue of Tamil activism in Canada.
Sri Lanka: A View From Britain

8.Last week, The Agenda did a series on the situation in Sri Lanka ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) held there. We’ve gotten some reaction to the series, so we are hosting a series of follow up conversations.

In this video, Jan Jananayagam of the NGO Tamils Against Genocide Europe evaluates British Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to go to CHOGM and publicly raise the issue of human rights there, versus Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper decision not to attend CHOGM as a statement. She also talks about concerns over Sri Lanka’s human rights situation more broadly, and shares some of her thoughts on The Agenda’s coverage of the Sri Lanka issue.