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See no Tigers

The Ottawa Citizen runs a front-page story about Tamil protesters shutting down downtown Ottawa without mentioning that virtually every protester waved a Tamil Tiger flag or wore a Tiger t-shirt. Several chanted slogans calling the Tigers freedom fighters.

The Tamil Tigers are banned as a terrorist organization in Canada and several other countries. Their decades-long struggle for a Tamil homeland in the north and east of Sri Lanka has featured the ethnic cleansing of non-Tamils; the forcible recruitment of child soldiers; more than 150 suicide bombing attacks against both military and civilian targets (including at Colombo’s International Airport in 2001, an attack that killed 16); and multiple massacres of civilians, including, on one occasion, more than 30 Buddhist monks who were shot and hacked to death with swords. 

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