Friday, August 27, 2010

Why Did The Tamil Cross The Sea (Again)?

Bryan Weese keeps up the Fox News North drumbeat o' fear, but his story does contain, way down at the bottom, some new and useful information. Remember the non-scientific non-survey of Tamil refugees that Brian Lilley wrote about last week? He used some of the figures in it to conclude:

...the majority of successful Tamil refugees travel back to Sri Lanka, raising questions about the legitimacy of their refugee status.

Actually, it didn't really raise such questions, and Lilley only thought it did because he ain't too handy with numbers. His case relied on the assumption that the Tamils who went home both arrived in Canada and returned to Sri Lanka in 2009 (read through the link above for details).

However, from Weese' story we find out that this is almost certainly not what transpired:

The Canadian Tamil Congress said many of those trips were likely taken during the four-year ceasefire in the civil war from 2002 to 2006.

Booyah! Hack on hack violence.

OT: This guy is also tracking the decline and fall of FNN. Worth a read.

5 comments:

Gerrard787 said...

The Canadian Tamil Congress said many of those trips were likely taken during the four-year ceasefire in the civil war from 2002 to 2006.

And the contortions begin.

It's OK to travel back to your home country for a vacation while the war is experiencing a temporary ceasefire but now that peace reigns across all of Sri Lanka, one must flee for their life.

Makes sense to me.

Gene Rayburn said...

Well Paul S it all depends on your definition of peace. Seeing as you are still too cement headed to read about both sides to figure it out we may as well just assume you're a lost cause.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste Paul. Too bad about yours.

ridenrain said...

A refugee is someone who risks their life to get anywhere else. Someone who floats away from Cuba on an inner-tube is a refugee.

Someone who leaves Sri-Lanka for Indonesia then takes a 3 month cruise to Vancouver is not a refugee.

Gene Rayburn said...

Yes it was a three month cruise Ridofbrain. Maybe you should take the same cruise ship back to Indonesia and find your smarts.

Oh wait, you're ridofbrain for a reason.

double nickel said...

I see the trolls are out today.