Forced remittances in Canada's Tamil enclaves.

Canada currently hosts the world's largest Sri Lankan diaspora. Most of the roughly 400,000 Sri Lankan immigrants to Canada are ethnic Tamils who came as political refugees following the outbreak of civil war on the small island in 1983. Sadly, however, their persecution continues at the hands of the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE), an ethnic Tamil insurgency group fighting for autonomy in the northeastern portion of Sri Lanka, and notorious for using tactics such as political assassination, suicide bombing, and the recruitment of child soldiers. Half a world away from the conflict's origins, the LTTE has established a formidable presence within Canada's Tamil enclaves. The LTTE regards these diaspora communities as attractive sources of revenue for funding its costly war. They've developed a system to extract remittances from Tamil refugees in Canada by exploiting transnational social ties. They threaten migrants about the security of relatives or property still in Sri Lanka. The practice creates victims on both sides of the migration system because it draws resources from the host state to fuel a destructive war in the sending state. Political, social, and geographical features on both sides of the Sri Lankan Tamil migration experience make people vulnerable to sustained coercion by the LTTE after resettlement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]