Tamil Genocide Education Week Act

The Tamil Genocide Education Week Act (Bill 104, 2021) is a law adopted on May 12, 2021, during the 42nd Parliament of Ontario.

As one of the largest concentrations of Tamils outside southeast Asia, the Tamil community in Ontario had families suffering the effects of the genocide that the Sri Lankan state perpetrated against the Tamils during the civil war from 1983 to 2009. The Act proclaims a "Tamil Genocide Education Week", a seven-day period each year ending on May 18, during which "all Ontarians are encouraged to educate themselves about, and to maintain their awareness of, the Tamil genocide and other genocides that have occurred in world history".

The Court of Appeal for Ontario, ruled that the Act's was not "educative" and its main purpose was to "commemorate the Tamil Ontarian community’s experience of the Sri Lankan Civil War and thus promote, within Ontario, the values of human rights, diversity and multiculturalism."

Legislative history

The bill was introduced in April 2019 to the Legislative Assembly by the Sri Lankan born Vijay Thanigasalam, Ontario's associate minister of mental health and addictions which proposed a seven-day period ending on May 18 (hich marks the Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day to be recognize the Tamil Genocide. The bill passed and received royal assent on May 12, 2021.

Reaction

The Act was challenged in court by members of Ontario's Sinhalese community on the basis that infringe their free expression and equality rights, which was rejected by Ontario judge, Justice Jasmine Akbarali. On appeal the Court of Appeal for Ontario affirmed the lower court’s ruling that the law does not infringe on Ontario's Sinhalese community's free expression and equality rights, while it disagreed lower court’s definition of the law as "educative", stating that the law’s “dominant purpose is to affirm and commemorate the Tamil Ontarian community’s experience of the Sri Lankan Civil War and thus promote, within Ontario, the values of human rights, diversity and multiculturalism.”. The judgement further stated that “The impugned portions of the TGEWA’s preamble state that the Sri Lankan government’s allegedly genocidal policies were ‘Sinhala-Buddhist centric,’ not that Sinhala-Buddhists are, as a racial group, collectively responsible for them,” and “Likewise, claiming that the Sri Lankan state ‘orchestrated’ a genocide does not imply that Sinhala-Buddhists are collectively responsible for ‘executing’ the alleged genocide.”

William Schabas observed that the act was adopted unanimously, with members of the legislature unlikely to oppose it since several were having significant Tamil constituencies in their electoral districts.

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