London's Tamils Do It Again.

Yesterday (11/5) Tamils who had been protesting on the green in Parliament Square saw there numbers swell to 700 and swamped police lines. At around 10:30 they spilled out on to the roads blocking traffic across the four main roads and Westminster Bridge. By 16:30 the police, using a labour intensive softly softly approach, had cleared the side of the square around Whitehall and Westminster Bridge allowing some traffic to flow. By 19:30 the number of protesters had dwindled allowing the demonstration to be contained on the grass and the square was fully re-opened to traffic. A small group of protesters climbed Westminster Abbey, hung a banner and occupied the roof.

This latest protest comes in response to events this weekend in the Tamil homeland which saw over 400 people killed in shelling by the Sri Lankan army. This led to an emergency, informal meeting of the United Nations in which the situation in the supposed "safe zone" in northern Sri Lanka was described as a bloodbath. The Sri Lankan government rejected the claim and described the situation as a humanitarian operation before accusing the Tamil Tigers of killing their own civilians in order to win a propaganda war. At the same time the Sri Lankan's began expelling foreign journalists from the country after they began reporting that Tamil civilians being held in Sri Lankan internment camps were being subjected to a lack of food and water, physical and sexual assault and even rape. The Sri Lankan army describes these camps as humanitarian centres being used to house Tamil civilians the army has rescued from the Tamil Tigers.

The Parliament square protest was so significant it caused to emergency questions being asked on the floor of the House of Commons during the debate on the expenses scandal. The MP's could have used this as an opportunity to discuss the support the British government has been giving the Sri Lankan army in it's war against the Tamils. They could have used it as an opportunity to discuss the way the police deal with political demonstrations. They could even have used it as an opportunity to condemn the actions of the Sri Lankan army. Instead the MP's decided to complain that the protest had delayed them getting into Parliament. Apparently some were so late that they were unable to file that days expenses claims.

Today the demonstration in Parliament square is reported to be growing by the hour. This could provide an interesting backdrop to coming weekend. On Saturday an unknown number of people are expected to gather at London's Heathrow airport to take part in the Euro flash mob in protest against airport expansion http://www.euroflashmob.com/ At the same time 10,000 - 15,000 people are expected to take part in a march against the Israeli blockade of Gaza http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/1179/1/ If there is another large Tamil demonstration in Parliament square it dramatically increases the chances that there will be a break out group from both demonstrations heading to either the Israeli of Sri Lankan Embassy.