I don't know why I should have been there Rikki. You've called the post 'Tamil March'. What is the march about. Has the conflict not ended? I wouldn't feel confident to march with flag wavers, most seemingly on one side of a civil war.

the tamil people have faced terrible repression for decades and the west has been complicit, much like the palestinians.

the 'war' is over, but hundreds of tamil children and women are abducted from the concentration camps each night, many raped or tortured before 'disappearing'.

the concentration camps hold more than a quarter of a million tamils in abject conditions and break all manner of geneva conventions.

doctors, aid workers and media have all been prevented from entering the camps. the food is scarce and of terrible quality. sri lankan soldiers treat the tamils with barbarism.

there have been calls to the UN, to gordon brown, and to barak obama to monitor, prosecute, and provide aid. nothing is being done for the tamil people.

the western media is complicit in its silence and in portraying what 'ruby's' post stated, that a 'civil war' is over. "move along please, there's nothing to see".

more info can be found at:

 http://tamilvoice.co.uk
www.srilankacrisiscamps.org/petition
www.victimsofsrilankanwar.com
www.srilankacrisiscamps.org/FAQs

Are only Western European countries capable of an autonomous bloc?

Regarding the international solidarity or lack of it, Rikki is correct to say that again the lack of non-Tamils was a real problem, but i would like to point out the momentum that has very slowly grown.

At February's march there were NO white faces. Maybe a dozen all day (out of 125,000 people). The second march this year was even bigger and apart from a few dozen people all day (out of about 200,000) the rest were Tamil. Stop The War had a banner with few people then.

Today, groups represented included Socialist Worker Party, Fight Racism Fight Imperialism, Colombia Solidarity Campaign, Global Women’s Strike, Student Workers, International Commission Against Disappearances, and a Stop The War banner - but i question whether this is a national representation or a local group acting against Stop The War policy of seemingly not supporting the Tamil struggle. Messed up considering SWP even spoke at the end. In addition there were more white non-Tamil faces, maybe 100 but scattered throughout. History will note the lack of solidarity with this issue. The effort of the organisers should be noted though. The speakers at the end of the march had a very good representation of white faces from MPs to humans rights campaigning groups to social activists.

Ruby's post sadly shows us yet again that the Tamil struggle is not properly understood by almost everybody. At this rate it will be years before we get a solid autonomous block. That's simply not an option.

urm..dont wish to burst your bubble as I have a fair amount of respect for Indymedia and it's causes however, there was nothing like 100,000 people at the march! C'mon. Having been to many really big sporting events and music festivals and seen crowds in excess of 60,000 I can honestly say there were, at the very most, probably no more than 20-25,000 people involved for this strong cause.

Who at Indymedia gains these figures. I feel it would be more beneficial to ensure that they are as accurate as possible as not doing so really does detract from the validity of any protest.

All the best

Paul