In a sea of blue at the Manuka Oval, it was a small group in red that cornered attention on Tuesday; apart from being the most boisterous and vociferous in their support of their “beloved Sri Lanka”, the red brigade was conspicuous for the message it sought to convey, and not necessarily subtly.

Sporting T-shirts bearing the slogan “Voice of Tamils, where is humanity?”, these Tamils of Sri Lankan origin, now settled in Australia, were trying to espouse the cause of their brethren back home in the Emerald Isles, calling for an end to the 'poor condition' of Tamils in the country of their birth.

Whether it was the right forum to get their point across is open to debate, but this sizeable group — most of them from Sydney, but not restricted to the New South Wales capital city — went about trying to drive its point home without ill-will or rancour.

No gimmick

If their objective was to draw attention, then they didn’t fail in that regard; this, however, was no mere publicity-seeking exercise.

“To us, this is more a campaign than a protest. We are doing this because we believe Tamils in Sri Lanka are discriminated against and poorly treated. They are subjected to injustice in every possible walk of life. This has to change,” said Adrian Francis, a member of the group and now settled in Sydney.

Francis’ parents, he said, had suffered because of this injustice. “We don’t want to resort to hostilities,” he observed. “This is a peaceful way of drawing attention. We turned up for this match because we felt it would help highlight our concerns.

“At the same time, we are not against the country. We are very happy to see Muttiah Muralitharan representing Sri Lanka and doing so well,” added Francis. The world’s highest Test wicket-taker is the only Tamil in the Lankan team.

“We connect with him and are here to cheer for Sri Lanka, apart from making our point.”
The red brigade is determined to make its presence felt at other Sri Lankan matches during the tri-series.