Tamil Protests In London

[Pyara]

Once again the 1984 June Rally appears to gathered minimal interest from the mainstream media.

Last weeks Tamil protest against the Sri Lankan President being invited for the jubilee celebrations (Wednesday 6 June 2012) raised large media attention. The Tamil forum in the UK seem to have some stronger machinery in raising national awareness than we have as a more established community in the UK have.

It's really time for us to re-engineer our approach to raising awareness of atrocities against Sikhs in India. Our approach is repetitive and insular solely aimed at Sikh media, maybe it's become our comfort zone...

[Balait_da_Sher]

I think this got more coverage because it was directly related to a high profile event, so the two are not the same. However, I do agree with your comment about re-engineering our approach to raising awareness.

[SINGH_SARDAR]

Tamil protest is getting more coverage because they are against shri lanka which is a small country while our protest is against india which boasts to be worlds largest democracy.

[Pyara]

Tamil protest is getting more coverage because they are against shri lanka which is a small country while our protest is against india which boasts to be worlds largest democracy.

Maybe we've made that into our permanent excuse.

Time to be self-critical here, all the awareness we create is purely insular, it's effectively aimed solely at the Sikhs. To narrow it down further, it's aimed mainly at the more righteous minded panthic Sikhs not even the mainstream Anglo-Punjabi/Sikh community.

We are pulling out the same creased up banners, the same slogans, the same speeches from the last 20 plus years. Many of the same old faces still putting themselves forward with little to add since the same speech they probably did in year 1984 itself.

The large 84 rally turnout is purely based on loyalty, emotions and commitment of the Sangat. It's a shame we are not using these large numbers of sangat to really create the impact we deserve. Time to get out of our comfort zones and interact with the non Sikh world. Last week, when I contacted Amnesty, HRW as well as some other community groups who share a similar cause such as the Tamil forum not of the one of the reps I spoke to were aware of our rally.

The funders of the rally such as FSO need to really move away from the same old formula, worrying about pleasing the same old Sikh personalities with stage time and give way to new innovative ideas to work towards marketing a powerful message. As ever, it's all about letting go of some of that power.

[singhgurj]

Could the lack of media coverage/attention be a result of the fact that India is a tiger economy? Britain/USA are now bedfellows with India? Britain is dependent on India in terms of trade etc?

I feel that a protest against middle eastern countries by Uk based dissidents would have definitely attracted more coverage. We live in a money driven world. The only way we Sikhs will attract sympathy is if we become affluent enough to have an impact on the western economy. Human rights don't seem to matter unless atrocities are committed against the dissidents of a country that the west wants to destroy.

[Karku_007]

''The funders of the rally such as FSO need to really move away from the same old formula, worrying about pleasing the same old Sikh personalities with stage time and give way to new innovative ideas to work towards marketing a powerful message. As ever, it's all about letting go of some of that power''

Suggest you contact FSO and or Sikh Federation UK, who are members of FSO, to work on planning next years rally with the ideas as above.

If they do not allow you to be part of the planning or just ignore you, then we will definatley know that they do not want to let go of 'power'.

[chatanga]

One thing to keep in mind as well is the Tamil genocide was very recent and the UN was involved as well, even recently C4 did a docu on it, whereas bluestar was 28 years ago, and very few countries at that time gave a damn. So if they never cared too much in the 1st place...