Tamil activists, however, say that the real aim of this renewed effort by the Sri Lankan government is to hide its genocide of the Tamil people in the island from the international community. They say the Sri Lankan government has successfully sealed the flow of information by banning reporters and other independent observers from the northern and eastern regions of the island, where the Sri Lankan military is accused of arbitrary arrests and killings. The only leak of information is via the Tamil activists in the west.

"Sri Lanka is using more than one strategy to alienate the Tamils from the western governments. They range from diplomatic pressure to hiring public relations firms" says Professor Wilson, former head of political science at the University of New Brunswick.

The public relations firms hired by the Sri Lankan government are widely believed to have commissioned a string of misleading and false reports in the western media. A report titled "Canadian Tamils terrorized" which appeared in two major Canadian newspapers reported that the Tamils living in Canada are subject to extortion by the LTTE. However, the story was later retracted by the newspapers quoting Inspector Roy Teefe of the Metropolitan Toronto Police that he had not heard of any incidents in which Tamils were forced to contribute to the separatist war in Sri Lanka. Similar stories of extortion also appeared in the Bangkok Post.

Another common accusation by the Sri Lankan government is that the LTTE is involved in narcotics trafficking, a claim dismissed by many western officials. Also, whenever a few Tamil youths run into trouble with the law in the west, Sri Lankan embassy officials quickly issue press releases to link the youths with LTTE, without ever waiting for the official police reports.

Tamil activists fear that Sri Lanka's diplomatic missions have been transformed to wage an all out propaganda war against the Tamil people living in the west. The nature of the activities of these missions was revealed in a recent report in the Island newspaper by Asoka Weerasinghe of Project Peace, an ex-employee of the Sri Lankan high commission in Ottawa. In this report, Weerasinghe details how a Macleans senior reporter was approached and commissioned to write reports to tarnish Tamils, branding them as criminals.

Analysts say that Sri Lanka's aim is to suppress the support LTTE enjoys among Tamils in the west. "More and more, Sri Lanka is relying on international support for its war against the LTTE. In order to achieve a military victory, Sri Lanka needs to convince the world that the LTTE is a terrorist organization, which does not have the support of the Tamils. The government also needs to hide the atrocities committed by its armed forces against Tamil civilians," says Prof. Wilson. "By supporting LTTE and exposing the human rights violations, the expatriate Tamils are denying Sri Lanka a free hand to deal with the LTTE. This has made the Tamils target ".