A student in Ontario, Canada has been barred from carrying a controversial ‘Tamil flag’ at a multicultural assembly at his high school, a foreign media report said.

Kumar Makandu, a Grade 12 student at Central secondary school, had carried a Tamil Tiger flag at the annual assembly for the past two years but was told by administration leading up to the event on Friday that he couldn’t showcase the flag.

It depicts a tiger jumping through a circle of bullets -- though Makandu says it’s the sun -- with two crossed bayonets, the Toronto Sun reported.

Central principal Jim Robertson decided only the flags from internationally recognized countries would be included in the assembly after a student last year mistakenly thought the flag was connected to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a militant group that fought the Sri Lankan military in a bloody civil war from 1983 to 2009, the report said.

“We’re not trying to get into the politics of aspirational governments,” Robertson said. “I don’t want students to feel threatened.”

But Makandu claims there’s no connection between the flag to the Tamil Tigers, an organization the Canadian government put on its terrorism list in 2006.

“If I can’t even bring my flag up, how can I share my culture?” said Makandu, adding he spoke to many of his fellow students prior to the assembly and they told him they had no problem with him carrying the flag.

Makandu showed up for the assembly wearing a shirt depicting the flag, but a teacher promptly asked him to take it off.

He did so, not wanting to create trouble, and walked under the Sri Lankan flag at the assembly.
“It’s pretty upsetting that I can’t represent my culture in a multicultural country like Canada where we embrace other cultures,” he said.