Overnight, Sellathurai said, the newspaper's editor received a threatening call and hours later its office on Progress Rd in Scarborough, near Markham Rd and Highway 401, was vandalized.

Police said their investigation is still in the early stages.

The threats stemmed from a recent meeting Sellathurai, president of the Canada-Sri Lanka Business Council and the United Tamil Council of Canada, had with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The meeting was covered in Uthayan - a paper widely considered a moderate Tamil newspaper, and read by Toronto's Sri Lankan diaspora - as well as Sri Lankan media and websites.

Sellathurai said the call made to newspaper editor Logan Logendralingam said, "Your friends went and met the president, now you go and see what happened to your store."

When Logendralingam arrived he saw the damage. The whole front of the store was smashed, Sellathurai said.

The presidential meeting came about after Sellathurai delivered funds raised by Tamil businesses in Canada for children orphaned and displaced in Sri Lanka. Sellathurai called his meeting with the president "very positive," and said Rajapaksa vowed to work through the "ethnic issues" in the country.

The vandals were "trying to send a message" to Logendralingam to "not carry that message," said Sellathurai.

"(Canada) is a country that we came to live in peace, and if we can't continue to express our messages â?¦ then why are we here?"

Uthayan is considered a neutral or moderate paper that carries news about both the Tamil community and the mainly-Sinhalese Sri Lankan government. "We are not against the Tamil people and their struggle," Sellathurai said.

Sellathurai said this is the first harm done to the newspaper. However, when the Tamil community held a symbolic vote to create an independent Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka last December, Uthayan was pulled from three GTA stores and replaced with pro-referendum leaflets.

Editor Logan Logendralingam said at the time the paper was maliciously pulled because of its limited coverage of the vote.

Uthayan has also been the subject of recent controversy over its political positions, with entire stacks of papers stolen from the stores that distribute them, particularly in the Scarborough area.

Of the latest vandalism Logendralingam said: "They must have used baseball bats or iron rods."

He said he learned of the attack when he answered a call from a private number just after dawn Sunday.

A man speaking in Tamil said it was payback for the recent visit to Sri Lanka by the Canada-Sri Lanka Business Council, in which the donation of $20,000 was given to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The money was to have gone toward an orphanage that is managed by Rajapaksa's wife.

The reaction to the meeting and the donation was harshly critical, even before the vandalism.

But Selladurai pointed out: "We get a lot of negative emails. So many emails going around talking about our families, our lives, who we are.... We've been called traitors."

As at the time of going to press, police said there is no apparent link to the arson or other mischief.

"There's not a lot to really go on here," said 43 Division Staff Sergeant Kevin Murrell.

"There was no actual threat, just that they were aware of the money passed (to Rajapaksa)."

Last weekend's vandalism also follows two fires in the last year at a Sri Lankan Buddhist temple, including one on Tamil "heroes day" that is being investigated as arson.

- Torstar News Service