Protestors on Parliament Square. Photograph: Melanie Gouby

After more than two months at Westminster, Tamil protesters asking for international actions in favour of refugees have started to wither away. Many have gone home, frustrated and discouraged. But for the few Tamils remaining on Parliament Square, the cause is more vital than ever.

They have their own reasons- relatives trapped in the refugee camps, some of them untraceable, fear for friends left behind, or simply a need to show solidarity. Many also have their own stories. One being Gowrie, a 52-year-old retired shop keeper left Sri Lanka when she was in her early twenties.

“In 1977 I was living with my family in the central part of Anuradhapura, a Sinhalese city and my father had his business there. One morning, trucks came in with a mob calling ‘Who is Tamil here?’ So we had to run”, she recalls.

“I was exactly 20 at the time. Luckily my father was in Anuradhapura doing business that day. Our local MP knew my father and warned him.‘There’s a riot going on, you can’t go home alone’. He put my father in his car, told him to duck down, and brought him home. My sister got home too, I don’t know how. Apparently the school said everybody had to go home. “
Once the family of three had gathered at their home, they fled across nearby fields. “We found shelter in the house of a friend of my father, a policeman”.

Regardless of their ethnicity, her father’s workers, all from Sinhalese origins, were extremely loyal and guarded the house during the night. But in the morning Gowrie’s family house had gone up in smoke.
“I could hear my father’s heart beating”, she says. “The next day we went to the town hall, where all the Tamils gathered. Many of them were beaten up, but luckily we weren’t. The policeman had offered us some food before we left, but we could not eat because we were very distressed”.

In the town hall, Gowrie heard stories of torture. Although the stories were unconfirmed, they left a strong impression on the young woman.

“You know people like Prabhakaran [the deceased LTTE leader] are not born, they are made. So they say now that Prabhakaran is dead, but other are going to be made now because of the kind of actions the government takes against the Tamils”, she says.

Gowrie, left shortly after the riots and went to study in India. “I did not want to stay because of the experience. I did not want to stay because I wanted to live. I decided to go to Europe. I ended up in Paris. It was very pretty but I was living in a tiny room. I was 23 then," she told The London File.

Because she could not get a job in Paris, she decided to come to London as she could speak English well. In 1984 she moved in with her brother who was already here.

“I started Computer Studies but did not finish it because it was too expensive. Little by little I worked here and there and finally I started my business. I had a newsagent’s shop near Victoria”, she recalls.

Gowrie is not married because “many things changed after 1977” and did not keep close with the Tamil community in London. But the conflict outbreak in March motivated her to join the street protest outside Parliament.

“We are Tamils and those people have no one else than us, we have a voice, in this country we have the freedom to express ourselves. I have a duty to be here, I can’t stay home”.