News Service from House Harris

NSW: Home invasion racially motivated, Sinhalese leader says

SYDNEY, May 18 AAP - An acid attack on two Sri Lankan students in a Sydney home invasion was racially motivated, a Sinhalese community leader says.

The attack happened on the same day Tamil Tiger rebels admitted defeat in their 37-year battle against Sri Lankan government forces for an independent ethnic homeland.

Tamils have been protesting for weeks in Sydney and Canberra, calling for an end to what they called the genocide in their homeland.

Police have appealed for calm after politically-motivated unrest in Sydney's west, including a brawl involving more than 100 people at a supermarket car park on Sunday.

Dr Pryanka Bandara said she had been told a group of Tamils targeted the student's house at Westmead, which was well known in the Sinhalese community.

"It was a Singhalese house that got broken into by these Tamil extremists," she said.

"It's definitely racially motivated."

The intruders threw acid on two men inside and stabbed one, who was also left with a broken ankle.

Chathurika Weerasighe, 27, is in a stable condition with stab wounds and a broken ankle in Westmead Hospital.

His 22-year-old roommate, identified only as Jayasiri, remains in an induced coma in Concord Hospital.

Dr Bandara, a member of the Society for Peace, Unity and Human Rights, said Australian Tamils had sent money to fund the Tigers and were upset the rebels had lost the war.

"There are a lot of people in western Sydney who have funded this terrorist war for a good couple of decades," she said.

"It's their money, it's their hard work that's getting defeated at the moment."

She has called on the Australian government to stop Tamils holding further protest meetings across the nation, saying they would inflame the situation.

"The Australian government should not allow these illegal protests to be carried out at the expense of public money," she said.

The Sinhalese community was being advised not to retaliate, Dr Bandara said.

"The community should not be provoked by the Tamil protesters," she said.

She also hoped the end to the civil war would bridge the divide between the Tamil and Sinhalese communities.

"I feel very strongly for the youngsters who have never lived in Sri Lanka, but have a Sri Lankan Tamil origin but grew up in Sydney," she said.

"They have been really separated from the rest of the Sri Lankan community."