Metanarrative of Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal, geopolitics and secularism: Jude Lal Fernando

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May 18 declared as Awakening Day of Tamil Nation against Genocide

The grassroots groups which came together from the North and East to organise the 10th Remembrance Day commemorating the deaths of tens of thousands of lives in the Tamil genocide declared the day as the Awakening Day of Tamil Nation against Genocide at Mu'l'livaaykkaal. The occupying military of genocidal Sri Lanka had put up several, and a particular military unit that had from Colombo was visiting door-to-door in Mullaiththeevu warning the people against taking part in the event. However, the remembrance event proceeded with people who had come from other towns. The event was peaceful and emotional. The statement issued by the organisers called for the international investigations and to recognise the distinct sovereignty and inalienable right of self-determination of Tamils in the merged North-East. Full story >>

Emergency used to target peaceful Tamil activists at Keappaa-pulavu in Vanni

The SL Military and the Police were allowing the Sinhala colonists to lay siege to the District Secretariat in Mullaiththeevu on Monday. However, they were harassing four Tamil protesters, who met a small group of foreign journalists at Keappaa-pulavu in Vanni on the same day. “The checkpoint was not there when we started the meeting. However, after 25 minutes, the checkpoint was hurriedly put up near the protest site and the four of us, as well as the journalists talking to us, were thoroughly checked at the post. The SL military knows us very well as we have been staging the protest along the street near the military camp for 807 days,” Chandraleela Simidkasan, a leader of protesting Tamil women at Keappaa-pulavu said on Tuesday. Full story >>

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Mullai GA gives in to pressure from top, allocates lands to Sinhala colonists

Mullaiththeevu District Secretary (Government Agent) Ms Rupavathy Ketheeswaran appears to have bowed to pressure from the Colombo establishment to allocate a housing scheme for the Sinhala colonists in Mukaththuvaaram in Kokku'laay, says civil activist and a former UN Field Officer V. Navaneethan. While defending the rights of the private Tamil land-owners, the GA seems to have promised to allocate three acres of public lands to the encroaching colonists. The GA who visited the area after the Sinhala protesters laid siege to her office on 13 May, was under pressure to promise the public land plot of three acres to be transferred to the colonists to set up a housing scheme. She was accompanied by SL military officers and the police as well as Survey Department officials, news sources in Mullaiththeevu said. Full story >>

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Sinhala colonists protest against Tamil officials in Vanni

More than one hundred Sinhala colonist families staged a protest laying siege to the Mullaiththeevu District Secretariat on Monday opposing the Tamil officials, including the District Secretary (GA) Ms Rupavathy Ketheeswaran, for objecting their illegal occupation of the lands. Even after the district secretary had met them, the protesters were blockading the entrance. The SL Police was not acting against the protesters. The SL military and police, who blocking Tamils from gathering to commemorate the 10th year of 2009 genocide that took place in the district citing Emergency Regulations, were not acting against the Sinhala protesters, the officials at the District Secretariat told TamilNet. Full story >>

Colombo attempts to Sinhalicise Tamil village using sympathy following Easter attack

Occupying Colombo’s ‘National Housing Development Authority’ (NHDA) was silently scheming to launch a housing scheme for Sinhala colonists in Mukaththuvaaram in Kokku’laay West village (GS/GN) area of Karai-thu’raip-pattu administrative division of Mullaiththeevu district on Saturday. However, the move was temporarily postponed following strong objections from the Tamil land-owners. The violent colonists, backed by the occupying SL Navy are Sinhala Catholics. They have been occupying the place during the times of war and after. Mukaththuvaaram is a strategically located village at the northern tip of the lagoon-mouth of Kokku’laay. The provincial border between the North and East runs through the lagoon. Full story >>

Western diplomats must act to free Jaffna University student leaders: Political Analyst

The West needs to be reminded that the Tamil Christians were at the receiving end of the Easter Sunday most probably because the hierarchy of the Tamil National Alliance and the Tamil leaders, in general, had been explicitly leaning towards it after the end of the genocidal war in 2009. The unitary state in Colombo has now clamped down on the Tamil student leaders of the Jaffna University by deploying the Emergency Regulations totally out of proportions in a heavily politicised and chauvinistic manner using the situation after the Easter Sunday attacks, said Jaffna-based Senior Lawyer and Political Analyst S.A. Jothilingam on Thursday. His comments to TamilNet come a day after the Magistrates’ Court in Jaffna was unable to act on the release of the students as their release required explicit action by the SL Attorney General under the Emergency provisions. Full story >>

Arts Faculty student leader urges principled action from Jaffna lawyers

The president of the Student Union of the Art Faculty at the University of Jaffna, Mr Rajaratnam Krishanth, has urged the lawyers, particularly the head of the bar association in Jaffna Ms Shantha Abimannasingham P.C., who is also the notary public Council Member of the Council of the University, to take up the wrong PTA detention of Jaffna University Student Union. The matter should also be taken up with the U.S. Embassy and other diplomatic missions in Colombo, he said. The action for releasing the JUSU leaders must be a broader one, he said. The students were awaiting the legal outcome on May 08 before initiating a struggle, he said. In the meantime, all other avenues must be pursued in parallel, he said. TNA's Sumanthiran and Civil Society activist Guruparan are already done their part, the fellow students told TamilNet. Full story >>

Religious community condemns SL Police detention of Tamil student leaders in Jaffna

The arrest of the two Tamil student leaders of the Jaffna University Student Union (JUSU) on Friday was a classic example which confirmed the fear of ordinary Tamil and Muslim people that the SL Intelligence Establishment would be misusing the recently re-introduced Emergency Regulations to target the innocent people and to curb their democratic activists. The SL military intelligence has deployed the ER in an inappropriate, unacceptable and irrelevant manner, which was totally out of proportions, said human rights activist Rev Fr SVB Mangalarajah on Sunday. The veteran activist, representing a section of Tamil Catholic and Hindu priests who condemned the arrest of JUSU leaders. They urged the SL Government to release the student leaders if it was serious about not repeating the ER abuses as it was doing during the 30 years of the war in the North-East. Full story >>

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SL Police detains Tamil student leaders of Jaffna University after SLA cordon

The occupying SL Army has detained the main Tamil student leaders of Jaffna University after deploying a large-scale cordon and search operation along with the SL Police under the pretext of securing the premises from Islamist attackers on Friday. The SLA, using the Emergency Regulations, wants to stop the student mobilisation towards the 10th year remembrance of Tamil genocide on 18 May, fellow student leaders told TamilNet. Jaffna University Student Union President 25-year-old T. Thivakar, who hails from Mullaiththeevu and JUSU Secretary 24-year-old S. Babilraj are the two leaders detained. It is the first time that the SLA has been deployed in a big cordon and search operation inside the University of Jaffna, JUSU members said. Full story >>

Swiss youth group brings out publication on de-facto state of Tamil Eelam

A Swiss-based Tamil youth group has come up with a print compilation, titled “Structures of Tamil Eelam: A Handbook”, based on online and textual research on the LTTE-run de-facto state of Tamil Eelam. The compilation, made by a 20-year-old author, is structured into eight parts and twenty-six chapters with articles and photographs. “Almost ten years since the destruction of Tamil sovereignty through the global conspiracy conducted at Mullivaikkal, the ongoing nature of Tamil genocide reiterates the need for Eelam Tamils to understand the fundamentals of our struggle in formulating a legitimate path for a permanent political solution for the Tamil struggle,” says the preface of the book. Prominent Tamil and Sinhala diaspora activists and writers of first generation N Malathy (New Zealand), Ana Pararajasingham (Australia) and Viraj Mendis (Germany) have praised the work. Full story >>

Muslims fear next wave of attacks could target Sufi Dargahs in Mannaar, Musali under cordon

Security has been beefed up at the five pilgrimage sites in Mannaar district as the Muslim religious leaders expressed fear of the next wave of externally influenced Islamist attacks could target their traditional pilgrimage sites as the ring leader of the terror attacks on Easter Sunday was also opposed to such worship as “anti-Islamic” practice. In the meantime, the occupying SL Army, SL Navy, the STF commandos and the SL Police have subjected the entire 107 km coastal road from Puththa'lam in the North Western Province to Mannaar in the Northern province with ten check posts since Saturday. The security beef-up has increased the travel time from Mannaar to Puththa'lam from two hours to six hours. The SL forces are mainly targeting the Tamil-speaking Muslims in Musali division with three large cordon-and-search operations for the past three days, civil sources in Musali said. Full story >>

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Trauma, uncertainty escalates following shootout, explosions in East

It was the Muslim house-owners in Kalmunai, Chaayntha-maruthu and other places in Ampaa'rai, who cooperated with the security establishment to detect the residences of the renters behaving suspiciously or absconding on Friday. At least six suicide bombers have reportedly blown themselves up during the cordon and search operations reported from Friday to Saturday morning. At the same time, the news of three innocent children getting killed in gunfire while no military or police getting harmed and the subsequent reports claiming that it was the terror suspects who shot the children, have raised suspicion among the people, said Moulavi AJM Ilyas, a leading Islamic religious leader in Batticaloa. Moulavi Ilyas reiterated that the entire Muslim community in the island stood united in condemning the terror attacks on Easter Sunday. Full story >>


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Colombo's COIN backfires, solidarity key to ensure Tamil-Muslim territoriality: Diasporic academic

The growth of Wahhabism in the island has only served Colombo, and its external backers' interests in weakening the possibilities of unified Tamil speaking peoples' resistance to the unitary state, argues Norway-based Eezham Tamil anthropology academic Athithan Jayapalan in an article following the serial Easter Sunday bomb attacks in the island. The Wahhabis were contributing to the severing of the ties held by Tamil Muslims to their territory, and in the case of north and east, to their Tamil neighbours by targeting, destroying or marginalising traditional Tamil Muslim Sufism in the island in the past. “Time has again come for Tamil – Muslim solidarity and alliances to bloom, to arrest divisive measures of the Colombo state and external powers,” to counter the dangers of the future, he writes narrating the trends of the past and his experiences during the field trips to the island. Full story >>