West influencing regime-change politics responsible for worsening situation: Fr Sakthivel

Sinhala colonisation escalated in Vavuniyaa North with a multitude of players backing infrastructure

Elected civic members of Vavuniyaa North Divisional Council (PS) complain that the Sinhala colonisation is relentlessly targeting the eastern side of their division. The occupying Sinhala Army and its home-guards paramilitary act as the guardians of the colony while the extremist Buddhist monks coordinate the systematic expansion. Various SL ministries provide the infrastructure. Besides, a host of actors from a leading socio-economic NGO with Buddhist philosophy to a local extremist group known as ‘Sinhala Power in the North‘ (‘Uture Hela Balaya’ or ‘Utura Rakina Raṭa Surakina Jātika Balaya - Vanni’) facilitate it through different approaches. Also, sections of expatriate Sinhalese, including a retired professor from Australia, have funded the housing projects of the scheme. The Sinhala settlers are being radicalised without any provocation or hostility from the Tamils. Full story >>

Colombo closing down schools with less than 50 students tantamounts to educational betrayal

The education of the students living in the rural and remote villages in the North-East would be severely affected if the SL Government goes ahead with the proposed move of closing down schools with less than fifty students in the island, said former Education Minister of Eastern Province S. Thandayuthapani on Friday. The resettlement has not been fully completed even though ten years have elapsed since the end of the war. It also takes time for the people to resettle in a meaningful way. The move to cut down the access to education is an educational betrayal, Mr Thandayuthapani said. The international actors, such as the World Bank and the IMF who provide ‘development’ assistance to the SL State are also betraying the Tamils in the North-East if they were giving input to the SL Government to close down the schools with fifty or less of students, he said. Full story >>

Linguistic discrimination, insensitive iconography used to establish Sinhala Buddhist hegemony

“Three things that cannot be hidden for long in the North-East are the sun, the moon and the genocide,” commented a photojournalist documenting post-2009 structural and heritage genocide in the occupied traditional homeland of the Eezham Tamils. Not only the Sinhala military and the intruding extremist Buddhist clergy from the South but all the ministries and the departments of the unitary state system of Colombo are implementing their projects in the North-East without respecting the diversity and cultural sensitivities involved. Often, the underlying agenda of establishing the Sinhala Buddhist supremacy is visually exposed very quickly, the journalist said referring to the flag and plaque sites erected in the ‘Semata Sewana’ model villages being put by the ‘National Housing Development Authority’ (NDHA), which comes under the SL Ministry of Housing, Construction & ‘Culture Affairs’. Full story >>

Tamil youth in Batticaloa irked by SL State-backed southern company bent on ilmenite mining

Tension prevailed in Kathira-ve'li, and the surrounding villages located 75 km north of Batticaloa city on Wednesday when Tamil youth went on a motorbike rally opposing the move for mineral excavation by a corporate from the South. Protesters were riding around 60 motorbikes from Verukal Bridge to Vaakarai through Panichchangkea'ni. The residents of three villages, Kathirave'li, Puchchang-kea'ni and Puthoor have been protesting against the exploitative ilmenite excavation project launched with the backing of the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka. “Now, the people here are outraged, especially the youth. Recently, one youth wanted to self-immolate himself to protect his soil. We struggled to stop it,” Kathirve'li Fisheries Society leader M Subramaniyam told TamilNet. “We are finding it difficult to control the youth, and they could resort to extreme response any time,” he warned. Full story >>

Assange arrest: Declaration of war against digital civil society by bandwagoning powers

“Julian Assange: Conspiracy theorist proved right?” was the questioning headline of a comment piece co-authored by AFP correspondents Alice Ritchie and James Pheby following the breaking news of the British arrest of the founder of WikiLeaks on Thursday. The arrest comes 16 days after the organisation tweeted, citing the New York Times, that Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno was trying “to sell Assange to US for debt relief,” especially after the whistleblower organisation published the purportedly leaked contents of his iPhone (Whatsapp, Telegram) & Gmail. The Whistleblower organisation tweeted again six days ago warning that its founder will be expelled within “hours to days”. The withdrawal of Assange's political asylum by Ecuador, arrest by the British police and the US Department of Justice releasing the indictment against him have all taken place within the span of a few hours. Full story >>

Analyst: Transitional justice will never work, SL State institutionally genocidal

Eezham Tamils should not fall prey to the advocacy coming from the Western countries that prod them into the roadmap of unworkable transitional justice in the island, Jaffna-based Senior Lawyer and Political Analyst S.A. Jothilingam told TamilNet on Tuesday. The Tamils have almost lost their trust in the UN institutions after witnessing the events unfolding at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. If the UN system, also politically siding with the political establishment, could not deliver justice to the crimes committed against the Tamils in the island, it would not be able to resolve the political conflicts anywhere else, he reiterated. The Western states involved in the geopolitical race against China want to make concessions to the UNP government. In their greed for securing strategic interests, they are sacrificing the justice owed to Tamils, he said. Full story >>

2ND LEAD (Correction)

Employment discrimination in educational sector in East

Tamil teachers in Batticaloa complain that the unitary system of the SL State is institutionally discriminatory as it wants to favour employment and infrastructure to Sinhala language schools while satisfying Tamil-speaking Muslims with compromises at the expense of allocations to Tamils in the Eastern province. Out of 349 teaching appointments provided to graduates in the Eastern province, 278 went to schools operating in Sinhala language and a further 7 were bilingual Sinhala medium teachers. Only 7 were Tamil medium teachers while 57 were bilingual Tamil medium teachers. Full story >>

SL State appropriates lands of Tamils in Batticaloa under ‘Mahaweli’ scheme

Eezham Tamil land-owners in four interior GS divisions in Kiraan and Chengkaladi divisions of Batticaloa district are facing an imminent threat of losing upto 90 per cent of their paddy lands and 99 per cent of other lands which they owned for decades. Their areas are being absorbed into the Mahaweli colonisation programme under cover of ‘development’, say Tamil farmers. Agrarian Services Centre official at Kiraan T. Jeyaraj has informed the farmers that they would be only allowed to retain 2.5 acres of paddy lands and 0.5 acres of lands for homestead per adult person in their families as their lands were being taken over by the Mahaweli authority, the farmers said. Full story >>

USA strengthens Quad, India set to receive anti-submarine Seahawks

India is set to purchase twenty-four Sikorsky MH-60R Seahawk choppers (also known as Romeo choppers) from the USA for USD 2.4 billion, the Pentagon said on Wednesday. The US Navy operates more than 250 Romeo choppers, which were developed based on the US Army’s UH-60 Black Hawk, as its primary helicopters for anti-submarine warfare and open ocean duties. The Indian move comes after the Australian Navy upgrading its naval combat capabilities with Seahawk ‘Romeo’ helicopters between 2014 and 2016. Japan, the fourth member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) formation, has already modernised its military helicopter fleet with its own Mitsubishi H-60 series equivalent of the anti-submarine helicopters. Full story >>


2ND LEAD (Adds video)

Sumanthiran's rationality exposes Wigneswaran's gullibility

ITAK Parliamentarian and President Counsel M.A. Sumanthiran, a proven ‘revisionist’ of Eezham Tamils’ external right of self-determination who sophisticatedly denies Tamil genocide, has now assailed former NPC Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran, who mistakenly or deceptively ended up harping on IIGEP as a precedent-setting argument to justify the illogical demand for hybrid courts. After Sumanthiran's intervention, which was highlighted by Jaffna daily Kaalaik-Kathir on 31st March, Wigneswaran issued a new statement on the same day – this time in Tamil only – and said he was not asking to set up a group like the IIGEP. His initial statement also pointed out that the act of IIGEP dissolving itself was an example why an international investigation was necessary in the island, he reiterated. Full story >>

Senior TELO leader urges DMK to withdraw Hambantota investment

M.K. Shivajilingam, the senior political leader of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO) and former TNA parliamentarian, has urged DMK politician Samikannu Jagathratchagan in Tamil Nadu to reconsider the decision of his family to invest in the big business of building an oil refinery and cement factory in Hambantota in the South. “I urge Mr Jagathratchagan to reconsider his decision [...] Eezham Tamils have not yet gained justice to the genocide committed against them. A political solution is still far away [..] At this juncture, the investment move is also contradictory to the unanimous position of Tamil Nadu State Assembly which had called for economic sanctions on Sri Lanka until these issues are resolved,” Shivajligam told TamilNet on Friday. Full story >>

Interior village faces imminent Sinhalicisation in Batticaloa

The occupying Sinhala military chased away the residents of four villages in Kudumpi-malai GS division, which is also known as Thoppik-kal and Baron’s Cap, during the times of war in 2007. The villages are located close to Polonnaruwa border. Although the uprooted Eezham Tamils were allowed to resettle back in 2013, the fertile highlands at Periya Miyaang-kal village, owned by Tamil settlers since 1969 were being retained by the occupying Sinhala military occupation. Even though the SL Army relocated its 11th Regiment troops from the location two years ago in 2017, the Tamil landowners are not being allowed to enter their lands. Now, the SL authorities have started to claim that the grounds have become ‘state property’ says Nagarasa Nagathamby, who was living there since 1969. The Buddha statue and the structures are intact, and the Tamils fear a Sinhala colony at the locality. Full story >>

Colombo ‘reminds’ Eezham Tamils on significance of theorising war historiography

Occupying Colombo's Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) has filed a ‘B Report’ requesting the Magistrates’ Court in Jaffna to demand the editor of Colombo-based Thamizhth-thanthi weekly to reveal the author and the source of an article, which was published in May 2018. The article was about the late Brigadier Balraj, a highly esteemed military commander of the LTTE, who played the key role in the Tiger victory of the Elephant Pass garrison in 2000. The TID has approached the SL Court in January 2019, eight months after the article, titled “Balraj, the unparalleled war hero of the 21st century”, appeared. The SL State wants to suppress the media freedom of Eezham Tamil writers to file articles under pen names. It wants the editors to impose self-censorship and not to protect the identity of the authors. Colombo wants to make an example through this case, journalists in Jaffna said. Full story >>