Mano Ganesan misleads on Kanniyaa heritage dispute: Trincomalee Councillor

Tamil land-owners suppressed from mobilising against ethnic land-grab in Thiriyaay

The present SL Government Agent (District Secretary) of Trincomalee district, NAA Pushpakumara, as well as his predecessor Major General (retd) Ranjit de Silva, both Sinhalese, have transferred more than 300 acres of fertile lands of Eezham Tamils to Sinhala politicians and officials. The Divisional Secretary serving under them has been forced to subject the properties for long-term lease, said M. Konesan, the chairman of Thiriyaay Farmers’ Organisation. Full story >>

SL State-run Timber Corporation escalates logging of teak trees in Vanni

The SL State-owned Timber Corporation (STC) which comes under the SL Mahaweli Development and Environment Ministry, which is led by SL President Maithiripala Sirisena, has been engaged in wide-scale felling of Theakku trees (teak, Tectona grandis) in Oddu-chuddaan area in Mullaiththeevu. The occupying SL military, empowered with police powers under the Emergency Regulations, has been prohibiting Tamil journalists from entering the area to monitor and report on the anti-environment activity which has been stepped up after the visit of Mr Sirisena to Mullaiththeevu on 08 May. The teak trees being cut down are carried out by an all Sinhala team of workers from the South. The trees were planted by the Tamil Eelam Forest Conservation Unit of the Liberation Tigers and the Tamil Eelam Economic Development Organisation (TEEDOR) during the de-facto administration of Tamil Eelam before 2009. Full story >>

Occupying Colombo schemes Sinhala Buddhist settlement in Chemmalai-East, Vanni

The controversial erection of the giant Buddha statue at Neeraaviyadi in Chemmalai-East of Mullaiththeevu district is to be further expanded into a Buddhist enclave encapsulating 33,376 hectares of land area to the southeast of Naayaa'ru lagoon, reveals a poster put up by Ven Kolamba Medhalankara Thero, the ‘chief incumbent’ of the so-called Gurukanda Purana Rajamaha Vihara at the disputed heritage site. The monk is groomed by the occupying Sinhala Army's 593 Brigade, which is having its headquarter-base at Naayaa'aru. Scheming a large hermitage under the name of Gurukanda Purana Raja Maha Vihara (Gurukanda PRMV), the SL Archaeology Department, the SL Ministry of Buddha Sasana and the SL Ministry of Mahaweli ‘Development and Environment’ are backing the scheme, informed sources in Mullaiththeevu said. Full story >>

Kokku'laay-centric united action needed to counter Colombo wedging North-East

The resettled Tamil residents of the strategic Thennai-maravadi village bordering the Northern and Eastern Provinces in the Trincomalee district are facing Sinhala colonisation and Sinhala Buddhicisation of Tamil heritage sites on two fronts, at Pa'nikka-vayal to its west and at Kanthasaami-malai, which extends eastwards into Kokku'laay lagoon. The Sinhala colonisation and the Buddhicisation of Tamil heritage site of Kanthasaami-malai are being accelerated under the Emergency Regulations and the situation prevailing after the Easter Sunday attacks that have triggered the extremist monks to escalate their chauvinistic schemes in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils. The two-pronged attack, which is being stepped up in the recent days, is part of a larger design of permanently wedging the territorial contiguity of the Tamil homeland along the narrow border between the North and the East. Full story >>

Sinhala Buddhist fundamentalism ultimate trump card in unitary ‘Sri Lanka’: Suresh

The successive SL governments continue to behave hostile towards the Tamil people through ‘celebrating’ victory in the month of May. Furthermore, the SL State and its military sustain the Sinhala Buddhist fundamentalism unabatedly erecting Buddhist temples in the North and the East. The same trend is also witnessed in the way the Islamophobia is deployed in the electoral politics of the South, particularly after the Easter Sunday attacks, commented Tamil politician Suresh Premachandran in a video interview to TamilNet this week. The SL Army’s 11-day ‘Walk of Warriors’ launched from Medawachchiya to Colombo coinciding with the May’ victory celebration’ seems to be a display of warning to the Muslim people as well as being propaganda targeting the Sinhala people with the message that the military force is their ultimate protection, the former Tamil militant turned politician observed. Full story >>

2ND LEAD (Correction)

SL military, police suppress traces of officer involved in fatal accident

The occupying Sinhala military and the police are trying to suppress photographic traces of a fatal accident as well as exerting pressure on the family of the 67-year-old victim who was killed on the spot in the accident caused by the speeding vehicle, which was driven by an officer-rank SL Army person. The accident took place in front of Nedungkea'ni Maha Viththiyaalayam school on Sunday around 7:00 pm in Vavuniyaa North. The driving officer was wearing a green military uniform, eyewitnesses said. The victim, Kanapathippillay Perampalam, was on his way to buy short eats for his grandchildren. He was on a bicycle. Full story >>

SL Forest Department seizes 1,500 acres of lands opposite Tamil Heroes Cemetery in Champoor

Sinhala guards belonging to the SL Forest Department have hurriedly marked many of the outgrown trees in the private agricultural lands at Aalang-ku’lam in Champoor, Trincomalee with the letter ‘F’ claiming the trees as the properties the SL department, Vairamuthu Pathmanathan, the chairperson of Aalang-ku’lam Farmers Federation, said. The SL Forest Department has marked the trees at the extent of 1,500 acres of lands, located just opposite the razed Aalang-ku’lam Tamil Heroes Cemetery where more than 800 LTTE fighters lay buried. The latest move indicates that the SL Forest Department was also claiming the private agricultural lands that belong to the people, who possess deeds and permits to prove their ownership to many plots of farms in the area. Full story >>

IC failing to impose mediated solution, ultimately responsible for escalating Sinhala chauvinism

Even though one feared the outbreak of an anti-Muslim pogrom immediately after the Easter attacks, silence prevailed for two weeks. Then the mob violence targeted the properties of Muslim traders. It was not an act of immediate responsive impulse, but an engineered move instigated by an organised force. Despite their differences in the scale, there are certain similarities between the 1983 Black July anti-Tamil pogrom and the post-2009 anti-Muslim pogroms, says Batticaloa-based human rights activist Kathir Barathythasan. During the war, the International Community (IC) was acting as a mediator. But, it was also abetting the SL State, causing massive civilian deaths. The IC, now wants the anti-terror legislation to fit its global designs ignoring the drastic internal consequences. The IC must, therefore, be convinced to deliver a negotiated settlement to the national question, he said. Full story >>


2ND LEAD (Adds video)

SL police, backing monk, commit hate-crimes against Tamils, says assaulted journalist

Two officers-in-charge (OICs) of the stations of Kokku’laay and Mullaith-theevu of the occupying SL police in Vanni, verbally abused a Tamil journalist, K. Kumanan, on Monday, a day after he reported their biased conduct against the Tamil Saiva devotees, who had gone to reinstate the name board at the disputed heritage site of Neeraaviyadi in Naayaa’ru. The OIC of Kokku’laay went a step further physically slapping the journalist at his neck as well as deliberately shaking his camera. The SL Police was also intimidating Kumanan by taking photos. “The police officers were not only attacking me, but they were also verbally abusing the entire Tamil media in a collective sense,” said the freelance reporter. The assault came a day after his report appeared in the Veerakesari daily. Full story >>

Muslim prisoner alleged of LTTE gets back-to-back life sentence in genocidal Sri Lanka

Anuradhapura’ Special High Court’ of the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka has served three jail terms, 20 years each, to be followed one after the other for the first three indictments and a life sentence for the remaining 29 charges to a Tamil-speaking Muslim political prisoner on Tuesday last week. The accused, 45-year-old Abdul Hameed Umar Hattaaph, was the second accused in the case regarding the assassination of a notorious Sinhala military commander, Major General (retd) Janaka Perera in October 2008. Umar Hattaaph had pleaded not guilty. He has been languishing in SL prisons for the past ten years. There was no lawyer prepared to defend him. Umar Hattaap is a father of three and hails from Neariya-ku’lam, Maangku’lam, Vavuniyaa. Full story >>


2ND LEAD (Correction)

Profound experience of attending Tamil Genocide Remembrance in Vanni: Bremen Tribunal Judge

Colombian theologist Rev Fr Javier Giraldo Moreno was visiting the island this month taking part in the tenth Tamil Genocide Remembrance event, which was held at Mu'l'livaaykkaal in Vanni on 18 May. Fr Javier Giraldo was one of the eleven judges of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal (PPT) which found the unitary state of Sri Lanka guilty of the crime of genocide in the hearings held in Bremen, Germany in January 2014. Before leaving the island, Fr Giraldo addressed journalists at a press conference held at Jaffna Press Club on 20 May, and he was responding to four specific questions. Re-examining Norway-facilitated 2002 peace process was necessary to advance the struggle for the rights of the Tamils, he said. Furthermore, the leaders of all religions should get together to counter the divide-and-rule tactics of the SL government, especially after the Easter attacks, the Catholic priest said. Full story >>

Wigneswaran writes to Guterres: Urgent need for UN Monitoring Mission to North-East

Former Chief Minister of Northern Provincial Council Justice CV Wigneswaran has written to UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres urging the latter to appoint a United Nations Monitoring Mission to record ongoing human rights violations in the North-East. The SL military has put up ten checkpoints between the Tamil-dominated areas of Vavuniyaa and Jaffna, and these checkpoints have become sites of countless human rights violations, mainly targeted harassment of Tamil women and arbitrary detentions, Justice Wigneswaran said in his letter sent to UN offices on Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day. Full story >>

‘Eelam War V’ is knowledge-war against ‘political COIN’: Swiss youth group

Switzerland-based Eezham Tamil youth group, ‘Phoenix the Next Generation’ and its media front ‘Puradsi Media’ (meaning revolutionary media) has announced a three-point programme to confront the ongoing political counter-insurgency (political COIN) that has been deployed against the Tamil diaspora by the powers and the SL State who want the diaspora to either abandon or compromise the doctrine of Tamil Eelam. The Phoenix group came up with the initiative at the book launch of “Structures of Tamil Eelam: A Handbook”. The book launch took place at the Archives Centre, known as “Thmaizh-ka'la'ri”, which is attached to Chaiva-ne'rik-koodam Archives Centre in Bern, Switzerland. Full story >>