Colombo seizes Muslims’ land in Trincomalee for geopolitical exploitation

[TamilNet, Friday, 31 March 2017, 20:17 GMT]
Eastern Governor Austin Fernando, who is a former Defence Secretary under the UNP government, is scheming to alienate lands to an external power through Sinhala militarization of Tamil-speaking Muslims’ Karumalai-oottu village in Trincomalee Town and Gravets division where a 6-decades old Mosque was demolished by the occupying Sinhala military in 2014. Now, a military base is going to be constructed at 4.65 hectares of lands near the demolished mosque. The lands have been officially allocated through the divisional secretary, civil sources said. During the regime of Rajapaksa, 1,200 acres of lands, from Prima flourmill to Karumalai-oottu, including Ve’l’lai-ma’nal and Clappenburg Bay were given to China on a long term lease. Now, the Eastern Governor is negotiating a deal with another foreign power, Tamil civil sources in Trincomalee said.
Full story >>

Tamil villagers severely disturbed by Sinhala soldiers at Ampaa’rai village

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 March 2017, 18:51 GMT]
A military base of the occupying Army of genocidal Sri Lanka, stationed at Veappaiyadi in Annamalai 02 GS area of Naavithan-ve’li division in Ampaa’rai district, has been causing a number of inconveniences to Eezham Tamil villagers at the village, says T. Kalaiyarasan, an elected provincial councilor of the Eastern Province. The villagers are afraid of the harassing Sinhala soldiers and are unable to attend hospital, which is situated near the military base. A temple and a school are also located nearby. The civil authorities are unable to reconstruct the hospital as the SL military is stationed at the site. Around 486 Tamil families are living in the village. The SLA moved in after the notorious Special Task Force (STF), which was stationed at the locality since 1990 left the village in 2012.
Full story >>

Genocidal Colombo sentences 60-year-old Tamil activist to 20 years in prison

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 March 2017, 22:10 GMT]
After the genocidal State of Sri Lanka was once again given ‘time and space’ at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the SL judiciary sentenced a prominent Tamil political prisoner, 60-year-old Thevathasan Kanagasabai, with 20 years of imprisonment accusing the former director of the Tamil unit of the ‘National Film Corporation’. Mr Thevathasan has been serving the film corporation as a board member for long time and was finally awarded with the director post to lead the Tamil Unit by the SL government in 2004. Later, he was accused of assisting the LTTE Black Tigers in Colombo. The film corporation director, who has been promoting the cinema of Eezham Tamils, hails from a family with leftist background at Karaveddi in Jaffna.
Full story >>

Muslims, Tamils protest against Colombo’s land grab in Musali, Mannaar

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 March 2017, 07:02 GMT]
Around 150 Tamils are staging a continuous protest demanding Colombo to release the lands seized by the occupying Navy at Mu’l’lik-ku’lam in the Musali division. In the meantime, more than 50 Muslims from Ma’richchuk-kaddi staged a protest condemning the Colombo government, SL President Maithiripala Sirisena and the SL Forest Department for having annexed their residential areas as part of the Vil-pattu reserved forest. Extremist Buddhist monks have been exerting pressure on SL State to Sinhalicise the reserved forest of Tamil-speaking peoples into Wilpatha. Despite repeated protests by Tamil-speaking Muslims, the Colombo Establishment, both during the times of Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithiripala Sirisena, has been trying to seize the lands of Muslim residents.
Full story >>

SL military harasses Tamil farmers in Ma’nmunaip-pattu village

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 March 2017, 17:15 GMT]
The soldiers of the occupying Sinhala military stationed at 5th Mile Post on Kalmunai – Batticaloa Road are harassing the owners of cashew farms in the village of Thaazhang-kudaa, located in Ma’n-munaip-pattu DS division, by openly stealing away dry stems of cashew trees without seeking permission from the owners of the farms. The Tamil families, now engaged in cashew farming in the lands approached the SL military personnel and reminded the Sinhala soldiers that they were in fact stealing the trees belonging to the people. But, the Sinhala military personnel responded aggressively, threatening the families.
Full story >>

62 families in Champoor demand lands back from abandoned coal power plant

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 March 2017, 22:14 GMT]
The lands seized for the construction of drainage canals from the now abandoned coal power plant scheme in Champoor have not been released back to the land owners from Champoor and Kadatkaraich-cheanai, rights activists in Champoor complain. 27 families from Champoor and 35 families from Kadatkarai-cheanai are planning to launch a protest demanding their lands back, they said. The affected land-owners have also been sidelined in the provision of housing schemes so far. Colombo is reluctant to release these lands with a hidden motive of transferring the lands to some other purpose, the activists said.
Full story >>

CBK draws flak in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 March 2017, 23:44 GMT]
Former SL President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (CBK), who is the Chairperson of so-called Office For National Unity (ONUR) visited Jaffna on Saturday and addressed the Tamil audience along with NPC Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran at Pazhai Veeman-kaamam in Thellip-pazhai, where she laid foundation stone for a Primary Health Care Centre. She was confronted by an uprooted mother, Ms Sarasvathy Tharmalingam, who demanded demilitarisation of villages with houses, properties and agricultural lands of more than 3,000 families just 500 meters away from the site of the event. NPC Chief Minister also went on record exposing serious lack in the so-called Peacebuilding Priority Plan (PPP) framework, which has excluded the participation of the key stakeholder, the Tamils as a party shaping the process.
Full story >>

Uprooted Tamils in Mannaaar launch continuous protest braving SL Navy threat

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 March 2017, 12:21 GMT]
Around 120 uprooted Tamil villagers from Mu'l'lik-ku'lam in Musali divison of Mannaar mainland on Thursday morning launched a protest with a vow to continue and step up their struggle to liberate their village. The struggle was inspired by the continuous protest by the people of Keappaa-pulavu in Mullaith-theevu district, who have been waging their struggle for almost two months now. The uprooted Tamils residing at Malang-ku'lam and Kaayaa-kuzhi gathered along Mannaar - Puththa'lam Highway announcing their struggle. SL Navy and a Sinhala Assistant Divisional Secretary were threatening and harassing the people to end their protest. However, the protest continues.
Full story >>

Speeding SL Navy boat kills Tamil fisherman in Vidaththal-theevu, Mannaar

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 March 2017, 18:46 GMT]
A naval vessel of the occupying Sri Lanka Navy knocked down a small fishing boat killing 39-year-old fisherman on the spot in the sea lane towards Palk Strait from Vidaththal-theevu jetty on Thursday around 8:30 p.m. The SL Navy personnel on board the military vessel left the site of the incident after informing the local fishermen about the ‘accident’. The fishermen rushed to the spot and recovered the dead body of the fisherman.
Full story >>

Asian Development Bank to fund Sinhalicisation port project in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 March 2017, 22:17 GMT]
7,000 million rupees have been allocated by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to upgrade one of the three harbours, which have been selected by genocidal Sri Lanka in the Jaffna district for Sinhalicisation through militarization and ‘development’, civil sources in Jaffna said. The Point Pedro Harbour, which has been a military zone for a long time and which has been deployed by the intruding Sinhala fishermen from South for Multi Day Boat fishing has already been taken over by Colombo’s Ports Authority (SLPA) and Ceylon Fishery Harbours Corporation (CFHC). SL Army’s 524 division is still stationed in the lands that belong to the Customs Department just opposite the PPT Harbour.
Full story >>

Colombo deploys Sinhala Military Intelligence personnel as CEB workers in Battialoa

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 March 2017, 18:05 GMT]
The occupying Colombo has employed several Sinhala military intelligence personnel as meter readers and consumer coordinators of Ceylon Electricity Board from CEB branches operating from Kalladi and Kaaththaan-kudi. These workers, entering the houses of Tamils are involved in surveillance activities, say informed Tamil civil sources at Batticaloa District Secretariat. The district has already been struggling with Colombo appointed Sinhala workers in the public sector of the Tamil-speaking district and that too when there are thousands of qualified and unemployed Tamils in the district itself. Now, the military is also intervening into the public sector through its intelligence wing, the civil sources further said.
Full story >>

Maithiripala's petition system causes grievances to uprooted Tamils in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 March 2017, 22:41 GMT]
The occupying Army of genocidal Sri Lanka has started to harass the uprooted families in Valikaamam North in Jaffna, who have recently sent petitions to SL Presidential Secretariat through the ‘Tell the President of Sri Lanka’ programme. SL military officers are visiting the families that had complained about their lands and properties in militarized Valikaamam North. The visiting Sinhala military officers want the complaining families to sell their lands to military itself or to lease out their lands and properties on longer term contracts. SL military is seeking all means to permanently and legally grab the lands and properties in the coastal area that have been transformed into military resorts. Similarly, the owners of agricultural lands in the fertile red soil, have also been asked by the SL military to consider selling their lands to the occupying military.
Full story >>

Handover investigations to international judicial mechanism, NPC tells Geneva

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 March 2017, 09:26 GMT]
While the uprooted people and the families of enforced disappeared in Trincomalee, Vavuniyaa, Mullaiththeevu, Ki'linochchi and Jaffna are staging continuous protests demanding the UN human rights regime in Geneva not to provide any more ‘time and space’ for the genocidal SL State and its military to escape accountability on international crimes committed in the land of Eezham Tamils, the elected council of Northern Province passed a resolution echoing the feelings of the people on the ground and urged the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to refer the case to an international judicial mechanism. “[W]ithout truth, justice and an equitable political solution, neither reconciliation nor permanent peace is possible”, the NPC resolution said and said that the international community should initiate a UN-mediated negotiation process to resolve the national question.
Full story >>

SL Military Intelligence wages shadow war against Champoor people

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 March 2017, 23:13 GMT]
The intelligence wing of the occupying Sri Lanka Army in Moothoor East has been threatening the leaders of various social and justice organisations in an attempt to dismantle the entire social fabric that prevails among the resettled people of Champoor. There have been several reports of strict military surveillance on everything that moves in and out of Champoor and Tamil activists being forced to work as surveillance operatives. But, the latest move aims at dismantling the grassroots from sustaining their social fabric. The mediation board (I’nakka-chapai), Rural Development Society, Womens’ Development Society and the local justice systems that facilitate and mediate in disputes between the individuals in the society are facing serious threats from the SL military intelligence in recent days.
Full story >>

Resettling families in Pulavuk-kudyiruppu complain about lack of assistance

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 March 2017, 15:31 GMT]
The uprooted people of Pulavuk-kudiyiruppu in Keappaa-pulavu complain that have not received any assistance to clear their 48 acres of lands that have been released after a long struggle. The SL Air Force, that has kept their lands seized has not used them, but destroyed their houses and infrastructure facilities. Not only the SL State mechanisms, the UN agencies have also failed to address their needs, the resettling families complained. In the meantime, 138 families waging a continuous struggle in front of the SL military base at Keappaa-pulavu have intensified their protest with a fasting campaign since Saturday.
Full story >>

Colombo-based UN agencies collaborate with SL military programme in Vali North

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 March 2017, 22:40 GMT]
The UN agencies based in Colombo are trying to force local NGO networks in Jaffna by promising big sums of assistance if they promote the uprooted people from Valikaamam North in Jaffna to accept the ‘solutions’ conceived by the occupying military. The SL military and the so-called Resettlement Ministry in Colombo have been working together. But the officials attached to the UN development agency based in Colombo are also taking a similar direction by rushing through a superficial ‘investment’ without laying out a comprehensive plan for the resettlement of the uprooted people to ensure the delivery of their basic needs, security and livelihood. The result is compartmentalization of people and permanent enslavement under Sinhala military-led demographic and structural genocide.
Full story >>

Uprooted people of 5 coastal villages in Jaffna issue 4 weeks ultimatum to Colombo

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 March 2017, 22:21 GMT]
Three senior leaders of the newly launched ‘Five Villages Development Joint Committee’, representing 6,000 families from Kaangkeasan-thu'rai, Oo'ra'ni, Mayiliddi, Thaiyiddi and Palaali, the five coastal villages that have been subjected to military occupation and complete annihilation of civilian infrastructure during the past 27-years, declared this week that their organiastion would launch a mass struggle. They have issued 4 weeks of ultimatum to SL President to respond to their appeal. If there is no positive response to their final appeal, they would undertake a relentless mass struggle until full resettlement, said veteran rights activist Vijayaratnam Ratnarasah, who has been involved in trade union, civic bodies and a convenor of one of the first citizens’ committees in the Tamil homeland since 1960.
Full story >>

Sinhala homeguards grab lands for colonisation in Cheddi-ku'lam, Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 March 2017, 23:20 GMT]
400 acres of lands belonging to the people of Veerapuram village, located in Cheddik-ku'lam Divisional Secretariat division of Vavuniyaa district, are being seized by Sinhala homeguards. The land grab is aimed at creating a Sinhala colony, Tamil villagers complain. Tamil villagers from Veeerapuram were uprooted during the times of the war due to repeated harassment from the occupying military having camps in the nearby villages that had been occupied by the Sinhala colonists. While some of the villagers displaced to Vanni, others chose to flee to Tamil Nadu through Mannaar.
Full story >>

Colombo instructs civil administration in East to alienate lands to occupying military

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 March 2017, 22:04 GMT]
Fearing continued protests that could spread to the three districts in East against genocidal land grab, the occupying SL State has in recent days issued circulars to all the three government agents in East to speedily alienate lands through so-called legal measures making sure that the lands already seized by its three armed forces and the STF that comes under the SL Police. The military forces should ‘legally’ own all the private and public lands that remain militarized since 1990, a source close to Batticaloa GA told TamilNet on Wednesday. Similar instructions have also been given to land officials. The GA has come under increased pressure from Colombo to collaborate with the occupying military in surveying and transferring the lands.
Full story >>

Trevor Grant, veteran Australian friend of Eezham Tamils, passes away at 65

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 March 2017, 23:15 GMT]
Australian journalist and an advocate for Tamils rights, Trevor Grant, who has also written widely on SL State’s genocide against Eezham Tamils and on the complicity of the Western governments in the genocide, has passed away on Monday at the age of 65 after a courageous battle with cancer for 18 months. “As a sports journalist for 40 years, he took the mission of speaking truth to power more to heart than any of his kind,” wrote Greg Baum, the chief sports columnist and associate editor of The Age paying tribute to him in a memorial piece in the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday. In 2014, he authored a book titled Sri Lanka's Secrets – How the Rajapaksa regime gets away with Murder.
Full story >>

Collaborate with Colombo or get lost in Geneva: SL President tells Tamils in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 05 March 2017, 23:22 GMT]
SL President Maithiripala Sirisena who visited Jaffna on Saturday was reiterating the same words of former SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa at both the military and civil event in Jaffna. His visit was fully packed with military events except a single event, which was a PR stunt of launching the “Tell the President” office in Jaffna. Mr Maithiripala Sirisena, who has been claiming earlier that he was also in command of the final phase of Vanni war in his capacity as a deputy defence minister in 2009, was addressing the SL military in Jaffna on Saturday vowing not to allow anyone to subject the troopers of the three armed forces to stand for criminal trials in connection with alleged war crimes. During his trip, Sirisena was not prepared to meet the demonstrating women who were searching for their kith and kin or the graduates demanding jobs.
Full story >>

Wickramasinghe protects unpunished war criminals of SL Military Intelligence

[TamilNet, Saturday, 04 March 2017, 20:35 GMT]
SL Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe has secretly launched a plan to erase the records of military intelligence officers and operatives of the Military Intelligence who have been named with command responsibility by the affected victims and their families, particularly the kith and kin of Eezham Tamils subjected to enforced disappearances at the hands of occupying Sri Lankan military after MI operatives carried out arrests, detentions and abductions during the presidency of Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa. In an effort to get rid of the details of those named by the victims, the military intelligence officers and operatives are being transferred to separate divisions or offered early retirement, informed EPDP paramilitary sources told TamilNet on Saturday.
Full story >>

SL Minister, Councillor behind veiled threats to LRC Director in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 March 2017, 19:27 GMT]
A SL Deputy Minister and a member of the Eastern Provincial Council were issuing veiled threats to Batticaloa District Director of Land Reforms Commission, Mr Wimalraj Nesakumar, who later survived a brutal assassination attempt on 22 February at Ka’luthaava’lai, informed civil sources in Batticaloa told TamilNet on Thursday. Both the SL minister and the EPC councillor were trying to instruct the LRC Deputy Director to desist from objecting illegal land grab in Tha’laavaay, situated in Ea’raavoor-pattu divison, the sources further said.
Full story >>

Keappaa-pulavu struggle continues, only one tenth of lands released

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 March 2017, 23:40 GMT]
Lands belonging 54 families were released in Pulak-kudiyiruppu of Keappaa-pulavu GS area after 29 days of continuous struggle on Wednesday. The families of Pulak-kudiyiruppu entered their lands in a mood of victory. However, the happiness lasted only a few minutes till they arrived premises of their lands to witness their houses and trees, which were standing there in full shape as late as on 30 January this year, had been completely erased to the grounds by the occupying Sinhala military that had a different plan of permanently seizing their lands. Many of the families were caught in pain and trauma caused by the memories of the loss of their loved ones in the genocidal onslaught. In the meantime, more than 128 families of Keappaa-pulavu and the remaining 30 of 84 families from Pulak-kudiyiruppu vowed to continue to the struggle until their lands completely released.
Full story >>