Tamils vow to stage feast at Naayaa'ru, disregard ‘advice’ on not to provoke monks

[TamilNet, Sunday, 30 June 2019, 10:37 GMT]
How about Tamils considering an approach of collaborating with the Sinhala Buddhist establishment and adopting a line without provoking the monks, the US Ambassador in Colombo recently asked a Tamil minister, informed sources in Colombo said. The SL minister was also working hard to contain the escalating dispute at Neeraaviyadi in Mullaiththeevu and at Kanniyaa in Trincomalee in an attempt to strike a compromise. However, the monks were not listening. They came with expanding plans of Neeraaviyadi and stepped up their hostile protests. The militant monks started to threaten the Tamils by naming and shaming a prominent activist of the anti-Mahaweli protests at a demonstration they staged recently at Neeraaviyadi. Now, the Tamil grassroots activists in Vanni have vowed to carry 108 Pongkal pots to the Pi'l'laiyaar temple at Neeraaviyadi on 06 July 2019 to stage a feast to their deity.
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Colombo wants to legally militarise lands attached to ‘JOSSOP’ base in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 29 June 2019, 22:22 GMT]
The occupying military of genocidal Sri Lanka wants to permanently seize a large tract of land surrounding the notorious ‘JOSSOP’ camp in Vavuniyaa, which the SL military deployed as a torture chamber during the times of war. Although the official claim was about 16 acres of lands, the move aims to convert at least 250 acres of lands including higher-lying lands that belonged to 14 families. The unitary state mechanism is silently working to legally transfer these lands to the SL military at the absence of mobilised opposition by the uprooted and war-affected people, Tamil civil sources at Vavuniyaa District Secretariat said. The travellers to Vavuniyaa could see the extent of the military cantonment for almost one kilometre along the A9 highway, 2 km south of Vavuniyaa.
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SLA officer attempts to seize coastal lands as intruding fisher in Vaakarai

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 June 2019, 19:23 GMT]
A Sinhala Army officer stationed in Vaakarai is claiming lands to set up fishing ‘Paadu’ (an area of coastal sea-bed falling within the scope of a draw-net at 10 feet long) at the Tamil village of Maavadai-oadai in Vaakarai (Koara'laip-pattu North division) in the northern part of the Batticaloa district. The intruding Sinhala Army officer, attached to 233 Brigade of the SLA, is known as Major Kumara. He was clearing the land, which initially belonged to a Tamil land-owner, N. Packiyarasa. The area falls within the so-called safety buffer zone of 200 meters from the coast as the SL State enforced a ban after the 2004 tsunami. Tension prevailed in the village when the Sinhala officer, in military uniform, started to clear the 2.5 acres of lands using a bulldozer. The occupying Sinhala Army was backing him.
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PTA claimed life of upcountry Tamil political prisoner: Fr Shaktivel

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 June 2019, 20:20 GMT]
It was the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) that ultimately claimed the life of 62-year-old Muththaiah Sagadevan, who was severely affected by various diseases during his 14 years of detention. He passed away at the National Hospital in Colombo under the prolonged PTA-custody on 22 June, said Rev Fr M Shaktivel, the co-chairperson of the Action Committee to Free Tamil Political Prisoners. The TID detained Sagadevan in 2005. It took three years to file a case against him in 2008. But, the baseless PTA case was being dragged on for so long destroying his psychological and physical health. The misery has been caused by the new regime which has failed to recognise the PTA detainees of the LTTE times as political prisoners, Fr Shakthivel said. The international community was also calling for the scrapping of the PTA, he noted.
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Colombo escalates charges against three political prisoners as ‘war crimes’

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 June 2019, 23:26 GMT]
SL Attorney General's Department has formulated its false charges against three Tamil political prisoners (TPPs) as LTTE's war crimes. Dropping the earlier expressed charge, which was also not based on evidence, the SL-AG has introduced a new 27 point charge. The three TPPs, Mathiyarasan Sulaxan, Rasathurai Thiruvarul and Ganeshan Tharshan, have been languishing in the prison for ten years. They are now being ‘punished’ for their unrelenting protests in prison in the past, legal sources said. One of the prisoners managed to explain the baseless accusation to the journalists who were present at the High Court in Vavuniyaa, when he was brought for the hearings. The hearings are scheduled for three days.
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ICRC deceives families of missing persons to register with OMP: Mariayasuresh Easwary

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 June 2019, 22:57 GMT]
The Head of Mullaiththeevu District Families of Persons subjected to enforced Disappearances Ms Mariyasuresh Easwary has condemned the ICRC for working behind the scene to lock the families into the agenda of the SL Office for Missing Persons (OMP), which her organisation has outrightly rejected. The ICRC, which handed over all the records it had over the missing persons to the SL State and abandoned the kith and kin of the missing persons, has entered the district after several years of silence. Now the ICRC wants the families to register their complaints with the OMP in exchange for 6,000 rupees of financial assistance per month.
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Tamils should demand to scrap Mahaweli ‘development’ in North-East: Wigneswaran

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 June 2019, 23:04 GMT]
The SL military and three departments coming under Colombo, SL Forest, Archaeology and Mahaweli, have seized more than 80,000 acres of lands in Mullaiththeevu district alone. The Sinhala colonisation has targeted the North-East with the so-called ‘Mahaweli development’ for a long time since 1948. The ultimate motive is three-fold: grabbing the lands of Tamils, enacting demographic changes and wedging the territorial integrity of the North-East, which constitutes the traditional homeland of Tamils, said Justice C.V. Wigneswaran, the former Chief Minister of Northern Provincial Council, in his weekly response to questions from media on Thursday.
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SL military deploys paramilitary against Tamils in rural areas of Batticaloa North

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 June 2019, 20:36 GMT]
SL Military Intelligence has re-introduced Tamil paramilitary personnel who interfere in the day-to-day civil affairs of the poverty-stricken Eezham Tamils in the rural areas, situated 45 km northwest of Batticaloa in Koa'ra'laip-pattu North (Vaakarai) division. The occupying SL Army wants to know everything in detail from private gatherings involving relatives of the families to public events and land usage of the resettled people through the paramilitary personnel who were previously on the pay-list of Karuna and Pillayan groups, informed sources said.
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Another Buddha statue placed near Trincomalee private bus stand

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 June 2019, 18:38 GMT]
A group of persons led by a Sinhala Buddhist monk installed a Buddha statue at the auto-rickshaw parking place located near the private bus stand in Trincomalee city on Sunday morning when the occupying Sinhala soldiers and the settlers were marking Poson Full Moon Poya. The 75 cm high Buddha statue, placed inside a glass cover, has replaced a smaller figure at 20 cm height, Tamil residents said. The move was part of a systematic plan, they said. The smaller statue had been placed at the locality after 2009. Now the extremist section has installed the statue with glass cover, which usually precedes the installation of a giant Buddha statue, the people said.
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SL Police harasses Sinhala writer after articles on marauding Sinhala-Buddhist violence

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 June 2019, 19:04 GMT]
The Organised Crimes Prevention Division (OCPD) of the SL Police in Colombo is harassing veteran journalist Kusal Perera, a Sinhala political essayist, who has been writing about the escalating anti-Muslim Sinhala-Buddhist extremism after the Easter Sunday attacks. The Free Media Movement (FMM) in Colombo said that the SL Police was attempting to record a statement from the editors of Colombo-based English newspaper Daily Mirror on Friday. The SL Police was trying to convince the Colombo Magistrate Courts to detain and investigate the journalist under the provisions of the so-called ‘International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights’ (ICCPR) Act No 56 of 2007. The FMM said that the latest move by the SL Police was setting “dangerous precedent” as it was a serious threat to the freedom of expression and media and the pursuance of legal action under the ICCPR Act.
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Militant monk warns Tamils not to challenge ‘foremost’ stake of Sinhala Buddhism

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 June 2019, 21:39 GMT]
Sinhala extremist militant monk Ven Bengamuwe Nalaka Thero, the chief organiser of so-called ‘National Rights Movement,’ was visiting the disputed heritage site, Neeraaviyadi in Chemmalai-East, Naayaa'ru, in the district of Mullaith-theeevu on Sunday. He was taking hardline Sinhala protesters in three buses from Colombo, Anuradhapura and the Sinhala colony of Janakapura at Weli-Oya (Ma'nal-aa'ru) in Mullaiththeevu to stage a protest against the removal of the Sinhala name board of the illegally constructed Buddhist temple at the disputed heritage site. Nalaka Thero, along with a couple of other speakers, issued a stern warning to the Tamils that they better dare not to challenge the heritage genocide being waged by the Sinhala Theravada Buddhist establishment and the SL ‘Army and Archaeology’.
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Tamil land-owners suppressed from mobilising against ethnic land-grab in Thiriyaay

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 June 2019, 23:37 GMT]
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.
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Mano Ganesan misleads on Kanniyaa heritage dispute: Trincomalee Councillor

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 June 2019, 18:48 GMT]
SL Minister of Hindu Religious Affairs and ‘National’ Integration, Mr Mano Ganesan, was appreciated by Tamils in Trincomalee for confronting the Sinhala Buddhist monks regarding the ancient Tamil heritage of Kanniyaa during his recent trip attending the District Coordinating Committee meeting, on Monday. However, the monks were unmoved. They categorically told Mr Ganesan and the TNA Parliamentarian C. Yogeswaran that it was the Sinhala Buddhist Establishment and no one else in the island – not even the Executive President or the Prime Minister– who had the power to determine the fate of the heritage affairs of Kanniyaa. The minister could very well proceed taking up the issue with Maithiripala Sirisena or Ranil Wickramasinghe in Colombo, but it would not change the ground reality, was the message, says Piratheasa Chapai (PS) councillor Chandirarajah Vipooshan, who was at the meeting.
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SL military targets Tamil grassroots activists in Mullaiththeevu, GS officer receives death threat

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 June 2019, 22:45 GMT]
The occupying Colombo’s Army in Mullaiththeevu has issued death threat to an Eezham Tamil Village Officer (GS), K. Bede Jeyaharan on 06 May, a couple of days before SL President Maithiripala Sirisena visited Mullaiththeevu promoting Sinhala colonisation of the region. The GS officer said he was able to recognise the offenders as SLA soldiers, although they were wearing tinted glasses and were covering their faces with black clothes. The incident took place at Va'n'naag-ku'lam where the SLA soldiers, conducting a cordon and search operation, stopped the GS who was on his way to give tuition at a private education centre. As the masked soldiers turned him away from reaching the institution, a captain rank SLA officer arrived at the site and issued the death threat, the GS has complained to the SL Human Rights Commission office in Vavuniyaa.
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SL State-run Timber Corporation escalates logging of teak trees in Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 June 2019, 22:47 GMT]
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.
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SLA Sinha regiment extorts money from Tamils in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 June 2019, 08:37 GMT]
The Sinhala soldiers of the occupying SL Army’s Sinha Regiment in Batticaloa are extorting money in large scale across the 14 administrative divisions of the district under cover of selling lottery tickets. Armed soldiers in military uniform are forcing the Tamil travellers on the road, particularly near the camps in Paduvaan-karai region, forcing people to hand over everything they have in cash in their possession in exchange for a sweep ticket, priced at one hundred rupees. The sweep ticket is being forcibly sold in connection with ‘Sinha Mela’, which is a mega carnival intended to raise funds for the ‘serving officers and men, disabled soldiers and their families of the Sinha Regiment.
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SL authorities plan to seize 50 acres as ‘Buddha Pooja Boomi’ in Thennai-maravadi

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 June 2019, 20:39 GMT]
Tamil civil sources at Kuchchave'li said the controversial monk Galgamuwa Sandhabodhi thero has been harassing the Divisional Secretariat to demarcate fifty acres of lands at the temple site of Eezham Tamils along the strategic border between the Northern and Eastern provinces. The monk has claimed that the properties were needed to generate income for a future Buddhist temple. SL Archaeology Department and the occupying Sinhala military are planning to erect a Sinhala Buddhist temple at the locality after destroying the Hindu temple, the sources further said.
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Sinhala Buddhist fundamentalism ultimate trump card in unitary ‘Sri Lanka’: Suresh

[TamilNet, Thursday, 06 June 2019, 19:18 GMT]
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.
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Sinhala monk named Galgamuwe ‘Santhabodhi’ spearheads Buddhicisation of Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 June 2019, 23:20 GMT]
A group of Sinhala colonists from the remote places along the Trincomalee - Mullaiththeevu district border accompanied Galgamuwe Santhabodhi Thero to stage a protest at Neeraaviyadi in Naayaa’ru, Mullaith-theevu, on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the SL Police was chasing away the Tamil journalists who went to cover the protest. The latest move, opposing the Tamils restoring their Saiva temple rights, comes as the extremist monk was emboldened after the hunger strike staged by Athuraliye Rathana Thero demanding the SL State to act against the Muslim governors and ministers, was yielding results in favour of their demands, commented Tamil activists in Mullaiththeevu.
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SL military, police suppress traces of officer involved in fatal accident

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 04 June 2019, 19:02 GMT]
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.
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Muslims learn hard lesson on modus operandi of Sinhala majoritarianism: Journalist

[TamilNet, Monday, 03 June 2019, 22:32 GMT]
Tamil-speaking Muslims, particularly their politicians, who have been siding with the ruling regimes of the mainstream Sinhala parties the past, should now review their strategy and consider joining hands with the Tamils. They must have learned the lesson of their past failures, commented veteran Muslim journalist ALM Saleem, based in Kalmunai of the Ampaa’rai district. A single monk has managed to move the entire SL regime resulting in the resignation of the Muslim governors and the politicians holding portfolios in the government on Monday. It is an important lesson. The Muslims should not place their trust on the majoritarinist political parties anymore, Kalapoosha'nam Saleem said.
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SL Forest Department seizes 1,500 acres of lands opposite Tamil Heroes Cemetery in Champoor

[TamilNet, Sunday, 02 June 2019, 12:14 GMT]
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.
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Prejudiced Archaeology Dept escalates ethnic tensions in Trincomalee: Civic Councillor

[TamilNet, Saturday, 01 June 2019, 23:18 GMT]
Chandirarajah Vipooshan, a member of Trincomalee Town and Gravats Predesiya Saba, says that the overtly prejudiced behaviour of the SL Archaeology Department which selectively promotes the interests of the Sinhala Buddhists has escalated ethnic tensions between the Tamils and the Sinhalese in Trincomalee district. The civic member said it was the SL Archaeology Department, which was instigating construction projects of the monks to accelerate the Sinhala Buddhisication in Thennai-maravadi and in Kanniya. The monks were from different temples. It is the Archaeology Department that coordinates the activities timing the situation prevailing the in the island, he said.
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