China earns ire of Taiwan, strengthens ties with genocidal Myanmar that faces ICJ ruling

Gotabaya commits to maritime military cooperation with India

“India and Sri Lanka have agreed to further strengthen cooperation to ensure maritime security in Indian Ocean region and sharing of intelligence inputs,” reported India’s state-run Doordarshan News (DD News) on Saturday. The move was carried out by India’s National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval, who is described as the most influential person in India, next to Indian PM Narendra Modi. It also comes a day after the neighbouring Maldives was made to openly acknowledge compliance with US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy of the Quad formation. The one-day visit seems to have happened without prior announcement. Full story >>

US-India ‘think-tankers’ advise New Delhi to put Tamil concerns on the backburner

Indian Prime Minister Narendra has been successful in culminating a two-year-long “silent background work” to rebuild relations with Rajapaksa siblings, observes Constantino Xavier, a research fellow at Brookings India in New Delhi. In an interview to Rediff, the Portuguese academic, who specialises foreign policy and defence in South Asia says, however, India was risking that Mr Gotabaya could repeat the game Nepal’s Prime Minister KP Olie played with India during the last three years. Mr Oli “gave in to all of Indian protocol demands and political optics, visited Delhi first, proclaimed India first, then waited for India to forget about him, and went on to do more business with China,” the US-India think-tanker told Rediff.com on Thursday. Full story >>

Gotabaya praises Chinese President, but avoids reciprocating “strategic partnership”

“Sri Lanka may have less landmass, but will soon be strong economically. China will be with Sri Lanka in its striving to reach this goal,” said the visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi who met SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Tuesday. “As Sri Lanka’s strategic partner China will continue to standby Sri Lanka’s interests. China stands for the country’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence. We will not allow any outside influences to interfere with matters that are essentially internal concerns of Sri Lanka”, the Chinese FM said. China was expecting Colombo to reciprocate ‘strategic partner’ status and benefit from its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in a “win-win” manner. However, Gotabaya Rajapaksa was responding to the call in a sophisticated manner. Full story >>

Geopolitical visits foreshadowed Nepal’s difficult balancing act between US-MCC and China-BRI

There were many visits to and from Nepal in the beginning of 2019 such as the visit by Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kano and Nepali Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali's visit to India, Japan, US and many other countries. Head of US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Phil Davidson and US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia Joseph H Felter have visited Kathmandu in 2019 seeking military cooperation. Now, the debate whether the US Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is part of the US Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) has heavily divided the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) as the country is set to decide whether to ratify or not the bilateral agreement. The MCC was established in 2002, eleven years ahead of China announcing its massive Road And Belt Initiative in 2013. The MCC signed a USD 500 million Compact with Nepal in September 2017. Full story >>


2ND LEAD (Adds Hansard record of Sampanthan's speech)

Sampanthan indirectly implicates India, US, EU, UK, Japan, Norway for Tamil predicament post-2009

Despite all the valid criticisms against the revisionist TNA hierarchy, which has misled the occupied nation of Eezham Tamils by deviating from the fundamentals of the democratically mandated aspiration after 2009, one should appreciate TNA Parliamentary Group Leader R. Sampanthan for strait-forwardly reiterating, especially in recent times, the names of the regional and international formations ultimately responsible to crush the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The countries and the alliances mentioned by Mr Sampanthan include India, USA, Japan, Norway and the European Union with the UK. Sampanthan refers to the block of countries excluding India as the “international community”, and these countries were formally represented by identifiable individuals who served the formation of Tokyo Co-Chair Donors. A troika of diplomats was representing India at the height of the war. Full story >>

Nepal’s balancing act between powers carefully watched in Colombo

The ruling Communist Party in Nepal is divided in opinion as the country’s parliament is required to ratify the mega infrastructure project the previous government had negotiated with US foreign aid agency, Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) in 2017. The critics of the MCC project argue that Nepal would be coerced into the military US Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) by embracing the project. Why does the bilateral agreement have a binding clause of Indian approval, they ask. India is a major strategic partner to the US and one of the four military powers constituting the emerging Quad alliance led by the USA in the Indo-Pacific. The proponents argue that the US Congress-initiated MCC, which came into being long before the Pentagon’s IPS outlook must be seen as an economic programme without any military dimension attached to it. The Nepalese choices will have an impact on Colombo. Full story >>

61 parents of missing persons have perished while continuing protest beyond 1,050 days

The kith and kin of Eezham Tamils subjected to enforced disappearances at the hands of the occupying Sinhala military are passing away, one by one. Their deaths occur as the SL State, and the global forces behind the deceptive ‘transitional justice’ mechanism continue to remain deaf to their demand of establishing the truth of what had happened to their loved ones. While a section of families avoid protests succumbing to the so-called pragmatic view that the SL military had assassinated all the missing family members under its captivity, the protesting families want an official answer establishing what had happened to their loved ones. 72-year-old Rasendram Soosaippillai from Oalaith-thoduvaay in Mannaar was the 61st parent to die without a response from the SL authorities on the whereabouts of his son, who was abducted ten years ago in Mannaar. Full story >>

Gotabaya's China visit postponed as Russian FM's visit to Colombo coincides with schedule

SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s scheduled visit to China on 14 and 15 January 2020 has been postponed, media reports in Colombo said on Friday. Mr Rajapaksa visited New Delhi, a major strategic partner of the USA within two-weeks since getting elected as the SL president in November 2019. In the meantime, Chinese President Xi Jinping dispatched a special envoy in December 2019 to invite Mr Rajapaksa to China. The trip, scheduled to take place in January, has now been postponed due to the coinciding visit by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who is expected in Colombo on 14 January. However, media reports in Colombo were trying to give the impression that the re-scheduling was taking place at Beijing’s request. Full story >>

Tamil Political Prisoner passes away after 26 years of SL imprisonment

A 45-year-old Tamil Political Prisoner (TPP) from Batticaloa, Mahendran Sellappillai, passed away after suffering from a life-threatening illness (cancer) in the custody of genocidal Sri Lanka on Thursday. He was 19-year-old when the occupying Sinhala military detained him under the notorious so-called Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) during a cordon-and-search operation in Batticaloa on 27 September 1993, just three days after he had lived together with his newly married wife. The SL Army and its much-feared paramilitary operatives tortured Mahendran, who was illiterate. His family was poverty-stricken, and its livelihood was dependent on toddy-tapping. His life ended after twenty-six years, three-months and six days of custody in the various prisons of genocidal Sri Lanka. His story exposes not only the tragic fate of the TPPs but also the mindset of the SL regimes in Colombo. Full story >>

Families of missing Tamils in Vanni turn their protest against EPDP

The families of Eezham Tamils subjected to enforced disappearances at the hands of the occupying Sinhala military in the genocidal war up to 2009 have turned the focus of their protest against SL Minister Douglas Devananda, who has been a close ally of the Rajapaksa regime. Mr Devananda's EPDP was a former Tamil paramilitary group, operated by the occupying Sinhala military. The families have been irked by the attempts by Devananda to dilute their continues protests that have passed one thousand days this month. Full story >>

No need for Eezham Tamils to ‘namō namō’ Sri Lanka

Eezham Tamils ended their emotional attachment to the 1951 ‘namō namō tāyē’ (‘sri laṅkā tāyē’) when their political move for powersharing in what they aspired as the Federal Republic of Ceylon was thoroughly denounced by the Sinhala nation in 1972. The dream for an inclusive and federal Ceylon/Ilaṅkai (Lanka) or Eezham, as Tamils had identified the island for centuries, lost its meaning with the constitutionalization of the ‘Sri’ prefix. The term meant ‘auspiciousness’, but in practice implied the establishment of the ‘holy’ island as chosen by the Buddha to be exclusively destined for the Sinhala people with the mission to protect Buddhism. When it gained constitutional precedent, the Tamil attachment to it ended. After decades of genocidal hegemony and without a political solution to their national question, Eezham Tamils have no moral or legal connection to the anthem. Full story >>

India's CAA deepens “geopolitical schisms” in South Asia, say 14 regional activists

Fourteen academics, rights activists and writers from South Asia, including the renowned Sinhala academic Professor Jayadeva Uyangoda, have issued a joint statement condemning the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) passed by the Hindu nationalist BJP in India. They were identifying themselves as “South Asian citizens” in issuing the statement. The CAA has the potential of “deepening geopolitical schisms” among the countries of South Asia, which should be striving for peace and mutual understanding, the statement issued by the fourteen South Asians said. Full story >>

Colombo prepares to trade off China-renegotiations for Quad scaling-down UNHRC Resolution in 2020

Susil Premajayantha, the SL State Minister for International Relations, has gone on record on Tuesday stating that the new SL government of Gotabaya Rajapaksa was preparing to propose ‘amendments’ to the UNHRC Resolution 30/1 of 2015 during the March 2020 UN Human Rights Council Session in Geneva. “We have fulfilled 17 out of 20 conditions in the resolution. Sri Lanka has a new government with a new mandate. Therefore, we have every right to prevent any untoward impact on our nation from any quarter,” the minister was quoted as saying by Daily Mirror on Wednesday. Three of the four Quad partners, Australia, Japan and India are going to be the geopolitical powers with active membership of the UN Human Rights Council in 2020. Full story >>