Jude Lal Fernando’s Sputnik interview exposes unfolding British duplicity on KMS ‘investigations’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 September 2020, 15:41 GMT]
The UK investigative journalist Phil Miller has revealed with an immense amount of details how the UK’s security company, Keenie Meenie Services (aka KMS), was involved in training the SL commando force, the Special Task Force (STF), which massacred, abducted and tortured scores of Tamils in the island. However, British paramilitary forces like Keenie Meenie give ‘credible deniability’ to the British state. Even the use of the word ‘mercenary’ is misleading, says Professor Jude Lal Fernando of Trinity College, Dublin, in an interview to Sputnik on Thursday. The exiled Sinhala academic and activist, who has been actively engaged in seeking global justice to Tamil genocide, claimed that the British paramilitary was operating “only within the interests of the British state and as part of the state”.
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Eezham Tamil and Muslim solidarity non-negotiable in true spirit of Mu'l'livaaykkaal

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 19 May 2020, 07:42 GMT]
“The viability of the collective political goal of Tamil Eelam is the most sublime truth about Mullivaikkal. This goal of justice and freedom cannot be changed for anyone’s comfort and convenience. Nor can it be changed by New Delhi, London or Washington. It should not be changed by the imperial agendas that are designed to divide the Tamil speaking Muslims and Eelam Tamils,” observes Professor Jude Lal Fernando of Trinity College, Dublin, in his May 18 Remembrance article to TamilNet on Wednesday. “Mullivaikkal tells Eelam Tamils that they are a people who had and who have demonstrated the highest possible moral courage in resisting subjugation. Nanthikkadal lagoon connects all of us to the sea of political wisdom of numerous struggles of oppressed peoples on earth that declares no one will give us freedom, but that we have to struggle for it and gain it ourselves,” he writes further.
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Monk praises Gota for releasing SLA soldier from death row, celebrates genocidaire soldier as “hero”

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 March 2020, 23:38 GMT]
While all attention remains focused on the lethal Corona pandemic, SL President Gotabaya has chosen to silently release a Sinhala soldier, Sunil Ratnayake, who was sentenced to death in 2015 for one of the brutal massacres committed on Eezham Tamils. In a genocidal act, eight Tamil civilians, including a five-year-old child and two teenagers, were massacred by Ratnayake and five other soldiers at Mirusuvil in Jaffna on 19 December 2000. Ratnayake, a non-commissioned officer of the SL Army, was the only soldier to be punished by the court. The case was put off several times to facilitate escape routes to commissioned rank officers, except Ratnayake, whom the system intended to release at a later opportunity, as it has happened now, Tamil rights activists in Jaffna commented. In the meantime an extremist Sinhala Buddhist monk celebrated the release posting a video comment on Facebook.
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Colombo brings back EPDP terror assassins from exile

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 March 2020, 23:42 GMT]
The military intelligence of occupying Colombo has allowed SL Cabinet Minister Douglas Devananda to bring back exiled assassins of his war-time paramilitary outfit EPDP back to the island and into Jaffna in the recent days, informed sources in Colombo said. Some of the EPDP terror operatives deployed by the SL intelligence establishment to commit targeted assassinations and abductions to destabilise the 2002 ceasefire towards the run-up to the genocidal onslaught in 2009 exiled during the previous Rajapaksa regime. These are the ones, now returning to Jaffna, the sources said.
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Demand Tokyo Co-chairs, India to bring international mediation between Tamils and GoSL

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 November 2019, 19:59 GMT]
Unlike during the genocidal onslaught in 2009, the US and India are now more tightly intertwined in their foreign policy approach on the maritime affairs of the states in the Indian Ocean. There is a joint Indo-Pacific outlook, especially after the 2013 launch of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). There would be no different approaches or nuances between the two powers, as it was the case in the previous decade. The US and India, along with two other key partners in the region, Japan and Australia, would be acting en bloc. The Rajapaksa establishment is very well aware of this reality. It is time that Tamils muster their historic courage and articulate a joint demand for international mediation. It is also the time that the foreign actors who were pulling the wrong strings during the 2009 genocide and its aftermath now take account of their earlier practices.
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“Gota, go home,” mothers in Jaffna protest against the architect of white-van abductions

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 October 2019, 23:02 GMT]
The kith and kin of Eezham Tamils subjected to enforced disappearances at the hands of the occupying Sinhala military during the regime of Mahinda Rajapaksa staged a protest in Jaffna on Monday, when his sibling, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa contesting the forthcoming SL Presidential elections came to woo the Tamil voters in the North on Monday. The mothers gathered in front of Col Kiddu Park at Nalloor staging their symbolic protest against the former SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. The world community must call for international criminal investigations against the crimes committed by Mr Gotabhaya, the mothers said. They were also denouncing internal and hybrid forms of the inquiry approved by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva as futile.
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SL military wants to cremate remains of controversial monk inside temple premises

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 September 2019, 23:21 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala military is preparing to stage the cremation of the late Kolamba Medhalankara Thero, who was causing ethnic tensions through the controversial project of Sinhala-Buddhicisation at Neeraaviyadi in the ancient Tamil village of Chemmalai in Naayaa'ru, Mullaiththeevu. The project was launched in 2009 by a genocidaire commander of the SL Army, Major General (retd) Jagath Dias and the late Anunayake of the Seruwila Saranakiththi Kalyani Sect, Seruwila Saranakiththi Thero, who was promoting Sinhala colonization along the border of North and East until his demise in May 2016. Kolamba Medhalankara Thero has passed away due to cancer, and the SL Army and SL Navy want to cremate him on Sunday at the premises of the Pi'l'laiyaar temple where he was violently installing a Buddha statue earlier this year.
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Pirapaharan’s statements between 1984 and 1993 reproduced in book form in Europe

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 August 2019, 23:55 GMT]
A Switzerland-based Eezham Tamil youth group, ‘Phoenix - the Next Generation’, has photostatically reproduced the rare 314-page compilation officially published by the Headquarters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in September 1993 in Jaffna. The book contains selected letters, interviews and statements of LTTE Leader Velupillai Pirapaharan starting from his first media interview in March 1984. The compilation consists, amongst others, of a letter that declines LTTE representation at a meeting held in New York in May 1985, appeals to the leaders of India and Tamil Nadu during the LTTE-IPKF war in 1987, and a letter of solidarity addressed to South African (ANC) leader, the late Oliver Tambo, in July 1988. The reproduction has been made from a book obtained at the public library of Jaffna in the past. The book, with ID 9907, is no longer accessible at the library.
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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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Occupying Colombo schemes Sinhala Buddhist settlement in Chemmalai-East, Vanni

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 June 2019, 21:30 GMT]
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.
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Colonising Sinhala Buddhist monks, officials provoke Saiva Tamils in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 May 2019, 18:04 GMT]
A group of encroaching Sinhala Theravada Buddhist monks, who had illegally built a Buddhist shrine in 2013 near the Saiva (Hindu) shrine of Kanniyaa hot wells in the traditional Tamil division of Uppu-ve’ li in the Trincomalee district, have recently started to dismantle the remaining foundation-structure of the Saiva Pi’l’ laiyaar temple. The Saiva temple was destroyed during the anti-Tamil pogroms, and the occupying Colombo establishment has been blocking the Tamil landowner from reconstructing the temple. After dismantling the square-shaped foundation of the Saiva temple, the occupying Sinhala monks started to lay a circular foundation at the locality on 21 May. The controversial move has drawn strong objections from the Tamils, including the owner of the lands, Ms Ganesh Kokilaramani, triggering religious tensions between the intruding Sinhalese and the native Tamils since 22 May.
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Tamil Genocide Remembrance marked in geostrategic Pacific islands of Okinawa, Jeju

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 May 2019, 17:26 GMT]
The people of the Island of Okinawa, located between Japan and Taiwan in the East China Sea of the Pacific, marked the tenth Tamil Genocide Remembrance in two separate events reflecting their resistance to the protracted geopolitical militarisation of the islands in the Indo-Pacific. In 1945, almost one hundred thousand civilians along with an equal number of Imperial Japanese Army soldiers and 12,000 US military personnel perished as the USA went on capturing Japan’s southernmost island in one of the bloodiest amphibious invasions in the modern history. Around 30,000 US troops are now stationed there with a changed focus towards China. The grassroots movement among the Okinawan population is strongly opposed to their island being continuously militarised. Mu’l’ li-vaaykkaal Remembrance events were also held in Kyoto, Japan, and on the strategic Jeju island off the Korean peninsula.
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Kalaikkoan's premonition proved right, Tamils cannot shy away from international struggle

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 May 2019, 23:41 GMT]
The chauvinist elements in the South which were behind the State-sponsored anti-Tamil pogrom in 1958 also chose to warn the Muslims and the Burghers that they would be the next targets in the aftermath. Many Tamils were chased out from South to Jaffna and Batticaloa, But they would be eradicated from there as well, in the future, through Sinhala militarisation, the warning claimed. Fifty years later, Colombo and the powers abetting its war, would be achieving that if the war was allowed to proceed the course it was taking, warned Kalaikkoan master, the head of LTTE's Navam Academy, in 2009. The 36-year-old student of history, who had almost lost sight in both of his eyes was an articulate teacher. He was subjected to enforced disappearance at the hands of the SL military on 17 May 2009. TamilNet releases the unedited audio of the Satellite phone communication with him from 13 April 2009.
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Academics across continents mark Tamil genocide remembrance in Dublin, discuss global injustice

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 May 2019, 23:34 GMT]
Irish, Cypriot, Rwandan, Palestinian, Rohingya, Korean and Colombian academics were taking part in an academic conference and a commemorative event on the tenth year of 2009 Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal Tamil genocide in Dublin, Ireland on the 02nd of May and on the 08th of May. The reflections made at these events provided both insights from lived experiences of genocide as well analysis of the situation before and in the aftermath of May 2009. The geopolitical context of Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal, attempts to de-politicize Tamil resistance and consolidate the ongoing structural genocide institutionalized through the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka were discussed in detail in the events making comparisons with the oppressions elsewhere in the world.
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Blake's Colombo lecture reminds Tamils of bureaucracy abetting 2009 genocide

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 May 2019, 16:57 GMT]
Former US Ambassador Robert O. Blake was visiting Colombo on Tuesday to deliver a lecture titled ‘US Foreign Policy towards China and South Asia and what it means for Sri Lanka’. He was advising Colombo to tackle the response to the Easter Sunday attacks by drawing lessons from the 2001 Bush Administration and form an intelligence coordinating body of technocrats not to miss any single lead of information on potential attacks. Former SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was precisely doing that during the war, he said. He also warned against over-reacting as the US did after 9/11 by expanding government surveillance without appropriate constitutional checks. On geopolitics, Mr Blake was enticing Colombo to engage with China, the USA and other countries in parallel, a paradigm which enabled Colombo to annihilate the military power of Tamils through a genocidal onslaught in 2009.
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118 Muslim families demand occupying SL Navy to release their lands in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 March 2019, 17:33 GMT]
One hundred and eighteen Tamil-speaking Muslim land-owners from the strategic coastal village of Chilaavath-thu'rai in Mannaar are waging a continuous protest since 20 February demanding the release of their 36 acres of lands. The SL military has been occupying their lands since 2007. Currently, the SL Navy is stationed in their territories. Despite repeated assurances by SL Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe who visited Musali division in January 2018 during the local government election campaign and the latest promise from the SL President Maithiriipala Sirisena that their lands would be released before 31 December were only false promises, the protesters said.
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SL military erects giant Buddha statue at controversial heritage site in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 December 2018, 21:45 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala military in Mullaith-theevu installed a small Buddha statue, which was covered with glass at the disputed heritage site of Neeraaviyadi-eattam in Chemmalai in November. The SL military has now hurriedly replaced it with a huge Buddha statue disregarding the interim order and the protests of Tamil residents. The move comes after a delegation from the SL Archaeology Department in Colombo visited the SL military prompting it to accomplish the mission, civil sources in Mullaiththeevu District Secretariat told TamilNet. An extremist Buddhist monk, Kolamba Medhalankara Thera, staying with the SL Army's 593rd Brigade at Naayaa'ru is operating with the thinking that once the giant statue has been successfully erected, Tamil protests, as well as the interim orders, would lose their impact as the SL Constitution accords ‘foremost place to Buddhism’, the sources further said.
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USA, China agree on 90-day ceasefire on trade war, India to reaffirm US defence ties

[TamilNet, Sunday, 02 December 2018, 14:45 GMT]
Unlike the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit that ended without a final statement amidst US-China disagreements in Papua New Guinea two weeks ago, the summit of 20 powerful economies of the world (G20) has concluded in Argentina with consensus among the capitalist actors resolving to “strengthening the global financial safety net with a strong, quota-based, and adequately resourced IMF at its centre.” The G20 has also resolved to reform the World Trade Organisation, which has been viewed by US President Donald Trump as something designed by the rest of the world to screw the USA. While the G20 vowed to “improve a rules-based international order,” Mr Trump has agreed with Chinese President Xi Jinping to begin negotiations on structural changes to resolve longstanding trade disputes within the next 90 days, which is seen as a ceasefire on trade war between China and the USA.
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Genocidal Sri Lanka's maritime and naval greed expose attitudes of powers

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 November 2018, 11:29 GMT]
Maithiripala Sirisena, the incumbent SL President and Ranil Wickramasinghe, the now disputed SL Prime Minister, increased military-to-military maritime training with the USA, India and Japan between 2015 and 2017 while seeking to exploit the China-tilt ‘achievements’ of the Rajapaksa government. The SL Navy was receiving naval vessels as gifts from all the powers after the 2015 regime change. However, the SL State wanted more and more, believing that the geopolitical paradigm experimented through the genocide on Eezham Tamils would bring it fortunes. The naval ambitions went to the extent of wanting 25 powerful naval vessels from different actors to create a powerful naval fleet. At the same time, SL State's maritime economic ambitions were aimed at making Colombo the financial hub in the Indian Ocean.
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Thileepan Remembrance in Jaffna underscores need for new emancipation strategies

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 September 2018, 08:24 GMT]
All Tamil parties and movements that orientate their politics on the national liberation of the nation of Eezham Tamils actively took part in an emotional event participated by hundreds of Eezham Tamils on Wednesday at Nalloor in Jaffna. Lt Col Thileepan (Rasaiah Parthipan) sacrificed his life through a 12-day fast-unto-death without food and water in 1987. He was the political head of the LTTE in Jaffna when New Delhi intervened with its military force after entering a State-to-State agreement with Colombo. Thileepan's sacrifice was a crucial historical event in the political emancipation of Eezham Tamils as it exposed the real agenda of the intervening power, which was calling the shots in the island during the times of the Cold War.
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