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512 matching reports found. Showing 1 - 20 [TamilNet, Sunday, 07 February 2021, 23:16 GMT]The Tamil-speaking people in the North-East have waged an unprecedented post-2009 march from Poththuvil in Ampaa’rai in the East to Polika’ndi in Jaffna. Confronting the legal barriers and the roadblocks put up by the SL Police and the notorious Special Task Force (STF) commandos, the people across the eight districts of the North-East mobilised outmanoeuvring the ‘disciplining mechanisms’ of the Sinhala-Buddhist ethnocratic rulers in Colombo. The five-day march, named as “Poththuvil to Polika'ndi” (P2P), was organised ahead of the 46th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva. The rally concluded on Sunday demanding international justice for genocide reiterating the fundamental principles, the Right of Self-Determination and Eezham Tamils’ nationhood. The P2P mobilisation also demanded an immediate end to the discriminatory forced cremation of COVID-19 Muslim victims. Full story >> [TamilNet, Sunday, 19 July 2020, 22:33 GMT]Former Tamil paramilitary operative Douglas Devananda, who collaborated with the genocidal military of occupying Sri Lanka, is now SL Minister of Fisheries in the “caretaker” cabinet of Rajapaksa regime. Sinhala poachers from South are allowed to encroach and engage in destructive fishing along the coast of the occupied country of Eezham Tamils. The quisling minister is citing the law imposed by the SL State during the times of war. The law is known as Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Act of 1996. “The 1996 law was drafted with southern fishers in mind. It has not taken into consideration the concerns of Tamils. We are not opposed to others fishing here. But, we are opposed to poaching and destructive fishing methods destroying our fishing ecosystem by the Sinhala fishers,” said N. Varankulasingam, the chairman of the Federation of Vadamaraadchi North Fisheries societies. Full story >> [TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 June 2020, 23:36 GMT]Former Tamil paramilitary operative Kathiravelu Nithiyanada Devananda alias Douglas has hijacked several fisheries cooperative societies in Jaffna using his political power. Mr Devananda is the SL Minister of Fisheries in the “caretaker” cabinet of Rajapaksa regime. The EPDP leader is deploying the hijacked organisations to suppress the Tamil fishers in Jaffna who oppose exploitative and environmentally destructive sea cucumber poaching. The SL Minister is engineering violation of court orders issued two years ago, grassroots activists in Jaffna complain. Devananda has also manipulated a church to back the controversial move. Full story >> [TamilNet, Saturday, 20 June 2020, 23:53 GMT]Occupying Colombo’s Sinhala soldiers opened fire at a 24-year-old Tamil man, who didn’t stop his motorbike when the SL Army stopped him at Mukamaalai in Pazhai in Ki'linochchi district on Saturday evening. The victim, Nakarasa Ramakrishnan, was seriously wounded with four gunshots hitting his head and neck, the residents said. Then, the SL soldiers denied transportation to medical treatment for the seriously injured man for one hour, resulting in his death on the way to the hospital. In the meantime, SL Police was trying to twist the incident as something that happened when Mr Ramakrishnan attempted to grab the weapon of an SL Army soldier. A total lie, the villagers claim. The gunshots were fired targeting the victim’s head when he failed to stop, they said. The incident has occurred 300 meters away from A9 Highway near the war-time Forward Defence Line. Full story >> [TamilNet, Sunday, 12 April 2020, 23:57 GMT]The SL State released almost three-thousand prisoners from its prisons to halt the spread of the pandemic in jails. However, none of the eighty-four Tamil Political Prisoners were among those released. Although a massacre convicted Sinhala Army soldier was set free, the SL State was not prepared to release even a single Tamil political prisoner (TPP) who has been indefinitely detained for years without trial. At a time when the entire island is supposed to confront the pandemic jointly, why does the SL State discriminate the TPPs, asked 35-year-old Komahan Murugiah, a former TPP from Jaffna. If the SL State was genuine as it claims of being united in the fight against the pandemic, both the state and the collaborating politicians must prove their credibility by releasing the TPPs who are languishing in the jails, Mr Komahan told TamilNet. Full story >> [TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 March 2020, 17:10 GMT]SL ‘Terrorist’ Investigation Division detained 40-year-old Selvarasa Uthayasivam, a father of four at Keavil in Vadamaraadchi East on 04 March as reported earlier. The TID was alluding to SL Human Rights Commission in Jaffna that the detention was linked to the arrest of four persons alleged of having explosives on the previous day. However, the neighbours of Uthayasivam told TamilNet on Tuesday that the SL TID had intentionally targeted Mr Uthayasivam for his environmental and social activism in recent times. Vadamaraadchi East coordinator of National Fisheries Solidarity Movement Ratnasingham Muralitharan said the detained family man was active against exploitative sand mining by the SL Army and the SL Navy. He had also opposed illegal logging activities carried out with alleged involvement of the SL Police.
Full story >> [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. Full story >> [TamilNet, Saturday, 08 February 2020, 22:20 GMT]SL Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa was not reciprocating Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “confidence” that Colombo would “realize the expectations of the Tamil people for equality, justice, peace, and respect within a united Sri Lanka.” Both the leaders held a joint media presence in New Delhi on Saturday. Mr Modi said that it would be “necessary to carry forward the process of reconciliation with the implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka.” Mr Rajapaksa, who read out a statement after Modi’s speech, was not making any reference to “united” or “13th Amendment”. The same pattern was also witnessed during SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s visit to India in November 2019. It is evident that Mr Modi was making concessions to Colombo in return for its compliance to the maritime security concerns of New Delhi, political observers in Jaffna said. Full story >> [TamilNet, Thursday, 09 January 2020, 22:53 GMT]The coordinator of the continuous protest in Vavuniyaa Jeyavanitha Kasippillai is again facing harassment from the ‘Terrorist’ Investigation Division of the SL Police which is compelling her to appear for an investigation under the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). The cabinet of Gotabaya Rajapaksa has recently refused to withdraw the PTA. The latest harassment comes as the attempts by Douglas Devananda, an ex-paramilitary collaborator of Rajapaksa regime, miserably failed to end the continuous protests in the North and East. The families of Tamils subjected to enforced disappearances at the hands of the occupying Sinhala military have spent more than 1,055 days in continuous protests in the North and East. Full story >> [TamilNet, Tuesday, 31 December 2019, 17:41 GMT]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 >> [TamilNet, Saturday, 14 December 2019, 22:47 GMT]In what was described as the first-initiated protest against the SL authorities in Jaffna after Gotabaya Rajapaksa assuming office as the SL President in the South, the Tamil residents from Valikaamam East blocked the A9 Highway for more than one hour at Puthukkaadu Junction on Saturday. The protesters were agitating against the exploitative sand mining escalating without any control in Jaffna. They demanded the SL Police to block the southern sand traders who were dispatching their tipper vehicles to transport the excavated sands from Jaffna. The SL Police had to promise the protesters of setting up a new point to control the sand transport to end the protest. Full story >> [TamilNet, Thursday, 12 December 2019, 22:59 GMT]The newly installed SL Minister of Fisheries & Aquatic Resources, Douglas Devananda has let the hell break loose in Jaffna at three different hotspots, where he has given green signal to illegal sand miners to engage in sand mining. During the previous Rajapaksa regime, Maheswary Foundation, a business outfit run by Mr Devananda’s paramilitary group was exploiting the sand excavation in typical Mafia fashion. However, the domination was contained to some extent after the 2015 regime change, but the exploitation continued in low-scale by new actors, predominantly Sinhala traders from South, entering the scene. With his cabinet-rank being reinstated, the Jaffna-based former Tamil paramilitary operative of the Sinhala military and leader of the paramilitary-turned-political party EPDP, has let loose all actors to exploit illegal sand mining without any constraint, allegedly for one week. Full story >> [TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 December 2019, 22:43 GMT]The SL State Intelligence Service (SIS), formerly known as the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB), has been harassing 35-year-old Komahan Murugiah from Punnaalai, Jaffna after he denounced a fake news report regarding the Tamil Political Prisoners (TPPs). A Jaffna-based Tamil Television, Dan TV, alleged of orchestrating false propaganda in favour of SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had recently claimed that seven TPPs from Anuradhapura prison had been silently released. On Friday, Mr Komahan openly rejected the fake news and said all the six TPPs detained in Anuradhapura prison were still languishing there. After Komahan exposed the false propaganda, SL SIS officers started to harass him posing questions, rights activists in Jaffna told TamilNet on Tuesday. Full story >> [TamilNet, Thursday, 29 August 2019, 22:43 GMT]Douglas Devananda, the leader of the paramilitary-cum-political party, Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), has again resorted to harassment against the mothers of Tamils subjected to enforced disappearances at the hands of the military of genocidal Sri Lanka and his EPDP outfit. Mr Devananda was an SL minister during the regimes of Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa. The SL military deployed his group to abduct Tamil activists, journalists and those who were working with the LTTE. Recently, he told the press that he had lodged a complaint with the SL Police in Colombo against the open and public statements made by Mrs Mariasuresh Easwary, the wife of a person reported missing at the hands of the SL military. Mrs Easwary, who heads the district organisation of missing persons in Mullaith-theevu, was making the open allegation on behalf of the members of her organisation. Full story >> [TamilNet, Friday, 03 November 2017, 22:25 GMT]Jaffna University students on Friday condemned ITAK leaders, particularly M.A. Sumanthiran and Mavai Senathirajah for evading a crucial meeting at Jaffna University in which they were supposed to articulate and take a common responsibility of taking forward the struggle on behalf of the political prisoners before the students urged the hunger-striking political prisoners to abandon their fast unto death. Each of the three hunger-strikers have gone down in weight by 12 to 17 kg and their pulse was slow, the blood pressure has fallen and their body parts could be permanently impaired as their hunger-strike reached 37th day. Heated arguments ensued between the student leaders and NPC Councillor M.K. Shivajilingam who has been trying to negotiate and advance an appeal process in the Court of Appeal in Colombo instead of making it a political struggle with principled demands.
Full story >> [TamilNet, Monday, 09 January 2017, 15:07 GMT]Major General Mahesh Senanayake, the Jaffna commander of the occupying military of genocidal Sri Lanka, Reginald Cooray, who is Colombo's colonial governor to North and Angajan Ramanathan, the SLFP’s nominated parliamentarian who was earlier promoted by the Rajapaksa regime to circumvent Colombo regime’s dependency on Douglas Devananda's EPDP in Jaffna, are now jointly deployed in a covert operation of counter-insurgency and subversive nature with the intension of bringing disunity among the poverty-stricken section of uprooted people from Valikaamam North who are still languishing in 29 of 34 ‘welfare’ camps in Jaffna district. Full story >> [TamilNet, Monday, 07 November 2016, 21:06 GMT]The ‘Terrorist’ Investigation Division (TID) of genocidal Sri Lanka has staged at least 8 abduction-styled arrests in Jaffna within the past three days. The arrests have been carried out under the ‘Prevention of Terrorism Act’, according to the SL Police. The explanation given by the TID, especially when questioned by the families of arrested persons, was that the persons were being targeted for alleged involvement in criminal gangs. The ‘arrests’ come after a period of heightened propaganda in South that there was a gang named ‘Avva’ operating in Jaffna beyond the control of SL Police and military. One of the arrested is said to be a law student and an active supporter of Tamil National Peoples’ Front, who was engaged in democratic mobilization, especially during the Ezhuka Thamizh uprising in Jaffna. Full story >> [TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 May 2016, 23:21 GMT]Colombo’s Forest Department, which comes under SL President Maithiripala Sirisena’s Ministry of Mahaweli ‘Development’ and Environment, has been blocking Tamil farmers from taking their cattle to graze in the northern and eastern parts of Thivulaanaik-ku’lam, which is situated across the border of Batticaloa and Ampaa’rai districts in the East. Wealthy Sinhalese businessmen from Kurunegala and Gampaha districts have seized thousands of acres of public and forest lands to grow cowpea crop in large scale in the area, says T. Sivapatham, the president of Poaratheevup-pattu Cattle Farmers Association. Meanwhile, the SL Government Agent in Batticaloa is prioritizing the interests of Colombo’s business elite and the projects by foreign NGOs involving the employees in the public sector. Tamil farmers are being completely ignored in Batticaloa district, according to divisional civil sources. Full story >> [TamilNet, Friday, 01 April 2016, 16:52 GMT]The Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), led by Mr Suresh Premachandran, has denounced on Friday a narration given by the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) that one of the oldest parties of early Tamil militant legacy was dropping the terms ‘Eelam’ and ‘Liberation’ in its party name. The claimed name change is actually being contemplated by a small group, the EPRLF ‘Padmanaba wing’, which is neither part of the TNA nor has any electoral standing. This group is led by former North-Eastern Provincial Council Chief Minister Mr Varatharaja Perumal, who is widely seen as an agent of Indian Intelligence. In 2009, immediately after the Vanni genocide, the then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK Chief Mr M. Karunanidhi also gave instructions to remove the word Eezham in public places. Mr Karunanidhi reportedly has said that it was the wish of the ‘Central agencies’ of India. Full story >> [TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 February 2016, 22:14 GMT] Tamil journalist Subramaniam Ramachandran, who was abducted by the SL military in February 2007 in front of Kalikai junction military camp at Karaveddi in Vadamaraadchi, Jaffna, was last seen alive in the custody of Sinhala military at the notorious camp at Pallappai in the same area in 2012, according to his 55-year-old sister Jeyaratnam Kamalashini. The SL military vacated from Pallappai a year later in 2013 and instructed the people not to dig the abandoned wells in an attempt to cover up alleged mass graves. The genocidal State of Sri Lanka still refuses to reveal the whereabouts of the father of two children. Despite reports of alleged mass graves, there have been no efforts by the judiciary of ‘Sri Lanka’ to excavate the killing fields. Reporters in Jaffna question the advice by the visiting UN Human Rights Chief to expect delivery of justice through the ‘Sri Lankan’ judiciary. Full story >>
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