Navi Pillay explains ‘human rights’ limitations in Geneva on Tamil genocide

[TamilNet, Sunday, 21 March 2021, 13:34 GMT]
The manifestation of a “pre-existing strategy” using archaeology and historic preservation as guises for political or religious agendas has been observed by the UN Special Rapporteurs visiting Sri Lanka in recent years. Today’s international law has not provided universal human right to land. However, SL State’s violations of the land rights of “marginalised communities” could be addressed under the normative framework of international law, said Dr Navanetham Pillay. She mentioned the violation of the Right of Self-Determination. Pillay appeared as a keynote speaker at a conference titled “Loss of the Tamil Homeland,” which was convened by Justice C.V. Wigneswaran on Saturday. She was confronting TamilNet’s questions over her failure to call for investigations on Tamil genocide, which includes examining the “pre-existing strategy” for all the crimes committed against Tamils in the past.
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Tamil activists resisted three sources of outside influence while drafting demands to UNHRC

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 January 2021, 23:44 GMT]
The joint demands formulated by the Tamil national political parties towards the United Nations make specific reference to genocide twice. The four-point document gains significance as Parliamentary Group Leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Mr R Sampanthan has endorsed it with his signature, said former Northern Provincial Council Minister Ms Ananthy Sasitharan. Mr M A Sumanthiran representing the TNA in the negotiations finally agreed to make the specific reference after TELO Parliamentarian Selvam Adaikalanathan seemingly insisted for it, she said. TELO is a party of the TNA with three parliamentary seats. In an explosive and lengthy comment to TamilNet, Sasitharan narrated how the foreign powers and NGO agenda-setters were attempting to influence the process from three fronts. She considered Dr Guruparan Kumaravadivel as the behind-the-scene drafter of the final document.
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2020 election resembles 1970 polls that formed genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 August 2020, 10:08 GMT]
The SLFP led by Srimao Bandaranaike replaced the British drafted Ceylon constitution doing away even the minimal and symbolic safeguards for external justice through the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. Enacting a unitary constitution without the democratic mandate of Eezham Tamils, Ceylon was transformed unilaterally into genocidal Sri Lanka by the Sinhala politicians. Now, the SLFP is replaced by the SLPP, ten years after genocidal annihilation of the armed movement and the de-facto state of Tamil Eelam. The SLPP is poised to enact a constitutional discourse emboldening the unitary state towards the final phase of heritage and structural genocide in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils. As far as the Eezham Tamils are concerned, there is very little left for them to achieve within the scope of SL Parliamentary politics.
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SLMC Chairman: Time for joint Tamil-Muslim efforts

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 June 2020, 18:17 GMT]
Intellectuals, civil society activists and politicians among the Tamils and the Muslims should jointly design a joint programme if their people are to exist with self-respect, said A.L. Abdul Majeed, the chairman of Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC). The Tamils and Muslims are confronting an existential threat. The tendency is going to worsen further with dire consequences to their collective rights. His party favoured a merged North-East Province, Mr Majeed, who once served as a councillor in the merged province, said. The majority of the Muslim people in the de-merged North and East will follow suit if a convincing formula was to be conceived for their coexistence within the merged unit. India needs to be reminded of its historical responsibility in ensuring the merger, he added.
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Moragoda’s “think tank” justifies Sinhala apprehension to MCC, proposes renegotiations

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 March 2020, 23:47 GMT]
The so-called Colombo-Trincomalee Economic Corridor (CTEC) was only a new name given to decades-old agenda of demographic genocide wedging territorial contiguity of the Tamil homeland. Previous Rajapaksa government named it “North Central Metro Region (NCMR)” as envisaged by its “National Physical Planning Department” in April 2010. The selection of districts for the implementation of one of the proposed Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) project on land administration has “ironically led to the perception that MCC was to build an economic corridor between Colombo and Trincomalee and facilitate a land grab by foreigners,” claims a recent writeup originating from Milinda Moragoda’s Pathfinder Foundation. The outfit claims its reading of the MCC proposal justified some of the public concerns [of the Sinhalese].
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Wigneswaran reneges on Eezham Tamils’ inalienable Right to Self-Determination

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 February 2020, 22:18 GMT]
Former Northern Province Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran recently launched an electoral political alliance, Tamizh Makkal Koottanii (TMK) as an alternative to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA). But, he has ended up reneging on Eezham Tamils’ inalienable Right to Self-Determination, precisely the same way the hijacked hierarchy of the TNA did it after 2009. Washington and New Delhi, which didn’t want to recognise the sovereignty or the right to self-determination of the Eezham Tamils, deceived the TNA leaders to toe the line of ‘devolution of power’ without rejecting the unitary state system or by adopting a ‘non-descript’ constitutional discourse. The initial ‘mantra’ used for that purpose was the deceptive notion of “internal right to self-determination,” which is nothing else than self-denouncement of the right to self-determination. Wigneswaran has just uttered that mantra.
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Putting Russian abetment of Tamil genocide in proper context

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 January 2020, 23:55 GMT]
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has given an email-interview to Colombo-based Daily News before his visit to the island on Monday. The long-serving Russian FM was stressing a set of principles such as “indivisible security” and “non-interference in the internal affairs” of the states in the Indian Ocean. Mr Lavrov also mentioned “peaceful settlement of disputes and non-use of force or the threat of force”. As far as the Eezham Tamils are concerned, they will never forget the use of lethal weapons deployed by genocidal Sri Lanka’s military. Much of those were supplied by Russia, particularly the OFAB-500 cluster bombs deployed by the SL Air Force and the thermobaric infantry weapons such as RPO-A Shmels used by the SL Army against Eezham Tamils.
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Sampanthan indirectly implicates India, US, EU, UK, Japan, Norway for Tamil predicament post-2009

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 January 2020, 23:10 GMT]
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.
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Gotabaya backtracks on Colombo’s assurances to New Delhi: Sumanthiran

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 January 2020, 23:31 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran has said that SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was regressing from the assurances made by his predecessors, including his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, to New Delhi on three occasions about the full implementation of the 13th Amendment. When India intervened in 1987, Colombo turned towards the “right direction” and started to “acknowledge the diversity of its peoples,” by amending the Constitution, the TNA parliamentarian said. The equal status between the peoples in the island is not dependent on their respective numerical strength. “This principle must be acknowledged if our democracy is to survive and indeed flourish, and not regress into naked majoritarianism. Regretfully, in his address to Parliament on 3rd January 2020 the President has articulated such a regressive position,” he said.
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No need for Eezham Tamils to ‘namō namō’ Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 December 2019, 21:10 GMT]
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.
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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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Reject engagement with genocidaire Gotabaya

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 November 2019, 23:10 GMT]
Newly sworn-in SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has denounced the existence of Eezham Tamils as a nation in the North and the East of the island. The wartime genocidaire Defense Secretary wants Tamils to become ‘Sri Lankans’ capitulating to the Sinhala Mahawansa doctrine, which possesses the requisite intent for Tamil genocide. The Tamils and their political leaders must unambiguously state now that there would be no engagement with genocidaire SL President and the SL State unless he openly and publicly declares Eezham Tamils as a nation entitled to the right of self-determination. The foreign state actors upholding the engagement paradigm are ultimately responsible for the continued crimes against Eezham Tamils in the island.
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Shivajilingam responds to Sampanthan: no withdrawal without written assurance

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 November 2019, 09:13 GMT]
If the TNA Leader negotiates with Sajith Premadasa and secures a written assurance in which the SL presidential candidate commits to fulfil two specific demands, Tamil presidential candidate M.K. Shivajilingam was prepared to withdraw from the race for SL presidential candidate. However, such a move has not taken place, said Mr Shivajilingam in a comment to TamilNet on Wednesday. He was responding to Mr Sampanthan’s public appeal to Mr Shivajilingam to step down from the presidential race without any preconditions.
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Eezham Tamils set to mobilise against heritage genocide in Kanniyaa, Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Monday, 15 July 2019, 19:03 GMT]
Following the call from the Saiva priest of Thenkayilai Aadheenam at Kanniyaa, Trincomalee, the grassroots of the Eezham Tamils are mobilising for a unified protest against the heritage genocide at Kanniyaa Hot Wells. Former Chief Minister of Northern Province Justice CV Wigneswaran expressing his solidarity named the joint activity against Tamils at Kanniyaa as an “open act of genocide”. The pattern of the cultural and heritage destruction as well as the landgrab by the various SL Departments has become a widespread phenomenon especially after the Easter Sunday attacks, he said in a statement issued in Tamil on Monday. In the meantime, the District Organiser of the Tamil National People's Front in Trincomalee Dr Ra Shrignaneswaran urged the UN agencies such as the UNICEF and UNESCO as well as the foreign governments that fund the SL State not to back the heritage genocide.
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Trustee vows to take up legal fight for restoration of Kanniyaa temple

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 July 2019, 07:29 GMT]
The Sinhala SL Government Agent (District Secretary) of Trincomalee District, NAA Pushpakumara, has been liaising with the SL Presidential Secretariat in Colombo and facilitating the SL Archaeology Department to resume the deconstruction of the base structure of Pi'l'laiyaar temple at the disputed heritage site of Kanniyaa Hot Wells. Mrs Ganesh Kokilaramany, who is the land-owner and the principal trustee of Pi'l'laiyaar temple, went to file a complaint with the SL Police. However, the Police showed four documents to her in an attempt to justify the resumption of the controversial work by the SL Archaeology Department. SL Presidential Secretariat has given go for the construction of the disputed Buddhist ‘chaitya’ by dismantling the construction of 200-year-old Hindu Pi'l'laiyaar temple at the private lands that belong to Mrs Kokilaramany.
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Tamils, Muslims need strategic alliance to protect heritage rights in North-East

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 June 2019, 17:16 GMT]
The Tamil Saiva Priest of Then-Kayilai Aatheenam, Thavath-Thiru Akaththiyar Adika’ laar, has urged legal activists to find ways to contain the hostile acts of the Sinhala Buddhist monk from the Velgam Vihara, who has dismantled the foundation of Hindu Pi’l’ laiyaar temple at the heritage site of Kanniyaa hot springs in Trincomalee. The Saiva priest said it was not merely a religious dispute, but rather a cause of preserving the heritage rights. The best option, in his opinion, was to address the issue through the courts. In the meantime, TNA Leader R. Sampanthan was taking up the burning question with the SL President and the Prime Minister. However, both the legal avenue and the political appeals made with collaborative orientation only have minimal impact in the unitary system of genocidal Sri Lanka, especially under the Emergency Regulations, commented legal activists in Trincomalee.
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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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ITAK must act to revoke Gazette notifications, transfer Land Commissioner in East

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 March 2019, 20:21 GMT]
SL President Maithiripala Sirisena has only revoked one of the Gazette notifications that had been issued by his predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa who had seized the lands of Tamils in Champoor. After the revocation of Gazette notification of transferring lands to SL Board of Investment under the Urban Development Act (UDA), the people resettled. However, a previous Gazette notification, which was made by Mr Rajapaksa who acquired the lands of the people under an urgency clause of the Land Acquisition Act (LAA), remains in force. Although repeated requests were made by Moothoor Divisional Secretary to re-issue necessary land permits to the people who had owned these lands for decades, Provincial Land Commissioner of the Eastern Province D.D. Anura Dharmadhasa has been blocking the move citing the initial Gazette notification, say Tamil-speaking Muslim officials at Moothoor DS.
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SL State apparatus at full swing to Sinhalicise ancient temple of Tamils in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 January 2019, 22:41 GMT]
The trustees of Thiruk-koa'neasvaram (Koneswaram) temple in the eastern port city of Trincomalee blame three different authorities of the unitary of state of genocidal Sri Lanka as severely restricting their initiatives to preserve the spiritual environment at the historic Saiva temple. The Tamil devotees experience the conduct of the SL state apparatus as racial discrimination, reporters in the city said. The secretary of the trustee board, Mr K. Parameswaran, when contacted by TamilNet said the SL Archaeology Department, SL Department of Coast Conservation and the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau, which is a statutory body of the Colombo government, were confronting the trustee board.
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Tamil POW, detained for 10 years, launches hunger-strike at Anuradhapura prison

[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 January 2019, 20:06 GMT]
Sivaseelan Sivapragasam was 22 years when the SL military detained him on 19 May 2009 at Oamanthai in Vavuniyaa. He had lost his mother and a brother during the genocidal onslaught by the advancing SL military which directed indiscriminate artillery fire into the so-called ‘safe zone’. His father, Mr Sivapragasam, the only remaining family member outside the SL Prison who was tirelessly demanding the release of his son, also passed away on 16 December at Vaddak-kachchi in Ki'linochchi. The lone survivor of Sivapragasam family is now waging hunger-strike urging his release to at least conduct the 31st-day ritual ('Anthiraddi' rites) to his deceased father, his fellow inmates told media on Sunday.
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