Unprecedented P2P uprising paves the way for rights-oriented politics of Tamils and Muslims

[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.
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Colombo’s brutal suppression of Tamil Heroes’ Day counter-productive to stated objectives: Tamil MP

[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 December 2020, 15:44 GMT]
Emboldened with a two-thirds majority in the SL Parliament, the regime of Rajapaksa has chosen to suppress Tamil remembrance days, particularly the Maaveear Naa'l (Tamil Eelam Heroes’ Day) this year. The Rajapaksa regime was short-sighted in using the opportunity to showcase to its southern audience that it was more determined than its predecessor in blocking November 27 Remembrance. However, the brutal manner in which the SL State and its judiciary suppressed the collective remembrance events received more attention not only among the Tamil youth in the North and the East but also in the South, said ITAK (TNA) Parliamentarian from Batticaloa Shanakiyan Rasamanickam. “I received phone calls from Up-Country Tamil youth from Deniyaya and Matara in the down south to Kandy and Colombo,” he said adding that even fifteen and sixteen-year-old youth were posing questions.
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Sinhala Archaeology officials attach GPS tracking to ‘heritage’ stones in East

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 July 2020, 20:17 GMT]
A group of employees from all-Sinhala SL Archaeology Department spent time with a stone used to burn camphor at Chiththaa'ndi Murukan temple on Friday. When they left, they claimed to have attached a GPS tracker to the rock. In the meantime, SL Police Officer-in-Charge at Ea'raavoor Police was dodging to register a complaint from the temple board, sources close to the management said. Uniformed police personnel have been visiting the temple since 19 July and persons claiming to be employees of SL Archaeology Department come and go since 26 June. The intruding officials are not interested in informing through proper channels before their interventions. The situation has caused security-related concerns as there are valuable properties of the temple within the premises.
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Saiva deity statue destroyed 20 days after ‘inspection’ by Sinhala monk in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 July 2020, 22:15 GMT]
Unknown attackers have smashed the door of the inner sanctuary of Kusalaana-malai Saiva Kumaran temple and destroyed the main deity statue, residents of Karadiyan-aattuk-ku'lam in Batticaloa told TamilNet on Friday. The desecration has taken place three weeks after a Sinhala-Buddhist was observed inspecting the temple situated at the 213-feet high hillock, 35 km west of Batticaloa city. A similar destruction was reported a few days ago at Kurunthoor-malai hillock in Mullaiththeevu in Vanni. The board of the temple was reluctant to talk to journalists as it feared media attention could trigger further problems to the temple. However, Tamil farmers in the nearby village urged broader awareness on the ongoing acts of heritage genocide in the East and North.
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Colombo's Archaeology Department, SL Police threaten chief priest of Chiththaa'ndi temple

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 July 2020, 23:30 GMT]
Officials of occupying Colombo's Archaeology Department visited the ancient Saiva (Hindu) Murukan temple at Chiththaa'ndi, located 20 km north of Batticaloa city, last month on 26 June. The visiting team was taking photographs of stones used for crack opening coconuts and for burning camphor as well as the stone slabs used in the temple for various purposes. They claimed that the rocks resembled Buddhist artefacts and that they should be delivered back to the SL Archaeology Department. Sivasri Vasantharajah Kurukka'l, the chief priest of the temple, told them that the stones had been there for several decades while other slabs were produced in Vavuniyaa in 2010 when the temple was renovated. On Sunday, SL Policemen from Batticaloa visited the temple blaming the chief priest for ‘not cooperating’ with the officials of the department.
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Sinhala Police OIC hit Tamil women with vehicle for opposing monks-led heritage ‘task force’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 July 2020, 10:04 GMT]
The vehicle of SL Police Officer-in-Charge(OIC) of Vellave'li station PWM Anandasiri hit protesting Tamil women causing injuries to them on Thursday. The OIC has threatened the protesting Tamils of Veaththuch-cheanai village in Batticaloa that he would book them under various pretexts if they continued to agitate against the SL Presidential Task Force (PTF) on the so-called Archaeological Heritage Management. The OIC secured a court order and has named 12 residents as respondents who objected the entry by the SL Archaeology Department to the folk-deity temple of Vairavar and nearby playground, the residents said. Veaththuch-cheanai is a hamlet situated in Vellaa-ve'li of Poaratheevup-pattu DS division, 40 km south of Batticaloa city.
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After Naavat-kuzhi, Colombo targets Poonakari for Sinhala colonisation across Jaffna lagoon

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 July 2020, 19:28 GMT]
Strategically located Naavat-kuzhi in Jaffna peninsula and Poonakari across the Jaffna lagoon at the entrance to the peninsula in the mainland were systematically targeted for Sinhalicisation by occupying Colombo during the previous Rajapaksa regime. Politicians, including Rajapaksa family members, were directly involved in grabbing lands and farms in Poonakari. Sinhala colonists were brought to Naavat-kuzhi in Jaffna. The colonisation of Naavatkuzhi carried out clandestinely during the Rajapaksa rule gained “legal” status under the Sirisena-Wickramasinghe rule that followed. Sections of Sinhala nationalists who joined the US bandwagon, such as Patali Champika Ranawake, allocated lands and housing schemes to the colonists. They also completed a Buddhist stupa. Now, the Rajapaksa regime is back in business escalating the project into Poonakari, informed Tamil officials in Jaffna said.
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Devananda circumvents court order, manipulates Jaffna fishers to allow poachers from South

[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.
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Dr Amir Ali: SL Archaeology aims to obliterate Tamil traces, shrink territory of Muslims in East

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 June 2020, 23:30 GMT]
In Israel and India, archaeology is used as a weapon to disenfranchise a whole community, writes Dr Amir Ali, a renowned academic based in Australia, in a guest column of the Colombo-based Daily Financial Times on Friday. “What the Sri Lankan archaeologists did was no different from what Israeli and Western archaeologists accomplished in Palestine,” he observes. “From the time of independence, archaeology has been a powerful tool in the hands of Sinhalese nationalists to obliterate any vestiges of an ancient Tamil civilisation in Sri Lanka,” writes Dr Ali from the School of Business and Governance in Murdoch University, Western Australia.
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SL Army & Archaeology falsify heritage traces to meet Sinhala-Buddhist ideology: Saiva priest

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 June 2020, 23:44 GMT]
The chief priest of Gayatri Amman temple, located in the suburb of Batticaloa city, has blamed the Sinhala military for planting false archaeological ‘traces’ in the vicinities of the camps in the district of Batticaloa. The tendency of planting pieces of evidence, which are then ‘excavated’ by SL Archaeology Department has been escalating throughout the past five years, said Sivasri V K Sivapalan Kurukka'l. The latest step in which the SL President appointed an all-Sinhala Presidential Task Force (PTF) headed by SL Defense Secretary has added woes to an already distressing situation. The efforts by religious dignitaries to bring inter-religious and ethnic harmony have been severely affected, not only in the East but in the entire island, he lamented.
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The Guardian succumbs to pressure from SL High Commission on indigenous term Eelam

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 May 2020, 16:54 GMT]
“Eelam is an indigenous name for which popular holiday island?,” was a question posed by a travel quiz published by the Guardian on 15 May. The quiz had rightfully stated the term, which is one of the ancient names for the island. However, in a political move, the High Commission of the unitary state of genocidal “Sri Lanka” reacted against the term “Eelam” sending a letter misinforming the paper that the term had “never been used as an indigenous name for Sri Lanka”. The paper has removed the question without defending the term “Eelam”.
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COVID curfews hurt livelihood of resettled people of Ira'nai-theevu twin-islet

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 April 2020, 14:06 GMT]
The SL fisheries authorities have neglected marketing arrangements for the fish caught by the recently resettled Tamil fishers of Ira'nai-theevu twin-islets that lie 12 nautical miles from the western coast of Ki'linochchi district. The prices have dropped from 1,000 rupees to 300 rupees for one-kilo crabs and from 800 rupees to 200 rupees for cuttlefish catch. More than sixty families are residing in Ira'nai-theevu without permanent housing. The people of the islets facing the Palk Bay are also deprived of community assistance during the curfew. In the meantime, there were reports of COVID-19 infections at the SL military-operated Quarantine Center at Muzhangkaavil, a coastal hamlet located near their temporary settlement, Ira'nai-maathaa-nakar in the mainland. Those infected were medical personnel brought for quarantine from the South.
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Tamil Political Prisoner passes away after 26 years of SL imprisonment

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 January 2020, 23:07 GMT]
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.
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Rajapaksas demonstrate Mafia tactics of control through Devananda in Jaffna

[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.
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SL Police extorts money from Kaaththaankudi Muslim traders

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 November 2019, 19:45 GMT]
Sinhala police officers posing as Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) investigators from a special unit in Colombo engage in widespread extortion of money from the Muslim business owners in Kaaththaan-kudi. The extortion has increased in recent days, and the business owners are reluctant to lodge complaints at the police station in Kaaththaan-kudi even though Tamil-speaking Muslim police officers are manning the station.
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SL military warns Tamils against protesting land-grab along Pooneryn sandbar

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 November 2019, 18:02 GMT]
The commander of the occupying Sinhala military stationed in Ki'linochchi, Major General GV Ravipriya, has threatened the people of Kauthaari-munai and the nearby villages along Ma'n'nith-thalai sandbar of Poonakari (Pooneryn) not to object SL Governor's plan of alienating lands to a planned hotel by an Australia-based Tamil trader collaborating with the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka. The SL military is fully backing the land grab, which is promoted by the SL Governor to North Suren Raghavan.
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Sand mining mafia intimidates Divisional Secretary in Batticaloa North

[TamilNet, Thursday, 31 October 2019, 15:05 GMT]
Three Sinhala sand mining traders, scooping sands in Kathirave'li in Koa'ra'laip-pattu North (Vaakarai) division, have threatened the Divisional Secretary M. Karan saying that they were capable of transferring him away from his division. One of the Sinhala sand mining traders from Kanthaa'laay in Trincomalee is demanding to increase the extent of the sand permit to cover the expenses to sponsor one of the leading presidential candidates, the officials further said. The latest threat has come as the DS was trying to limit the extensive scooping. The traders operate with the backing of the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau, which comes under the unitary State system in Colombo.
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SL Governor's latest land grab poses danger to archaeological traces of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Sunday, 13 October 2019, 22:15 GMT]
SL Governor to North Mr Suren Raghavan is attempting to alienate 115 acres of lands at Kauthaari-munai in Ma'na'niththa'lai sandbar of Poo-nakari (Pooneryn) division to a private Tamil diaspora business person from Australia before his Governor term expires. Mr Raghavan is deceptively suppressing objections from the Tamil civil sources and the grassroots activists in Ki'linochchi district, informed grassroots activists in Poonakari told TamilNet. The 25 km long sandbar, which extends towards the Jaffna Peninsula from Poonakari in the main island, is of immense natural beauty and archaeological value to the Eezham Tamils. The area is dotted with archaeological remains ranging from microlithic/megalithic times to the times of the Dutch, covered by massive sand dunes.
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SL Police threatens Tamils for observing annual temple festival in Vavuniyaa North

[TamilNet, Sunday, 15 September 2019, 07:09 GMT]
A group of SL police officers from the Nedungkea'ni station in Vavuniyaa North have been questioning and recording statements from the trustees of Vedukkul-naa'ri Aathi-linkeasvarar temple in Vavuniyaa North on Saturday and Sunday. Furthermore, the SL Police was making phone calls to selected people in the area, stating that a case had been filed against those who were actively involved in the temple festival that completed on Saturday. The trustees and devotees have ‘violated’ the SL Antiquities Ordinance by using a ladder to reach the hilltop, the SL police claims. The SL Police was demanding the removal of the ladder before 10:00 a.m. on Sunday.
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Colombo's departments abet large-scale deforestation and hunting in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Friday, 06 September 2019, 15:19 GMT]
Widespread logging of forest trees, large-scale alienation of forest lands and hunting of spotted and sambur deers, as well as local buffaloes, continue unabated amidst persistent ignorance and possible collusion with the SL Forest and Wildlife Conservation Departments as well as the SL Police. Local Councillor Kandiah Soundararajan, who is elected from Vaddk-ka'ndal in Maanthai West Divisional Council (Piratheasa-chapai/PS), has exposed the extent of the destruction when contacted by TamilNet this week. In the meantime, the law enforcement authorities of the unitary state mechanism in Colombo are systematically depriving the resettled poverty-stricken and landless Tamils. It is the local population, which constitutes a nature-loving-society with excellent human-environment relationships, as history has witnessed in the past, Tamil activists in Mannaar observed.
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