Anti-Muslim harassment escalates in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 June 2019, 23:51 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala Navy and Army along with the SL Police are harassing the Tamil-speaking Muslims in two hotspots in Mannaar district as never before, and the trend is worsening every day without anyone to voice for the rights of the affected innocent people. The predominantly Sinhala soldiers, particularly the SL Navy personnel at Thaaraa-puram in Mannaar island and those stationed in the mainland in Musali division, are humiliating the residents of more than 20 colonies. These settlements were put up by the controversial politician, Rishard Bathiudeen, who was serving the successive regimes in Colombo while creating a voter base for himself with the funding he facilitated from the Arabic world. The former SL Minister's opportunistic political behaviour has not only backfired against him but also against the Muslim residents of Thaaraa-Puram, which is his native village in Mannaar.
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SL military, police go all out against everything ‘Thowheed’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 May 2019, 23:54 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala military and the SL police have detained at least 21 Muslims in Mannar up to Wednesday night. Most of the arrested are members of various Thowheed Jamath groups that are different from the National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ), which was created by the Easter Sunday attacker Zahran Hashim. These are multiple organisations such as Ceylon TJ, SLTJ, All Ceylon TJ and United TJ which are not prohibited. Even the hardliners in these groups have faith-oriented difference with the NTJ. However, the SL Police and the military are going after everything that has 'Thowheed' in the name, legal sources in Mannaar said. The personnel carrying out the cordon and search operations are Sinhalese. Meanwhile, the SL soldiers are also desecrating the places of worship by wearing shoes inside the premises, the people complained.
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‘Silver Park’ boosting Hambantota not linked to China: Norwegian agency

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 April 2019, 23:41 GMT]
"Hambantota got a new boost that was nothing to do with China or the BRI," reported a global shipping news service on Monday. The reporting agency, TradeWinds, is headquartered in Oslo, Norway. The China Merchants Port Holdings (CMPH) which controls the Hambantota port has conveyed to Indian and US diplomats who visited the port that its security was led by retired Sri Lankan admiral Jayantha de Silva and not by China's People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), the report further observed. In the meantime, UPFA MP Asanka S Semasinghe was alleging that Tamil Nadu DMK Politician S. Jagathrakshakan's family-owned business could be a money laundering project. SL Minister of ‘Development’ Strategies and International Trade Malik Samarawickrema (UNP) was rejected his allegations on Tuesday.
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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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Let Sinhala nation decide its fate, keep focus on Tamil struggle

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 October 2018, 23:51 GMT]
The constitutional coup is an outcome of a fierce competition raging between UPFA and UNP agents, who want to exploit the accelerating trade-war between the two powers, the USA and China. The USA has already established its strategic military access to the island through India. The current dispute is not aimed at taking military or diplomatic side with a particular actor, Tamil political observers in Jaffna said. The right-wing populistic SLPP led by Rajapaksa, the strongman from Hambantota and the centre-left SLFP chaired by Sirisena, another strongman from Polonnaruwa, are staunch Sinhala nationalist parties having the blessings of the Buddhist establishment. The SL military is excited by their unity. Tamils, having no leadership after the LTTE, are puzzled. They are deceived to believe that China is behind Rajapaksa and that the USA is sticking with Wickramasinghe.
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Sirisena stages constitutional coup, installs Rajapaksa as SL Prime Minister

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 October 2018, 23:39 GMT]
The executive president of genocidal Sri Lanka, Maithiripala Sirisena, has suddenly installed former SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa as the SL Prime Minister after withdrawing his UPFA from the so-called ‘good governance’ alliance on Friday night. The soft parliamentary coup, which seems to be a carefully planned secret move, has been justified by Mr Sirisena as adhering to the constitutional provisions of the unitary state. Mr Sirisena, who is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, had this already in mind when he addressed the UN General Assembly last month in the USA, political observers in Jaffna commented. Maithiripala was praising his troops on the ground during his UN visit to Donald Trump's USA. The UNP is now reaping what it sowed 40 years ago in 1978 when the late J.R. Jayawardene introduced the executive presidency.
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SL-AG Department finds new excuses to dodge hunger-striking TPPs demands

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 October 2018, 15:07 GMT]
SL Attorney General's Department has told TNA Parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran that it would not be considering the demands of three of the twelve hunger-striking Tamil political prisoners at Anuradhapura prison at all. The families of the TPPs said the explanation given by the SL-AG was illogical and condemned the TNA for passively tolerating the Colombo establishment citing ongoing disputes between the SL President Maithiripala Sirisena's UPFA and the UNP led by SL Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe.
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Disillusioned sections of Saiva activists transform into Hindutva extremists in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 26 May 2018, 21:02 GMT]
Alarming hate-speech evidence has emerged in Jaffna on Thursday causing concerns among the Tamil national grassroots circles that a new brand of North Indian Hindutva extremism is induced into the Tamil society challenging the secular Tamil nationalism at one of its bedrocks. The latest controversy and a hate speech highlighted in Tamil language media come as a reaction to the insignificant issue of 33 cows getting purchased for meat by a slaughterhouse in Chaavakachcheari following the due civic procedures in Jaffna. The Hindutva-influenced sections were staging a protest against what they termed as Islamic slaughter of cows regarded as sacred animals by Buddhists and Hindus.
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8 Tamil workers quit, ethnic harassment at SL State-run Coconut Garden in East

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 March 2018, 22:32 GMT]
Eight Tamil workers at Paasikkudaa Coconut Model Garden have quit their jobs unable to tolerate the harassment meted out on them by the Sinhala-controlled management of the SL State-owned garden, which comes under the Batticaloa Regional Office of the Coconut Cultivation Board (CCB). The Sinhala administration of the CCB office in Batticaloa and its Paasikkudaa Garden management have moved on to appoint Sinhala workers to the positions of the permanent cadre after successfully evicting the Tamil workers from the garden. Only two of the positions have gone to a Tamil and a Tamil-spaking Muslim. The Sinhala officials have stepped up harassments on the Tamil workers since 2015 with the hidden agenda of evicting them from the Model Garden. A co-worker, who was previously a military soldier, was also deployed against them, the Tamil workers who have quit their jobs told TamilNet on Friday.
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Eezham Tamils set to lose Vavuniyaa North to Sinhala colonists in civic elections

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 February 2018, 15:08 GMT]
The Sinhala colonisation and demographic changes engineered by the genocidal unitary State of Sri Lanka in Vavuniyaa North have gone to the extent that Eezham Tamils would be losing their political hold of Vavuniyaa North Divisional Council (Piratheasa Chapai) in the forthcoming civic elections, Tamil civil sources in Vavuniyaa said. Vavuniyaa North was entirely a Tamil division before the colonisation by Sinhala paramilitary-led colonists following the State-sponsored anti-Tamil pogrom in 1983. Although the area has been subjected to Sinhala colonisation for a long time through settling Sinhala paramilitary personnel and their families, the extent of silent colonisation has been accelerated after the war in the recent years with the aim of transforming Vavuniyaa North into a 'Sinhala Only' division as the recently Sinhalicised division of Weli-oya, the civil sources further said.
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Risking legal action, Hakeem wants to transfer lands to Hizbulla’s colony in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 September 2017, 12:10 GMT]
Rauff Hakeem, the SL cabinet minister of ‘Urban Development, Water Supply and Drainage’ is trying to illegally allocate 35 acres of public lands to put up a Muslim colony being schemed by M.L.A.M. Hizbulla, an appointed UPFA parliamentarian and State Minister of ‘Resettlement and Rehabilitation’ at a traditional Tamil area in Batticaloa district. The controversial move is taking place at Kalladi, 7 km southeast of Batticaloa city. The lands initially taken over from Tamil people back in 1963 for the purpose of expanding water supply and irrigation from Unnichchai tank to other areas, civil sources in Batticaloa said. The SL ministers are engaged in hostile activities setting Batticaloa Tamils against Tamil-speaking Muslims from Kaaththaan-kudi, the sources further said.
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NPC plunges into crisis as external agenda-backed forces challenge Wigneswaran

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 June 2017, 23:35 GMT]
Ilangkai Thamizh Arasuk Kadchi (ITAK), which is the main constituent party of the TNA, engineered a move of no-confidence against NPC Chief Minister Justice C.V.Wigneswaran on Wednesday. A considerable number of councillors submitted the request, just a few hours after Justice Wigneswaran instructed two of his ministers, subjected to investigations to resign, and asked two other ministers to go on compulsory leave until the investigation on them is completed. Bringing the four ministries under Chief Minister's purview, the NPC CM said he was answerable to the people who had entrusted him with the task of leading the NPC. TNA parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran has been involved in creating, managing and finally deploying the move as an opportunity to force Wignewaran and his genre to retire from politics. However, Wigneswaran remains calm and restraint, news sources in Jaffna said.
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Collaborate with Colombo or get lost in Geneva: SL President tells Tamils in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 05 March 2017, 23:22 GMT]
SL President Maithiripala Sirisena who visited Jaffna on Saturday was reiterating the same words of former SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa at both the military and civil event in Jaffna. His visit was fully packed with military events except a single event, which was a PR stunt of launching the “Tell the President” office in Jaffna. Mr Maithiripala Sirisena, who has been claiming earlier that he was also in command of the final phase of Vanni war in his capacity as a deputy defence minister in 2009, was addressing the SL military in Jaffna on Saturday vowing not to allow anyone to subject the troopers of the three armed forces to stand for criminal trials in connection with alleged war crimes. During his trip, Sirisena was not prepared to meet the demonstrating women who were searching for their kith and kin or the graduates demanding jobs.
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Hybrid court unworkable in ‘Sri Lanka’ context: K. Sivapalan

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 September 2015, 22:41 GMT]
Internal investigations on violence against Tamils carried out by Commissions of Inquiry (CoI) with members appointed by Sri Lanka officials in the past have always been a failure. "The main reason for the failures can be traced to the absence of political will in successive Buddhist majority governments in ‘Sri Lanka’ to ensure accountability for grave violations of Human Rights of Tamil people," says K. Sivapalan, the exiled deputy chairperson of a Tamil rights group, North East Secretariat on Human Rights (NESoHR). Two of the commissions had “international” presence in 1963 and in 2006, in a hybrid context, but failed to deliver justice. As a lawyer who represented several victims from the Eastern Province, Mr Sivapalan says, for any criminal investigations to be successful, hearings of the courts will have to be held outside the island.
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Relay race for genocide sanctified as ‘Good Governance’ by USA: Jude Lal

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 September 2015, 00:01 GMT]
The SLFP/UPFA, UNP, JHU and the JVP have all claimed their share in the genocidal ‘military victory’ against the Tamils. The Sinhala liberal intelligentsia describes the trend as a ‘relay race’, where each Sinhala political leader had taken turns in contributing to the victory, says Professor Jude Lal of Trinity College, Dublin, in an interview to TamilNet on Tuesday. “There is an inherent racism within the so-called project of good governance, which is based on a victor’s mentality. The agenda of the ‘good governance’ did not arise from the Sinhala society. It was part of the US-sponsored UN resolution and a facade to cover up crimes committed against the Tamil people by the Sri Lankan state,” the exiled Sinhala academic says adding that the political power of the ‘Sinhala Supremacist State’ is at its peak at the moment.
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TNA secures 16 of 29 SL parliamentary seats in North-East

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 August 2015, 05:50 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has secured 5 seats in the Jaffna electoral district, 4 seats in Vanni, 3 seats in Batticaloa, 1 in Trincomalee, 1 in Ampaa'rai and two seats for nominated parliamentarians according to the latest figures. In Jaffna, S. Sritharan, Mavai Senathirajah, M.A. Sumanthiran, T. Sitharthan and E. Saravanapavan have secured their seats after repeated counting of preferential votes on Tuesday while Suresh Premachandran lost his parliamentary seat. In the meantime, United National Party (UNP) led by Ranil Wickramasinghe is set to form the SL government in the South, despite a tough race with Mahinda Rajapaksa's UPFA. The UNP was leading the electoral districts in the South, particularly where Tamils and Muslims live in considerable numbers. UNP has got 106 seats in the SL parliament followed by the UPFA (95), TNA (16), JVP (06), EPPD (01) and SLMC (01).
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Time for Indian media to investigate what went wrong with New Delhi

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 August 2015, 23:30 GMT]
Four decades ago, overpowering the US outlook, New Delhi successfully materialised the liberation and independence of Bangladesh from the colony-like rule of Pakistan. But within a couple of years the USA managed to hijack Bangladesh into military rule and to become non-friendly to India. New Delhi did quite the opposite to Eezham Tamils. It was the crucial strategic partner to the US-led coalition that enacted the first ever gang-genocide in the region to uphold a congenitally genocidal State. New Delhi emerged as the main protector of Rajapaksa after the war. Yet, if Indian journalists like P K Balachandran, long operating in Colombo, could now link Rajapaksa with emerging shades of Eezham Tamil nationalism, and they find only anti-Indian sentiments in them, then there must be something constantly wrong with New Delhi, which the Indian media should investigate.
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Swaminathan blames SL military for failure in releasing lands, resettlement

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 June 2015, 23:22 GMT]
Sri Lankan Minister of Resettlement and Reconstruction Mr D.M. Swaminathan, who visited Jaffna on Monday publicly admitted that his ministry was been unable to release lands and provide for resettlement of the uprooted people from Valikaamam North as it had been promised by himself earlier. The SL military has not been cooperating as required in the release of lands as promised, the powerless Colombo-based Tamil minister said passing the blame from political leaders to the occupying military establishment. The visiting UNP minister was addressing the elected representatives, civil officers and the organisations representing the uprooted Tamils from Valikaamam North at two places, in Thelliappazhai and at the Jaffna District Secretariat.
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Bathiudeen hijacks one more key institution from Swaminathan

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 June 2015, 19:33 GMT]
The EPDP leader and a former SL Minister Douglas Devanada lost control of the affairs of the SL State-run industrial establishments such as the Palmyra Development Board and the Elephant Pass Saltern to the new collaborator of the SL regime in Colombo. The new collaborator, D.M. Swaminathan, who is a Colombo-based Tamil representing the UNP has virtually lost control of his own institutions. Five months have elapsed since the Elephant Pass Saltern was assigned to the SL Minister of Resettlement, Reconstruction and Hindu Religious Affairs. But, his ministry is still not in control of the key institution. The UPFA-affiliated controversial SL Minister Rishad Bathiudeen is controlling the affairs of one of the major industrial entity in North through Maanthai Salt Ltd., which comes under his ministry, civil sources in Jaffna told TamilNet on Tuesday.
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Uprooted Musali Tamils demand lands back, SL Navy ignores Minister Swaminathan

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 May 2015, 20:15 GMT]
Mu'l'ikku'lam has become a strategic point of occupation to the Sri Lankan forces that aim to Sinhalicise and colonise the land and the historic waters of Eezham Tamils. More than 4,500 Eezham Tamil civilians, evicted from Musali division in Mannnaar district in September 2007, are still refused entry to their village by the occupying Sri Lanka Navy, which has changed their village into a military cantonment. On Saturday, SL Minister of Resettlement, Reconstruction and Hindu Religious Affairs D.M. Swaminathan (UNP) was forced to wait in front of the gates of the cantonment called ‘Command Headquarters - North Western Naval Area’ for more than 40 minutes by the occupying Sinhala Navy.
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