SL Supreme Court fixes date to hear FR petition by uprooted Maathakal Tamils

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 October 2012, 13:57 GMT]
Two members of the Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court Wednesday fixed the hearing of the Fundamental Rights violation petition filed by six uprooted residents of Maathakal from the Valikaamam division of the Jaffna district for November 12.
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Colombo's militarisation budget to increase by 26%

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 October 2012, 14:58 GMT]
The Sri Lankan Defence Ministry, headed by SL presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, has sought a 26% increase in its military and ‘urban development’ expenditures for the year 2013, news sources in Colombo said. The military expenditure for the year 2012 was 230 billion rupees out of a total budget of 2,220 billion. For the year 2013, out of a total budget of 2,520 billion, the SL defence ministry seeks 290 billion rupees. While the budget increase is 13% the military seeks 26% increase, a double. Meanwhile, a group of international academics pointed out last week that Sri Lanka's expenditure on education is only 1.86% of the GDP, which is the lowest in South Asia and one of the lowest in the world.
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Spy case filed in Tamil Nadu against Pakistani diplomat in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 September 2012, 16:34 GMT]
Amir Zubair Siddiqui, a diplomat in the Pakistan High Commission in Colombo has been accused in a court in Tamil Nadu for his alleged spy activities in India. According to the First Information Report (FIR) filed by the Tamil Nadu Police in a court in Tiruchy, the Pakistani diplomat, through his contacts Haji and Shaji living in Colombo, has employed Thamim Ansari of Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu to supply sensitive information of defence installations in India. The Q Branch of Tamil Nadu police arrested Ansari on Monday, while he was going to the Tiruchy airport to catch the Colombo flight. The DVDs seized from him had defence-related visuals, news reports said.
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Frederica Jansz sacked

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 September 2012, 12:50 GMT]
Frederica Jansz, the editor of one of the last remaining "outspokenly anti-government" English newspaper published in Colombo, was sacked by the new businessman owner when Jansz refused to "curb her style of writing and compromise her credibility," as demanded by the owner, BBC reported. Asanga Seneviratne who is an associate of Sri Lanka's President, Mahinda Rajapakse, had bought a 72% stake in the paper, and had asked Jansz to stop carrying articles critical of the Rajapaksas - several of whom occupy senior government positions, BBC reported.
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‘Sexist cartoons on Tamil Nadu CM reflect Sinhala patriarchal attitude to Tamil women’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 September 2012, 00:03 GMT]
In the garb of criticizing protests in Tamil Nadu against visiting Sri Lankan pilgrims, Lakbima, a mainstream Sinhala daily published two cartoons on Sunday portraying the Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalithaa in a derogatory manner. The libellous cartoons, which targeted Ms. Jayalalitha on the basis of her status as a woman political leader, also targeted the late MGR, former Tamil Nadu CM and popular Tamil cinema icon, and the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. “The sexist nature of these cartoons on a political leader of Tamil Nadu published in a major Sinhala newspaper reflect the patriarchal attitude of the Sinhala state machinery towards Tamil women in general,” commented a feminist working with war survivors in Vanni adding that this attitude manifested itself as genocide-intended sexual violence against Eezham Tamil women by the occupying Sinhala forces in the Tamil homeland.
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Resettlement showcase brings in further miseries to uprooted Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 August 2012, 20:29 GMT]
250 families recently brought to Chivanakar village in Puthukkudiyiruppu (PTK) division of Mullaiththeevu district complain that they have been let down by the SL authorities that rush to vacate the Menik Farm in Cheddiku'lam, Vavuniyaa. Promising the uprooted proper resettlement to the uprooted Tamils in their own village, 141 families were brought from Menik Farm to Chivanakar. Another 101 families who were residing with their kith and kin elsewhere also joined them when their village was announced opened for resettlement. Now, these families are struggling in their own village without any shelter and have sought refuge under the trees. There are no basic facilities. Most of these families, who are below the poverty line, demand at least temporary huts and basic facilities before the rainy season begins in a few weeks from now.
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UN exposes use of cluster munitions in Vanni War

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 August 2012, 23:51 GMT]
The United Nations Mine Action Team, which coordinates the UN agencies engaged in humanitarian de-mining throughout the world, has documented the use of cluster munitions in the Vanni war, informed sources in Mullaiththeevu told TamilNet.
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SL military steps up harassments on ex-LTTE members in Vanni

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 July 2012, 23:30 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army in Vanni has started to pressurize ex-LTTE members, who have been released from SLA imprisonment to present themselves almost on a daily basis at nearby SLA camps to their houses in Vanni, according to information reaching from several villages in Mullaiththeevu and Ki'linochchi districts. The ex LTTE members are also being harassed by the SL military intelligence officers to work for them as underground informants. Earlier, the former Tamil fighters had been instructed to register at nearby SL military camps on a monthly basis. Later, they had to register on a weekly basis, and now they are instructed to show themselves up almost every day. The latest harassments are reported from all the corners of Vanni, especially after a psy-ops military team from Colombo came to Vanni interrogating surveying and harassing the former Tamil fighters recently.
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Gotabhaya schemes ‘Guantanamo Bay’ in Galle

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 July 2012, 21:19 GMT]
Sri Lankan Defence Secretary and SL presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has instructed the SL police to transfer all Tamil political prisoners from the ‘declared’ prisons in the North and East to the notorious Boosa detention camp in the Galle town of the Southern Province, informed sources in Colombo said. The instruction has been given at a meeting convened by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa on 17 July. The Tamil Prisoners of War and political prisoners are going to be further isolated from the outside world. The families of ex-Tiger members and those held under alleged association with the LTTE have expressed fear on the deteriorating security situation of their family members in the custody of the occupying Sri Lankan forces.
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Emerging logistics blueprint of Sri Lanka's White Van operations

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 July 2012, 01:58 GMT]
Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a non-profit litigation and advocacy group based in the U.S., has pieced together an operational blueprint of Sri Lanka's White Van abductions, and the complicity of State Institutions. The blueprint is based on affidavits from surviving abductees, a video deposition from an ex-member of Liberation Tigers who was spared execution at the last moment, information revealed from recent capture of white van abductors in the South, and other circumstantial evidence including open death threats issued by Sri Lanka's Defense Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapakse. TAG concludes that the white van phenomenon is not a random occurrence of isolated events, but a systemic well-organized criminal enterprise carried out by independently operating cells consisting of criminal gangs and military personnel and activated by directives from high level State officials.
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SL military harasses, confiscates ICRC clearance of ex-LTTE members in Vanni

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 July 2012, 18:48 GMT]
A psy-ops squad, operated by SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, has started to ‘interrogate’ and harass former fighters and members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who have been released after the detention and so-called rehabilitation programme. Claiming that they belong to a ‘special CID unit’ from Colombo, the psy-ops squad from Colombo has been picking up former LTTE members and those who have earlier served in in the civil bodies under the LTTE administration, taking them to public places such as schools and harassing them psychologically as well as meting out physical torture on to them. Further, as part of the harassment programme, the military squad has confiscated the release papers issued to the ‘rehabilitated’ LTTE cadres by the ICRC and the International Organisation of Migration (IOM).
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Sri Lanka's descent to dictatorship

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 July 2012, 21:03 GMT]
"...three years after the war ended, human rights groups and opposition leaders warn that the country is descending toward dictatorship, with dissent brutally crushed, the media cowed and the minority Tamils, whose insurrection caused the war in the first place, still treated like second-class citizens," Washington Post said in the Friday edition, adding, "[a]s the scorched earth campaign entered its final stages in 2009, it cost tens of thousands of lives – a U.N. report called for an investigation into war crimes by both sides, accusing the Tigers of using civilians as human shields and the Sri Lankan military of indiscriminate shelling and denying civilians access to humanitarian aid."
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New Delhi grooming Sinhala military needs careful perusal in Tamil Nadu

[TamilNet, Monday, 09 July 2012, 02:11 GMT]
In the wake of reports on New Delhi continuing its training to Sinhala military personnel at a base in Bangalore after transferring them from Chennai following opposition from Tamil Nadu government, the Chief Minister Ms. Jayalalithaa on Saturday said "Tamils want action for war crimes against Sri Lanka. We will not accept the training of Sri Lankan airmen anywhere in India." New Delhi’s obsession with grooming the Sinhala military after being in complicity with it in the genocide of Eezham Tamils needs careful perusal in Tamil Nadu, in the background of mushrooming Sinhala military bases trained against Tamil Nadu, New Delhi pressing for subjugation of Eezham Tamils within a united Sri Lanka model when one party has a genocidal military and the other has none, and in addition, New Delhi currently sitting in the UNHRC monitor group on Sri Lanka, observers said.
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Public land becoming military land is strategy of ICE in the island

[TamilNet, Friday, 06 July 2012, 23:48 GMT]
Converting all public lands or community lands of Eezham Tamils into Sinhala military lands, in the guise of ‘legally’ asserting them as ‘State Land’ of Sri Lanka is the strategy now promoted by the International Community of Establishments (ICE), partnered in the context by India and the USA that are in war with the nation of Eezham Tamils in proving a new order based on State terrorism and genocide, said political observers in Jaffna commenting on the accelerated land and sea appropriations taking place in the country of Eezham Tamils, ‘conquered’ in a genocidal war designed by the said culprits. As genuine Eezham Tamil nationalism would not agree to the grab, the culprits employ the genocidal Sinhala military to do the job, protect it from international indictment and that is why they deny any genocide taking place in the island, the activists further said.
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SL military extends HSZ in Jaffna, evicts resettled people from Kuppuzhaan North

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 June 2012, 23:46 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army in Jaffna has re-confiscated more than 250 acres of land in Kuppuzhaan North in Valikaamam South division of Jaffna district in recent days, evicting resettled families from their land, complain the uprooted families. The Sinhala Army has been putting up permanent concrete fences and has instructed people not to cross the fence. The news of the latest land grab by the SL military and the news of people being evicted again from the resettled areas of the former ‘High Security Zone’, on top of the news that the SL military planting land mines in de-mined areas of Maathakal, have slashed hopes of resettlement among the 40,000 people, who still remain as uprooted people after their eviction from Valikaamam HSZ.
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New Buddhist stupa constructed in Pachchanoor village in Moothoor

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 June 2012, 10:41 GMT]
A Buddhist Vihara has been constructed in Pachchanoor, a village in Moothoor DS division of Trincomalee district, by the Colombo government and its Sinhala Buddhist clergy with the backing of the occupying Sri Lanka Army under the patronage of the SL presidential sibling and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, news sources in Moothoor said.
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Gotabhaya plans psy-ops newspaper in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 June 2012, 23:12 GMT]
Occupying Colombo's defence establishment led-by SL presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa plans to start a daily newspaper with the name ‘Thamizh Naatham’ in Jaffna by appropriating the building and assets of the former daily Namathu Eezhanaadu. The move for the psy-ops war through a new newspaper directly run by the SL military establishment comes in, because of the failure of the EPDP's Thinamurasu and the Jaffna edition of Thinakaran, run by SL government-controlled Lake House of Colombo in winning the hearts of the masses in the country of Eezham Tamils to the satisfaction of the occupiers, informed sources in Jaffna said. In the late 1980s, the occupying IPKF tried a similar move by running a newspaper ‘Viduthalai’ with the backing of the EPRLF.
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Indian casino comes to Colombo

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 June 2012, 15:26 GMT]
Delta Corp, a listed gaming company of India led by Jayadev Mody, has acquired 11 acres of land near Bandaranaike International Airport in Colombo to build a fully integrated entertainment hotel/ resort, the company informed Bombay Stock Exchange. "Sri Lanka, post the end of the three-decade long civil war, is now witnessing a tourism and industrialization boom. Delta Corp hopes to have an early mover advantage and be part of this growth," the company was cited saying by The Economic Times, Monday. Casinos are always a prerequisite in the development of any regional or international hub of economic and social crimes, commented political observers in the island.
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Emerging pattern of SL judicial proceedings needs perusal

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 June 2012, 19:26 GMT]
When gunmen killed the Changkaanai temple priest in 2010, the commander of the occupying Sinhala military in Jaffna, Maj. Gen. Hathurusinghe, first accused former LTTE cadres, later said SL Army gun borrowed from corrupt troops was used by former LTTE carders, and subsequently all the arrested - two SLA personnel and two alleged former militants were released by the courts. A pattern is now seen in producing cases in the courts related to the murder of two Eezham Tamils, a UK deportee and a Canadian citizen in Trincomalee and in Ki'linochchi. Media in Colombo is busy in highlighting the SL prosecution version of personal motivation, once again involving SL military personnel in one case and former militants in the other, to exclude the responsibility of top SL military command.
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US commander, Indian defence minister assure military aid to Gotabhaya in Singapore

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 June 2012, 10:03 GMT]
The Chairman of the US Joint Chief of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, the top most US military commander and Indian Defence Minister A.K. Anthony met genocidal Sri Lanka’s war-crimes-accused Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa behind the screen in Singapore on Tuesday to assure him of their military assistance, especially in the naval field. The high profile meeting took place while Mahinda Rajapaksa was being hosted in London and the US ambassador-designate to Colombo was talking about ‘de-militarisation’ of the north in the island. Singapore Foreign Minister Shanmugam was in Colombo a few days earlier to talk ‘business’. Following the classic British colonial strategy, Sri Lanka, Burma and Singapore are mobilised to meet threats from the East, analysts said.
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