Colombo accelerates Sinhala colonisation in Trincomalee district

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 March 2013, 13:23 GMT]
The SL government is actively engaged in settling Sinhalese families from the Southern districts of the country in Sri Mangalapura, a Sinhala village in the Seruwila electorate in the Trincomalee district. Temporary huts are hurriedly constructed in Sri Mangalapura to accommodate hundreds of southern Sinhalese families brought to Trincomalee district, news sources in Trincomalee said. Tamil civil sources say this is an attempt by the Colombo government to change the demography of the Trincomalee district.
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‘US resolution annihilates aspiration of Eezham Tamils’: Tamil Nadu writer

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 March 2013, 00:43 GMT]
Criticizing the pro-LLRC US resolution passed at Geneva, Tamil Nadu based writer, activist and poet, Meena Kandasamy argues that “Carrying out the diktats of such a document will only annihilate the genuine aspirations and right to self-determination of the Eelam Tamils” basing her argument on the fact that the LLRC categorically denies the existence of a Tamil homeland in the North and East of the island of Sri Lanka. Criticizing both the US and India for abetting the genocide of the Eezham Tamil nation, she further states “Justice in this unipolar world revolves around the UN and the imperialist powers that it serves. Even though the Eelam Tamils have historical sovereignty and earned sovereignty, if they believe that separation alone can guarantee them safety, their last recourse to save themselves from complete extermination is to stake a claim to remedial sovereignty before the UN.”
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Geneva resolution will impede progress: NYT

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 March 2013, 20:42 GMT]
The Human Rights Council voted once again to urge the Sri Lankan government to investigate “alleged violations of human rights” for the growing evidence that government soldiers killed tens of thousands of civilians in their bloody campaign to crush the LTTE. "But as with last year’s resolution, this year’s Council vote offers little more than hand-wringing," an opinion column in the New York Times said, adding, "[w]hile they carry symbolic weight, such resolutions may, in fact, be impeding progress rather than facilitating it."
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New US Secretary of State responsible for Geneva injustice: Boyle

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 March 2013, 15:15 GMT]
The New US Secretary of State John Kerry, who assumed office on 1 Feb 2013, was the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations in 2009 that brought out a report advising the USA to help Sri Lanka’s military without insisting on political solutions. Finding a clear link between the 2009 Kerry Report and Kerry’s State Department, US Professor of Law, Francis A Boyle said, "The callous and callow Kerry Report came right after the GOSL genocidal massacre of about 100,000 Tamils in Vanni, recommending that the United States government abandon all principles and instead aid and abet the continued GOSL repression and persecution of the Tamils. That is precisely the policy we now see in operation with Kerry as U.S. Secretary of State. This latest UNHRC Resolution sponsored by Kerry’s State Department and acting pursuant to his instructions proves it. Kerry should be fired," said Boyle.
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95 Tamil girls ‘alter’ the image, says 300,000 strong Sinhala military

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 March 2013, 14:09 GMT]
The 300,000-strong genocidal Sinhala military of Sri Lanka on Thursday took ‘pride’ in recruiting for the first time 95 Tamil girls for ‘office’ work and said that it is an evidence for the military not discriminating on ethnicity. Out of 150 Tamil girls who were originally forced to enter Sri Lanka’s military, 55 managed to escape. During the ‘training,’ around 20 driven to the stage of hysteria were admitted in hospital. The Tamil psychiatry doctor who came forward to their help himself was branded as mentally challenged. He is imprisoned and yet to be released. On the passing out parade day, four of the girls fainted, while their kith and kin were helplessly watching. Promises were made for one million rupees housing aid and 44 girls received Indian-made scooters, but parents complained that their daughters, held against their will, are not allowed to visit homes.
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Australia's vote at Geneva raises questions

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 March 2013, 19:53 GMT]
While rights group and Tamils dismissed the US resolution passed in the UNHRC sessions in Geneva as toothless and as allowing space to Colombo to continue with the structural genocide of Tamils, Australia was reluctant to endorse even this resolution, and voted at the last minute because of "concerns it would offend the ruling Rajapaksa brothers," Australia's ABC news reported quoting executive director of the New York based rights group Human Rights Watch [HRW], Kenneth Roth. "It is pretty clear Australia's policy toward Sri Lanka is the asylum seeker tail wagging the bilateral dog," Roth said.
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Time to wage next stage of struggle

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 March 2013, 07:13 GMT]
The Eezham Tamil grassroot may have to bring in new leadership that has faith in people’s power; that has the ability to mobilise people’s power; that gets its power from the people and that invites the ‘diplomats’ to come to it rather than going to them. Never forget that non-cooperation is an effective way of democratic struggle, especially in struggles facing imperialism. With confidence coming from the Tamil Nadu upsurge to embark on a new genre of struggle, Eezham Tamils should know converting the solidarity into a joint people’s power rather than detracting it or hijacking it. The Tamil Nadu upsurge cannot be silenced like the defeatists silencing the diaspora uprising. New Delhi and Washington may brush aside the upsurge by adamantly passing an empty resolution. But the effects of the upsurge are already showing and it depends on how the struggle is going to be led further.
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Genocidal double talk by India, US - Prof. Boyle

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 March 2013, 01:46 GMT]
Professor Francis A. Boyle, an expert in international law, called the statements made by the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, and by India's ambassador to the U.N., Dilip Sinha, after the adoption of the US resolution on Sri Lanka in the Geneva sessions of the UNHCR, as "genocidal double-talk," pointing out the "blatant hypocrisy" in praising a resolution that looked at Colombo to implement the recommendation of its local "truth" commission. While rights groups and Tamils demanded an "international" investigation into the killings in Mu'l'l'vaaykkaal, leaked U.S. State Department memos had earlier revealed US officials acknowledging the futility of local investigations when culpability for the war-crimes pointed at Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse and his siblings.
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Unprecedented demonstration in Tamil Nadu denounces empty resolution at Geneva

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 March 2013, 03:29 GMT]
Several hundreds of thousands people across Tamil Nadu took to streets on Wednesday in a students-led demonstration unprecedented in recent decades in Tamil Nadu, denouncing the US-tabled empty resolution further diluted by New Delhi at Geneva, and demanding international investigations and plebiscite on the question of Eezham Tamils. Peaceful demonstrations took place at every part of Tamil Nadu, including all the major cities. Conservative estimates put the total number of participants, mostly students, at a million. The positions taken by Washington and New Delhi, the leading architects and abetters to the genocidal war in the island, in bringing out a deceptive resolution at Geneva have contributed immensely to the confirmed awareness among the people of Tamil Nadu that Tamil Eelam is the only solution to the genocide-affected Eezham Tamils, political observers in Chennai commented.
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India to build and launch satellites for genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 March 2013, 03:04 GMT]
India is likely to initiate discussions with Sri Lankan authorities on bilateral cooperation in space-related activities, including building, launching and operating satellites, said The Hindu on Thursday, citing New Delhi’s Government sources. The move is to counter Chinese–Sri Lankan collaboration in the area of space, as a Sri Lankan firm is likely to launch a communication satellite with Chinese help in 2015, The Hindu further said.
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Indian intelligentsia led by The Hindu, CPI-M, failed Tamils: Thirumurugan

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 March 2013, 04:23 GMT]
Talking about the two sides of Indian intelligentsia, and from where the struggle in Tamil Nadu is gaining its ideological support, Mr Thirumurugan Gandhi of the May 17 Movement said, the Indian intelligentsia that is mostly Left-orientated and goes with the CPI-M has failed Tamils in the past. The CPI-M, for its information, depends on The Hindu or NGOs like the Observer Research Foundation that is liaising between the Establishments in Colombo and New Delhi, said Mr Thirumurugan in an exclusive interview to TamilNet in last November.
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Conscious inequity: The Hindu’s “Mindless solidarity”

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 March 2013, 01:28 GMT]
As the peoples’ mobilisation in Tamil Nadu is surging up to question the junta of the Establishments that was ultimately responsible for the genocide and on-going genocide of Eezham Tamils, The Hindu that played a leading part in the media game seems to be ‘missing’ the LTTE. “With the terrorist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam no longer in the picture, large sections of the people in Tamil Nadu have begun to openly sympathise with the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka,” said the editorial of The Hindu titled “Mindless solidarity” on Tuesday. The Hindu, perhaps because of its base in Chennai and perhaps because it represents the interests of a particular class (not exactly caste) suffers from the defect of cat’s eye view when it comes to the question of Eezham Tamils, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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Kapila Jeyasekara, alleged killer of Trinco-5 students, appointed Vanni DIG

[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 March 2013, 10:16 GMT]
H.D.K.S. Kapila Jeyasekera, who rose in ranks as the Superintendent of Police (SP) from the Special Task Force (STF), and who was alleged to have been responsible for the extra-judicial execution of five Trincomalee students in 2006, and other killings in Trincomalee during 2006, including the ACF-17 killings, has been appointed as the Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) to the Ki'linochchi and Mullaiththeevu district, Jaffna Tamil daily Uthayan reported. Mr Jeyasekara is also a close ally of Sri Lanka's Defense Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, and has been kept out of visible public presence after Jeyasekera was accused of a serious security lapse involving India's Prime Minister during his visit to Colombo in 2008.
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Commonwealth's quandary over CHOGM in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 March 2013, 21:25 GMT]
If the Commmonwealth Head of States Meeting (CHOGM) were held in Colombo this November, "what’s at stake is the reputation of the Commonwealth...," and, as the host, "it [Commonwealth] will be led by a country that committed war crimes on a scale that the UN says, "represented a grave assault on the entire regime of international law,"" says Francis Harrison, a former reporter for the BBC in Colombo. Canada’s Harper has said he will not attend a Colombo meeting, UK's key foreign affairs committee has recommended the Prime Minister not to attend, and there is wide speculation that the Queen will not attend.
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USA continues to harp on implementing Sri Lanka's LLRC

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 March 2013, 13:21 GMT]
Seeing a ‘broad spectrum of recommendations’ in the so-called Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) of Sri Lanka, the delegation representing the USA at the UPR review sessions of the UN Human Rights Council on Friday continued to harp on Sri Lanka's own LLRC, avoiding any reference to international investigations on Sri Lanka. The US position was only differeniating between the internal mechanisms of Sri Lanka, namely the National Action Plan and the LLRC.
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Colombo executing structural genocide, not reconciliation - Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 March 2013, 11:54 GMT]
Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the President of the Tamil National People's Front, in a discussion with Phil Miller of "Open Democracy" in Geneva, criticized the language of "reconciliation" promoted by British officials and asserts that “structural genocide, not reconciliation, is the phrase which most accurately describes what is going on,” and adds that “[t]he land grab is not peculiar to this [Rajapakse] regime. It has been happening for the last 65 years. The only time it stopped was during the armed struggle of the LTTE, because then Sinhalese people were not willing to settle in the north and east, where a de-facto Tamil state existed."
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UNHRC, CHOGM, Regime Change: people’s power has no substitute

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 March 2013, 07:26 GMT]
A drama has been carefully executed by all in the game ultimately guilty of crimes and detract the question of Eezham Tamils: first by giving hope and by deploying agents among Tamils that something serious in ‘procedure’ is going to take place, so that any righteous Tamil mobilisation in the island and in the diaspora could be diffused; then by pointing to New Delhi competing in the crime so that the political parties fixed and the gullible in Tamil Nadu would be facilitators, and finally by tabling a mischievous resolution so that whether it is passed or not passed it would favour the genocidal State and regime in Sri Lanka, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo, welcoming the youth uprising in Tamil Nadu and adding that there is no substitute to people’s power in altering the machinations.
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Rajapaksa ad says Tamils are happy about IA at Hambantota

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 March 2013, 16:26 GMT]
While even the flights to India from the Palaali airport became non-operational for the last 35 years, a newspaper advertisement of Colombo government in Sinhala this week showed a person dressed as a Tamil father, standing against a background of palmyra palms, telling that he is ‘happy’ about the Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport at Hambantota, since his son has found a job there. When the Sinhalese workforce brought from the South are grabbing every single job in new infrastructure projects in the North-East and while the Tamil lands are kept under military occupation, the state propaganda paints a picture of a 'Happy Tamil' who even manages to get jobs at the development projects in the deep south, commented media sources in the island.
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Commonwealth day brings to focus war crimes, Sri Lanka, CHOGM

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 March 2013, 11:14 GMT]
Canada's Liberal leader Bob Rae, Former Conservative foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Labour's former foreign secretary, David Miliband, and Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, Douglas Alexander, in statements made on the Commonwealth Day, and speaking to news media called for focus on the war-crimes committed in Sri Lanka and joined the opposition to having the Commonwealth Head of Government Meeting (CHOGM) held in Sri Lanka this November.
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Colombo deploys former LTTE members to twist opposition to US resolution

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 March 2013, 07:32 GMT]
While the Tamil Nadu students in an unprecedented international approach have risen up targeting the hollow resolution tabled by the USA at Geneva, and have come out with 9 demands addressed to New Delhi and Tamil Nadu governments, Colombo engineering an ironical twist to the Tamil uprising, organised a simulated anti-resolution demonstration in Vanni on Tuesday directed by the Sinhala military with the forced participation of former LTTE members, who are now kept as farm labourers by the military. The demonstration was scheduled to take place in Ki’linochchi and Mullaiththeevu by placing the detained former LTTE members in the forefront, followed by public passers-by who were detained for this purpose by the SL military on Tuesday morning. But, the plan flopped and the SL military had to bring in Sinhalese from Mannaar in 3 buses to stage the demonstration in Ki'linochchi.
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