Law to take over private lands in Tamil Homeland

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 December 2011, 12:09 GMT]
Whilst the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) has been in the past taking over lands in the Tamil Homeland under the guise of High security Zones (HSZ) they have now surreptitiously introduced a Bill in the Parliament to amend the ‘Town and Country Planning Ordinance’ in an effort to take over even private lands belonging to Tamils in Tamil dominated areas under various religious and historical pretexts, writes a legal practitioner and human rights activist in the Eastern Province.
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West endorses ethno-military rule, military solution: Tamil civil groups

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 December 2011, 11:39 GMT]
Civil society organisations in the country of Eezham Tamils are enraged at foreign diplomats visiting their country confining the purposes of the visits primarily to meeting the commanders of the occupying Sinhala military but not the civil society. While genocidal Sri Lanka conjures ’normalcy’ has come to Tamils, the gesture of these diplomats is a tacit endorsement to the ethnic-shaded military rule and military solution. Those who delay international justice, sit on international responsibilities, and talk about ‘domestic’ solutions are not honest. They only mean ‘remote controlled’ military solution, and that is what in the minds of the core sections of the Establishments that deploy cosmetic talk of human rights as a cover, the civil groups accused. They are particularly enraged at the conduct of the US, UK and EU diplomats.
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Abducted university student released

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 November 2011, 15:29 GMT]
Jaffna University Siddha Medicine student, Vetharaniyam Latheesh, who was feared abducted by the occupying Sri Lanka’s military on the Heroes Day evening, Sunday, at Thirunelveali in Jaffna, was released on Monday evening after being taken to a notorious military intelligence outfit directly operated by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa in Vavuniyaa. The release of Latheesh became possible as some Western embassies in Colombo showed interest in his case, news sources in the island said. Jaffna University students, who were harassed by the SL military after a torch was lit atop the university hostel on the Heroes Day, felt relieved and optimistic at the gesture of the international community, university circles said.
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Solheim hijacks thrust of Norway report

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 November 2011, 03:39 GMT]
Norwegian minister Erik Solheim, while speaking in Oslo 11 November at the release of the report evaluating Norway’s failed peace process in Sri Lanka, tried to hijack the philosophical thrust of the findings of the report and this brought him into confrontation with the evaluation team leader, Gunnar M. Sørbø. Mr. Erik Solheim tried to defend the main criticism in the report and the stand of Sørbø that Norway should have quit the peace process to signal the world of the impending dangers. Arguing that nobody expected a military solution succeeding, Solheim painted the picture of a star-crossed and epic-style tragedy that everyone has to be now contended with in a philosophical way, and said that the stand of Sørbø was ‘arrogant’. Solheim’s speech made Sørbø to remind that the issue was of life and death and Norway should have had contingencies ready.
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Fonseka verdict signals trend to come out of LLRC

[TamilNet, Friday, 18 November 2011, 16:51 GMT]
Colombo High Court Bench on Friday convicted Sri Lanka’s former military commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka to three years rigorous imprisonment for him alleging that the SL President’s brother and defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa had ordered the execution of surrendering LTTE officials in the white flag incident. Fonseka was found guilty of “spreading rumours and causing public disorder.” His rigorous imprisonment may mean that he should perform manual labour in prison. Fonseka’s conviction signals what directions the LLRC findings and following actions might take, commented political observers in Colombo. “This conviction happens under a dictatorship,” Fonseka told the court rejecting the verdict. "People will rise against this judgement and only then will the independence of the judiciary be restored," he added.
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Maldives defence minister visits Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 October 2011, 05:04 GMT]
Maldivian Defence Minister, Thalhath Ibrahim Kaleyfaanu, visited Sri Lanka’s occupying Army in the country of Eezham Tamils in Jaffna on Wednesday. His visit follows Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed’s unhindered support to genocidal Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa in shielding the latter from international war crimes investigation. The ‘hundred per cent Islamic country’ Maldives in recent times has entered into a number of agreements with Israel, the secret protocols of which are yet to be known to the public. However, the new friendship and the lease of one of the islands to Israel for ‘agricultural development’ are much talked about in Maldives. The support of US Asst Secretary of State Robert Blake to Nasheed’s Maldives in the international organisations is not without reason, political observers say.
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Sri Lanka organises sea-paramilitary to attack Tamil Nadu fishermen

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 October 2011, 21:40 GMT]
Calling themselves ‘Somalian pirates’ a sea-paramilitary created and deployed by Sri Lanka’s Navy is intensifying its mid-sea attacks on Tamil Nadu fishermen in the waters of the Palk Bay, Gulf of Mannaar and off the southern tip of India, news sources in Jaffna said. Largely Sinhalese from the south, along with a Tamil gang inducted by the SL Navy from Koddadi, a coastal locality near military occupied fort of Jaffna city, man the paramilitary. SL Navy has given military training to this outfit. A Sri Lankan minister is also suspected to be involved in the operation. Several lakhs worthy of fish catch of the fishing fleets of Tamil Nadu is routinely seized after attack by this paramilitary getting inside Indian waters, while the SL Navy holds off the fishing fleets along the maritime boundary. One such attack took place while the Indian foreign secretary was visiting Jaffna on Sunday.
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Blake wooed genocidal Sri Lanka Army to help Afghan war

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 October 2011, 09:30 GMT]
Within months of a war masterminded to end in the genocide of Eezham Tamils, the US Asst Secretary of State Robert Blake wooed the genocidal Sri Lanka Army’s help in the US-led war in Afghanistan, reveals a Wikileaks document. In a meeting that took place in Colombo on 8th December 2009 with SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, “Blake raised the possibility of Sri Lanka contributing to U.S.-led coalition operations in Afghanistan, noting that would be a significant step in support of improving military-to-military engagement,” briefs a classified cable of the US embassy in Colombo. Citing Muslim sentiments and ire of Islamic organizations, Gotabhaya avoided committing on any direct involvement, but he came out with an alternative for Sri Lanka providing covert training assistance in Afghanistan through NGOs and Private Military Companies.
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“We deployed DPU teams inside safe zone”: Rajapaksa confided to US envoy in May 2009

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 September 2011, 21:43 GMT]
During the final days of the genocidal war in Vanni when the international community was repeatedly urging Colombo to cease attacks on the ‘safe zone’, the SL President and Commander-in-Chief of the SL armed forces Mahinda Rajapaksa admitted to a top US envoy that his military had deployed Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) missions, also known as Deep Penetration Units (DPU) inside the so-called safe-zone to “organize people to breach the LTTE earth bunds.” Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa has ‘confidentially’ shared this military secret to Charge d'Affaires of the US embassy James R. Moore, while holding a meeting with Co-Chair Ambassadors in Colombo, barely two week before Colombo massacred thousands of civilians and claimed military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
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Blake's bona fides to deliver Tamil justice questioned

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 September 2011, 09:12 GMT]
Robert Blake, U.S. assistant secretary of State for South Asia, and former Ambassador to Sri Lanka and India, is widely known to be the architect of the U.S. policy on Sri Lanka which has resulted in Sri Lanka's massacre at Mu'l'livaaykkaal where more than 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed. Key activists in the Tamil diaspora are increasingly convinced that Tamils are unlikely to obtain justice and accountability under Blake's tenure where Blake is forced to face challenges to provide sustenance to his Sri Lanka policy - a policy which requires accommodating Rajapakse rule amid soaring rights violations, continuing structural genocide of Tamils and an authoritarian governance where war victims are further subjected to State sanctioned military violence.
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SL 'grease devils’ in Jaffna target uprooted Vanni families

[TamilNet, Friday, 09 September 2011, 06:52 GMT]
While news reports from the East earlier this week said that the Sri Lanka Army in Batticaloa has been harassing the families of former LTTE members, including those who had left the movement 20 years ago, reports from different areas in the Jaffna peninsula indicate that the SL military operated ‘grease devils’ and ‘abduction units’ in the peninsula have been increasingly targeting uprooted families from Vanni, who have settled themselves in the Jaffna peninsula after the Vanni war. Amidst the tension and chaos created by ‘grease devils’, reports of children being abducted are on the increase, civil activists in the peninsula said.
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Using ‘grease devils’ Colombo sets next stage of militarisation

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 September 2011, 06:36 GMT]
Citing ‘grease devils,’ Sri Lanka occupying the country of Eezham Tamils sets the next stage of its militarisation by creating a ‘civil’ paramilitary that will be formally led by SL minister Mr Douglas Devananda, but actually ‘steered’ by the commander of the occupying forces, Maj. Gen. Hathurusinghe and the colonial governor Maj. Gen. Chandrasri. Openly accusing SL government and SL military for staging ‘grease devil’ attacks on Tamils and Muslims, the demonstrating Jaffna University students on Tuesday called upon the attention of the International Community. But the kind of International Community we see sitting on the world today will only be happy to receive more military lessons from Gotabhaya and ‘Asian Nobel’ laureate Hathurusinghe on how to use devil strategy for militarisation, commented a civil rights activist in Jaffna.
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Jaffna University students agitate against ‘grease devils’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 September 2011, 05:45 GMT]
Openly accusing Sri Lanka government and its military for staging the ‘grease devil’ attacks on Tamils and Muslims of the North and East, and especially their women, the agitating students of the University of Jaffna called upon the International Community to take note of what is happening. More than a thousand students of the university with full support of the Teachers Union and Employees Union of the university staged the demonstration on Wednesday. Even animals resist when they are attacked, but we don’t have even that freedom against the cowardice ‘grease devils’ set by SL government with ultimate intentions of continued genocide, the demonstrators raised voices. It was a major demonstration in Jaffna in the last couple of years, news sources said.
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Grease devils – a new military phenomenon unleashing State terror in NE: JDS

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 September 2011, 06:42 GMT]
The Journalist for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), a media organisation of exiled group of Journalists from the island, Thursday said that the introduction of so-called grease devils was nothing but “a new military phenomenon to instil a chilling fear psychosis among the Tamil and Muslim communities living in and around their traditional homelands of North and East” and to unleash “a full-scale State-terror to curtail their collective rights”.
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Blake will draw blank if truth not recognized

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 August 2011, 01:57 GMT]
The US Asst Secretary of State Robert Blake visits Sri Lanka this week, following Indian Foreign Minister Krishna telling the Parliament that what bothered the island for the last three decades was nothing but ‘terrorism’ and the solution confines to material ‘rehabilitation’ of Tamils and political ‘build up’ of the defunct 13th Amendment. Blake spoke to diaspora groups in the US before his visit. The engagement of India and the USA with the island is meaningless if it is not based on the recognition of the truth that the issue in the island is a national question, the war waged there had chronic genocidal intentions on the part of the Sri Lankan State and the military that now occupies the country of Eezham Tamils is in actuality not a State military of international norms but a genocidal Sinhala military, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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Tamil Nadu Congress MP agrees with Gotabhaya

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 August 2011, 04:22 GMT]
There is no need for any more solution as the 13th Amendment is already there, said Gotabhaya Rajapaksa in giving an interview to Headlines Today this month. Speaking in the Rajya Sabha, Thursday, Tamil Nadu Congress parliamentarian Dr EM Sudharshana Natchiappan agreed with Gotabhaya. “In the latest booklet released by their [Sri Lanka] Defence Ministry a humanitarian analysis is given. In that also they have accepted the Thirteenth Amendment. Why I am stressing on the Thirteenth Amendment again and again is because there is a new thinking in the policy makers that they have to go beyond the Thirteenth Amendment. This is the policy followed by all the parties including BJP after Rajiv Gandhi. What he had laid as a foreign policy for Sri Lanka is to have the Thirteenth Amendment implemented in toto, so that there is peaceful settlement,” Natchiappan said.
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AIADMK, opposition walkout after Krishna’s statement in Rajya Sabha

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 August 2011, 12:33 GMT]
Both the main political parties of Tamil Nadu, AIADMK and DMK, as well as most of the opposition parties in the Rajya Sabha of the Indian parliament walked out on Thursday, disappointed by the statement made by the Indian Foreign Minister SM Krishna on Sri Lanka. On the issue of war crimes, Krishna said that India would wait for the tabling of the UN panel report in a UN forum to take a stand on the issue. This is because, “questions still remain” on the report, he said. On the killings of Tamil Nadu fishermen by Sri Lanka’s Navy, the Foreign Minister of the power aspiring for permanent representation in the UN Security Council said: “We have limitations in acting on the fishermen issue. If you have more details give it to me and I will investigate.”
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3 Sinhala ‘intruders’ reported missing in Muslim town in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 August 2011, 16:09 GMT]
A combined search operation has been launched by the Sri Lanka Army and Sri Lanka Police to trace three Sinhalese persons who are reported to be missing in Muslim dominated Kaathankudy in Batticaloa district during disturbances over the ‘grease devil’ scare. The disappearance of three persons suspected to be ‘grease devils’ is alleged to have taken place in Paalamunai village Friday night when they fled and sought refuge in a police station located in Karbala village. Thereafter SL police personnel and SLA soldiers had rushed to the area and attacked youths who were passing through Beach Road and Goodwin Junction and also damaged houses, shops, and vehicles.
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USA to conduct joint exercise with genocidal Air Force of Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 August 2011, 05:44 GMT]
The Pacific Air Command of the US Air Force will be conducting a joint air exercise with the Air Force of Sri Lanka, involving the bases at Ratmalana in Colombo and Ampaa’rai in the Eastern Province, media reports from Colombo said. Royal Australian Air Force, Royal Malaysian Air Force, and the Bangladesh Air Force also will participate in the exercise. The Air Force of Sri Lanka is accused of specific instances of war crimes against Eezham Tamils in the UN panel report. While talk of human rights and crimes against humanity is dubiously manipulated by some powers for their political benefits, their defence establishments and intelligence agencies are all out to promote militarism of genocidal Sri Lanka for their strategic benefits, political analysts in the island said.
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Gotabhaya thinks giving into war crimes allegations will have no end

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 August 2011, 23:40 GMT]
Responding to war crimes allegations will not work, confronting them will only work, seems to be the orientation of Rajapaksa regime as implied by a comment of SL presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, who reacted to Tuesday’s The Hindu editorial, saying "it seemed fresh charges would be levelled as soon as we responded to existing allegations". Addressing a symposium on ‘post-war’ challenges at BMICH, Colombo the SL defence secretary said that he would stand by what he had said on rejecting the rape allegations on the SL Army, citing the safe treatment of a UK national “so attractive” in the custody of the SL Army, The island reported Thursday. The Hindu in its editorial said that for this statement alone Gotabhaya should be taken to task.
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