Sinhala militarisation expanded in Jaffna contrary to claims: Jaffna Paper

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 June 2012, 23:30 GMT]
Contrary to news reports released by Colombo that it has drastically reduced the number of troops in the North, the occupying Sinhala military in Jaffna peninsula has been stepping up land grab for military purposes in recent days even outside of the so-called High Security Zone and former Forward Defence Lines in the Jaffna peninsula. Uthayan Tamil daily, published in Jaffna, on Thursday broke a front-page story that SL military has begun to appropriate 61 acres of land in the peninsula from the civic bodies and private owners in three divisions. After already grabbing thousands of acres of land, the genocidal SL military has now set afoot to appropriate 35 acres in Thellippazhai division, 24 acres in Jaffna division and 2 acres in Nalloor division of the peninsula.
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SL military confiscates state lands from civic bodies in North

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 June 2012, 14:02 GMT]
As far as Eezham Tamils are concerned, State in the island exclusively means the occupying Sinhala military. This is once again vigorously demonstrated in the North, as the Sinhala military has started confiscating State lands from elected civic bodies in the North at gun point. The Sinhala colonial governor Maj. Gen. GA Chandrasri facilitates the process by appointing Sinhala Government Agents/ Asst. Government Agents in many of the districts in the North and by transferring Tamil officials not cooperating with the land grab for Sinhala colonies and the use of the military. Now the elected civic bodies in Jaffna too are threatened to give up not only State lands but also to agree to confiscation of private lands by the occupying military. Washington and New Delhi have discovered an Israel in the Sinhala State to groom in South Asia.
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Unique temple of Tamil folk heritage found destroyed, desecrated in HSZ in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 May 2012, 05:25 GMT]
A unique temple of Eezham Tamil folk heritage, dedicated to Kooddaththaar, a deity historically worshipped by a soldier guild that got absorbed into the toddy-tapping community, was found destroyed in bombing and its rare bronze idol sawed off and stolen at the Vasanthapuram locality of I’lavaalai in Jaffna. For the last two decades the locality was under the ‘High Security Zone’ (HSZ) of the occupying Sinhala military. Recently, when some fringes of the HSZ were allowed for resettlement, the people of Vasanthapuram returned. Finding their temple destroyed and the deity missing they now worship only the pedestal remaining. Vasanthapuram is where the occupying military has built lines of a few monotype houses for the resettled people and often shows them off to visiting foreign dignitaries as an example of its ‘reconciliation’ efforts.
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Tamil student abducted, killed near SL military zone in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 April 2012, 17:33 GMT]
18-year-old Sivalingam Sivakumaran, a student from Kerudaavil village in Vadamaraadchi North of Jaffna district, was found slain inside a bush, 2 km away from his house on Wednesday. The Tamil student was abducted five days ago, on 13 April after 6:00 p.m., when he had left his house towards the historic Chelvach-channithi temple, according to the family of the victim. The Kerudaavil village is situated along the eastern border of the Valikaamam ‘High Security Zone’ of the occupying SL military. The student has been tortured and killed, the villagers who witnessed the recovery of the dead body told media. In the meantime, Indian parliamentarians were taken to Jaffna Wednesday evening, after being taken on a ‘guided’ tour, which was fully packed with ceremonial events, carefully avoiding interactions with civil representatives in Mullaiththeevu.
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Displacement continues 22 years for coastal people of northern Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 April 2012, 23:14 GMT]
Resettlement Committee of the Displaced Citizens of Valikaamam North (RCDCVN) and Valikaamam North Fishermen Societies Union on Wednesday handed over an appeal addressed to the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa through the SL Government Agent in Jaffna Ms. Imelda Sugumar, reminding the SL president that the people of Valikaamam North, especially those from the coastal villages, have not been allowed to resettle in their own soil for 22 years.
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SLA re-confiscates land ‘declared’ resettled in Jaffna HSZ

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 March 2012, 11:56 GMT]
The Sinhala state occupying the country of Eezham Tamils will never observe any of the ‘reconciliation’ hoodwink it simulates to the outside world. This becomes explicitly evident with the Sri Lanka military re-occupying villages ‘declared’ for resettlement in the Valikaamam High Security Zone, to create an extensive and fenced militarized region along the northern coast of Jaffna, news sources in Jaffna exposed. Several traditional villages of Jaffna in the fertile red-soil belt will be lost forever in the creation of an extensive Sinhala military region in the most strategic and economically important part of the country of Eezham Tamils, and civil officials in Jaffna are gagged to open their mouths on the blatant grab that takes place after showcasing resettlement to the world, news sources further said.
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Human skeletons recovered from well in Valikaamam North

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 February 2012, 16:40 GMT]
Recently resettled civilians in Kollangk-kaladdi of Valikaamam North in Jaffna have located human skeletons inside a well while clearing it for their use, sources in Valikaamam told TamilNet Sunday. A skull was located. But, the number of the recovered skeletons indicates that some of the victims had been decapitated, before they were dumped into the well, the sources said. It is believed that the victims were civilians abducted by the Sri Lanka Army operated squads and those who went to check their properties inside the SLA occupied territory after year 1992, when the SLA seized the village of Kollang-kaladdi.
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Human skeletons found in SLA abandoned locality in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 January 2012, 00:45 GMT]
Skeletons of two persons, allegedly slain by the Sri Lankan military in recent times, have been recovered from an abandoned well near a bund constructed by the occupying Sri Lanka Army in I'lavaalai, Pa'ndaththeruppu situated in Valikaamam in the Jaffna district on Wednesday. Brain parts found inside one of the two skulls indicate that the victims have been slain in recent times, eyewitnesses told TamilNet. The skeletons were located when the villagers were clearing the well at a locality known as Thennanthoappu (cocount palm grove), a place recently vacated by the Sri Lanka Army.
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Missing ITAK representative in Jaffna under ‘investigation’ in Colombo

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 January 2012, 15:22 GMT]
The organizer of Ilangkai Thamizh Arasuk Kadchi (ITAK) in Jaffna city and a former representative of Jaffna University Student Union, Mr. Arnold, has been reported missing after being invited to Colombo by a person yet to be identified. Arnold has been allegedly abducted and subjected to investigations by the Criminal Investigation Department of the Sri Lankan Police in Colombo, informed circles in Jaffna said.
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Protestors force SL military to open cremation ground in HSZ

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 December 2011, 18:51 GMT]
Resettled Tamils in the eastern part of Kaangkeasanthu'rai (KKS) on Tuesday staged a spontaneous protest against the Sri Lanka military demanding the right of the dead to be cremated in their own cremation ground. The protestors threatening to carry the casket of one of their relatives to the cremation ground blocked the main access route of the SL military, demanding the occupying army to open the route to the cemetery. Although the SL military blocked more than a hundred villagers, who attempted to take forward the casket to the cremation ground, the military hierarchy was forced to allow the villagers to reach the cremation ground through an alternative route as the protest lasted for more than 3 hours. The elected TNA members of the civic body in KKS joined the protest, which is described as first of its kind agitation in the SL occupied Jaffna.
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SL military appropriates 54 acres of Palaali Training College

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 December 2011, 20:46 GMT]
Sri Lankan Defence Ministry has set afoot plans for grabbing the lands of Palaali Teachers Training College, one of the two key academic institutions of Tamil teachers in the North, for military purposes. The latest move by Colombo to appropriate the 54 acres of the land situated near the Palaali airport in the High Security Zone and to possibly annex the personnel of the institution with Koappaay training college, has drawn severe reactions from the educationalist and academic circles as well as the civil society in the North.
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‘ICG report fails to cover genocide-intended sexual violence’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 December 2011, 05:42 GMT]
The International Crisis Group report titled ‘Sri Lanka: Women’s Insecurity in the North and East’ that was released on Tuesday touched upon problems faced by the Eezham Tamil women in their homelands at the hands of the occupying Sri Lankan military apparatus. While the report has been welcomed by some for its revelations, Eezham Tamil civil society activists in the homeland, academics and feminists came down heavily on the report for studying the gender problem in isolation without addressing either the national question of the Eezham Tamils or the process of structural genocide, which necessarily includes use of sexual violence, which is being carried out by the Sinhala majoritarian state to crush the Eezham Tamil nation. They also questioned the motives and practical effectiveness of such reports that seek to push the principal contradictions under the carpet.
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SLGA in Jaffna blamed for manipulating statistics of uprooted people from HSZ

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 December 2011, 21:51 GMT]
The Sri Lankan Government Agent in Jaffna, Imelda Sugumar, has gone on record last week drastically reducing the number of uprooted persons from the SL military-occupied High Security Zone in the district, from 66,905 persons of 14,004 families as reported by her secretariat last year, to 36,442 persons of 10,170 families this year. Ms. Sugumar was citing ‘latest figures’ from December 06, 2011. In reality, the resettlement has gone at a snail's pace and there are still around 60,000 people waiting to resettle in their lands still occupied in the name of High Security Zones. The GA and Jaffna SL military commander Maj. Gen. Mahinda Hathurusinghe, in December 2010, went on record arguing that mine-clearance in HSZ area would take another 10 years. One month ago, Mahinda Hathurusinghe was giving the figure of people remaining to be resettled as numbering only around 18,000.
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Students, academics bid farewell to A C Nadarajah

[TamilNet, Friday, 25 November 2011, 08:39 GMT]
Around one thousands people, most of them students and teachers, gathered Thursday to pay their last respects to social activist, educationalist and journalist A C Nadarajah (A S Nadarajah), who passed away at the age of 70 at Urumpiraay in Jaffna. Mr. Nadarajah was the president of Displaced Peoples Association of Valikaamam North and former manager of Jaffna Thinakkural. Through his writings he pioneered an independent initiative which instituted social institutions to help the uprooted people of Vanni.
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Social activist A S Nadarajah passes away in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 November 2011, 05:42 GMT]
Former principal of Vasaavi'laan Central College and former General Manager of Jaffna edition of the Tamil daily Thinakkural, A S Nadarajah passed away in Jaffna on Monday night at the age of 70. He was ailing from cancer and was anticipating death at any time. Yet, even in his last days he was engaged in social work in full swing, especially in reviving educational, social and cultural institutions of his native village Kurumpasiddi, where people are permitted to resettle in parts of the village. But, his more impactful and extensive contributions were in doing charity in Vanni after the war.
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University student leader attacked in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 October 2011, 13:06 GMT]
Suspected Sri Lanka Army intelligence personnel armed with sharp iron rods followed the Jaffna University Student Union leader S. Thavapalasingham in more than 8 motorbikes and attacked him at Kantharmadam in Jaffna seriously wounding the student leader who has been mobilizing students in democratic protests against the grease-devil threat recently. 24-year-old Thavapalasingham has been admitted at the Intensive Care Unit of Jaffna Teaching Hospital. This is the third iron-rod attack on prominent persons of the civil society in Jaffna after the Vanni war. Suresh Premachandran's secretary Ramesh, who now heads the Valikaamam East Piratheasa Chapai (PS) narrowly escaped from the attackers first. Later, in July 2011, the chief news editor of Uthayan daily, Gnanasundaram Kuganathan, was attacked by the motorbike squad.
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Snail pace delivery of houses with Indian assistance, mere 0.1% completed

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 October 2011, 14:38 GMT]
Housing scheme for displaced civilians of North and East, announced by India last year, has failed to deliver, according to Tamil NGO and political circles in Jaffna. India had announced last year that it would construct 50,000 houses for the displaced in the North and East. However, only 53 houses have been constructed so far till October 2011, Tamil NGO sources said. Plans were afoot in Mannaar, Vavuniyaa, Ki'linochchi, Mullaiththeevu and Jaffna in North to construct houses for the war-displaced people. Earlier this year, when asked on the lack of progress of Indian announcement, Indian officials in the island responded that at least one thousand houses will be constructed before the end of 2011. The officials diluted the commitment further indicating that the numbers also included repair of existing houses.
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Aaraip-pattai

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 September 2011, 04:44 GMT]
The thicket of Aarai shrub
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