‘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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No infrastructure to take care of floods displaced genocide victims of Vanni

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 December 2011, 06:47 GMT]
11,000 people belonging to 2,556 families have been displaced from the low-lying lands of Ki'linochchi district this week following heavy rain and floods, according to District Secretariat officials in Ki'linochchi. Of these, only 1,443 persons of 349 families have been provided refuge by the SL administration. The remaining families have been struggling to find space with their relatives and friends elsewhere. Most of the ‘re-settled’ victims of genocide were living in temporary huts in the low-lying lands. But, the floods have taken away even their huts while destroying their agricultural produce, the livelihood for which the people had to borrow money from the SL banks. Despite the claims by the SL government that people have been resettled and their infrastructure restored, the district remains roofless to accommodate people affected by the floods, even after two years of the war.
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Building consensus with universal ideology

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 December 2011, 06:02 GMT]
The struggle of Eezham Tamils has to be waged with the strength of unity and consensus in ideology; both in the immediate task of dealing with a three-cornered international struggle in a multipolar world as well as in the long-term universal task of pursuing the Right of Self Determination for nearly a third of the world that is currently denied of it and in the world-wide struggles of the 99 per cent of the peoples in this planet seeking a more equitable world against the one per cent that constitutes today’s globalized Establishments, writes TamilNet Economic and Geopolitical Analyst in the Asia Pacific. The days of alignment with any power are gone in the multipolar world set-up, where the alignments are shifting every now and then though the underlying element among the Globalised Establishments is Cooperation via UN & its agencies, he further writes.
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Eezham Tamil Diaspora activists in UK question SL reconciliation motives

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 December 2011, 00:41 GMT]
While structural genocide continues unabated in the homeland of the Eezham Tamils, certain well funded Sri Lankan NGO’s that harp on peace and reconciliation are steadily pursuing a war by other means on the Eezham Tamil Diaspora. Programmes initiated by organizations like the One Text Initiative, which receives generous funding from foreign donors as well as support from the Sri Lankan state, in the name of ‘engaging with the Sri Lankan diaspora’, are attempting to marginalize the Eezham Tamil diaspora polity that is pushing for international investigation into genocide committed by the Sri Lankan state as well as recognition of their political sovereignty. This agenda was evident from a recent meeting in London where such proponents of reconciliation were challenged by Eezham Tamil activists of various shades.
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Indo-US competition deprives justice to Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 December 2011, 12:12 GMT]
A historical perusal of the long plight of Eezham Tamils would show that a subtle cold war between India and the USA, played over the national question in the island, and their competition to have the dominant nation of Sinhalese on their side, denied justice to the nation of Eezham Tamils at every stage. After leading the matter into an open genocide and on-going structural genocide, the relationship of Tamils with New Delhi or Washington could never be the same again, unless both come to a consensus of delivering justice to Eezham Tamils. Both the powers now pay for their long injustice, as China’s confident entry into Indian Ocean is directly connected to their failure and loss of credibility in the Eezham war. If Tamils siding with India or the USA is vain without delivery of justice, better to collectively opt non-cooperation against both, writes TamilNet political commentator.
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TNA leadership faces admonition from civil society of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 December 2011, 23:50 GMT]
Prominent members of the Tamil civil society of all walks of life presented a memorandum to the Tamil National Alliance leadership on Tuesday, strongly condemning deception and deviatory polity of the leadership while times demand well-defined solutions to a long struggle. The civil society members urged firmness of leadership in political stand in convincing India and the US of the indispensability of addressing fundamentals of the aspirations of Eezham Tamils, i.e., nation and the right to self-determination. Tamils are not a ‘minority’ requesting concessions, but a nation demanding self-rule, the memorandum said. The impressive list of signatories included prominent religious leaders, academics, educationalists, professionals, trade unionists and community leaders. For the first time the TNA leadership faces such an open challenge of the first magnitude from the civil society.
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China announces Indian Ocean naval base in Seychelles

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 December 2011, 01:04 GMT]
China on Monday announced setting up its first naval base abroad at Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.  The former British colony, Seychelles, lies in parallel to the Maldives and the US-British base Diego Garcia in the East, the Somalian coast of Africa in the West, Gulf of Aden/ entrance to the Red Sea in the north, and Indian dominated Mauritius as well as the French colony Reunion in the South. While the Chinese defence ministry announced that its Navy would seek supplies and recuperate facilities through the base, the Seychelles foreign minister said that his country had invited China to set the base to fight against piracy. The base gains significance, as China is about to launch its first aircraft carrier, Hindustan Times said. Tamils are one of the peoples of Seychelles, locally known by the name Malba (from Malabar, a term common to Tamils and Malayalis in colonial vocabulary).
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Criticism mounts on Indian HR record, US media policy

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 December 2011, 06:11 GMT]
“Nothing but a radical shift in economic, security and social policy is needed to meet India's national and international human rights commitments,” said Miloon Kothari, the convenor of Working Group on Human Rights (WGHR) in India, commenting on the latest WGHR review report that presents a very bleak scenario of the actual state of human rights across India, according to The Hindu, Sunday. Meanwhile, several media and rights organisations are currently engaged in a campaign against the US Congress considering a law on censoring the world’s Internet. The US, long criticising China and Iran over Internet, now embarks upon discussing a law far worse that could target You Tube and WikiLeaks, the rights groups said. The rights groups and media in India and the US were virtually silent when the policies of the powers killed a hundred thousand Tamils in a war that kept witnesses away.
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Abductions escalate in North, families urged to approach Co-Chair Ambassadors in Colombo

[TamilNet, Friday, 09 December 2011, 09:51 GMT]
21-year-old Tharsan Kannuchamy, who was earlier released after detention by the Sri Lanka Army following Vanni war, has been reported missing since Monday this week, according to a complaint lodged by his family with the SL Police in Chu'n'naakam in Jaffna. Mr. Tharsan was last seen leaving for work to a shop in Jaffna from Uduvil, where his family has recently settled after living in the nearby town of Chu'n'naakam. SL Police and Red Cross declining to take complaints, helpless human rights workers now advise family members of the abducted to report matters to the Ambassadors of the Co-Chair countries that are accountable to the war and post-war in the island.
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Translate political strength into solution: TNPF’s Kajendren

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 December 2011, 15:46 GMT]
The LTTE left endowing us with enhanced political strength in the international arena. It will be a folly if we don’t know to effectively translate that into political solution addressing to our aspirations, said the Secretary General of the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF), Selvaraja Kajendren, while remembering the slain Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian, N. Raviraj on Wednesday in Jaffna. The present TNA tries to project an image that the Tamils are now weak and they should not demand anything as in the past. This is a wrong projection. It is the political strength and righteousness the LTTE left with us that now makes the IC to poke its nose with seeming sympathy. Their real interests are different, but the space has to be used with firmness and not with naivety on our part, Kajendren said.
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Tension prevails as SLA terrorizes Tamils confronting Sinhala thugs in Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 December 2011, 02:44 GMT]
Scores of Tamils, including women and children, were injured and terrorized by the occupying Sinhala army at Ira'naimadu junction in Ki'linochchi on Tuesday night between 8:00 and 10:30 p.m., following 4 Sinhala thugs were confronted by the local people. Four Sinhala men from South who came to a Tamil shop at Ira'naimadu junction on Tuesday night threatened the shopkeeper and attacked him. When the people of the locality retaliated, the Sinhala men escaped into an SL military camp. Around 30 Sinhala soldiers who came in support of the thugs indiscriminately attacked the people of the locality and all people passing by the junction. The attack continued for nearly two hours.
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Colombo’s colonial rule, TNA and diaspora frustrate people in the Tamil country

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 December 2011, 00:07 GMT]
From allowing blatant burglary and fleecing businesses to harassing people and making money from fabricated petty offences, the Sinhala military, police and officials of occupying Sri Lanka aim to frustrate Tamils to make them leave their country, said a feature by S.M. Thiyagarajah appeared in Tamil media on Saturday. There are deeper political reasons in depriving Tamils of their self-respect and imbibing a feeling of insecurity in them, the article further said. Meanwhile, citing Prof. SK Sitrampalam speaking on Thursday, The Virakesari’s weekly editor V. Thevaraj wrote that Colombo-centric elements in the TNA and collaborative sections in the diaspora disappoint Tamils in the island. Tamils should be united against once again falling into traps by succumbing to collaboration and dearth of leadership, he further said.
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Maathakal protests Sri Lanka’s Naval base

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 December 2011, 23:22 GMT]
A major coastal village Maathakal in Jaffna staged a protest on Monday against occupying Sri Lanka building an extensive naval base there by confiscating private lands of Eezham Tamils. Maathakal is the closest point of Jaffna to Point Calimere (Koadikkarai) in the Tamil Nadu coast across the Palk Strait. The base is a security threat not only to Eezham Tamils but also to Tamil Nadu as well as to India, but New Delhi and Colombo seem to think Tamils on either side of the Palk Strait as ‘common enemies’, commented a geopolitical analyst in Jaffna. In recent times, occupying SL is silently expanding its naval bases in other points of the Palk Bay too, at Kaarainakar, Kayts, Ma’ndaitheevu, Delft and Oora’ni by confiscating private lands. Meanwhile Sri Lanka that has no claim over Bay of Bengal without the country of Eezham Tamils it occupies, is entertained in Indian dominated BIMSTEC.
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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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Norway funds Sri Lanka ministry

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 December 2011, 10:52 GMT]
The Norwegian embassy in Colombo has contributed 18.5 million Rupees to Sri Lanka’s Child Development and Women’s Affairs ministry to improve mobility of Women Development Officers and to display billboards in prominent places, a press release from the Norwegian embassy in Colombo said on Friday. Norway at times had to “buy peace” through aid, observed Norway’s assessment report of the failed peace process released last month, cautioning “Aid may play a supportive role in peace process, but cannot short-circuit complex political processes.” Aid cannot be a substitute for politics, the report further said. But the Norwegian government is now interested in buying inroads into ‘Victor’s Sri Lanka’, forgetting its responsibilities to the victims of its peace process, diaspora political observers said.
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NZ assures support for IC justice and accountability to war victims

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 December 2011, 20:01 GMT]
“New Zealand remains willing to co-operate with the international community in considering appropriate investigative mechanisms to bring justice and accountability to the victims of the Sri Lankan war,” said New Zealand’s foreign minister Murray McCully, on Thursday, in a letter addressed to Tamil Forum in New Zealand. The UNSG panel report is likely to be discussed at the March Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, he further said in the letter.
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Wider public participation marks Heroes Day in Tamil Nadu

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 December 2011, 11:34 GMT]
It became clear on the eve of Heroes Day, Sunday, that ruling circles in India join hands with genocidal Colombo in denying Tamils the right to remember their fallen freedom fighters. Yet the day was observed with a marked positive difference in Tamil Nadu this time. Public and grassroot initiatives replaced political party organized mass gatherings, and there was wider and spontaneous participation of a social cross-section: from workers and farmers to communities in business, education and professions. “If Tamils have contributed anything memorable to human civilization in their contemporary history that was the paradigm-setting stand taken by the Eezham Tamil heroes, defying injustice of all the world Establishments,” commented an 85-year-old Marxist who spent a life time for the communist movement in the diaspora and in the home country, ever since he was 16.
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US-UK axis drags EU into endorsing militarisation of Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 December 2011, 21:12 GMT]
USA and the UK are primarily responsible for endorsing Sri Lanka’s military rule and military solution to the national question of Tamils. Europe is unwillingly manipulated by the US-British axis, says a feedback from a Sinhala reader to the feature “West endorses ethno-military rule, military solution: Tamil civil groups,” appeared in TamilNet, Thursday. The feedback cites the instance that the ‘Friend of Sri Lanka’ EU parliamentarian, Geoferey Van Orden, who went on ‘fact-finding’ to Jaffna and came up with appreciation to Hathurusinghe’s military reconciliation, is actually a Eurosceptic British Conservative Party member who was earlier serving in the British military intelligence corps.
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‘Rehabilitation’ means mental torture in open prison

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 December 2011, 19:18 GMT]
For former liberation fighters and their active supporters who were ‘released’ after the war, the so-called rehabilitation means servitude under SL military and mental torture in open prison, news reports from the SL-occupied country of Eezham Tamils said. The latest sanction against them is that they were warned by the SL military not to try going abroad for any reason. If caught at the airport their lives are not guaranteed, they were told. Instructed to report often to SL military intelligence units, they have been repeatedly told not to talk to media, not to discuss anything with the public and not to attend to any public gatherings. Most of the former liberation fighters are already under mental stress from the ‘brain washing’ sessions before the so-called release. Now they are forced to live a completely isolated life.
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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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