Unemployed Tamil graduates stage protest in SL militarized Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 December 2011, 18:13 GMT]
Hundreds of unemployed Tamil graduates Friday held a protest in front of the office of the SL Colonial Governor of Northern Province Maj. Gen (retd) G.A.Chandrasiri demanding immediate employment and condemning the lethargic attitude of the Colombo government in providing employment opportunities to the graduates in the North. The demonstration commenced from Va'n'nai Perumaa'l Kovil the city of Jaffna went through Stanley Road and Kandy Road to the final destination in Chu'ndukuzhi where the SL Governor’s Secretariat is located. Around 500 unemployed graduates participated in the protest. No government appointments are made in the North between 2005 till 2010, the protesters complained.
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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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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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Whether history is different to Tamils and Sinhalese, asks Jaffna academic

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 November 2011, 06:38 GMT]
A single event that took place in the University of Jaffna on the Heroes Day, Sunday, has captivated the minds of Tamils all over the world, more than the diaspora functions marked by ever increasing participation of people but in some instances showing hijack aimed at dividing, capturing and ‘softening’ the struggle by the very forces against whom the spirit of the Day was meant for. Amidst all the oppression against the Day, by genocidal Sri Lanka backed by imperialism especially the Indian one, unidentified people lit the Heroes Day flame atop a tall building in the Jaffna University to shine like a star of hope. The Sinhala brethren should understand the event in the same vein of they take pride in Sri Sumangala hoisting the lion flag in Dalada Maligawa even after the British conquest of Kandy, an academic in Jaffna said.
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‘Tamil Sovereignty Cognition Declaration a conceptual reference point’

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 November 2011, 18:59 GMT]
The Tamil Sovereignty Cognition declaration released this year on Heroes Day would serve as a ‘conceptual reference point’ in ensuring that Tamil sovereignty is never compromised, writes RM Karthick, research scholar at a British university, in an article published in Countercurrents, an Indian on-line journal. “It is naivety to expect anything democratic from a unitary state of Sri Lanka,” he argues drawing parallels between the observations by the military analyst and senior editor late Mr. Sivaram Dharmeratnam with the Declaration and the video messages released by the second generation activists on Sunday. “The declaration conceptually challenges the ‘monopoly of truth’ that Lanka and its friends claim to wield in defending their unitary state, through its concise elucidation of the three types of sovereignties that the Tamils can lay claim to namely historical, earned and remedial.”
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Anuradhapura Tamil prisoners receive attack as ‘Heroes Day present’

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 November 2011, 06:19 GMT]
A group of Sinhala prison officials who entered the Anuradhapura prison on Sunday asked Tamil political prisoners in remand, numbering around 65, to come out as they wanted to give ‘presents’ for them on the Heroes Day. Realising the sarcasm, when the prisoners refused to come out, they were forcibly brought out to an open ground where they were made naked and were severely beaten up by the prison guards. Five of them who were seriously injured are admitted in the Anuradhapura hospital. Even though there were many others too who got injured, they were not taken to hospital. The Tamil political prisoners were recently arrested from the Vanni districts and they are kept at Anuradhapura without any cases being filed.
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Tamil activists assert sovereignty, declare for plebiscite

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 November 2011, 11:09 GMT]
Leading Tamil activists of the younger generation in Tamil Nadu, Canada, USA and Switzerland, came out with a declaration on Sunday for an international decision to conduct and monitor a plebiscite among the people of North and East descent in the island, in the diaspora and among the refugees in India and elsewhere, in order to decide on the creation of an independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam. The activists asserted sovereignty of Eezham Tamils on three counts: historical, earned and remedial. They also declared that international players should stop insisting on united Sri Lanka and drop pretensions of ‘domestic solutions’. Further declarations upheld symbols and expressions of the struggle, urged recognition of all those who laid down their lives for the liberation cause and called upon coordinated global action by democratic forces.
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SL Police ‘fixes’ Moothoor murder crime on Tamil Veddahs

[TamilNet, Saturday, 26 November 2011, 15:05 GMT]
Two Tamil males with Veddah background were arrested by the Sri Lankan Police in Champoor Friday evening allegedly for the crime of killing the teacher Miss Kurukulasingham Srivathanion on Thursday. The SL police has allegedly ‘fixed’ the crime, which took place within 200 meters from a Sri Lanka Army post and between two SLA camps while the Tamil teacher was on her way to Paaddaa'lipuram government school from Kaddaipa'richchaan.
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Exposing SLA temple sanctions to BBC brings in attack on house in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 26 November 2011, 11:02 GMT]
Attackers believed to be from the Sri Lanka Army opened fire and lobbed grenade and petrol bomb on the house of the head of the civic council (Piratheasa Chapai) of Kaarainakar, Mr Anaimukan Velayutham, a TNA member and a leading trader in Jaffna in the early hours of Saturday, causing minor injuries to his aged mother. The attack comes hours after an interview by Mr. Anaimukan to BBC Tamil, Friday evening, in which he exposed that the occupying SLA had instructed temples in his civic division not to toll bells, not to light torches and to cease any use of loudspeakers during the Heroes Day observation week. His house situated in Thirunelveali in Jaffna was attacked by 1:30 a.m., Saturday. Mr. Anaimukan when contacted by journalists in Jaffna on Saturday condemned the attack and said whoever the attackers were, he was not going to allow himself to get threatened by such acts.
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Young female Tamil teacher killed in Moothoor East

[TamilNet, Thursday, 24 November 2011, 12:51 GMT]
The body of a Tamil teacher aged 25 with cut injuries on her head was discovered from a shrub in Moothoor east Thursday morning by the Moothoor Police on a tip off from members of public. She had been a teacher at Paaddaa'li-puram Government Tamil Mixed School. Moothoor East area is now under the full control of the Sri Lanka Army and Moothoor Police since the end of the war.
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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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Rajapakse's media fears spread from TamilNet to Sinhala opponents

[TamilNet, Sunday, 20 November 2011, 19:21 GMT]
"The ban on TamilNet is the first instance of what the Free Media Movement believes may soon be a slippery slope of web and internet censorship in Sri Lanka," BBC reported on 20th June 2007 when local reports indicated that access to TamilNet was blocked by unannounced directives to service providers from officials in Colombo. Four years later, Colombo, increasingly alarmed by proliferation of opposing views to the authoritarian trend of the governing Rajapakse family, has banned access to five websites, and initiated new registration procedures for local and foreign websites that intend to carry news on Sri Lanka, local reports said. The ban on TamilNet has continued for the last 4+ years without any protest from the local rights watchdogs, and Sri Lanka has been noted by media watchdogs as one of the worst offenders of media freedom.
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People of Maldives cut off face of ‘Sri Lanka Lion’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 November 2011, 23:47 GMT]
People in the Addu Atoll of Maldives on Friday early hours cut off the face of the Lion statue installed by Sri Lanka last week in the Maradhoo island of the Addu Atoll, to mark Sri Lanka’s participation in the 17th SAARC Summit held in Addu between 10-11 November. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s monument in the Hithadhoo island of Addu Atoll was also set on fire on last Monday. The Islamic Ministry of Maldives on Thursday ordered the relevant government authorities to remove the irreligious SAARC monuments, which it said, breach the nation’s law and religion, reported Maldivian media Haveeru on Friday. In the 1990s SL President Premadasa built a clock tower in Male, with a dome resembling a Buddhist stupa. It was modified later due to public protest.
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China proxies get India's closest coast in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 November 2011, 04:41 GMT]
The closest coastline to Tamil Nadu in Jaffna, a 15 km stretch from Thiruvadi Nilai to KKS has been given to a Malaysian corporate of Chinese connections to install windmills and solar panels to produce electricity and 'sell' it to the people of Jaffna, replacing the coastal people and the proud palmyra palms now stand there. In October 2011, the Malaysian corporate, KLS Energy entered into an agreement with China Machinery and Engineering Corporation to 'develop' wind/solar hybrid power project in Jaffna. The agreement was part of Malaysian Prime Minister's US$ 10 billion economic cooperation initiative with China. In an ingenious plan to steal the entire northern coast of Jaffna for the SL military, corporates and ventures of imperialism, genocidal Colombo not only seals off Eezham Tamils from Tamil Nadu, but also effectively checks Indian ambitions there with proxy Chinese projects.
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China timed SAARC summit to open embassy in Maldives

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 November 2011, 18:41 GMT]
China hurriedly opened a full-fledged embassy in the Republic of Maldives on 8 November, just two days before the 17th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) held this time in Addu in the southern most atoll of Maldives between 10–11 November. Commenting that such efforts by China in the region cannot be prevented, the Indian Defence Minister A. K. Anthony on Tuesday said, "China is expanding its military capabilities and building military infrastructure along the borders with us. We know that...we are aware of that, and we are concerned about that," Deccan Herald reported Thursday. India balanced the development by signing a pact worded as ‘maritime and counter-terrorism cooperation’ by which both nations agreed “their respective territories would not be allowed for any activity inimical to the other and by any quarter.”
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India emerges as main designer of ‘Asian Model’ in Norway report

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 November 2011, 10:25 GMT]
The Norway report on the failed peace in Sri Lanka, concluding that Asian powers in pursuance of military solution were a reason for the failure, cautions that this model of ‘conflict resolution’ will challenge future Norwegian-style mediations. India’s role in the genocidal model of conflict resolution is not adequately discussed in the report, yet bits and pieces in the report along with what transpired in the panel discussion in Oslo on Friday, place India as decisively responsible for the ‘Asian model’ that ended the war in genocide. Meanwhile, citing the upsurge of Sinhala nationalism as a result of the international peace process, the report advises appeasement by leaving the fate of Eezham Tamils to ‘domestic solutions’. But an upsurge of Tamil nationalism resulting from the genocide, snowballing in either side of the Palk Bay, is yet to make impact with the IC.
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Indian former foreign secretary boycotted in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 15 November 2011, 00:25 GMT]
Students and faculty of the University of Jaffna boycotted an address by India’s former foreign secretary (2004-2006) Shyam Saran, who visited Jaffna on Monday at the invitation of India-Sri Lanka Foundation and the University of Jaffna. As a result, the audience for Mr. Saran’s address at the Kailasapathy Auditirium of the university turned out to be mainly the SL military personnel occupying Jaffna. Speaking on India’s neighbourhood policy, Saran denounced international solutions to the question of Tamils in the island and advised them to seek ‘domestic’ solutions through talks. Shyam Saran was one of those met by Norway’s team that evaluated the failed peace process. The stand that India will sit on international solutions but insist on its own involvement alone was evident in an earlier statement of recently retired foreign secretary Nirupama Menon Rao too.
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International unity on criticism of Sri Lanka’s conduct: Armitage

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 November 2011, 10:45 GMT]
Expressing dismay at the “chauvinistic attitude” of the Sri Lankan state, former US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said on Friday the international community was united in its criticism of Sri Lanka’s conduct in the north and east and that SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa would not be welcomed internationally unless conditions there improved. “I don’t think anyone disagrees that the Tamil people have been mistreated and are continuing to lack – across the board – fundamental freedoms, dignity, etc,” Mr. Armitage told the audience.
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"Charming Betsy" not so charming towards defendant Silva

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 November 2011, 00:05 GMT]
November 17th is D-day to the costly defense marshaled by alleged war-criminal ex-General Shavendra Silva. He must submit a reply to plaintiffs' brief filed on the 8th during the pre-trial motion phase of the civil case initiated by two Tamil plaintiffs in the Southern District Court of New York. Facing a strong legal response by the plaintiffs' attorney, Ali Beydoun, to establish personal jurisdiction for the court to hear the case, including arguments against claimed immunity, and alternate arguments based on an exception to immunity under international laws when egregious crimes are committed, defense attorneys have a formidable legal task ahead to convince the Judge to dismiss the case, informed legal sources said. Plaintiffs have used in the jurisdictional argument, "Charming Betsy," a case that provides binding precedent to the interpretation of international law.
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