A’luth punchi ku’lama, Kugnchukku’lam

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 December 2010, 01:29 GMT]
The new small tank
The small tank
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War crime suspect in Rajapaksa entourage plans charted flight escape

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 December 2010, 00:44 GMT]
Sri Lankan Major General Chagi Gallage, a member of Mahinda Rajapaksa's entourage to London, plans to escape war crimes accusation in the courts of London by chartering a flight, informed circles in London said Thursday midnight. Meanwhile, if Mr. Rajapaksa's visit was a private one as claimed by him, why there were senior ministers like G.L.Peiris and military commanders in the entourage, wonder media circles in London. The escape plans of the military commander follows attempts by the Global Tamil Forum (GTF) to file a war crimes case against him in London. Valid reasons are suspected behind the escape attempt of Chagi Gallage. Around 7,000 Eezham Tamils in London protested the presence of Rajapaksa entourage in London Thursday.
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Veteran journalist Sivanayagam passes away

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 November 2010, 12:42 GMT]
Veteran journalist S. Sivanayagam whose contributions were part of the history of the liberation struggle of Eezham Tamils, passed away on Monday in Colombo at the age of 80. The funeral will take place on Thursday. Joining The Daily News in 1953, he became the founder editor of Saturday Review started in Jaffna in 1982. The weekly that made a name in the early stages of the Tamil militant struggle had an abrupt end with the 1983 pogrom. He was later in charge of the Tamil Information Centre in Chennai. In 1990, he was editing a new journal Tamil Nation. Following the assassination of Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, he was arrested without any charges, harassed, insulted and was ill treated by the Indian intelligence. He left India in 1993 to get asylum in France. He was also residing in London. Ailing from bone cancer, a few years ago he went back to Colombo and was remaining silent.
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More than 50,000 determined Tamils in Toronto pay homage to heroes

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 November 2010, 11:14 GMT]
The temperature was freezing. Permission was half-hearted. Venue arrangement was last minute due to anticipated obstacles. Yet, a determined mass of 50,000 Eezham Tamils in Toronto, Canada, congregated on Saturday in four sessions in a temporarily built hall for the purpose, to pay homage to the heroes who laid down their lives for the cause of the liberation of Tamil Eelam. The hall was built on an open terrain where permission to congregate was granted, and the floor was paved with wooden planks to bear with the cold. The event was marked with heart-touching cultural programmes. Meanwhile, the resolution seen in the diaspora now makes Colombo think tanks to question their present strategy of countering the diaspora through hired Public Relations firms and lobbyists. The Tamil diaspora would out-bid the Colombo government they are afraid.
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50,000 gather in London to remember Tamil Eelam Heroes

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 November 2010, 19:14 GMT]
Around 50,000 Eezham Tamils congregated on Saturday in London to pay homage to the Maaveerar (heroes) who laid down their lives in fighting for the liberation of Tamil Eelam. Similar gatherings proportionate to the population of Eezham Tamil diaspora were noticed in the other European capitals. 9,000 congregated in one of 8 localities in France and 9,000 at Fribourg in Switzerland, where local organisers noticed a new vigour of uprising. Meanwhile, the BBC in London cut a pathetic figure by featuring a report of a BBC Tamil Service staff, titled “Why Sri Lankan Tamils won’t remember war dead this year”. The BBC Tamil Service in recent years has become a mouthpiece of war crimes accused Colombo and the establishment abetting it from New Delhi, observers said. The subversive game is played by manipulating the unjustified continuation of the tag of ‘terrorism’ in UK, they further said.
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Indian FM harps on failed 13th Amendment in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 November 2010, 09:16 GMT]
Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna, who ceremoniously opened an Indian Mission near Kantharmadam junction in Jaffna, failed to deliver any positive message to Eezham Tamils on India's position in resolving the national question. Mr. S.M. Krishna harped on the failed 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution, a model Tamils have rejected as inadequate in guaranteeing their rights and he also failed to touch the territorial integrity of the North-Eastern Province which was de-merged by Rajapaksa government that disregarded the earlier arrangement that has been in practice for several years following the Indo Lanka Accord.
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Poet Kasi Anandan speaks to Palaka'ni

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 November 2010, 05:03 GMT]
Mu'l'livaaykkaal is only a turning point in the Tamil Eelam struggle, says veteran national poet of Eezham Tamils Kasi Anandan to the audience of Palaka'ni, the TamilNet window for cross-views that features its inaugural programme on Saturday. “The Tigers have silenced their guns. To what extent the chauvinism of the Sinhala state could go, the international community has yet another opportunity to understand now. But, has it ever accepted that what is being committed is a genocide," he questioned. Any struggle that is based on righteous principles will win. Eelam Tamils should understand this and proceed, said the 72-year-old Batticaloa-born poet, who has been associated with Periyar E.V.Ramasamy Nayakkar, S.J.V Chelvanayakam and Velupillai Pirapaharan.
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Heroes Day - 2010

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 November 2010, 00:01 GMT]
At the height of the Vanni war, a representative of the Biafra struggle sent a message to TamilNet. He wanted the Eezham Tamils to remember that they were fighting not merely for them, but for the cause of many peoples like them all over the world. If the Eezham Tamils fail they fail the world of liberation, he said. He wanted the message and his best wishes to be conveyed to Vanni. That is the international dimension of the heroes of Tamil Eelam. They fought for the liberation of their nation and at the same time fought for a missing point in contemporary human civilisation. Many thought that Biafra could never be repeated in contemporary times and that too in ‘civilized’ South Asia. But there were people who adamantly wanted to prove that it is possible. Remembering the heroes in 2010 should remind us of the duty ahead of us towards ourselves and towards human civilisation.
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Swiss Tamil youths launch 'Thamizhan' Energy Drink

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 November 2010, 21:34 GMT]
Two Tamil youths in Switzerland on 26 November 2010 launched an Energy Drink named 'Thamizhan' and announced that the income generated through the sales of the product of their private firm would be fully invested to form and sustain a foundation-managed fund that would strengthen the democratic interests of the Eezham Tamil cause, the owners told TamilNet Friday.
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New Secretaries appointed to ‘Mahinda Chintana’ government

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 November 2010, 12:24 GMT]
55 Secretaries, the highest civil servants of the ministries appointed Tuesday by the President of the Colombo government Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa, were advised by him to discharge their duties properly according to the ‘Mahinda Chintana’, reports Daily Mirror. Structuring the ministries in his second term of office, Mr. Rajapasksa handed over new appointment letters to the secretaries of the various ministries. The Mahinda Chintana list of Secretaries has one Tamil and one Muslim among the 55. The lone Tamil secretary is appointed to the Ministry of Traditional Industries and Small Enterprise Development for which Mr. Douglas Devananda is the minister.
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Kadugannawa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 November 2010, 06:54 GMT]
The fierce mountain pass
The mountain pass at the frontier
The mountain pass to traverse

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Genetics and etymology go contrary to myths

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 November 2010, 06:38 GMT]
Kadugannawa, the Sinhala name of a key mountain pass in the Kandy district of the island of Sri Lanka comes from Dravidian etymology and is related to Kadu-ka’navaay in Tamil, reveals an etymological column in TamilNet. Meanwhile, genetic studies based on DNA conducted on Sinhala expatriates by a British medical institute 10 years ago showed that the Sinhalese predominantly carry M20, the Dravidian marker in them, says Subramaniyam Visahan who recently came out with an outline publication on the peopling of the island of Sri Lanka. Myths that obscure objective history about the peopling of the island could have been shattered had Colombo joined the DNA mapping programme, the Human Genome Project, said the UK-based writer, who formerly worked for the British National Archives.
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Paintings depicting horror of war on Vanni exhibited in Bergen

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 November 2010, 14:50 GMT]
The Tamil students of Bergen University held an exhibition at the Bergen University Student Centre paintings by Tamil Nadu Artist Kuzhanthaivelu Pugazhenthi titled ‘The Faces of War’ Friday and Saturday, depicting the horror suffered by Eezham Tamils in its Fourth War and the heroic sacrifice and valour of Liberation Tigers, sources in Oslo said. The exhibition drew a large number of Norwegian students on the first day while the students of Bergen Tamil School viewed them on the next day.
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Colombo censors Tamil Nadu magazines, articles

[TamilNet, Sunday, 21 November 2010, 08:12 GMT]
Sri Lanka government continues to censor articles related to the Eezham Tamil national cause or the State terrorism in Sri Lanka appearing in magazines, books and other written literature coming into the island from foreign countries, particularly the Tamil Nadu state of India. Both Tamil and English works are subjected to the censorship. An article written by the news reporter of Anantha Vikadan, a Tamil weekly magazine published in Tamil Nadu, in its last issue had been torn off from all the imported copies and the title of the article on the cover rendered illegible.
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Ramanathan Trust endows land to Upcountry Tamil tenets in Vanni

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 November 2010, 17:39 GMT]
In a significant move Friday, the president of Sir. P. Ramananthan Trust, former senior professor S.K. Sitrampalam, donated the lands of the Trust in Ki'linochchi to 60 families of Upcountry Tamils who were long-term tenets of those lands. The families uprooted in the recent war were unable to claim housing aid supposed to come through an Indian aid programme in the absence of ownership-documents of the lands, which they were inhabiting for a long time. The Ramanathan Trust was owning 330 acres of productive farmland in Ki'linochchi, which was settled by the Upcountry Tamils for several decades.
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China urged to respect Tamil place names

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 November 2010, 09:13 GMT]
The thermal power plant China builds in the Puththa’lam district is located at a Tamil village called Nuraichchoalai that simply means the grove of Nurai fruit trees (Nephelium longanum). But a corrupted and Sinhalicised form Norocholai is the one followed by Chinese official records. Even the media in India, including the media in Tamil Nadu, mutilate the name joining with Sinhalese and Chinese. Norocholai has no meaning in Sinhala or Tamil. Sri Lanka comes out with a new set of colonial names for places in the land of Tamil nation. China and India, which have cared to bring back the names of their cities such as Beijing and Mumbai from the colonial renderings Peking and Bombay should be sensitive enough for the sentiments of Eezham Tamils, urged a Tamil academic in Colombo.
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I'lavaalai

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 November 2010, 23:07 GMT]
The small hamlet
The new hamlet
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Military fortresses and colonisation in Jaffna choke Tamils, threaten India

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 November 2010, 10:26 GMT]
The selection of locations for building new military fortresses and for colonising Sinhalese in the Jaffna peninsula is sinisterly schemed by colonial Sri Lanka to permanently squeeze the Tamil heartland. Casual visitors don’t perceive it. Tamils of collaborative politics helplessly defend it. Indian policy planners of habitual bungling compare it with what they do in Kashmir, tribal belt and northeast India and agree with it. They think that if the nation of Eezham Tamils is permanently erased and if they get one or two harbours there that is enough for the security of India. The military cum colonisation complexes come up with the full blessings of India and with Chinese material help. But eventually they are going to be trained on India, said an academic in Jaffna, citing the complexes that squeeze the peninsula at strategic locations.
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ENDLF wants another IPKF to implement 13th Amendment

[TamilNet, Monday, 15 November 2010, 21:11 GMT]
In an ‘extraordinary meeting’ convened in Bangalore, Saturday and Sunday, Eezham National Democratic Front (ENDLF), a paramilitary group based in India, passed a resolution urging India to send a ‘new peace making force’ to fulfil the promise made by Rajiv Gandhi on the North-East Provincial Council. If India can’t help it should constitute a higher level international committee of countries that accommodated the refugees to bring in justice, the resolution further said. ENDLF, mainly having former members of PLOTE and led by Paranthan Rajan, is a pro-Indian militant outfit created by the Indian intelligence agencies to defend the Indian agenda in the late 1980s. The ENDLF sacrificed 1700 of its cadres pinning faith on the promise made by Rajiv Gandhi, the resolution said.
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Indian intelligence think-tank studying China to meet in Chennai

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 November 2010, 08:31 GMT]
“China’s relations with neighbouring countries having territorial disputes including India have somewhat come under strain. It has become important for the latter to factor the reasons behind China’s apparent assertiveness in their formulations of policies towards Beijing,” says the concept paper of a national seminar “Rise of China: Implications for Asian Neighbours,” convened on 17 December at Hotel Savera by three academic-intelligence outfits of India based in Chennai. One of them was founded a year ago to ‘sensitise the people of South India to the complex political, economic and security problems facing India and its South Asian neighbours’. Many of the participants of the seminar, addressed as renowned Sinologists, were actively involved in blunting the national question of Eezham Tamils.
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