War crimes and the responsibility of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 November 2010, 04:04 GMT]
Eezham Tamils have made a strategic blunder two decades back in not internationally indicting the Indian Establishment for the war crimes committed by the IPKF. On one hand they allowed the indictment to sink under the din of Rajiv Gandhi assassination and on the other hand sections of them thought that the Indian Establishment should be spared for future benefits. Yet some others thought that it was not as important as Tamils acquiring military strength. The failure, in two decades of time, resulted in those who were a party to the crimes – from politics to military and from diplomacy to media – to boldly commit further crimes on a massive scale in proxy ways. Tamils should not fail again. Now it should be comprehensive indictment that needs own initiation and institutions coming from Eezham Tamils, writes TamilNet political comentator in Colombo.
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Treating Tamil Script from Tamil point of view

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 November 2010, 03:59 GMT]
Encoding an ‘Extended Tamil Script’ and encoding the Grantha script added with some Tamil characters in the Unicode Standard have become matters of controversy currently raging in Tamil Nadu. The very concept of having an ‘Extended Tamil Script’ only to present Sanskrit in Tamil is fundamentally flawed. Having the rare distinction as a classical as well as a globally living language, the Tamil need for an extended script to present other languages through its script is larger: Sister Dravidian languages such as the Brahui of Pakistan, related languages like ancient Sumer or Japanese and the languages the diaspora interacts from Latin America to Africa and Europe to Southeast Asia are some examples the ETS is expected to handle. India and Tamil Nadu alone shouldn’t decide a matter of universal Tamil interest, writes opinion columnist Akazhaan.
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Rajapaksa fears arrest in UK: Times of India

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 November 2010, 01:06 GMT]
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa's scheduled visit to UK has been called off by him fearing arrest in UK for his alleged war crimes under British law, the Times of India reported Friday. SL Foreign Minister G L Peiris was despatched to reconnoitre last month, the paper said, adding that certain Tamil organisations were planning to move court for Mr. Rajapaksa's arrest. Mahinda Rajapaksa is also the Commander-in-Chief of the Sri Lankan armed forces. Meanwhile, Eezham Tamil political activists allege that the war crimes in the island took place with the full blessings of the Indian Establishment.
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TamilNet wartime correspondent from Vanni reaches a free country

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 November 2010, 22:13 GMT]
Living incognito since May 2009, the TamilNet chief correspondent who reported from Vanni during the war, reached a free country this week. He was just 24 when he joined TamilNet. His knowledge in English was just basic. He was neither a member nor an associate of the LTTE. The free working space he had in Vanni was based only on an understanding about the political outlook of TamilNet towards the national cause of Eezham Tamils. But what he achieved goes into history of war journalism. He did a marvellous job on the ‘war without witnesses’, which major international media establishments couldn’t do or didn’t want to do. His safe passage to a free country was achieved by international civil society infrastructure. Many organisations, individuals and progressive Sinhalese helped him in his passage.
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UN event in Jaffna evokes controversy

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 November 2010, 01:55 GMT]
Sri Lankan Lion flag was hoisted at the UN office of Jaffna on the occasion of UN Day this year unlike ever before and the guests of honour invited for the celebration event were Sri Lankan military officials, triggering controversy on the sudden change of practice by the UN office in Jaffna, the city which has been under the control of the Sri Lanka Army for the last 15 years. Civil society circles, expressing displeasure on attitudinal changes within the UN office in Jaffna wondered whether it was a bureaucratic practice adopted by a biased-section of UN officials or the event signalled that the apex body of global humanity has gone further in adopting a 'post-war' change in its attitude towards Eezham Tamils after failing them during the final stages of the genocidal war last year.
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UN reforms and nations without state

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 November 2010, 21:59 GMT]
Indian media campaigns for permanent membership to India in the UN Security Council. But another opinion appearing in the Indian media show how far the Indian state, riding on the masses for the benefit of a few, is different from the peoples of India. Permanent membership to such an India or to any others in the already vicious and outdated Security Council is not the answer to the current global turmoil. It will further aggravate subservience of humanity to the Establishments. The UN and particularly Indian behaviour on Eezham Tamils is a lesson to humanity. Nations and the oppressed inside India should be the first to oppose India’s permanent seat as they would be the first to face the brunt of it. Meanwhile, nations without state all over the world should work for veto-powered collective say in UN to achieve balance for peace, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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Malaysian Tamils protest Indian PM inaugurating their township

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 October 2010, 18:25 GMT]
Around 200 Malaysians gathered Wednesday to protest Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh inaugurating ‘Little India’ in Brickfields, Malaysia, were dispersed when police arrested key leaders, Free Malaysia Today reported Thursday. The protestors questioned the rationale of naming the area ‘Little India’ when most traders doing business there for the past three centuries were Tamils. The protestors were also unhappy about Malaysian government choosing Manmohan Singh to preside over the launch. Manmohan Singh was least concerned about Tamil welfare, “Look at what happened in Sri Lanka. The Tamils were massacred by the Sri Lankan army but he was very quiet about it. The Sri Lankan army also attacked Tamil fishermen in Rameswaram (India) but Manmohan was mum about it as well,” M S Arjunan, a Malaysian Tamil leader said.
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Media and state crimes

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 October 2010, 19:31 GMT]
“You don’t say or even think that the invasion of Iraq is a criminal aggression of the kind for which people were hanged in Nuremberg […]. Suppose a newspaper started publishing the truth—that the invasion of Iraq was a criminal invasion that destroyed the country, that newspaper or the TV station is not going to get any ads”, said 82-year-old Noam Chomsky in an interview to India’s Outlook, Saturday. Meanwhile, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, making his most brazen disclosure – 391,832 secret documents on the Iraqi war, is a hunted man by the world’s Establishments, reports The New York Times, Saturday. “You play outside the rules, and you will be dealt with outside the rules,” Mr. Assange an Australian national was told by an Australian official.
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Aayiththiyamalai

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 October 2010, 07:42 GMT]
The hill of a kind of mineral-rock
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Paintings depicting horror of war on Vanni draw large crowds in Tamil Nadu

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 October 2010, 21:24 GMT]
A collection of paintings by Artist Kuzhanthaivelu Pugazhenthi titled ‘The Faces of War’, depicting the horror experienced by Eezham Tamils in its Fourth War and the heroic sacrifice and valour of Liberation Tigers, was exhibited in several places in Tamil Nadu from 11 May till September, beginning in Chennai. The exhibition was later held in Thanjaavoor and Thiruchchi drawing large crowds of people who also took part in the political seminars conducted at the venues of the exhibition. The French Cultural Centre in Chennai which usually caters to the upper class society which had first exhibited the paintings for ten days later extended it for another ten days due to the unexpected welcome shown by the people of Chennai, sources in Chennai said.
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Tissamaharama Tamil Brahmi inscription ‘missing’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 October 2010, 19:34 GMT]
The third century BCE potsherd inscription in Tamil language and in Tamil Brahmi script found at Tissamaharama in Hambantota district by German excavators is now missing in Sri Lanka’s Archaeology Department, informed sources said. The inscription found sometimes back was not included in the excavation reports of the Archaeology Department. Photo and decipherment of the inscription was brought out by Iravatam Mahadevan in The Hindu in June this year, followed by TamilNet. Meanwhile, accusing TamilNet for false publications, Dr. Susantha Goonatilleke in an article posted by transcurrents.com and published by Daily Mirror said that TamilNet had recently published inscriptions claimed to be from the South of Sri Lanka, which nobody in the Archaeology Department had seen.
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Birth centenary of V. Navaratnam, pioneer of Tamil Eelam polity

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 October 2010, 05:35 GMT]
18 October 2010 is the birth centenary of V. Navaratnam, doyen of the Tamil Eelam cause and founder leader of Thamizhar Chuyaadchik Kazhakam (TCK) in the late 1960s. TamilNet interviewed him in July 2005 when he was 95 years old. He passed away on 22 December 2006. Eezham Tamils and Sinhalese could never live under one government, even a confederation will not work and separation is the only way, he asserted in his interview. When his party contested the 1970 election there was only a little support. He was criticized for dividing the vote bank of the Federal Party. But within a few years all the mainstream Tamil political parties fell in line with his polity. The Vaddukkoaddai Resolution of 1976 was a copy of his party manifesto, said Mr. Navaratnam. His interview in voice is reproduced here.
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Indian Secretary General leads Commonwealth away from human rights

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 October 2010, 00:13 GMT]
Another instance of key persons in international organisations sabotaging international norms of humanity came to light when The Guardian leaked last Friday a document of the Commonwealth Secretariat. This time it was the Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Kamalesh Sharma, an Indian national heading the organisation telling his staff that it was not their job to speak out against the human rights abuses of the 54 member states. The Secretary General ignored calls from secretariat staff urging him to express concern at least, when abuses were committed in member states in recent years, The Guardian said, citing specific cases including the course of war in the island of Sri Lanka. "All those cases were all about the values the Commonwealth is supposed to stand for and we failed," according to a staff member.
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Kuruwita, Kurunægala

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 October 2010, 02:57 GMT]
The small hill
The small rocky hill
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One-person dominated TGTE decided by narrow margin

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 October 2010, 01:49 GMT]
The question of one-person dominated leadership or collective leadership was not at all taken for voting in the TGTE Constitutional Assembly meeting held in New York Thursday and Friday, TGTE members told TamilNet. The voting took place only on the question of whether there should be three regional deputies or not. 42 voted in favour of having deputies and 41 voted against it. However, there was another voting to decide whether the ‘prime minister’ as ‘supreme leader’ nominating the three deputies or whether they should be elected by the Assembly. In this voting, 46 favoured the ‘prime minister’ to nominate the deputies and 43 voted against it. At a third voting, on the question of ‘prime minister’ appointing 7 cabinet ministers, there was no stiff opposition as 43 voted in favour, 28 opposed and 10 from Europe abstained in protest.
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Keeping TGTE transnational

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 September 2010, 00:25 GMT]
The TGTE should be true to the transnational spirit and need. It has to function independently and transnationally. Parallel secretariats in federal spirit, in feasible locations across the world, and members meeting in those different locations are important to its image and spirit. Another major issue the members of the TGTE may have to consider is guarding TGTE against one-person leadership or one-time democracy. The apex leadership being collective has some advantages in formative or transition situations. Contrary to the propaganda of oppressors and defeatism of pessimists, spirited people among ordinary folk and serious elite expect a lot from TGTE. But polity and leadership don’t come from the blues. They manifest only from the realities of the structure and capacity of a society.
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India's reasons for banning LTTE false, fabricated: Vaiko tells Tribunal

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 September 2010, 14:55 GMT]
MDMK leader Vaiko on Friday appeared before New Delhi’s Tribunal set to hear petitions against the ban of the LTTE in India, to argue that he should be involved in the hearing and to plead that the ban extended by the Central Government on 14 May 2010 should not be confirmed by the Tribunal. The very first reason given by GOI for the ban that the Tamil Eelam objective of the LTTE includes Tamil Nadu, falls to the ground to pieces as the LTTE never wanted to annex an inch of land of Tamil Nadu, Vaiko said, adding that GOI’s reasons are totally fabricated with falsehood. The Tribunal judge Vikramjit Sen was specific in raising the question “Don’t they [the LTTE] want to annex Tamil Nadu or part of India with Tamil Eelam?”
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'EU should coordinate powers to bring justice to Eezham Tamils'

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 September 2010, 05:08 GMT]
While powers and countries like Norway, preoccupied with geo-strategy and ‘development’, ignore the fundamentals of the crisis in the island, the European Union should work towards convincing and coordinating them in bringing political justice to Eezham Tamils, said 62-year-old Jegatheeswaran Arunachalam, an Australian national who witnessed the war in Vanni to its end. The EU, consisting of old nations that have gone through the gravity of national question in history, is in a better position to grasp appropriate solutions, he said. “As an immediate action, the EU should send a fact finding mission that includes members of the diaspora, and it should work for an internationally guaranteed situation for the diaspora to independently reach out its kith and kin in the island”, Jegatheeswaran, now on a Walk for Justice mission across Europe with two fellow activists, told TamilNet Friday.
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