Abductions on rise in Vanni, Red Cross joins SL Police in refusing to register complaints

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 December 2011, 07:47 GMT]
A 23-year-old Tamil youth was abducted Tuesday night by armed men who came in a white van while the youth, Ganeshamoorthy Rathan, was talking to his friends along roadside in Kaadduvinayaakar temple area of his native village, Mu'l'liyava'lai of Mullaiththeevu district. Mr. Rathan was brought to his house and instructed to park his bicycle at his house. When the mother of the victim suspected that her son was under pressure by unknown men who accompanied him, the men pulled out a gun and said they were from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the SL Police and instructed Mr. Rathan to get into the van. When the family members went to the SL Red Cross office situated in Mullaiththeevu, the officials at the office refused to accept the complaint and said they do not register such complaints.
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SLA threatens villagers protesting illegal sand mining in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 December 2011, 23:29 GMT]
The commander of the occupying Sri Lanka Army camp at Mu'rakkoddaagncheanai and the police officer-in-charge from Ea'raavoor station on Monday dispersed the villagers from Chantha'na-madu-aa'ru who gathered in front of Chiththaa'ndi Murugan Temple to protest against illegal sand mining allegedly being carried out by a paramilitary person of Pillayan group, who is also a member in the civic body of Chengkaladi Piratheasa Chapai (PS).
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Strategic Batticaloa borderland appropriated for colonisation

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 December 2011, 22:44 GMT]
2,500 acres of lands in Mangka'la Aaru, located along Chengkaladi-Badulla A-5 road, a border village of Batticaloa district, are to be sold to Sinhala businessmen and to foreign investors, informed sources in Paduvaankarai told TamilNet. SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa's Colombo government has recently taken steps to survey the lands through its deputy minister and paramilitary operative Vinyagamoorthy Muralitharan. A team of SL government officials from Colombo are on the ground conducting surveying and demarcating the lands in question for the last one week, the villagers said.
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Questions for Sri Lankan Ambassador of Australia: Dr. Senewiratne

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 November 2011, 11:21 GMT]
If the war is over and the Tamil people have been ‘liberated’ from the ‘terrorists’ and ‘rehabilitated’, then why does the Sri Lankan government still not allow access to international groups in Tamil areas, asks Brian Senewiratne in a hard-hitting series of questions to Sri Lankan High Comissioner to Australia. Dr. Senewiratne, a renowned physician and an Australia based Sinhala expatriate, produced posers to ex-Admiral Thissara Samarasinghe using evidence from the UN report, Channel 4 video and other sources. The ex-Admiral, incidentally, is also alleged of war crimes and there have been calls in Australia to investigate his role in the genocide of the Eelam Tamils.
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Criminal accused Iniyapaarathi conferred with 'Pride of the Nation' award in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Saturday, 26 November 2011, 13:53 GMT]
The Government of Sri Lanka led by President Mahinda Rajapakse has conferred the national award “Desamanya” (country's pride or venerable by the country) to Iniyapaarathi, who is accused by the public for playing a key role in the abductions and disappearances of several people in Poththuvil, Akkaraippattu, Thirukkoayil and Vinaayakapuram in the Ampaa'rai district of Eastern Province and who has been accused of war crimes by the United Nations rights bodies for forced arms training to children. Iniyapaarathi is a lead operative of the paramilitary group led by Vinayagamoorthy Muralidharan alias Karuna who currently holds a Deputy Minister post in the Rajapakse government. Iniyapaarathi is at present the Ampaa'rai District Coordinator for SL President Rajapaksa.
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Canadian students show solidarity with Tamil cause

[TamilNet, Sunday, 20 November 2011, 03:01 GMT]
The York Federation of Students, the students’ union at York University representing over 50,000 students, unanimously adopted a resolution last week recognizing the ongoing structural genocide of the Eezham Tamil nation and the need to stand in solidarity with the Tamil people in their global struggle for self-determination. The success of enacting such resolutions has been credited to campaigns by Tamil students in educating and explaining the narrative of the Tamil struggle to their peers and allies, student activists said. The move is considered to be a reflection of the broader strategy to resist the discourse that aims to create a climate of fear, criminalization and alienation of Tamil community activism. Such efforts increasingly create a culture of acceptance to the Tamil nationhood and to its national symbols, student activists further said.
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957 uprooted Tamil families in Ampaa'rai district still remain in shelters

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 November 2011, 15:47 GMT]
Contrary to the claims by Colombo government and its paramilitary run subservient Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) that all uprooted Tamils have been resettled in Ampaa'rai district, 957 uprooted families from four Tamil villages in Thirukkoayil DS division of Ampaa'rai district in the East still remain in shelters amid claims, according to Batticaloa district TNA parliamentarian Mr.C.Yogeswaran. The MP visited the four villages, , Thangkavealaayutha-puram, Kagnchikudichchaa'ru, Kaagnchirangkudaa and Chaakaamam, last weekend to collect information about the Tamil families that have been struggling without resettlement.
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SLMM tilted balance in favour of Sri Lanka, against LTTE: Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Saturday, 12 November 2011, 21:12 GMT]
Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), the peace keeping arm of the Norway facilitated peace process in the island, tilted the balance in favour of the Sri Lankan state and against the LTTE, wrote Gajendrakumar Ponnampalam in 2007, in an unpublished research paper on the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) he submitted to a foundation in the West. The IC could have used the CFA to pursue conflict resolution by maintaining the balance of power between the parties, but to the contrary it had used the CFA as a ‘counterinsurgency’ tool to reinforce the state and weaken the de facto state, so that the state could pursue yet another military solution to the conflict, he further wrote. The unpublished paper that reveals how the very idea of Norway’s peace facilitation was to ‘fail the peace facilitation’ in favour of state, is documented here for historical purposes.
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Colombo pushes for 40,000 acres land grab for Sinhalese in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 30 October 2011, 15:48 GMT]
More than 40,000 acres of fertile lands that are located in border villages that come under the DS division of Koa'ralaippattu North, Vavu'natheevu, Ea'raavoorpattu, Chengkaladi, Koa'ralaippattu South and Paddippazhai in the Batticaloa district belonging to Tamil speaking people are under alienation to Sinhalese without the permission of the District Land Alienation Committee, the District Government Agent and Divisional Secretary and is undermining the Provincial Land Ordinance, says Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) member R. Thurairatnam. The EPC has not taken any action against the illegal encroachments Mr. Thurairatnam says in a memorandum to the Chief Minister of the EPC, Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan.
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Canadian Peace Alliance, unions show solidarity with Tamil Nation

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 October 2011, 14:44 GMT]
The Canadian Peace Alliance, Canada’s largest umbrella organisation of 180 groups representing over 1 million Canadians, resolved last week to encourage “its member organizations to stand in solidarity with the Tamil nation in their global struggle for self-determination and freedom.” It called for an “immediate end to the colonialism and genocide of the Tamil nation and an end to the occupation of the Tamil homeland by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and its allied paramilitary groups.” It resolved to support “the Pongu Tamil Rally for Self-Determination on Saturday, October 29,” besides urging international investigation on war crimes. Meanwhile, Canada’s largest trade union, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers demanded Sri Lanka to “immediately withdraw from Tamil Eelam,” and the Canadian Federation of Students, Ontario, condemned the attack on the student president of Jaffna University.
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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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Colombo brings Sinhalese to culture prawn in Jaffna marshlands

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 October 2011, 05:04 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s government occupying Jaffna has taken over 350 acres of coastal marshland along the Jaffna Lagoon in Kaarainakar, Ma’ndaitheevu and Araali for prawn culture laboured by Sinhalese brought from the South. Even though said as developed for freshwater prawn culture, the project will ruin the groundwater table in the above places where local people already face difficulties in getting drinking water. Such environmental disasters were already experienced in Puththa’lam. The ultimate aim of such projects is to demographically confiscate the coasts from Eezham Tamils, make their traditional villages environmentally uninhabitable and swindle the resources of their sea and land, academics in Jaffna said. The Sinhalese fishermen brought from the South target items of export value such as conches, sea cucumber and prawns.
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Sri Lanka organises sea-paramilitary to attack Tamil Nadu fishermen

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 October 2011, 21:40 GMT]
Calling themselves ‘Somalian pirates’ a sea-paramilitary created and deployed by Sri Lanka’s Navy is intensifying its mid-sea attacks on Tamil Nadu fishermen in the waters of the Palk Bay, Gulf of Mannaar and off the southern tip of India, news sources in Jaffna said. Largely Sinhalese from the south, along with a Tamil gang inducted by the SL Navy from Koddadi, a coastal locality near military occupied fort of Jaffna city, man the paramilitary. SL Navy has given military training to this outfit. A Sri Lankan minister is also suspected to be involved in the operation. Several lakhs worthy of fish catch of the fishing fleets of Tamil Nadu is routinely seized after attack by this paramilitary getting inside Indian waters, while the SL Navy holds off the fishing fleets along the maritime boundary. One such attack took place while the Indian foreign secretary was visiting Jaffna on Sunday.
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Remedial Sovereignty

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 October 2011, 05:22 GMT]
Tamils' demand for self-determination in the past four decades, which posed persistent challenges to Sri Lanka's sovereignty, was rooted on the acceptance of Tamils fundamental right to self-determination under customary international law, as a "people" possessing a distinct language, distinct culture and living in an identifiable region considered as the historic homeland. But recent, state sanctioned, massacre of 40,000 Tamils in Mu'l'livaaykkaal, and the continuing structural genocide, while reinforcing the traditional argument based on rights, also supplies an independent, stand alone justification for the creation of a state, based on the need to defend the Eelam Tamil population from further destruction - the doctrine of "remedial sovereignty."
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Colombo destroys herbal forest in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 October 2011, 21:38 GMT]
Several hundred acres of forest that contains herbal plants, situated along the coastal strip from Koa'ra'langkea'ni to Paalaiyadith-thoa'naa in Koa'ra'laip-pattu South DS division in Batticaloa district where rare medicinal plants are found are being destroyed deploying bulldozers for the past six days under the direction of Colombo authorities. On behalf of Colombo, Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, a paramilitary leader and deputy minister in Rajapaksa government, has been heading the destruction in the name of ‘urban development and tourism’.
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Blake wooed genocidal Sri Lanka Army to help Afghan war

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 October 2011, 09:30 GMT]
Within months of a war masterminded to end in the genocide of Eezham Tamils, the US Asst Secretary of State Robert Blake wooed the genocidal Sri Lanka Army’s help in the US-led war in Afghanistan, reveals a Wikileaks document. In a meeting that took place in Colombo on 8th December 2009 with SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, “Blake raised the possibility of Sri Lanka contributing to U.S.-led coalition operations in Afghanistan, noting that would be a significant step in support of improving military-to-military engagement,” briefs a classified cable of the US embassy in Colombo. Citing Muslim sentiments and ire of Islamic organizations, Gotabhaya avoided committing on any direct involvement, but he came out with an alternative for Sri Lanka providing covert training assistance in Afghanistan through NGOs and Private Military Companies.
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Torture case filed against Sri Lanka's ex-General Shavendra Silva

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 September 2011, 00:50 GMT]
American University Washington College of Law's Human Rights Clinic in a press release issued today said that it has filed civil action at the District Court of New York Southern District (SDNY), on behalf of two Tamil plaintiffs against Sri Lanka's ex-Army General and currently Sri Lanka's Acting Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Shavendra Silva, on charges of torture and wrongful death. The civil action under the Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA) called for declaratory relief and compensatory and punitive damages for torts in violation of international and domestic law.
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“We deployed DPU teams inside safe zone”: Rajapaksa confided to US envoy in May 2009

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 September 2011, 21:43 GMT]
During the final days of the genocidal war in Vanni when the international community was repeatedly urging Colombo to cease attacks on the ‘safe zone’, the SL President and Commander-in-Chief of the SL armed forces Mahinda Rajapaksa admitted to a top US envoy that his military had deployed Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) missions, also known as Deep Penetration Units (DPU) inside the so-called safe-zone to “organize people to breach the LTTE earth bunds.” Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa has ‘confidentially’ shared this military secret to Charge d'Affaires of the US embassy James R. Moore, while holding a meeting with Co-Chair Ambassadors in Colombo, barely two week before Colombo massacred thousands of civilians and claimed military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
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Sri Lanka aims to get more time to complete genocide

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 September 2011, 16:46 GMT]
The primary aim of Sri Lanka in the UN human rights council is to buy some more time to complete its genocide of Eezham Tamils through structural means and militarisation so that the question of war crimes would eventually lose its importance and would become acceptable means of contemporary world polity. The more time is given to a virtually Sinhala military to occupy the country of Eezham Tamils with impunity, the more the world will be contributing to a dangerous paradigm. If the existing State system in the international organisations is going to repeatedly prove its incapability in delivering criminal and political justice, the global Tamils have to be prepared to undertake an international struggle in appropriate ways. 70 million global Tamils cannot be taken for ride by the Sinhala polity just because it has a State and Tamils don’t have a State.
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EPDP protest blocks Blake meet with Jaffna civil society, students

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 September 2011, 11:00 GMT]
The visiting US Assistant Secretary of State, Robert O Blake, had to cancel his appointment with civil society representatives, including student representatives of the University of Jaffna on Tuesday afternoon as EPDP paramilitary cum political party, aligned with Rajapaksa regime in Colombo, organized a protest outside the American Corner, situated on 4th cross street in Jaffna, sources in Jaffna said. Hundreds of people were brought from EPDP-controlled islets off Jaffna with placards supporting Mahinda Rajapaksa and staged the protest outside the American Corner.
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