‘Military presence in North-East worrying’: Navi Pillay

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 August 2013, 21:09 GMT]
“I was concerned to hear about the degree to which the military appears to be putting down roots and becoming involved in what should be civilian activities, for instance education, agriculture and even tourism,” Ms Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said at a press conference in Colombo on Saturday. Speaking at the conclusion of her visit to the island, Ms Pillay said that that the military presence in the North-East seemed “much greater than is needed for strictly military or reconstruction purposes,” also referring to the vulnerability of women to sexual abuse. While sympathizing with the spirit of the address of Ms Pillay, who has been at the receiving end of vulgar verbal abuse from Sinhala nationalists, Tamil activists in the island expressed regret that she was still conferring legitimacy to the GoSL’s genocidal blueprint called LLRC.
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Rajapaksa party brings in gangster politics to Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 August 2013, 06:45 GMT]
A clash between two factions of the SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s UPFA alliance in Jaffna ended up in gunfire on Tuesday in Thenmaraadchi, Jaffna. SLFP Jaffna organiser Mr Ankajan Ramanathan’s group and Mr Saravananthan’s group in Thenmaraadchi were chasing each other in vehicles, from Kodikaamam to Chaavakach-cheari. At the end, Saravananthan’s squad smashed vehicles belonging to Ankajan’s squad. Ankajan's father Ramanathan, who was armed with a handgun, opened fire on Sarvananthan’s group, seriously wounding a Saravananthan supporter, the sources further said. Ankajan’s’s gang was also behind the death threat to a TNA candidate in Jaffna, Mr Thambirasa.
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Navi Pillay signals balanced preliminary assessment as Rajapaksa continues LLRC-farce

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 August 2013, 16:41 GMT]
The AFP, Press Trust of India (PTI) and The New Indian Express have given significance to a story originating from Colombo that SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Friday ‘bifurcated’ the SL Defense Ministry, which has been in-charge of the police as well as the three armed forces, by bringing the Police under a new ministry. In reality, the announcement is just a farce as both Defence Ministry and the newly created ‘Law and Order’ ministry remain under the same powerful minister who is none other than the SL President himself. Former Chief of Staff of the genocidal SL military, Major General (retd) Nanda Mallawarachchi is to be the Secretary of the new ‘police’ ministry. Both the PTI and the New Indian Express reports have also noted that the LLRC had recommended the SL government to exclude the police from the Defence Ministry's control.
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‘Stand firm on referendum demand for Tamil Eelam’: Tamil Nadu activist

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 August 2013, 05:55 GMT]
The student uprising in Tamil Nadu, which erupted in the wake of the pro-LLRC US resolution tabled at Geneva in March, strongly stands for a referendum for Tamil Eelam said V. Vettrivel Chandrashekar, the director of the recently released documentary on the student protests ‘A’rappoar’, urging Tamils across the world to remain firm on the demand. In an interview to TamilNet, Mr. Vettrivel, talking about the need to document the historically and politically significant students’ uprising, also spoke about the positive influence the Tamil Nadu students’ movement had on regional and global Tamil politics. Referring to the London event in early July by diaspora youth ‘Seeking Perception sans Conditioning’, he said that the Tamil Nadu and the diaspora youth stood in one political line as regards the question of a referendum.
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Wigneswaran seeks mandate for ‘IC-facilitated’ Northern Provincial Council

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 31 July 2013, 01:12 GMT]
People's participation in the polls to Northern Provincial Council will be significant to the implementation of the 13th Amendment. Since Colombo has agreed to conduct the election merely because of international pressure, people have to be prepared to resist any sabotage. The elected PC will help to end the governor’s rule and interferences in civil administration, said Tamil National Alliance's Chief Minister candidate for Northern Province and retired Justice C.V. Wigneswaran on Monday in Jaffna, after fielding TNA's list of candidates for Northern PC elections. Meanwhile, Colombo President Mahinda Rajapaksa implied ‘understanding’ with the candidature of Wigneswaran, when he said on Tuesday that he would be willing to meet Wigneswaran to discuss land and police powers to provinces.
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UN Sri Lanka tribunal will avoid ICC jurisdictional issues, says Boyle

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 July 2013, 00:43 GMT]
The United Nations General Assembly (GA) must immediately establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Sri Lanka (ICTSL) as a "subsidiary organ" under U.N. Charter Article 22, and organized along the lines of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY), which was established by the Security Council, said Professor Francis Boyle, an expert in International Law, while commenting on the appointment of Samantha Power as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and advocating that Ms Power should follow the leadership of Madeline Albright who spearheaded the setting up of the ICTY. This will avoid the jurisdictional hurdles in the ICC taking up criminal matters related to a non-signatory state, Boyle added.
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Sri Lanka diplomat's twitter tirade jeopardizes British PM's CHOGM visit

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 July 2013, 02:14 GMT]
Sri Lanka's self-proclaimed "new school diplomat" and consul-general in Sydney, Bandula Jayasekara's twitter attacks against the Channel-4 film maker and British national, Callum Macrae, may cause potentially embarrassing diplomatic fallouts in the UK ahead of the Commonwealth Head of Government Meeting (CHOGM) scheduled to be held in November this year, political sources in Australia said. Mr Jayasekara has labeled Macrae as an "LTTE terrorist from London," and has threatened that he will block Macrae getting a visa to attend the CHOGM in Colombo. Macrae is currently touring Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Canada to screen the film, No Fire Zone: The Killing fields of Sri Lanka, which tells the story of the last 138 days of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009.
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Ban on water supply threatens agriculture of Eezham Tamils in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 June 2013, 22:34 GMT]
By banning water supply to agriculture and paper mills and supplying water to tourist houses, the Colombo government is putting lives of many Eezham Tamils in stake in Batticaloa. The Sri Lankan Finance Ministry, which comes directly under SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is also the finance minister in Colombo, has imposed on ban on supply of water from Vaakaneari lake to the agricultural farms, agriculturalists from the area complain.
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Indian outfits, Sinhala military, hijack Tamil religious struggle in East

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 June 2013, 08:57 GMT]
An RSS-linked outfit ‘Hindu Sevaa Sangkam,’ (HSS) in collaboration with the genocidal Sinhala military, attempts to hijack and deviate the religious part of the struggle of the genocide-facing Eezham Tamils in the East. Backed by SL military intelligence, and run by members of the Pillaiyaan group, the HSS uses the name of Vishva Hindu Parishad in infiltrating and breaking the national struggle of Eezham Tamils, in order to serve the unholy alliance of Indian corporatism and genocidal Sinhala State, news sources in Batticaloa said. Under the occupying Sinhala military, while Saiva temples face destruction, desecration and plunder everyday, but new Buddhist stupas mushroom, a protest of the grassroot YMHA was banned but an HSS hoodwink was permitted this month in Batticaloa.
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BJP, RSS, Shiv Sena answerable to Dasgupta policy-line

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 June 2013, 06:33 GMT]
Whatever is the journalistic halo behind Swapan Dasgupta, his recent writings and utterances on the struggle of the genocide-facing nation of Eezham Tamils could have been ignored as coming from just another of the dubious ilk that writes for agendas, had he not been a member of the Rajapaksa-sponsored BJP-RSS-Shiv Sena delegation that went to Colombo and Jaffna. Now as he openly bares the line of thinking in the camp, the BJP-RSS-Shiv Sena lot aspiring for power in India, may have to answer to the world of Tamils and to the humanity in general whether it is aspiring to become worse than that of the present Establishments in New Delhi, Washington and Beijing, commented an activist of alternative politics in Jaffna, urging mainstream polity and public in Tamil Nadu to be prepared with the needed.
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Vedda priest of Saiva temple murdered in Chella Kathirkaamam

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 June 2013, 23:46 GMT]
70-year-old, Rajapaksa Mudiyansalage Premadasa of the aborigine Vedda culture, and the chief folk priest (Kapuraala) of the Siva temple at Va’l’li Kukai cave in Chella Kathirkaamam, was hacked to death by unknown assailants in the jungle area near the temple on last Tuesday night. The killing took place amidst the currently on-going drive against Saiva temples in the country of Eezham Tamils occupied by the Sinhala-Buddhist State in the island. The Vedda aborigines are either Tamil-speaking or Sinhala-speaking, depending on the territories they live in. The Kapuraala tradition of them worshipping Saiva deities Murukan, Siva etc., is a unique strain of religion in the island. Sinhala-Buddhist priests spearheading colonisation marginalising the Veddas and erasing out their culture have gone on record in the past several decades.
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Rajapaksa-sponsored BJP visit, delegates pretending ignorance, anger Tamils in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 06 June 2013, 05:10 GMT]
Do not call us anymore to meet foreign delegates coming as Colombo’s guests, New Delhi’s Consul General in Jaffna Mr Mahalingam was told by leading civil society activists, who were angered by the threatening presence of SL military intelligence at a meeting arranged by him at his residence, between the visiting BJP-led delegation and civil society on Wednesday evening. Tamil national parties and many in the civil society avoided attending the meeting. Invitations to them and involvement of the consulate came in the last minute after criticism. Even amidst the intimidating eyes of the civil-clad Sinhala military and a foreign ministry official of Colombo, when the civil representatives managed briefing on the on-going structural genocide, a member of the BJP-RSS-Shiv Sena delegation defending genocidal Sri Lanka retorted that Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims live together in Colombo.
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BJP, RSS, Shiv Sena to meet Rajapaksa behind the back of New Delhi

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 04 June 2013, 01:06 GMT]
A top-level delegation led by Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad, a senior leader of New Delhi’s main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and participated by RSS and Shiv Sena members, is visiting Colombo from Tuesday to Friday to have discussions with the Rajapaksa brothers. The visit takes place without diplomatic protocols or arrangements by New Delhi’s High Commission in Colombo, news sources in Colombo said citing High Commission officials. A visit of the delegation to Jaffna is organised by the Rajapaksa regime. In Jaffna, the occupying Sinhala governor Maj. Gen. Chandrasri and Rajapaksa minister Mr Douglas Devananda will receive the delegation. A counter ‘civil society’ is simulated to meet the delegation. New Delhi’s diplomat in Jaffna Mr. Mahalingam is blank on the agenda of the visit and is sidelined from the programmes.
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Indian military intelligence visits Jaffna, Vanni

[TamilNet, Friday, 31 May 2013, 10:18 GMT]
A team of high-ranking Indian military intelligence officials, led by Indian Armed Forces Intelligence Unit Director General R.N. Singh, visited Jaffna and Vanni on Wednesday and Thursday. The team was received by the genocidal Sinhala military occupying the country of Eezham Tamils. The Indian visit, that took place while Rajapaksa delegation was in Beijing and was signing major agreements on money and defence, follows China’s Vice Intelligence Minister’s visit to Jaffna and Trincomalee in April. Any visit of Indian officials is nowadays considered a jinx and is much feared by Tamils in the island, just as they fear sooth-saying persons coming in the middle of the night with curses from the cremation ground, because of the long history of such Indian visits foretelling escalation of miseries during the war and aftermath, commented news sources in Jaffna.
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‘Sri Lanka’ poetry: Rajapaksa man edits, India publishes, SL-Canada mission launches

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 May 2013, 03:15 GMT]
National Book Trust of India (NBT), a publications outfit of the New Delhi Establishment had entrusted the editorship of an anthology of ‘Sri Lanka’ poetry to the well-known defender of the genocidal State, Prof Rajiva Wijesinha. New Delhi’s External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid ceremoniously received the book presented by the editor recently. The book “Mirrored Images” will be launched in Toronto, Canada, on Friday at a function jointly organised by Colombo’s High Commission in Ottawa and Consulate General in Toronto. Prof Chelva Kanaganayakam of the University of Toronto will deliver the keynote address at the event, the Sri Lanka High Commission invitation to select audience said.
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Colombo plans Sinhala military settlement in Valikaamam North

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 May 2013, 23:51 GMT]
While the uprooted Eezham Tamils of Valikaamam North confront the occupying Sri Lankan State against the seizure of their lands in the former ‘High Security Zone’ (HSZ), the Sri Lankan military is moving fast with its secret plans of establishing permanent Sinhala military settlements to bring in families of the Sinhala soldiers into the former HSZ in Jaffna. Informed paramilitary sources in Jaffna told TamilNet Tuesday that a Sri Lankan commander has been assigned the task of converting the former HSZ into a Sinhala Military Zone (SMZ), consisting of Palaali military base. Already, more than 5,000 houses have been constructed in Mu'rika'ndi in Vanni and families of Sinhala soldiers are being provided housing there. There are at least 30,000 Sinhala soldiers stationed in the Jaffna peninsula.
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Land acquisition by occupying military challenged in Sri Lanka Courts

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 May 2013, 23:34 GMT]
Following a writ-application filed at the Sri Lankan Court of Appeal by 1,474 Eezham Tamils owning lands in Valikaamam North on 14 May, which was an initiative taken by Colombo-based lawyers, including those belonging to the Tamil National Alliance, a group of lawyers based in Jaffna have filed legal action in Sri Lankan Supreme Court on 22 May, challenging the publication of the Section 2 notice to acquire lands from the owners in Valikaamam North. In the meantime, the commander of the occupying SL military in Jaffna, Major General Mahinda Hathurusinghe, who recently faced questions from the visiting United Nations representatives on the acquisition of lands in the former High Security Zone (HSZ), was attempting to play down the scale of the Sinhala militarization by hiding the extent of land acquisition outside the Valikaamam North area.
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Gotabhaya statement reconfirms emptiness in PC model

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 May 2013, 11:31 GMT]
While New Delhi and Washington harp on either the 13th Amendment or holding Northern Provincial Elections (NPC) as solutions to the national question in the island of Sri Lanka, a statement coming from SL presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa reconfirms the unworkable nature of the Provincial Council (PC) model in a unitary constitution of the Sinhala state, Tamil political observers in the island said. Mr Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was warning the government of his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa that giving police and land powers to the provinces meant that the Northern Province comprising the districts of Jaffna, Mullaiththeevu, Vavuniyaa, Mannaar and Ki'linochchi could pose a ‘major security challenge’, reported the Island on Thursday.
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Genocidal military gets into white garb to observe Vesak in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 May 2013, 22:11 GMT]
The commander of the occupying SL military in Jaffna, Major General Mahinda Hathurusinghe, together with all of his senior officers and a section of soldiers, observed a ‘Sil’ campaign on Thursday, according to a news release by the SL military in Jaffna. At the event, the SL commander Hathurusinghe and his personnel were all clad in white. In contrast, the occupying SL commander and his officers have been wearing military uniform while entering Hindu temples, an act considered as showing disrespect to the deities and as desecrating the shrines, observers in Jaffna commented. One of the topics discussed by the Buddhist clergy and the academics at the Buddhist religious event on Thursday was ‘music therapy as a remedy to youth unrest’, the news release by the SL military further revealed.
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BTF's call for genocide remembrance focuses on CHOGM boycott

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 May 2013, 02:44 GMT]
The British Tamil Forum’s (BTF) call for a mass rally in London on Saturday, remembering the 2009 Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal genocidal massacre, focuses on urging Britain and the Commonwealth to boycott the Sri Lanka CHOGM meet in November. Earlier this month, the British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced his decision to attend the meet. “It is ridiculous as well as painful to find that Cameron has decided to attend CHOGM in Sri Lanka,” said a BTF statement on Thursday, adding that the meet, leading to Sri Lanka chairing the Commonwealth for the next two years, “will not only be disgraceful to the Commonwealth and Britain, but will also create a permanent blot in their history.”
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