Wigneswaran warns of bleak future for Tamils, urges planning for next step

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 August 2019, 20:23 GMT]
SL President Maithiripala Sirisena appointing Shavendra Silva as the SLA commander is the logical outcome of the Sinhala thinking that remains unchanged. “Secondly, he may also be thinking that if Gotabhaya Rajapaksa were to come in as the president next, Shavendra Silva would be an ideal lieutenant to him, because they have worked together in the past,” commented former Chief Minister of North Justice C.V. Wigneswaran. The Sinhala political leaders would not grant any political rights to the Tamils in the future because, in their position there had been no genocide, no war crimes and they maintaint that those killed were all ‘terrorists’. “We may expect a very difficult time ahead. Tamils, both internationally and locally, must start thinking as to what should be our next step in the event of such people becoming very violent against our people,” the former chief minister told TamilNet.
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IC sheds crocodile tears over Shavendra appointment, US engages with his war-time chief

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 August 2019, 19:23 GMT]
Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, a US citizen when he spearheaded the genocidal war on Eezham Tamils in 2009, must be facing the lawsuits filed against him in the USA. However, instead of putting an effective end to the presidential hopes of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the US establishment has chosen to engage with him furnishing loss-of-US-nationality paperwork as required by him. The trend is quite visible to those watching the discourse, including the visits by the US-friendly actors engaging with the Rajapaksas. However, the US Embassy in Colombo issued a statement stating that it was ‘deeply concerned by the appointment of Lt General Shavendra Silva as SL Army Commander. Where was this US concern while engaging with Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, commented Tamil activists in Jaffna.
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2006 genocidal massacre at Chengchoalai campus marked in Vanni, Jaffna amidst PTA-threats

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 August 2019, 23:31 GMT]
Amidst PTA-threats coming from the occupying Sinhala Army, military intelligence and the SL Police against inscribing the names and photos of the school-girls, who perished in a targeted aerial massacre by the SL Air Force in 2006, the parents of the students commemorated the victims of the attack by putting up temporary paper photos on the arch. An emotional remembrance event took place at Va'l'li-punam in Mullaiththeevu district with the participation of TNA politicians. Vanni Cross and Chegnchoalai Remembrance Organisation organised the event jointly. In the meantime, Jaffna University Student Union (JUSU) also staged a remembrance event within the premises of the Jaffna University on Wednesday.
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New Delhi continues to interpret aspiration of Eezham Tamils as threatening its sovereignty

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 May 2019, 23:13 GMT]
Eezham Tamils should get the clue from New Delhi's latest proscription of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that the idea of Tamil Eelam remains strong even though the LTTE was institutionally destroyed a decade ago through a genocidal onslaught, commented Tamil activists in Jaffna. The Indian Ministry of Home Affairs proscribed the LTTE for five more years issuing a notification through the Gazette of India on Tuesday. The announcement observed that “[t]he LTTE’s objective for a separate homeland (Tamil Eelam) for all Tamils threatens the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India, and amounts to cession and secession of a part of the territory of India from the Union and thus falls within the ambit of unlawful activities”.
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Blake's Colombo lecture reminds Tamils of bureaucracy abetting 2009 genocide

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 May 2019, 16:57 GMT]
Former US Ambassador Robert O. Blake was visiting Colombo on Tuesday to deliver a lecture titled ‘US Foreign Policy towards China and South Asia and what it means for Sri Lanka’. He was advising Colombo to tackle the response to the Easter Sunday attacks by drawing lessons from the 2001 Bush Administration and form an intelligence coordinating body of technocrats not to miss any single lead of information on potential attacks. Former SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was precisely doing that during the war, he said. He also warned against over-reacting as the US did after 9/11 by expanding government surveillance without appropriate constitutional checks. On geopolitics, Mr Blake was enticing Colombo to engage with China, the USA and other countries in parallel, a paradigm which enabled Colombo to annihilate the military power of Tamils through a genocidal onslaught in 2009.
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Colombo's COIN backfires, solidarity key to ensure Tamil-Muslim territoriality: Diasporic academic

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 April 2019, 16:30 GMT]
The growth of Wahhabism in the island has only served Colombo, and its external backers' interests in weakening the possibilities of unified Tamil speaking peoples' resistance to the unitary state, argues Norway-based Eezham Tamil anthropology academic Athithan Jayapalan in an article following the serial Easter Sunday bomb attacks in the island. The Wahhabis were contributing to the severing of the ties held by Tamil Muslims to their territory, and in the case of north and east, to their Tamil neighbours by targeting, destroying or marginalising traditional Tamil Muslim Sufism in the island in the past. “Time has again come for Tamil – Muslim solidarity and alliances to bloom, to arrest divisive measures of the Colombo state and external powers,” to counter the dangers of the future, he writes narrating the trends of the past and his experiences during the field trips to the island.
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West influencing regime-change politics responsible for worsening situation: Fr Sakthivel

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 April 2019, 23:46 GMT]
The serial terror attacks on the churches and the hotels during the Easter Sunday has sparked fear of repercussions among the Muslims in Colombo, Negombo and the suburbs of the capital. They fear that a preplanned backlash could come from the forces operating among the other communities, Colombo-based human rights activist and Tamil Catholic priest Fr M. Sakthivel told TamilNet on Monday. In general, the people are also afraid that there might be other bombs as a bomb went off in Colombo on Monday while the SL Police was about to defuse it, he said. The priest who knows the grassroots situation prevailing in the South of the island said that the outside forces, particularly the West, which has been heavily intervening in the affairs of the island with a regime-change agenda, was to be blamed for the deteriorating security conditions of the non-Sinhala-Buddhist peoples in the island.
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Journalist harassed after exposing SLN surveillance on peaceful protest in Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 April 2019, 23:18 GMT]
The SL Police in Mullaith-theevu has instructed Tamil journalist, Shanmugam Thavaseelan, to attend questioning at its station on Thursday. The move is interpreted as harassment against the Tamil journalists covering the peaceful protests in the district. A Sinhala intelligence operative of the SL Navy, who was caught red-handed by the Tamil protesters while taking close-up photos of the participants of a peaceful protest at Vadduvaakal, was behind the complaint. The Sinhala operative was claiming that he belonged to the SLN Intelligence Wing. However, he was not in possession of papers or identity card to document his military identity. The people handed him over to the naval base, Gotabhaya SLNS, after verifying his identity. He was also forced to delete some of the surveillance photos during the intervention.
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Intelligence establishments poised to escalate religious fundamentalism in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 March 2019, 21:10 GMT]
A group of Saiva Tamil activists, attempting to renovate a decoration-arch placed four years ago on the road to Thirukkeatheeswaram temple in Mannaar, were opposed by a section of Tamil Catholic people on Sunday. The Catholics alleged that the presence of the galvanised arch was a disturbance to Our Lady of Lourdes Church at the locality. The Lourdes church, which was a minor place of worship, had also been expanded into a big temple four years ago in Maanthai parish. The parish priest of nearby Vangkaalai was opposing the ‘renovation’ of the arch blaming that the Saivites were scheming a permanent concrete structure. The Saivites, in their turn, were arguing that they were only consolidating the damaged parts of the existing galvanised arch on the occasion of Maha Shivaratri which was to be observed on Monday. The dispute was blown out of proportion by the parties with vested interest.
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Occupying Colombo turns SL military-employed pre-school teachers against TNA

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 January 2019, 23:23 GMT]
The unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka is planning to appoint Sinhala health sector workers and pre-school teachers for vacant posts at the absence of the democratically elected provincial council in the North, Tamil civil officials at the Northern Provincial Council said. In the meantime, the unitary state system has been inciting the pre-school teachers employed in the SL military-operated ‘Civil Security Division’ to protest against the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) through propagating false propaganda that the TNA was attempting to scrap their job contracts, the sources further said.
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Sirisena didn't keep word on resettling Tamil Catholics of Musali before 31 December

[TamilNet, Monday, 31 December 2018, 22:59 GMT]
SL President Maithiripala Sirisena promised to resettle the people of Mu'l'lik-ku'lam before the end of 31st December 2018. Despite the repeated pleas the people made through their political representatives in the SL Parliament and the Bishop of Mannaar taking up the matter with the SL President and his secretariat in Colombo, nothing has taken place, complained Rev Fr Lawrence Leon on Monday. The SL Navy was refusing to release the lands and is still putting up constructions while the people are languishing without infrastructure and roads. Last year, a bus transporting people narrowly escaped from a fatal accident during the Christmas time. The new year mass at the church of Our Lady of the Assumption at Mu'l'li-ku'lam has therefore been moved to the morning on 01st of January 2019, the parish priest further said.
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Sinhala Navy pelts stones at Tamil fishers at Vadduvaakal lagoon in Mullaith-theevu

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 December 2018, 10:07 GMT]
The sailors of the occupying navy of genocidal Sri Lanka's largest naval base in Mullaiththeev, SLNS Gotabhaya, which is located to the north of the narrow Vaddvaakal lagoon which links the largest Nanthik-kadal lagoon with the sea, have imposed an unofficial ban on fishing activities in the Vadduvaakal lagoon, complain the representatives of Mullaiththeevu Fishers Association. The SLN personnel started to warn the Tamil fishers to stay away from the lagoon which engulfs the SLNS garrison. When the fishers continued to engage in fishing and pleaded with the SLN that their families were dependent on the income from prawn fishing, the SLN sailors started to threaten the fishers away by pelting stones at them.
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Genocidal Sri Lanka's maritime and naval greed expose attitudes of powers

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 November 2018, 11:29 GMT]
Maithiripala Sirisena, the incumbent SL President and Ranil Wickramasinghe, the now disputed SL Prime Minister, increased military-to-military maritime training with the USA, India and Japan between 2015 and 2017 while seeking to exploit the China-tilt ‘achievements’ of the Rajapaksa government. The SL Navy was receiving naval vessels as gifts from all the powers after the 2015 regime change. However, the SL State wanted more and more, believing that the geopolitical paradigm experimented through the genocide on Eezham Tamils would bring it fortunes. The naval ambitions went to the extent of wanting 25 powerful naval vessels from different actors to create a powerful naval fleet. At the same time, SL State's maritime economic ambitions were aimed at making Colombo the financial hub in the Indian Ocean.
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US think tank: Rajapaksa unlikely to deal with China as before

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 November 2018, 23:51 GMT]
“Rajapaksa learned hard lessons from his last experience dealing with China on Belt and Road investments,” Andrew Small, a senior Fellow with Washington-based German Marshall Fund (GMF), was quoted as saying by New York-based Bloomberg on Thursday.  “Although Beijing will be happy to see his return – and was expecting it in the next round of elections anyway – it is unlikely that the dynamic will be the same as the last time he was in power,” the Asia expert has further said.
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Let Sinhala nation decide its fate, keep focus on Tamil struggle

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 October 2018, 23:51 GMT]
The constitutional coup is an outcome of a fierce competition raging between UPFA and UNP agents, who want to exploit the accelerating trade-war between the two powers, the USA and China. The USA has already established its strategic military access to the island through India. The current dispute is not aimed at taking military or diplomatic side with a particular actor, Tamil political observers in Jaffna said. The right-wing populistic SLPP led by Rajapaksa, the strongman from Hambantota and the centre-left SLFP chaired by Sirisena, another strongman from Polonnaruwa, are staunch Sinhala nationalist parties having the blessings of the Buddhist establishment. The SL military is excited by their unity. Tamils, having no leadership after the LTTE, are puzzled. They are deceived to believe that China is behind Rajapaksa and that the USA is sticking with Wickramasinghe.
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SL Navy harasses resettled Tamils in Musali by blocking access road with barbed-wire

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 October 2018, 17:07 GMT]
The occupying SL Navy of genocidal Sri Lanka has blocked the access route to the pockets of released lands in the coastal village of Mu'l'li-ku'lam in Mannaar mainland on Saturday. Barbed-wire was put up blocking access along the main road, which is also the main supply route to the military base. The SL Navy base is located in 35 acres. However, it retains hundreds of acres of lands in Musali division. The coastal village of Mu'l'lik-ku'lam lies 45 km south of Mannaar city bordering with Puththa'lam district. The resettled people started to protest in front of the SL Navy base on Sunday. The SL Navy lifted the barbed-wire only after Parish Priest Fr Lawrence negotiated between the protesters and the Navy. The people said the SL Navy has started to behave in a more hostile than before.
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Uprooted Mu'l'lik-ku'lam Tamils adopt Ira'nai-theevu approach, enter their lands seized by SL Navy

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 July 2018, 19:21 GMT]
More than 200 Tamil families were living in Mu'l'lik-ku'lam eleven years before, in 2007, when the Sinhala military of genocidal Sri Lanka seized the coastal village facing towards the Gulf of Mannaar. Last year, the occupying SL Navy said it would consider handing over a small pocket of 77 acres of the total 5,000 acres back to the people, after ten years of protests and finally the people waging a continuous protest for 38 days in March and April 2017. However, the SL Navy didn't clear the lands and hand them over to the people despite repeated requests. The promise was a deceptive move aimed at containing the protest. However, around 50 of the 200 families have now chosen to enter the lands by themselves. They are now confined to the lands, which the SL Navy said it was prepared to release, Catholic priests in Mannaar told TamilNet on Wednesday.
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SL Military Intelligence recommences recruitment of notorious ex-paramilitary operatives

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 July 2018, 21:53 GMT]
SL President Maithiripala Sirisena, who is also the Commander-in-Chief of the occupying military, and SL Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe have given green signals to the respective intelligence services under their control to recommence recruitment of former Tamil paramilitary operatives in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils in the North and East, informed ex-paramilitary sources in Jaffna said.
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Genocidal Sri Lanka imposes forcible military training for CSD pre-school teachers

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 April 2018, 18:19 GMT]
The occupying military of genocidal Sri Lanka has instructed enslaved Tamil women teachers in the pre-schools operated by its Civil Security Division (CSD) in Ki'linochchi and Mullaiththeevu districts. The pre-school teachers were earlier forced to undergo three-day training sessions. The SL military has now instructed a section of these teachers to take part in 21-days of a full-fledged military training programme, named as ‘leadership training’. The military training is conducted at SL military training centres in Diyattalawa and at Panagoda in the South. The training programme also aims at a brainwashing programme targeting the younger generation of enslaved children of CSD parents, employed at SL military-operated farms in Vanni.
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Colombo strengthens impunity for genocidal Sinhala commander

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 April 2018, 23:13 GMT]
Jaffna High Court Judge Manickavasagam Ilancheliyan on Monday gave green signal to proceed with the cases of habeas corpus seeking a senior commander of the SL Military to produce three of twenty-five Tamil youth, whose whereabouts are not known after the SL Army at Naavatkuzhi detained them 22 years ago in 1996. The SL Police instructed by the Judge to investigate the case stated that it was impossible for them to investigate the case as more than 20 years have elapsed since the disappearance of the victims. The first respondent is Major General Duminda Keppettiwalana, who commanded the Sinhala soldiers of the military camp at Naavatkuzhi in 1996 when he was a captain. He has been systematically protected and promoted by Sarath Fonseka, the former SL Army commander and a partner of the current regime in Colombo.
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