Wickramasinghe protects unpunished war criminals of SL Military Intelligence

[TamilNet, Saturday, 04 March 2017, 20:35 GMT]
SL Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe has secretly launched a plan to erase the records of military intelligence officers and operatives of the Military Intelligence who have been named with command responsibility by the affected victims and their families, particularly the kith and kin of Eezham Tamils subjected to enforced disappearances at the hands of occupying Sri Lankan military after MI operatives carried out arrests, detentions and abductions during the presidency of Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa. In an effort to get rid of the details of those named by the victims, the military intelligence officers and operatives are being transferred to separate divisions or offered early retirement, informed EPDP paramilitary sources told TamilNet on Saturday.
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Keappaa-pulavu protesters question silence of foreign diplomats, challenge ‘TNA optics’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 February 2017, 11:38 GMT]
Tamil women-led protesters in Keappaa-pulavu on Saturday questioned the silence on the part of the diplomats from the international community who have been to Keappaa-pulavu on ‘field trips’ in the past. The Head of Keappaa-pulavu Women’s Development Organisation Ms S Chandraleela told TamilNet on Saturday that in addition to releasing their occupied lands, the SL military should be withdrawn from the roads used by their children from their village to school. The people on the struggle are concerned of retaliatory abductions from the SL military, which is engaged in surveillance against the protesting families. In the meantime, SL Air Force remove the paragraph of shoot-at-sight warning from the notice boards it had put inside the lands, a day after the threat was exposed by media with photographic evidence.
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Health of hunger striking elderly women deteriorates, Wigneswaran urges immediate action

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 January 2017, 20:35 GMT]
The health situation of the hunger striking elderly women of Eezham Tamils subjected to enforced disappearances in SL military controlled Vavuniyaa during and after the genocidal onslaught on Vanni in 2009 has escalated on the third day of their fast-unto death campaign demanding immediate answers from the SL State and its backers on the whereabouts of their kith and kin. Medical sources in Vavuniyaa have urged hospitalisation of four women who were treated by the doctors on Wednesday. But, the hunger strikers have refused to cooperate and continue their struggle. In the meantime, several activists in Jaffna, Trincomalee and other places have called for escalation of hunger strike in other places. Social media activists are also organising a fasting campaign expressing their solidarity.
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Occupying Colombo stages ‘PTA abductions’ in Jaffna citing criminal gangs

[TamilNet, Monday, 07 November 2016, 21:06 GMT]
The ‘Terrorist’ Investigation Division (TID) of genocidal Sri Lanka has staged at least 8 abduction-styled arrests in Jaffna within the past three days. The arrests have been carried out under the ‘Prevention of Terrorism Act’, according to the SL Police. The explanation given by the TID, especially when questioned by the families of arrested persons, was that the persons were being targeted for alleged involvement in criminal gangs. The ‘arrests’ come after a period of heightened propaganda in South that there was a gang named ‘Avva’ operating in Jaffna beyond the control of SL Police and military. One of the arrested is said to be a law student and an active supporter of Tamil National Peoples’ Front, who was engaged in democratic mobilization, especially during the Ezhuka Thamizh uprising in Jaffna.
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Abducted Tamil businessman released after torture in Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 October 2016, 20:45 GMT]
36-year-old Krishnasamy Ratheesan, a Tamil businessman who was reported missing on 12 October in Ki'linochchi, returned home with internal injuries and symptoms of shock. Refusing to comment anything on who the culprits were and why they abducted him and subjected him to torture, the father of one chose to seek legal protection through the police in Ki'linochchi, sources in Ki'linochchi said. So-called white-van squads operated by the SL military intelligence were behind similar abductions in the past, especially during the times of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa as the ‘Defence Secretary’ of the occupying SL military. The latest abduction has raised alarms among the business community in the North-East.
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Catholic Peace Mission in Jaffna challenges Colombo’s propaganda on ‘reconciliation’

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 September 2016, 23:16 GMT]
While the President of genocidal Sri Lanka has brushed away the objective criticisms on the utter failure of one-way-determined ‘Sinhala-Only Reconciliation’ as mere propaganda coming from ‘fundamentalist media’ in the North-East, Rev. Fr. S.V.B. Mangalarajah, the president of the Justice & Peace Commission in Jaffna, has issued a report exposing some of the fundamental failures of this ‘one-way’ determined campaign of ‘reconciliation’ and the so-called ‘good governance’. Lands of the people not returned, political prisoners not released, lack of accountability for missing persons, serious apprehensions regarding the OMP, the PTA still being enforced, denial of memorial rights, lack of official arrangements to look after the victims of war, poisonous injections causing concern, failed local investigations and unabated erecting Buddha statues are pointed out in the report.
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Sinhala military builds Buddhist vihara in Hindu temple premises in Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 August 2016, 22:38 GMT]
Genocidal Sinhala military is constructing concrete structures surrounding a Buddha statue erected by it inside Kanakaampikai-Amman temple, which was initiated by Eezham Tamil Saiva mystic Yogar Swami in the early 50s when the Ira'nai-madu irrigations scheme was developing in Ki'linochchi. Despite repeated requests made to SL Minister of Prison Reforms, Rehabilitation, Resettlement and Hindu Religious Affairs D.M.Swaminthan, the Colombo politician has not been able to relocate the Buddha statue away from the Saiva temple premises and release the occupied lands back to the Hindu temple, Tamil activists in Ki'linochchi said. Now, the occupying ‘Sri Lanka’ Army soldiers have been busily deployed to put up walls surrounding the Buddha statue and the construction is blocking the chariot-route of the Hindu temple, sparking off tension in the area.
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SL Police crimes against Eezham Tamils exposed in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 August 2016, 23:02 GMT]
While a Sinhala Officer-in-Charge (OIC), Chintaka Bandara, and his criminal gang, alleged of being responsible for the torture, killing and subsequent cover-up of the murder of a 26-year-old Tamil youth in their custody at Chunnaakam in 2011 are still being at the helm of the SL police affairs at Kodikaamam in Jaffna, the SL Police in Jaffna city has been alleged of murdering a crucial witness this week. 51-year-old Krishnan Kanthasamy, who was a brokering agent of the Sinhala military-run white-van squad, was caught by the people on Kasthooriyaar Road in the city on Monday and he revealed the details of a Major rank SL Military Intelligence officer and his squad as being responsible for several abductions, killings and extortion of money from some of the families of their genocidal victims. Later, he was poisoned by Sinhala police officers, informed Tamil police circles told TamilNet.
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Sinhala Police wants SL Judiciary to investigate Tamil students first

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 August 2016, 08:49 GMT]
While Sinhalese students are demanding a sub-station of SL Police to be established inside the premises of the University of Jaffna, the police of genocidal Sri Lanka have filed cases against 5 Tamil students. The Tamil students, including the Student Union leader who was assaulted by the Sinhalese students, have to present themselves at Jaffna Court on 25 August, informed sources at the University of Jaffna told TamilNet on Sunday. In the meantime, 4 Sinhalese students have to present themselves on 10 September, the sources further said.
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Genocidal Colombo demonstrates its ‘respect’ to passive discourse by UNHRC with latest abduction

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 July 2016, 23:34 GMT]
While the Foreign Minister of genocidal Sri Lanka was telling the Human Rights Council in Geneva that his State had ratified the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Disappearance on Wednesday, the SL Military Intelligence of the SL State abducted a father of three and subjected him for a day-long unimaginable torture before dumping him away at a farmland in Mannaar with a warning that if he talked about what had happened to him at the torture chamber, he would be shot and killed next time. The victim, 38-year-old Santhiyogu Anton is receiving medical treatment at ward 04 of Mannaar hospital and the SL Police is ensuring what the abductors wanted the victim to do in remaining total silence to the world what had happened to him. The victim has revealed that there was at least one another person in the torture chamber of SL military intelligence.
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War-affected, poverty-stricken Tamil villagers complain of neglect in housing assistance

[TamilNet, Monday, 09 May 2016, 23:35 GMT]
104 Eezham Tamil families, who have resettled in Isaimalaith-thaazhvu village, which is located 3 km southeast of Murungkan town along Mannaar - Mathavaachchi Road in Naanaaddaan division, complain that they are being systematically neglected in all the housing schemes reaching Mannaar district. The families, mostly dependent on animal farming or agriculture close to their temporary huts, live below the poverty line, and are among the poorest in Mannaar district. Their houses were either demolished or taken over by the occupying SL military and the notorious Special Task Force (STF) in February 1997 during the brutal military operation code named ‘Edibala’.
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Colombo deploys military to carry out extra-judicial arrests, hostage-taking in North-East

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 April 2016, 21:41 GMT]
Colombo's military Establishment has stepped up white-van abductions and hostage-taking of family members of former LTTE members in the North and East in the recent weeks. At least 13 Eezham Tamils, including a woman, are being detained at the moment in the notorious torture chamber known as 4th Floor in Colombo, legal sources in Colombo said. Ex-LTTE members returning from employment abroad in the Middle East have been subjected to arrests at Katunayake airport. In the meantime, the ‘Terrorist’ Investigation Division (TID), operated from Colombo had taken two siblings of a former LTTE member in Batticaloa as hostages till the person they were searching for turned himself over to the TID, the sources in Colombo said. While claiming ‘good-governance’ and ‘reconciliation’ to outside world, the Colombo regime has reinforced Sinhala military rule in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils.
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Tamil political prisoners urge strong outside efforts to secure their release

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 April 2016, 06:15 GMT]
Tamil political prisoners in Anuradhapura prison told a delegation of Mannaar Citizens' Committee and a Northern Provincial Council member from Mannaar who were visiting them at Anuraadhapura prison on the traditional New Year Day on Thursday that they had lost all the hopes in the Colombo regime, which had come to power using the votes of Tamils. The regime is adamant in not taking a principled approach to their release. In the meantime, the political prisoners, who met the delegation from Mannaar told TamilNet over the phone that they had urged the visiting NPC councillor to impress upon the Chief Minister of the NPC and other councillors to also address the plight of Tamil political prisoners with Up-Country Tamil origin languishing in Anuradhapura prison.
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Occupying Colombo resumes arrests, abductions in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 April 2016, 20:02 GMT]
32-year-old Jeyakanthan Rajadurai, a former LTTE member released from the custody of the occupying military of genocidal Sri Lanka earlier, was abducted at gun point by unknown persons, who came to his residence at Nu'naavil in Chaavakachcheari on Sunday, according to a complaint lodged at the Human Rights Commission office in Jaffna. The abducted man is now detained at Boosa prison, about 98 km south of Colombo, informed sources told TamilNet. There are at least 11 abduction-styled arrests that have taken place in Jaffna and Ki'linochchi districts in the recent days, the sources further said.
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US, UN bureaucracy behind Zeid's soft stand on Sri Lanka: Prof Boyle

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 February 2016, 01:37 GMT]
Responding to Tamil activists accusation that "they witnessed a total lack of understanding on the part of UN Rights Chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein on the deep-rooted structural crimes taking place against Tamils in the East under the Mahaweli Minister and SL President Maithiripala Sirisena," Professor Boyle, an expert in international law, and who teaches at the University of Illinois College of Law, said, "Zeid is not an idiot. He knows full well that the GOSL has inflicted genocide on the Eelam Tamils that continues as of today. Zeid was sent there by the United States Government and the United Nations Bureaucracy to do damage control and damage limitation on behalf of the Genocidal GOSL Regime against the Eelam Tamils. He who pays the piper calls the tune."
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White-van abductions continue in North with ‘UNP sophistication’

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 December 2015, 21:42 GMT]
Sri Lankan military intelligence is operating white-van abductions through diaspora and homeland based intermediaries, a well-informed right activists in Jaffna told TamilNet on Wednesday. There have been at least three cases in the recent weeks where abductions were carried out in the Northern Province. The affected parties were given death threats if they chose to go public through other channels than the intermediaries through whom they were released after abductions. The targeted people were Tamil journalists, family members of diaspora activists and traders.
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Systematic enforced disappearances, an international crime, says Boyle

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 December 2015, 23:21 GMT]
Noting the re-emerging threat of white van abductions and enforced disappearances in the historic homeland, the NorthEast, of Eezham Tamils, Professor Francis Boyle, an expert in international law, said that systematic enforced disappearances is a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute, and in Sri Lanka this criminality of the Government of Sri Lanka is "an indicium of genocide against the Eelam Tamils." Boyle noted, as evidence of his concern, the recent incident in Jaffna where Colombo's military intelligence operatives threatened the editors of a local newspaper that they would have to face the "white van" if the paper failed to retract a published story on missing persons.
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SL military intelligence threatens Jaffna daily, reminds editors on ‘white-vans’ of past

[TamilNet, Sunday, 13 December 2015, 23:28 GMT]
Four Sri Lankan military intelligence operatives, who entered the office of the Jaffna edition of Thinakkural newspaper on Wednesday night, threatened the editorial staff for publishing a news item that exposed the ‘activities’ of certain surveillance operatives, who were camouflaged as journalists and deployed to monitor a meeting held on the previous day. The paper had published a story detailing the presence of four to six ‘operatives’, who were monitoring the participants at a meeting organised by the families of missing persons from all the 8 districts in the North and East on Tuesday. The SL military intelligence operatives who entered the office of the paper on Wednesday warned the editors to withdraw their story with a correction and apology to be issued on Thursday.
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Veteran photojournalist passes away at 82 after bicyle accident

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 November 2015, 23:41 GMT]
82-year-old photojournalist Sankarakampan Kathiravelu passed away on Thursday at Jaffna Hospital after he accidentally fell into a well when his bicycle crashed on a by-lane located near the newspaper office of Thinakkural in Jaffna. Mr S. Kathirvelu, coming from Up-country Tamil origin, has been one of the key photojournalists of Jaffna, who remained committed in his service for more than three decades. “His last wish was that Tamil journalists in the diaspora and the homeland should jointly work to strengthen the journalists to remain committed in their work to document the systemic crimes against the nation of Eezham Tamils,” senior journalists paying tribute to him told TamilNet.
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OISL should not absolve Colombo from genocidal crimes: survivor of Mirusuvil massacre

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 July 2015, 13:52 GMT]
The United Nations should not commit – once more – a crime against humanity in the case of Eezham Tamils by absolving the Sri Lankan State from the ultimate crime of genocide through facilitating escape routes to Colombo through the OHCHR at Geneva and the Office of the General-Secretary of the United Nations at New York, Ponnuthurai Maheswaran, who is the sole survivor and prime witness of Mirusuvil massacre case, told TamilNet this week in Jaffna. Mr Maheswaran had narrowly escaped from his killers on 19 December 2000 at the age of 21 at Mirusuvil where he witnessed 8 of his close relatives being tortured and killed by a killer squad of the occupying Sri Lanka Army. Although he had identified several soldiers directly involved in the massacre in the identification parades, all of them, except one, have been absolved of the crime by Colombo's justice system.
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