Eezham Tamils mark Genocide Remembrance braving veiled threats from Colombo

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 May 2017, 23:39 GMT]
Northern Provincial Councillors, including Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran, Tamil Peoples’ Council (TPC), Tamil National Peoples’ Front (TNPF), Tamil civil society, political parties of former Tamil militants including the EPRLF, TELO and PLOTE and TNA parliamentarians from Vanni electorate, have vowed their commitment to mark Mu'l'ilvaaykkaal Remembrance as Tamil Genocide Remembrance calling for the public to attend various events scheduled at Mu'l'livaaykaal on Thursday. The Catholic community associated with St. Paul’s Church in Mu'l'livaaykkaal have organised 800 stones to be engraved with the names of those who perished in the genocidal onslaught and called for a memorial monument at Mu'l'livaaykkaal where a statue was erected last year.
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TNA under fire for dealing with SL military commanders at district-level

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 April 2017, 21:46 GMT]
EPRLF leader Suresh Premachandran has urged the elected Tamil parliamentarians to refrain from engaging directly with SL military on the issue of releasing private lands. The burning problem of military land grab of private lands should be addressed to the elected leaders in the South. It is the duty of the SL President, who is an elected leader to instruct the military to immediately hand over the lands seized from private land-owners, Mr Premachandran said at a press conference held in Jaffna on Tuesday. The SL President is also the Commander-in-Chief of the occupying Sinhala military.
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Muslims, Tamils protest against Colombo’s land grab in Musali, Mannaar

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 March 2017, 07:02 GMT]
Around 150 Tamils are staging a continuous protest demanding Colombo to release the lands seized by the occupying Navy at Mu’l’lik-ku’lam in the Musali division. In the meantime, more than 50 Muslims from Ma’richchuk-kaddi staged a protest condemning the Colombo government, SL President Maithiripala Sirisena and the SL Forest Department for having annexed their residential areas as part of the Vil-pattu reserved forest. Extremist Buddhist monks have been exerting pressure on SL State to Sinhalicise the reserved forest of Tamil-speaking peoples into Wilpatha. Despite repeated protests by Tamil-speaking Muslims, the Colombo Establishment, both during the times of Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithiripala Sirisena, has been trying to seize the lands of Muslim residents.
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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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Thousands mobilize in Ezhuka Thamizh in Batticaloa, denounce genocidal ‘Sri Lanka’

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 February 2017, 20:50 GMT]
Thousands of Tamils mobilized in Batticaloa on Friday denouncing the unitary State model of genocidal Sri Lanka currently being envisaged in the constitutional proposals in the South. The SL regime in Colombo has discarded the proposals submitted in open and transparent manner by the Tamils in the North-East, the organizers of the event, Tamil People’s Council, said. The entire constitutional process has become a secretive discourse while the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act is used to muffle the freedom of expression of Eezham Tamils in the North and East, the speakers, including Justice C.V. Wigneswaran, said in their speeches. There should be full-scale de-militarization. The 6th Amendment to the SL Constitution and the draconian PTA should be scrapped for a free and fair constitutional process to take place in the North-East.
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ITAK leaders have violated Tamil people’s democratic mandate: Premachandran

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 January 2017, 22:39 GMT]
The very basic demands of Tamils have been totally denied, both by the constitutional assembly tasked with drafting the new constitution and by the political parties in the South. On what basis, the two ITAK politicians R. Sampanthan and M. Sumanthiran continue to be part of the constitutional assembly, asks EPRLF Leader Suresh Premachandran, who took up the matter in a recent coordinating committee meeting of the TNA. The Ilangkai Thamizh Arasuk Kadchi (ITAK), under the leadership of Thanthai S.J.V Chelvanayakam, boycotted the 1972 Constitution as the constitutional proposal didn’t respect the demands of Tamils. Similarly, the TULF boycotted the 1978 constitution brought by J.R. Jayawardene. There has been no democratic discussion or debate within the ranks of the ITAK. The two other parties, Sitharthan's PLOTE and TELO led by Selvam Adaikalanthan are also answerable, he said.
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TNA should quit constitutional steering committee: EPRLF

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 December 2016, 20:26 GMT]
The position of the TNA was that talks on political solution should precede the discourse on constitutional proposals. This has not taken place. The parties comprising the TNA are kept at dark by Opposition Leader R. Sampanthan and M.A. Sumanthiran. The duo has completely disregarded the exercise of participatory democracy of others in the TNA alliance, including the majority of other ITAK parliamentarians, said EPRLF Leader Suresh Premachandran on Wednesday this week. Except some ‘secret meetings’ organised by SL Foreign Ministry at Singapore and in London with some of their collaborators in the Tamil diaspora, the duo have kept the entire Tamil nation uninformed of their work, Mr Suresh Premachandran said.
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Violations and violence in BJP-New Delhi bringing Gandhi statues

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 December 2016, 23:49 GMT]
SL Police in Mullaiththeevu has been investigating four Tamil youth, who have recently shared messages criticising controversial erection of Gandhi and Buddha statues in the country of Eezham Tamils. The questioning by the occupying Sinhala police in Mullaiththeevu has come after a Gandhi statue, hurriedly put up in front of the District Secretariat a few days ago, was pulled down by unknown actors in the early hours of Monday. “The controversial erection of the statue, yet to be declared open, has actually taken place violating the procedures of the local government and the people having freedom of expression without instigating violence or be involved with the incident of pulling down this unknown statue are now being investigated by the police,” said Northern Provincial Councillor Thurairajah Ravikaran.
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UN refugee agency discriminates against stateless Eezham Tamil refugees

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 04 October 2016, 22:43 GMT]
Around 100,000 uprooted and poverty-stricken refugees from the country of Eezham Tamils are staying in the camps in Tamil Nadu State in India. Apart from them, more than 200,000 Eezham Tamils, who are also uprooted due to the conflict in the island, are also living outside the camps in Tamil Nadu. Only 4,564 people, belonging to 1,854 families have returned back to Northern Province. Most of the people returned to the island within the last five years the UN refugee agency UNHCR complain that they have been abandoned by the agency and the authorities. People who have returned to Vavuniyaa complain that Sinhala colonisers had seized their lands and that they are now let to look after themselves without any programmes of resettlement. The UN agency was only interested in paying the travel expenses. The returnees complain that they have not heard anything from the UNCHR after that.
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15,000 Tamils attend historic uprising in Jaffna, reject Unitary Constitution, ITAK draws flak

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 September 2016, 16:10 GMT]
Ezhuka Thamizh (Let Tamil rise up), the biggest uprising to take place in the country of Eezham Tamils after the Pongku Thamizh uprisings during the times of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), declared on Saturday that the ‘consultations’ staged by Colombo for the new constitution completely failed to include the genuine political aspirations of the Tamil people. The Ilankai Thamizh Arasuk Kadchi (ITAK) with a hijacked leadership and the powers operating it, received a serious message from the people at the grassroots, regardless of the organisers of the event, that the people on the ground are fully prepared to replace the ITAK hierarchy once a good leadership takes shape to lead the nation of Eehzam Tamils in the next phase of their struggle. It is now time for NPC Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran to prove the case, commented Tamil political observers in Jaffna.
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Sampanthan, Sumanthiran attempt to quench Tamil uprising in North

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 August 2016, 20:12 GMT]
Opposition Leader R. Sampanthan and pro-Establishment TNA parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran, have been staging a series of meetings in recent days in a die-hard attempt to quench the Tamil uprising, which has been scheduled to take place in Jaffna on 14 September. While the mobilisation which has been initiated by the Tamil Peoples Council (TPC), has drawn support from more than 54 grassroots and civil groups in the Northern Province, the deviatory leaders of the main Tamil polity, the TNA, have been instructed by the Establishments not to support the uprising. EPRLF and PLOTE leaders have been harassed by the Sampanthan polity not to be involved with the uprising. However, Dharmalingam Siddharthan and Suresh Premachandran have refused to yield to the pressure to change their stance, informed political sources in Jaffna told TamilNet.
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Ki'linochchi to mobilise against SL military erecting Buddhist sites in occupied Tamil land

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 August 2016, 23:17 GMT]
Triggered by Sinhala military soldiers being deployed to construct Buddhist vihara inside the occupied temple lands of Kanakaampikai Amman at Ira'nai-madu, two mainstream Tamil formations have announced protests and shutdown in the following weeks with the backing of rural and grassroots organisations in Ki'linochchi district. The first protest is to take place on 22 August from Elephant Pass (EPS) to Ki'linochchi with the backing of Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarian Sivagnanam Sritharan. The next protest and shutdown is scheduled on 07 October, on the initiative by Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF) with the participation of former Parliamentarians of EPRLF, PLOTE, EPDP. Tamil National Council, Catholic and Saiva organisations have come together extending their support to the mobilisation.
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Tamil politicians blame SL Military for enticing Sinhala students with triumphalist chauvinism

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 July 2016, 00:21 GMT]
It was a section of Sinhala students who went against the decision taken by the Jaffna University administration to allow Kandyan dance as a stage-event inside the venue hall and traditional Tamil music in the welcome procession outside the hall on Saturday. It was the SL military intelligence that enticed the Sinhala students to act in contrary to the decision, said Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the leader of Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF). The SL Police on Wednesday arrested a Jaffna University student leader merely on a complaint made to them. The SL police has acted without conducting an initial investigation, he said. In the meantime, EPRLF Leader Suresh Premachandran said there was no point in punishing Sinhala or Tamil students. Instead, the investigations should focus on how these students were manipulated by the external forces to indulge in violence, the former MP said.
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Tamil fishermen rise up against Colombo's move to permanently militarise Pa'l'li-munai in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 July 2016, 16:39 GMT]
Tension prevailed at Pa'l'li-munai, a coastal village of Eezham Tamils located within the urban limits of Mannaar city Wednesday morning around 10:00 a.m., when the occupying Sinhala Navy was using the SL Survey Department officials to measure lands for permanent military seizure while a case against the SL Navy is still pending at the District Court of Mannaar. SL Survey Department officials were blocked from surveying the lands of fishing market and 21 houses that have been occupied by the SL Navy since 1990. Eezham Tamil fishermen families spontaneously gathered at the site, shouted slogans against the SL Navy and demanded access to all their properties that have not been released to public since 1990.
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Colombo's TID interrogates Tamil paramilitary operative

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 June 2016, 22:48 GMT]
Colombo's ‘Terrorist’ Investigation Division (TID) officers are interrogating a 29-year-old Tamil paramilitary operative from Thenmaraadchi, Jaffna, in connection with the discovery of explosives in March at the village of Ma'ravanpulavu, informed sources told TamilNet on Wednesday. Sivarasa Sivakulan alias Murali, who has been a close confidant of former SL Military Commander in Jaffna Major General Mahinda Hathurusinghe and who was actively involved in SLFP election campaigns in Thenmaraadchi during the regime of Mahinda Rajapaksa, is the one subjected to interrogations at the notorious 4th Floor in Colombo. Mr Sivakulan has also been a close friend of the present SL Governor of Northern Province Mr Reginald Cooray, informed sources in Jaffna said. He was detained on 11 June.
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Learn from Kosgama blast, de-militarise civilian areas in North: Premachandran

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 June 2016, 22:33 GMT]
Colombo must remove the military camps in the North, especially the camps situated in residential areas away from Tamil civilians. The representatives in South have called for relocation camps away from civilian areas after the blast in Kosgama, where people lost lives, sustained injuries and the blast completely destroyed all the surrounding civilian properties. Imagine the situation in North, where several hundreds of army camps have been installed in residential areas among the civilians, said Suresh Premachandran, the leader of EPRLF, which is one of the four parties comprising the Tamil National Alliance.
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Maithiripala to stage another selfie session in Jaffna before next Geneva session

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 June 2016, 22:31 GMT]
Maithiripala Sirisena, the president of genocidal Sri Lanka, is scheduled to visit Jaffna on 18 June to take part in another publicity and ‘selfie’ stunt. Amidst the ‘lack’ of fresh venues to be released to the uprooted Tamils, the visiting SL President will be taking part in an event of ‘releasing’ Nadeswara College and Nadeswara Kansita Viththiyaalayam at militarized Kaangkeasan-thu'rai (KKS) for the second time this year. Mr Sirisena handed over the two schools at a PR move on 12 March. Since the initial PR move, which was also timed before a Geneva session earlier this year, the teachers and the labourers engaged in the reconstruction were being regularly harassed at the ‘Forward Defence Line’ of the SL military zone. Although education activities have been launched last Friday, the schools are still kept under military zone and civilians have not been allowed to resettle there.
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Genocide Remembrance at Mu'l'livaaykkaal passes strong messages to IC

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 May 2016, 17:22 GMT]
It would tantamount to betrayal of the victims of war if Tamils were to engage in ‘swap trade’ (pa'nda-maattu) exchanging accountability for the heinous war-crimes that were intentionally committed against them in the past with future reconciliation efforts, said the Chief Minister of Northern Provincial Council Justice C.V. Wigneswaran on Genocide Remembrance, which was collectively marked at Mu'l'livaaykkaal on Wednesday. In a carefully worded statement read out among the crying survivors of Tamil genocide, Mr Wigneswaran also delivered a sharp message to the member states of the ‘International Community’, the UN Human Rights Establishment, particularly its chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, not to ask Tamils to forget war crimes in return for the promises of federal solution.
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Indian intelligence, media insinuate Eezham Tamils to drop ‘Eelam’ in party names

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 April 2016, 16:52 GMT]
The Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), led by Mr Suresh Premachandran, has denounced on Friday a narration given by the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) that one of the oldest parties of early Tamil militant legacy was dropping the terms ‘Eelam’ and ‘Liberation’ in its party name. The claimed name change is actually being contemplated by a small group, the EPRLF ‘Padmanaba wing’, which is neither part of the TNA nor has any electoral standing. This group is led by former North-Eastern Provincial Council Chief Minister Mr Varatharaja Perumal, who is widely seen as an agent of Indian Intelligence. In 2009, immediately after the Vanni genocide, the then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK Chief Mr M. Karunanidhi also gave instructions to remove the word Eezham in public places. Mr Karunanidhi reportedly has said that it was the wish of the ‘Central agencies’ of India.
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Condition of hunger-striking POWs, political prisoners worsens

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 November 2015, 16:28 GMT]
At least 31 Prisoners of War and political prisoners are either forcefully admitted to prison hospitals or their health has seriously declined as their fast-unto-death campaign reached the 5th day on Thursday at New Magazine prison in Welikade, Bogambara prision in Kandy and in Anuradhapura prison, former parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran told journalists in Jaffna today. There are Tamils from all the districts, up-country, Muslims and even Sinhalese who are alleged or accused for their involvement with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) among the prisoners who are on hunger-strike, informed legal sources in Colombo told TamilNet. A wide-scale shut-down is to take place in the country of Eezham Tamils on Friday demanding release of the POWs and the political prisoners currently jailed in the prisons of genocidal Sri Lanka.
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