Indian Coast Guard trespassed into waters off Jaffna, 18 fishers detained since 03 October

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 October 2019, 20:17 GMT]
Ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu, where Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to host an informal summit, the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) has stepped up patrol activities in the Palk Straits and the Bay of Bengal. On 03 October, the ICG has trespassed into the waters off Jaffna peninsula and detained eighteen poor Eezham Tamil fishers, who were engaged in crab fishing off Ezhuvai-theevu island in an offshore vessel with 18 feet fishing bay. The families are yet to hear from the detained fishermen who are believed to be in the custody of Tamil Nadu Police in Puzhal prison, Annalingam Annarasa, the deputy chairman of Jaffna Islets Fisheries Federation said on Tuesday. Ezhuvai-theevu is the island that is seen first when coming from the Indian coast to Kayts Harbour.
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SL military, police, traders, exert pressure on civil authorities in Mannaar to alienate lands

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 September 2019, 20:49 GMT]
The occupying SL Police in Mannaar city is under constant pressure from the civil, religious and private property owners to vacate from their premises. The SL Police is harassing the Divisional Secretariat officials to release crown lands as compensation to relocate itself. Similarly, the SL Army from Tha'l'laadi cantonment in the mainland is demanding alternative properties allocated for its use before considering the release of 21 acres of the lands it has seized from a private Tamil land-owner since 1990. In the meantime, millionaire Sinhala investors from the South want large tracts of public lands leased or sold to them to put up wind and solar plants along the coast of the Mannaar island from Oalaith-thoduvaay to Thoadda-ve'li. The officials are already struggling to find lands for thousands of uprooted families from Mannaar, including those returning from exile in Tamil Nadu.
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India should change sterile attitude, IC must stop naming Tamil fighters as terrorists: Wigneswaran

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 September 2019, 23:03 GMT]
“There are no terrorists among us. Only those affected by State terrorism are among us. We ask the powers that be not to couple the names of our people with those who have been identified as fundamentalist religious terrorists. Our youth and others fought for a noble cause – the independence of their people. It is as a reaction to State terrorism that our youth resorted to arms,” declared Justice C.V. Wigneswaran, the former chief minister of the North at the massive rally held in Jaffna on Sunday. Wigneswaran demanded India to change its ‘hitherto sterile attitude’ towards a more robust and judicious one. He urged the Sinhala and Muslim people to recognise the Tamils right to Self-Determination. The rally in Jaffna drew between 3,000 and 6,000 people and was a success despite the weather conditions and the rifts caused by various political actors including the SL Governor to the North.
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UNHCR brings back refugees from Tamil Nadu without ensuring prospects for resettlement

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 September 2019, 23:42 GMT]
Uprooted Eezham Tamils who are returning from their overseas displacement in Tamil Nadu find it increasingly challenging to regain their lands and livelihood in the North-East of the island, civil officials in Mannaar said. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) and the SL state apparatus fail to meet even the basic requirements of those returning, the officials said. While the UNCHR facilitates the flight transport of the refugees through Colombo airport, it expects the SL State to complete the resettlement arrangements at the district level. However, the officials coming under the Colombo government in the district say they are unable to cope with the challenges, even to find temporary accommodation to the returning families.
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Military minds of New Delhi, Colombo stage ‘book fair’ in Jaffna though quisling Governor

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 August 2019, 23:36 GMT]
The SL Governor to North Suren Raghavan, who is the Tamil agent of Maithiripala Sirisena, the SL President and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, has organised a book fair in Jaffna this week. The military intelligence outfits of New Delhi and Colombo were collaborating behind the scene to sophisticatedly mix selected books from Tamil Nadu with publications depicting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as ‘terrorists’. The target audience of the book fair is the younger generation of Eezham Tamils. The officers of the occupying military of genocidal Sri Lanka were invited as the special guests to the event along with the Mayor of Jaffna and the Tamil children wearing Sinhala costumes were garlanding the guests at the event held under the patronage of the SL Governor at the Veerasingam Hall.
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Percival's 19th century Tamil proverb compilations collated and sorted in new publication

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 August 2019, 20:04 GMT]
One thousand eight hundred and seventy Tamil proverbs compiled by Rev Peter Percival and published as Thiruddaantha Changkirakam (திருட்டாந்த சங்கிரகம், Tiruṭṭānta Caṅkirakam) with their translation in English by the American Mission in Jaffna in 1843 and the second expanded edition in Tamil Nadu with 6,156 proverbs collected by the same author in 1874 have been combined into a single source by “Viruba” T Kumaresan and A Sivagnanaseelan. While the Tamil Nadu edition had been reprinted five times until 2019, the initial publication of proverbs collected in the country of Eezham Tamils had not been reproduced until now. The latest effort combines both the Jaffna and Mylapore compilations with English translations deploying traditional Tamil sorting in listing them all into a single source. The collection was published at an event held in Jaffna Hartley College on Monday.
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Pirapaharan’s statements between 1984 and 1993 reproduced in book form in Europe

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 August 2019, 23:55 GMT]
A Switzerland-based Eezham Tamil youth group, ‘Phoenix - the Next Generation’, has photostatically reproduced the rare 314-page compilation officially published by the Headquarters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in September 1993 in Jaffna. The book contains selected letters, interviews and statements of LTTE Leader Velupillai Pirapaharan starting from his first media interview in March 1984. The compilation consists, amongst others, of a letter that declines LTTE representation at a meeting held in New York in May 1985, appeals to the leaders of India and Tamil Nadu during the LTTE-IPKF war in 1987, and a letter of solidarity addressed to South African (ANC) leader, the late Oliver Tambo, in July 1988. The reproduction has been made from a book obtained at the public library of Jaffna in the past. The book, with ID 9907, is no longer accessible at the library.
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SL military in Jaffna hurriedly constructs Buddhist vihara in ‘HSZ’ lands in KKS

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 July 2019, 23:33 GMT]
The occupying military of genocidal Sri Lanka is silently and hurriedly erecting a Buddhist vihara at Thaiyiddi in Kaangkeasan-thu'rai (KKS) in Jaffna. The construction is taking place inside the military-held former High-Security Zone area which has not been released back to the people. Tamil civic member Shageevan Shanmugalingam from Valikaamam North (Thellip-pazhai) Divisional Council told TamilNet on Monday that he was turned back by the SL military when he went there to see the construction. In the meantime, journalists have managed to photograph the structure from a distance, exposing the project. New Delhi talking about the ‘development’ of the KKS port and upgrading the Palaali airport without ensuring de-militarisation, is paving the way for socio-economic and cultural Sinhalicisation of the coastal stretch of Eezham Tamils in Valikaamam North, Tamil activists in Jaffna said.
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Sikhs, expatriate Indian Tamils mark May 18 questioning role of Norway, USA

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 May 2019, 23:03 GMT]
The expatriate Indian Tamils from Tamil Nadu living in Scandinavia took part in the 10th Mu'l'livaaykkaal Genocide Remembrance event organised by Eezham Tamils in Oslo, the capital of Norway. They also staged a separate marking on their own at Gustaf Adolf's square in the city of Gothenburg in Sweden on 20th May. In the meantime, expatriate Tamil Nadu Tamils living in the USA staged remembrance events at 20 different places on 18th May, criticising the US abetment of genocidal Sri Lanka, both before and after the 2009 onslaught. The role of the expatriate Tamil Nadu Tamils in marking the tenth remembrance gains more significance than the hundreds of emotional events marked by the Eezham Tamil diaspora in the North-America, Europe and elsewhere with massive participation, said Tamil diaspora activists, who also appreciated the way a Sikh editor marked his remembrance to the same effect.
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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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People of all walks of life victims in ‘chosen island’ of geopolitics, religious extremism

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 April 2019, 23:12 GMT]
The families and the relatives of the victims of the serial terror attacks on Easter Sunday mourned their dead with mass burials and an island-wide day of mourning with three minutes of silence on Tuesday. At least 45 of those killed were children, according to the figures gathered by the United Nations. As the death toll from the bombings rose to 321, the Syria-based Islamic State group, which had lost all its territorial control in Syria and Iraq, claimed that it stood behind the serial terror attacks, publishing photos and a video of the attackers. In the meantime, reports also said that the US Indo-Pacific Command had wrapped up a joint naval training, four days earlier than it was scheduled to conclude in Hambantota.
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Tamil Nadu politician's family continues ‘Sri Lanka’ investment, disregards criticism

[TamilNet, Monday, 08 April 2019, 22:13 GMT]
Despite mounting criticisms, Silver Park Oil Refineries Pvt Ltd, owned by a Tamil Nadu politician's family, has begun its investment by transferring USD 400,000 to the SL Board of Investment, reports in Colombo said on Sunday. The forces, which have tricked the family of Tamil Nadu politician into the most massive single foreign direct investment ever in the history of the island so far, are aiming at blocking Tamils from waging a global BSD campaign against the SL State, Tamil activists in Jaffna said responded on Monday. SL Deputy Minister of International Trade and Development Strategies, Nalin Bandara was revealing the details of the initial transaction and forecasts of the USD 3.85 billion investment at a special media briefing held at the SL Information Department on Friday. The SL Minister was saying that the project would add USD 7 billion to the annual export earnings.
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‘Silver Park’ boosting Hambantota not linked to China: Norwegian agency

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 April 2019, 23:41 GMT]
"Hambantota got a new boost that was nothing to do with China or the BRI," reported a global shipping news service on Monday. The reporting agency, TradeWinds, is headquartered in Oslo, Norway. The China Merchants Port Holdings (CMPH) which controls the Hambantota port has conveyed to Indian and US diplomats who visited the port that its security was led by retired Sri Lankan admiral Jayantha de Silva and not by China's People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), the report further observed. In the meantime, UPFA MP Asanka S Semasinghe was alleging that Tamil Nadu DMK Politician S. Jagathrakshakan's family-owned business could be a money laundering project. SL Minister of ‘Development’ Strategies and International Trade Malik Samarawickrema (UNP) was rejected his allegations on Tuesday.
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DMK billionaire downplays record investment near Chinese port in Hambantota

[TamilNet, Sunday, 31 March 2019, 23:04 GMT]
DMK Politician S. Jagathrakshakan is trying to downplay the move for record-high investment in constructing an oil refinery and a cement plant by his family-owned business in Hambantota. The step, partnering with genocidal Sri Lanka and the Sultanate of Oman, which is having China as its biggest trade partner, “could see several more investors once the details were worked out”, the former Union minister has reportedly told media in India on Sunday. Eezham Tamils have severely criticised the move as being contradictory to the policy of his party and the legislature of Tamil Nadu, which has called for international investigations against Tamil genocide in the island as well as for an economic embargo.
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Senior TELO leader urges DMK to withdraw Hambantota investment

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 March 2019, 22:04 GMT]
M.K. Shivajilingam, the senior political leader of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO) and former TNA parliamentarian, has urged DMK politician Samikannu Jagathratchagan in Tamil Nadu to reconsider the decision of his family to invest in the big business of building an oil refinery and cement factory in Hambantota in the South. “I urge Mr Jagathratchagan to reconsider his decision [...] Eezham Tamils have not yet gained justice to the genocide committed against them. A political solution is still far away [..] At this juncture, the investment move is also contradictory to the unanimous position of Tamil Nadu State Assembly which had called for economic sanctions on Sri Lanka until these issues are resolved,” Shivajligam told TamilNet on Friday.
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Acid test for Tamil Nadu: DMK politician tricked into geopolitics of genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 March 2019, 23:29 GMT]
Within a few days after getting over with the ‘mere formality’ at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, SL Prime Minister Ranil Wickramsinghe is moving ahead with upholding the very same ‘development’ paradigm of the former SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa through securing USD one billion loan from China to link the centre of the island to the Chinese-built seaport Hambantota, which Mr Wickramasinghe leased out to China for 99 years in 2017. The SL Prime Minister has also tricked the family-owned business of Tamil Nadu's DMK politician Samikannu Jagathratchagan to invest 70% of USD 3.85 billion to build an oil refinery and cement factory in Mirijjawila in Hambantota district. The investment, made along with Oman's Oil Co (30%), is the largest foreign direct investment in the island, according to media reports in Colombo.
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Tamil parties failing to single-mindedly demand genocide justice, more dangerous than ITAK

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 March 2019, 14:11 GMT]
The Eezham Tamils need to objectively and scientifically distinguish the competing discourses of the collaborative politics of the ITAK and the actors claiming to counter the wrong narrative of the ITAK. While the ITAK is lost to ‘quisling politics’, there is a danger that the emerging alternative actors also succumbing to a rather dangerous ‘diplopia politics’, which is a double-option trap. The bedrock of both the deceptions is the overt orientation of relying upon the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR), tasked to promote and protect the human rights and function also as the secretariat of the UNHRC. It is important that Tamils should engage and interact with UN bodies. However, limiting the demands to the inside-the-box thinking of that system is more disastrous than the ITAK advocating quisling politics.
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Colombo wants to mark ancient villages in East as ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ villages

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 March 2019, 21:52 GMT]
SL Minister of Internal Home Affairs, Provincial Council and Local Government Mr Wajira Abeywardhana has instructed the district secretariats in the three districts of the Eastern Province to declare each village having at least one Sinhala Buddhist family as a Buddhist village, highly placed civil sources at the Trincomalee District Secretariat told TamilNet on Friday. Mr Abeywardhana is a UNP politician, who hails from the Galle District in the South. The UNP is following the footsteps of notorious Cyril Mathew (1912 - 1989), an outright racist UNP politician who was the SL Minister of Industry and Scientific Affairs (1977 - 1986) under J.R. Jayewardene, commented the civil sources at Trincomalee District Secretariat.
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Tamil refugees returned from India languish for seven years along border village of Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 13 January 2019, 19:13 GMT]
Thirty-seven Tamil families that have returned from the refugee camps in Tamil Nadu in India to their native village of Maruthoadai of Naavaladi in Vavuniyaa North after three-decades of exile are struggling without gaining access to their lands located along the border of Northern Province in Vavuniyaa North. The SL Forest Department is not allowing the people to set foot into their properties at Maruthoadai since 2010 when it gazetted their village as a forest conservation area. The intention is to block resettlement of Eezham Tamils and absorb the village into the expanding Sinhala colonisation programme, the uprooted families complain. They urge human right groups as well as the community organisations of Tamils to focus on their plight.
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Tamils across Palk Strait should initiate maritime policy for non-state actors in Indian Ocean

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 November 2018, 20:56 GMT]
The USA, approaching the island through its regional brother India, talks about “rules-based international order” while China's propaganda projects its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a “symphony performed by all relevant countries.” Genocide-affected Eezham Tamils and Tamils in Tamil Nadu facing various oppressions should convey to both the USA and China in clear terms which ‘rules’ they have to respect concerning the Tamil people and how to keep their ‘repertoire’ respecting the civilisational people not having a state of their own in the region, commented Tamil political observers in Jaffna. Observing the ‘naval diplomacy’ of genocidal Sri Lanka hanging in a dangerous balance with all the three geopolitical actors, they urged Tamils to grasp the big picture.
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