Colombo opts for anti-Tamil campaign to handle constitutional case

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 October 2012, 12:31 GMT]
The petitioners of a constitutional case against the ‘Divineguma’ Bill that will snatch away even grassroot development and social welfare powers of the provinces in genocidal Sri Lanka are currently targeted through a Sinhala poster campaign of ‘counterinsurgency’ style that collectively names the petitioners as ‘Paikiasothy Gang’ aiming ‘separation of the country’. The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), headed by Colombo-based Tamil, Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, in a statement on Tuesday hinted at the connection between the posters and Sri Lanka Army coming for ‘investigations’ of the Centre on Monday. The SL Supreme Court on Monday decided for a separate hearing of the case filed by the TNA and has fixed it to next Monday, while four more writ petitions challenging the bill will be taken up for hearing by the court on Thursday.
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JHU monks besiege historic Munneasvaram Siva temple in Chilaapam

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 October 2012, 17:16 GMT]
The Sinhala Buddhist extremist monks party, Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), which is a constituent of the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa's ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA), has been blocking the construction of ten-storied front tower (Rajakoapuram) of the several centuries old Munneasvaram Siva temple in Chilaapam (Chilaw) district in the North Western Province, according to the chief priest of the koayil, Mr Pathmanabakurukka'l.
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Colombo plans new demographic change in Ampaa'rai

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 June 2012, 21:36 GMT]
After tactically promoting the Sinhala Buddhist extremist Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), a ruling UPFA ally of the Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa, to file a legal suit against a key post-Tsunami resettlement village of the Tamil-speaking Muslims in Digawapi in Ampaa'rai, the colonial state apparatus in Colombo is now scheming a demographic change in Ampaa'rai to create a Sinhala division covering the Digawapi area with other areas, civil sources in Ampaa'rai say. Digawapi is a Buddhist ‘Sacred Zone’ is the argument promoted by the exclusivist JHU and the genocidal elements in the Colombo establishment. The new Sinhala Buddhist division would be carved out from four divisions, informed civil sources Ampaa'rai say.
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Occupying SL military threatens uprooted Tamils of Thirumu'rika'ndi in Vanni

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 June 2012, 15:13 GMT]
Lands that belong to 183 Tamil families in Thirumu'rika'ndi in Ki'linochchi district have been appropriated by the occupying Sri Lanka Army for a military housing scheme. The Tamil families have filed cases in law courts pleading that they should be allowed to resettle in their own lands in Thirumu'rika'ndi. In the meantime, the SL military intelligence officers visit each family, who reside in Vavuniyaa, and intimidate them to withdraw their cases and to settle at a different place.
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SL environmental plunder wipes out timber trees in Vanni, protected long by LTTE

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 January 2012, 21:30 GMT]
Sinhala plunderers from South who enter Vanni through Mannaar have been cutting valuable timber trees in large numbers and removing them to other parts of the island, people in Vanni complain. The Sri Lankan police is assisting the gangs that enter Vanni through Mannaar. The gangs are in possession of ‘permits’ from the so-called ministry of Environment and Natural Resources in Colombo, which is headed by Sinhala ultra nationalist political party leader Champika Ranawake who founded the Sihala Urumaya promoting Mahawansa mindset of anti-Tamil sentiments, comparing Tamils with Jews against an "Aryan Sinhala" supremacist philosophy. He later became the political advisor of the predominantly Buddhist monks party, Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), and a minister in the Mahinda Rajapaksa cabinet.
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Norway funds Sri Lanka ministry

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 December 2011, 10:52 GMT]
The Norwegian embassy in Colombo has contributed 18.5 million Rupees to Sri Lanka’s Child Development and Women’s Affairs ministry to improve mobility of Women Development Officers and to display billboards in prominent places, a press release from the Norwegian embassy in Colombo said on Friday. Norway at times had to “buy peace” through aid, observed Norway’s assessment report of the failed peace process released last month, cautioning “Aid may play a supportive role in peace process, but cannot short-circuit complex political processes.” Aid cannot be a substitute for politics, the report further said. But the Norwegian government is now interested in buying inroads into ‘Victor’s Sri Lanka’, forgetting its responsibilities to the victims of its peace process, diaspora political observers said.
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Stop treating Tamils as minority: Premachandran MP

[TamilNet, Sunday, 31 July 2011, 20:37 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran on Sunday touched on an important conceptual issue related to the national question in the island that affects equality between Tamils and Sinhalese, when he criticized those who treat Tamils as a ‘minority’. “We will not allow the government or anyone else to treat the Tamils as a minority anymore. If the Sri Lankan government thinks the Sinhalese are the majority and the Tamils are the minority, then they are mistaken,” Mr. Premachandran told The Sunday Leader.
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‘Colombo holds onto its sinking ship’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 May 2011, 05:23 GMT]
The visiting US Asst. Secretary of State Robert Blake accepted the congratulations of Colombo for the death of Osama Bin Laden. At the same time, in the context of the UN panel report on Sri Lanka’s war crimes he has said, “International mechanisms can become appropriate in cases where states are either unable or unwilling to meet their obligations.” But Colombo’s diplomatic community, as seen from what Dayan Jayatilake has written on Tuesday, pins its last hope on making a comparison between its genocide and the imperialism of the USA, thinking that such conflations could save its sinking ship. What the Sinhala polity that is neither prepared to concede nor share sovereignty with Eezham Tamils fails to see is that a precedence has been set in South Asia where powers could supersede sovereignty to implement what they think is right, writes a political analyst in Jaffna.
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Petitions, complaints, warnings from Sri Lanka ahead of UN war crimes report

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 April 2011, 22:54 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s government has launched a petition campaign against the UN making public an expert panel’s report on war crimes committed during the final months of the island’s war. The campaign, launched Thursday by Sri Lanka’s Minister of Private Transport Services, C. B. Ratnayaka, aims to collect one million signatures. It comes two days after President Mahinda Rajapaksa called for annual May Day rallies to be directed against the UN report. Also on Thursday, Sri Lanka’s foreign minister G.L. Peiris claimed releasing the report will damage the UN, while Mass Media minister Keheliya Rambukwella claimed the experts had written the report in just two weeks. The UN said earlier it will be releasing the much anticipated report on Friday.
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JHU Buddhist monk accused of sexually abusing child monks

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 March 2011, 14:04 GMT]
Buddhist monk and former parliamentarian representing Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) party of Sri Lanka, Aparekke Punnananda Thero, is accused of sexual abusing five underage novice monks, reported BBC Sinhala Service Friday. The Child Protection Authority (CPA) of the island produced two novice monks allegedly abused before the Colombo Magistrates Court and the court ordered the SL police to produce the other three child monks also, after the magistrate hearing the secret statements of the two child monks in her chambers. The CPA earlier informed the court that the suspect has admitted sexually abusing child monks under his custody.
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Colombo takes control of historic Kanniyaa hot wells in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 October 2010, 06:08 GMT]
The Government Agent of Trincomalee Major General (retired) Ranjith de Silva Tuesday stopped the Trincomalee Town and Gravets Pradesya Saba (PS) from maintaining the historic Kanniyaa Hot Wells stating that it belongs to the Department of Archaeology. The Government Agent (GA) also directed his men to remove the name board put up by the Pradesya Saba stating that the ancient King Raava'nan founded the hot wells and constructed the Pi’l’laiyaar temple to conduct the 31st day ritual ('Anthiraddi' rites) to his deceased mother. The Hindus in this region conduct "Anthiraddi" rites in memory of their deceased kith and kin.
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Development crimes, Norway and Tamil diaspora

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 July 2010, 23:52 GMT]
“While the West is hoodwinking Tamils with war crimes investigations, what takes place in the island in full swing with the abetment of those who abetted the war are development crimes, demographic crimes and cultural crimes to complete genocide. The balance tilted by the international community has now placed Eezham Tamils to face several armies: an occupying army, settlement army, a retrogressive cultural army and the ‘development army’. Meanwhile, some Tamil individuals argue that diaspora should stop prioritising politics, but should ‘reconcile’ to subordination and engage in ‘rehabilitation’, without realising that it is they who have imperceptibly fallen into a vicious political agenda of the oppressors”, commented a social activist responding to ‘development’ circles in Norway advocating the diaspora to engage in ‘development’ accepting a questionable Sinhala NGO as the ‘monitor’.
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JHU criticizes Colombo UN seige

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 July 2010, 16:12 GMT]
The Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) Wednesday criticized the siege against the UN office in Colombo by the National Freedom Front (NFF) led by Sri Lanka government minister Wimal Weerawansa, saying that the seige is a foolish act. JHU's former leader and currently a Member of Parliament of the JHU, Venerable Ellawela Medhananda Thera, told media that the UN has many member countries, and that UN should not be held responsible for the appointment of Experts Panel to assist the UN Secretary General to probe Sri Lanka's war crimes.
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JHU holds protest march against UN Experts Panel

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 June 2010, 17:21 GMT]
The Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), a constituent of the United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) government led by Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse, Monday morning held a protest march starting from the premises of the All Ceylon Buddhist Congress (ACBC) to the United Nations office located at Buddhaloka Mawatte in Colombo against the appointment of Experts Panel by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to advise him on the alleged war crimes during the last leg of the war in Sri Lanka, sources in Colombo said.
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Colombo intensifies spread of Buddhism in North

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 June 2010, 17:51 GMT]
Buses carrying around two thousand Buddhist priests under heavy escort carrying a sacred statue of Buddha on a pilgrimage to Jaffna had passed Vavuniyaa Monday and entered Vanni main land through A9 road, sources in Vavuniyaa said. The buses, however, have not reached Jaffna until Tuesday evening and it is assumed that the Buddhist priests, on an urgent mission to spread Buddhism in the North, are engaged in some unannounced opening ceremonies of newly erected Buddhist Viharas in Vanni by the occupying Sri Lanka Army (SLA) directed by Colombo government, sources in Jaffna said.
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JHU ousts pro-Rajapaksa Thera from leader post

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 June 2010, 07:52 GMT]
Power struggle ended in the extreme Sinhala nationalist Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) by ousting Venerable Ellawala Medhananda Thera from the post of party leader and electing Ven. Omalpe Sobhitha Thera unanimously at the party’s seventh national convention held Saturday evening at Colombo Town Hall. Ellawala Thera was backing Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa with the idea of prolonging his presidential term through constitutional amendment. The JHU had to elect a new leader as Ven. Ellawala Medhananda Thera had resigned from the post as he needed more time to devote on his pet subjects of archaeological research in Mullaiththeevu, JHU sources said.
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Champika Ranawaka visits to Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 June 2010, 17:29 GMT]
“Identified United National Party men were responsible for the burning of Jaffna Public Library that was the foremost library in South East Asia and a valuable cultural asset of Tamils and I as a Sinhalese and a Sri Lankan cannot pardon the atrocious act,” Power and Energy Minister and Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) theoretician Patali Champika Ranawaka said Monday in an event in Jaffna Public Library where he donated a batch of books to the library. Mr. Ranawaka is a key founder of Sinhala extremist National Movement Against Terrorism (NMAT) in 1998 and Sinhala Urumaya (SU) in 2000. He was known for his Nazi shade of anti-Semitism, in his speeches comparing Tamils with Jews and Sinhalese with Aryans.
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Army and Archaeology Department at work in Tamil homeland

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 April 2010, 06:56 GMT]
If the fort of Jaffna which was the symbol of colonial and post-colonial oppression of Eezham Tamils, and which continues to be the seat of occupying forces of the Sinhala State, has to be preserved with the funds of the Netherlands government, why should the monuments built by Tamils in their own land, remembering their own struggle, have to be destroyed, asks an academic in Jaffna, responding to the destruction of the memorial for Thileepan who fasted unto death in the struggle against Indian imperialism at Nalloor.
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JHU protests against Mano Ganeshan contesting Kandy

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 February 2010, 21:03 GMT]
Supporters of Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), a political party of Buddhist monks, Saturday morning held a protest demonstration in Kandy against Mano Ganeshan, leader of the Democratic Peoples Front (DPF), contesting in the Kandy electoral district on the United National Alliance (UNF) ticket led by the main opposition party (UNP), political sources in Kandy said.
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JHU faction quits party to support Fonseka

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 January 2010, 12:31 GMT]
Seven leading Buddhist monks holding important posts in the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), a constituent of ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) led by Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse pledged their support to Opposition Common Candidate General Sarath Fonseka in the forthcoming presidential election, reports from Colombo said.
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