LLRC witnesses forced to accept death certificates for people handed over to SLA

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 July 2012, 23:18 GMT]
A group of Sri Lanka Army officers from the JOSSOP camp in Vavuniyaa, which is the operational headquarters of the occupying SL military in Vanni, have been visiting Mullaiththeevu district in recent days, exerting pressure on the families of the missing persons in the district to receive death certificates for the victims. Suresh Premachandran MP of the Tamil National Alliance, who held a press conference in Jaffna on Monday, said that some of the families declare that they had personally handed over their family members at Oamanthai checkpost during the final hours of the war in 2009. “If these members were handed over to the SLA, then the SL military is answerable for their death,” Mr Premachandran said.
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Tamil politicians urge global action in releasing POWs, political prisoners

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 July 2012, 13:52 GMT]
Addressing a press conference in Vavuniyaa on Tuesday, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) called for immediate release of all political prisoners who are held without any charges in the Sri Lankan prisons. Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, representing the Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF) said that the International Community, especially the countries that backed the internal LLRC mechanism of Colombo in the resolution passed at the UN Human Rights Council's Sessions in Geneva earlier this year, are primarily responsible for the fate of the Tamil Prisoners of War and political prisoners. Those who attended the funeral of Nimalarooban, braving the threats posed by the Sri Lankan military and intelligence operatives, told TamilNet that the victim had sustained fatal injuries on his head.
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Lawyers in North protest against SL Minister Badurdeen following violence in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 July 2012, 10:25 GMT]
Lawyers and legal employees of Magistrate's Courts in North on Thursday protested against the SL Minister of Trade, Rishard Badurdeen, for inciting community violence at Koanthaippiddi jetty in Mannaar and for causing mob violence against Mannaar Court complex on Wednesday. A Muslim gang, numbering around 500 persons, incited by Mr Badurdeen's men, had threatened the Judges, lawyers inflicting damage to the court complex in the city on Wednesday. The violence was reported after the gang of SL Minister Badurdeen triggered ethnic violence against Tamil Catholic fishermen in Koanthaippiddi in Mannaar transforming a civil dispute into violence against Tamil Catholics of Joseph Vaas village. The SL Minister has been behind causing unrest between Catholics and Muslims in the district and has gone on record threatening the Bishop of Mannaar in SL Parliament, recently.
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Nelliyadi protest urges coherence in Tamil politics

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 July 2012, 16:51 GMT]
Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the leader of Tamil National Peoples’ Front (TNPF), addressing the peaceful protest on Wednesday at Nelliyadi, which was organised against the slaying of Nimalarooban in Sri Lanka’s prison, urged the people to see things in the context of Sri Lankan government’s systematic annihilation of the existence of Tamils as a Nation in the island. “Until we fail to establish the recognition of the Tamil nationhood and its distinct sovereignty, we will be failing in our political work,” he said. In the meantime, TNA MP S. Sritharan, addressing the protesters at Nelliyadi said Tamils are not a defeated Nation. “What has happened to our youth in 2012 in Vavuniyaa is nothing different than what had happened to our youth at Welikade prison in 1983,” he said adding that until the injustice continues, the struggle for liberation would continue.
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TNA should reject PC model, field independents in East elections: TNPF

[TamilNet, Sunday, 15 July 2012, 22:15 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) should demonstrate to the world the Tamil rejection of the Provincial Council model of the 13th Amendment by not participating in the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) elections, but the TNA could field a front of independent candidates to meet the political challenge of the times. The candidate list already prepared could go as an independent list with a specific political message on the cause to the people, said Gajendrakumar Ponnampalam of the Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF), presiding over a press conference in Jaffna on Saturday. The TNPF promised support to the TNA in any such move. In the meantime, former TNA parliamentarian and TELO leader M.K Sivajilingam urged the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and the TNA to field candidates jointly. It is time for the East to have a Muslim chief minister, who is also elected by Tamils, he told TamilNet.
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Unemployed graduates protest in Jaffna, UPFA dominates public sector employment

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 July 2012, 18:29 GMT]
SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa's Colombo government is widely blamed for handling new and temporary appointments in the Northern province for electoral political purposes. Recent temporary appointments have been provided with the condition that the employees should extend support the UPFA government in the provincial elections, unemployed graduates demanding justice said. On Thursday, a section of unemployed graduates, who have been sidelined in such appointments, demonstrated in front of the District Secretariat in Jaffna amidst harassment from the SL military intelligence and police commandos.
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Colombo destroys education of Tamil youth in North, teachers complain

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 July 2012, 06:55 GMT]
More than 11% of the schools in the Northern Province remain closed due to Sri Lanka military occupation, say teachers in Jaffna citing statistics from the Northern provincial ministry of education. Colombo has been systematically depriving the Eezham Tamil educational institutions in North and East from receiving external aid, both from foreign NGOs and the Tamil diaspora. In addition, the SL military-run civil administration has been diverting the funds already allocated in the provincial budget for the education sector. As a result, the Northern Province has ranked last in the latest GCE A/L examinations, the teachers said adding that such decline was not reported before, even during the height of the war.
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Tamil reported missing found in coma after Vavuniyaa prison raid

[TamilNet, Sunday, 08 July 2012, 23:37 GMT]
28-year-old Tamil man, Dilrukshan Muthurasa from Iluppaikkadavai, in Maanthai West of Mannaar district in Vanni, was one of the prisoners in Vavuniyaa prison, which was raided by the Sri Lankan Special Task Force commandos on 29 June. Dilrukshan, seriously attacked and allegedly subjected to torture at Vavuniyaa and Anuradhapura prisons, is currently in coma and is fighting for his life at Mahara prison. His mother, Reeza Muthurasa, who didn't know about the whereabouts of her son, has identified him after visiting her son at Mahara hospital, following press reports. According to Ms Reeza, her son, who had gone on employment in Middle East in 2006 had returned just before the war intensified in Vanni and was caught by the SL Navy when he tried to escape the war zone in a boat in 2009.
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SL military has grabbed 5,210 acres of land in Mannaar, say protestors

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 July 2012, 17:34 GMT]
Providing details of private and public lands being appropriated by the SL military in Mannaar district, Tamil activists, who came together for a protest on Saturday said, the militarisation seriously affects the lives of people of Mannaar. Tamil civilians, who are denied resettlement in Channaar in Maanthai West, where the occupying Sri Lankan military has appropriated 3,500 acres of lands, were the majority of the participants in the protest. Mannaar Bishop Rt. Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph, together with Catholic priests and other civil activists from Mannaar, took part in the protest, which was organised by the youth activists of Ilangkai Thamizh Arasuk Kadchi (ITAK). The protest was supported by the other parties in the TNA, the parties outside the alliance, and by the elected representatives of the civic bodies in Mannaar as well as the Democratic People Front from South.
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‘IC turns deaf ear to struggling Eezham Tamil Prisoners of War’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 July 2012, 09:05 GMT]
The international community of establishments and their agenda-driven outfits continue to turn deaf-ear to the plight of the Eezham Tamil Prisoners of War (POWs), failing to accord the necessary international legal status to Eezham Tamil POWs, who have become the ‘pawns of genocide’, activists in the island blamed following the reports on Wednesday that a 28-year-old Tamil prisoner, Ganesan Nimalarooban from Nelukku'lam in Vavuniyaa, had succumbed to his injuries at Mahara prison in South. All the 122 prisoners who were inside the raided prison cell in Vavuniyaa last Friday were taken to Anuradhapura prison, where Sinhala prison guards and criminal inmates tortured them for more than 10 hours. 22 of these Eezham Tamil POWs were later transferred to Mahara prison and Nimalarooban, hailng from a poverty-stricken family in the suburb of Vavuniyaa, was one of them.
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SL forces fatally attack protesting Tamil Prisoners of War in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 June 2012, 23:46 GMT]
The forces of genocidal Sinhala State in Sri Lanka fatally attacked Eezham Tamil prisoners of war kept in the prison at Vavuniyaa on Friday. Heads and limbs broken, more than 15 of the prisoners are admitted in Anuradhapura hospital after removing them from Vavuniyaa. The condition of some of them are said to be serious. The prisoners were protesting for the last few days over the torture and disappearance of a prison mate Mr. Saravanabhavan who was taken to Anuradhapura by the SL forces. Finding their peaceful fasting campaign responded with oppression, the enraged prisoners captured three of the prison officials and were demanding the return of Saravanabhavan for their release. In a well-planned operation on Friday, SL forces that entered into the prison, first deployed tear gas shells, plastic bullets and water canon, before brutally attacking the prisoners causing fatal injuries.
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SOS of Eezham Tamils seeks global Tamils, world humanity to respond

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 June 2012, 19:20 GMT]
Mu’l’livaaykkaal was only a beginning for the Sinhala State and its international abetters to perpetuate genocide of Eezham Tamils to suit overlapping agendas. After three years of Colombo’s accelerated structural genocide facilitated by the international community of establishments, the Tamil leaders in the island have once again voiced an SOS in unison on Tuesday, appealing to global Tamils and global community of humanity, to intervene and save their nation from militarised annihilation. Gagged, but experiencing the realities of the hoodwink of ‘post-war reconciliation,’ the voices coming from the island show better clarity and bearing, compared to the hijacked diaspora confused over where to address the issue and a Tamil Nadu leadership silent after a resolution that doesn’t address fundamental solutions, political observers in the island said.
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Colombo schemes military enclave in Maanthai, grabs 1,500 acres of land

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 June 2012, 23:47 GMT]
Grabbing 1,500 acres of land at Channaar Velimaruthamadu in Maanthai West of Mannaar district, the Sri Lankan military is hurriedly putting up a large cantonment with houses for military personnel from the South, according to news sources in Mannaar. The area selected for this purpose is a fertile land in the high ground near a tank where Tamil-speaking people were earlier engaged in agriculture and the jungle area has been used for slash-and-burn cultivation. Heavy machineries are deployed to clear and put up the structures for the military colony, at a strategic location, to control the A-32 Mannaar - Poonakari highway and the fishing harbour of Vidaththal-theevu which has traditionally been used by the Eezham Tamils to communicate with Tamil Nadu.
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SL military goes amok on uprooted civilians in Vanni, 2 injured, 1 suffers heart attack

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 June 2012, 17:08 GMT]
Children were thrown into vehicles and the occupying Sinhala Army assaulted uprooted Tamil families using gun butts and batons Monday evening at Thiru-mu'rika'ndi Hindu Tamil Viththiyaalayam in Ki'linochchi. A section of the uprooted families who had been brought from Menik Farm by the SL military a few weeks ago had declined to accept what they called an ‘enslavement’ offer of ‘resettlement’ by the SL military. They were placed temporarily at the school. On Monday, as one day was remaining till the protest organised by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) against the military land grab assisted by China, the SL military entered the school, bargained with the families at gunpoint for more than 4 hours and finally assaulted them forcefully transporting them back to Vavuniyaa. Tension prevails at Thiru-mu'rika'ndi after the horror let loose by the SL military on the uprooted civilians.
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SL Minister Devananda threatens civil protest in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 19 June 2012, 05:20 GMT]
Speaking in line with the SL courts in Jaffna on Monday, EPDP paramilitary leader Douglas Devananda, who is a minister in Mahinda Rajapaksa's cabinet, threatened protesting volunteer teachers from Vanni, declaring that if he uttered the word ‘postpone’ to the SL authorities, their appointments would be put on hold forever. Seating besides Maj. Gen. (retd) GA Chandrasiri, the colonial military governor of North, Mr Devananda, in a discriminating tone, said that the SL president doesn't like those who protest. The volunteer teachers, who have served for more than 12 years without SL government salary in Ki'linochchi and Mullaiththeevu districts, have been promised permanent employment each time they were staging protests, but find them discriminated on every occasion. On Monday, they were protesting outside the provincial education ministry situated in Nalloor, Jaffna.
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1033 lands, houses to be permanently appropriated for SL military in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 June 2012, 23:41 GMT]
After appropriating thousands of acres of land in Mullaiththeevu, Ki'linochchi, Mannaar and Vavuniyaa districts of the Northern Province, the SL military establishment in the North has accelerated its drive of appropriating 1033 properties, most of them privately owned lands and buildings, for the three SL armed forces outside the already seized ‘High Security Zone’ in the peninsula, civil officials in Jaffna told TamilNet, giving statistical breakdown of figures from the internal records of the occupying military. Colombo has passed the responsibility of land appropriation in Jaffna to its colonial military governor Maj. Gen. (retd) GA Chandrasri, according to the informed officials. In the meantime, the commander of the occupying SL military in Jaffna, Maj. Gen. Hathurusinghe, has defended the military move to maintain permanent camps in areas outside the so-called High Security Zones.
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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 military confiscates state lands from civic bodies in North

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 June 2012, 14:02 GMT]
As far as Eezham Tamils are concerned, State in the island exclusively means the occupying Sinhala military. This is once again vigorously demonstrated in the North, as the Sinhala military has started confiscating State lands from elected civic bodies in the North at gun point. The Sinhala colonial governor Maj. Gen. GA Chandrasri facilitates the process by appointing Sinhala Government Agents/ Asst. Government Agents in many of the districts in the North and by transferring Tamil officials not cooperating with the land grab for Sinhala colonies and the use of the military. Now the elected civic bodies in Jaffna too are threatened to give up not only State lands but also to agree to confiscation of private lands by the occupying military. Washington and New Delhi have discovered an Israel in the Sinhala State to groom in South Asia.
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Uprooted Tamils live with UXO threat, UN agencies silent on demographic ‘conquest’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 31 May 2012, 04:30 GMT]
Uprooted Eezham Tamils from the coastal villages of Mullaiththeevu district, denied resettlement in their own lands and forced to ‘resettle’ in Koampaavil resettlement-scheme, away from the radars of international media and human rights activists, have been abandoned without proper humanitarian assistance. Meanwhile, the families, clearing lands have been confronted with unexploded ordnance in the area that has been declared by UN agencies as clear of landmines. Last Sunday, 37-year-old Manoranjitham Asokkumar, a mother of three children, sustained serious injuries while clearing her plot of land. Local humanitarian workers, who gave photographs to TamilNet, alleged that the UN agencies had failed to even highlight the plight of the civilians who face the threat of landmines in the area, which the agencies have earlier verified as clear of landmines.
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Jaffna University comes to standstill following attack on student leader

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 May 2012, 04:31 GMT]
Following a lethal attack on the Jaffna University Students’ Union Secretary, Dharshananth, who was on his way to the university on Friday to organize the Mu’l’livaaykkaal Remembrance Day, students demanding the Vice Chancellor to get assurance for their security, decided to boycott classes and continue their struggle in various ways until the security question is resolved. We are not waging an armed struggle. We fight for our rights and for our people through democratic means. But politically motivated violent attacks continue to be unleashed against us. The International Community has committed a colossal blunder. Three years after the genocide none of the culprits has been punished. Our message to Tamil political parties and to the diaspora is that their actions should not betray our hopes, students said in their speeches.
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