220 Tamils arrested in SLA combing in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 April 2012, 17:53 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army and Police, backed by special teams of the ‘Terrorist Investigation Department’ from Colombo, have been entering selected houses in the villages of Trincomalee district, detaining ex-LTTE members since Saturday evening. The SL forces have detained around 220 Tamil males and females from their houses. The detained men have been taken to Welikande and the females have been taken to Poonthoaddam in Vavuniyaa, informed sources told TamilNet Wednesday. Ex-LTTE members who had left the movement more than 10 years ago have also been detained. The arrested also include returnees from Tamil Nadu and those who have been detained earlier and released for reunification with their families. While India and the West talk only about the North nowadays, the operations of genocidal Colombo in the East largely go unnoticed.
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Veteran Tamil activist and humanist reaches 88 in exile

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 April 2012, 20:06 GMT]
Solomon Arulanandam David (S.A. David), popularly known as Gandhiyam David, who presided the Gandhian movement which spread simple agriculture, self-sustenance, and importance to early education as a way of life in the deprived villages of Tamil Eelam for nearly a decade from 1972, reaches 88-years Tuesday as he spends his older years among his friends in Chennai. TamilNet extends its wishes to Mr David as it recognizes his unique and selfless contribution to Northeast Tamils and the hill-country Tamils displaced by Sinhala intimidation, riots and pogroms in the 1970s and 80s. David was assisted by another humanist of the 70s, the late Dr Rajasundaram. Rajasundaram was killed in the Welikade prison massacre in 1983, whereas his friend, David, escaped, re-incarcerated in Batticaloa jail to escape again in the famous Batticaloa jail break.
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‘Development’ gives no light to people while SL cantonment gets electricity in Vanni

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 April 2012, 21:41 GMT]
More than 30 months have elapsed since the Sri Lankan government was promising electricity link to the resettling people in Ki'linochchi under the so-called Spring of North ‘development’, which is nothing but a camouflage for the structural genocide committed by Colombo in the country of Eezham Tamils. Electricity posts were put up creating hope among the people that power would be supplied. Many trees were also felled in Vanni jungle in the name of putting up infrastructure. Renewed hopes were again given during the civic elections held a year ago by SL Power and Energy Minister Champika Ranawaka, the theoretician of the JHU, the Sinhala Buddhist extremist monks party, who declared opened a transformer at Chalvaa-nakar, a suburb of Ki'linochchi. The suburb is yet to see the light promised by the ‘Spring of North’, while the power lines are directed only to illuminate an SL cantonment.
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SL Army restricts NGO movement in Batticaloa district

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 April 2012, 18:57 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army has imposed restrictions on the movement of Non Governmental Organizations to Paduvaankarai from Batticaloa via Kiraan Bridge, civil sources in Batticaloa city told TamilNet Wednesday. The SLA soldiers at Kiraan Bridge are reported to have refused permission to several NGOs in recent days to travel beyond the bridge without SL Defense ministry authority. The NGO officials have been asked to obtain ‘pass’ from Welikanda SLA camp. The travel-ban on NGOs comes as SL military backed encroachment of Sinhalese is reported in the border areas of the Piratheasa Chapai (PS) divisions of Koa'ra'laip-pattu South, Vavu'na-theevu, Ea'raavoor-pattu and Chengkaladi.
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India to wage documentary war countering West’s exposure of Sri Lanka crimes

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 March 2012, 18:48 GMT]
The Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi has embarked on deploying India’s expertise in cinematography to campaign against recent exposures of Sri Lanka’s war crimes by Western documentaries and to defend the partnership efforts of the two Establishments in the island. Leading film makers in India have been hired by the ministry to produce a documentary that will be showing an interview with Rajapaksa, de-mining work by Indian teams and footages of Tamils ‘praising’ India, news sources in Colombo told TamilNet on Tuesday. Meanwhile, India’s Bollywood is set to produce a ‘politically charged’ commercial film, “Jaffna,” directed by Shoojit Sircar carrying the theme of ‘extremism’ to another level compared to his earlier film on Kashmir, and the actor John Abraham is going to visit the island often to get a hang of the milieu, IANS reported early this month.
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Ram journalism faces criticism in JNU for pro-Sri Lanka bias, endorsing genocide

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 March 2012, 06:04 GMT]
Activists of Delhi Tamil Students’ Union, Democratic Students Union, Students for Resistance and other common students raised slogans against N. Ram accusing him of being a ‘media fascist’ and ‘a stooge of Rajapaksa’ at a public meeting in JNU after his reply to a question on The Hindu’s role in whitewashing the Sri Lankan state genocide of the Eezham Tamils, wherein he had extensively blamed the LTTE. The meeting on ‘Paid news and media ethics’ was organized at JNU on Wednesday by the Student’s Federation of India, which is the students wing of the CPI(M). The fact that N.Ram and The Hindu have unethically manipulated news to cover up the war crimes of Colombo makes them complicit in the genocide committed on the Eezham Tamils, a Tamil Nadu research scholar in JNU told TamilNet.
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Marie Colvin remembered in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 February 2012, 21:06 GMT]
Tamil journalists from various media organizations came together on Monday in Jaffna with civil society members and student representatives of various faculties of the Jaffna University, to pay tribute to the slain war correspondent in Syria, Marie Colvin, who had been in the island covering the conflict earlier. Paying floral tribute, the event, organized by Nimalarajan Memorial Foundation, remembered the late Marie Colvin as a Journalist Friend of Tamils. Meanwhile, remembering Marie Colvin in the diaspora, the London-based International Association of Tamil Journalists came out with a tribute last Thursday, saluting her courage, discipline and commitment to her work and to humanity.
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Colombo demarcates new Batticaloa villages for Sinhalicisation

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 February 2012, 22:27 GMT]
The Colombo government has been engaged in creating new villages for Sinhalese who are being brought down from the south to the Eastern Province. The SL government authorities have set aside around 25,000 acres of land in Vavu'natheevu in Batticaloa district under the pretext of allowing members of the so-called Sri Lanka Civil Defence Force, who are Sinhala home guards trained to colonise Tamil land by the Sri Lankan military, to do cultivation. Hundred percent of the paramilitary home guards in the unit receiving the lands in Batticaloa are Sinhalese.
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Women groups protest against SL militarisation move in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 February 2012, 23:54 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army in Mannaar has been allocated a vast area of lands in Ezhuththoor GS division of Mannaar Piratheasa Chapai (PS), where uprooted families, most of them who had lost one of their parents in the war and are from Mullaiththeevu, Ki'linochchi, Vavuniyaa and Mannaar districts, have been provided lands to resettle. The families, mostly run by females, have come together and shown their objection to the move to construct SL military cantonment, obstructing the normalcy needed for the families. The resettled women have formed civil groups and urged the civil authorities at all levels to take immediate step to stop the move which would threaten the peace of life in their new village.
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TNA tries to sell Indo-US pre-emption to Eezham Tamil civil society

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 February 2012, 14:45 GMT]
Accepting the implementation of the 13th Amendment that is already in Sri Lanka’s constitution and failed to meet Tamil aspirations, was the subject matter the TNA was trying to impress upon the representatives of the Eezham Tamil civil society, in a meeting that took place in Vavuniyaa for five hours on Saturday. Eezham Tamils should not ‘hang on’ to their right to self-determination was the argument of a Colombo-based lawyer backing the stand of TNA leader R. Sampanthan, while this right was the very basis of the struggle of Eezham Tamils in the last sixty years, democratically as well as militarily, civil society circles told TamilNet. Many of the civil society representatives, especially from the East and Mannaar requested the TNA to conceive better ideas to bring in an interim administration for the North and East to face the current situation.
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Tamils must remind Britain of its obligations on February 04: Brian Senewiratne

[TamilNet, Saturday, 04 February 2012, 12:05 GMT]
February 4th, the day Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) got so-called “Independence” from Britain in 1948, is a day for action, not regret or mourning. “The betrayal of the Tamils by the British cannot be ignored. If it is, then Britain must be reminded of its moral, legal and ethical obligations, to ‘do the right thing’, by the Tamils even belatedly,” says Dr. Brian Senewiratne in an article he has authored on the so-called independence of Ceylon on 04 February 1948. “It is no exaggeration to say that on 4 February, 1948, ‘Independence’ was granted to the Sinhalese to do what they wanted to the Tamils. Britain could not care less, as long as the military bases were secure and the (British) tea estates remained under Sinhalese capitalist control, to supply tea at absurdly low prices to fill the British cup.”
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TID arrests two Tamil fishermen in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 February 2012, 02:51 GMT]
A group of persons, arriving in a white van and identifying themselves as from the Sri Lankan ‘Terrorism Investigation Division’ (TID), arrested two Tamil fishermen in Mannaar on January 19th, sources in Mannaar said. The TID officers had later had informed relatives of the fishermen after inquiry that TID police had detained the fishermen on reports that they had helped he LTTE.
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Tamil couple knifed to death in Vavuniyaa resettled village

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 January 2012, 12:27 GMT]
A husband and his wife were knifed to death on Thursday at a resettled village, Pan'rikkeitha-ku'lam in Vavuniyaa district. Kanthaiah Muthiah, 67, and his wife were living in a temporary hut with tin sheets, and have been doing paddy cultivation in the resettled village when the murder occurred.
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Colombo targets Tamil officials who defy instruction in land alienation in East

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 January 2012, 16:09 GMT]
Tamil divisional secretaries who are in charge of the administration of border Tamil villages in Batticaloa district are transferred out to other areas as they are strict in allocating lands according to law and without yielding to Colombo pressure. Villagers have been holding protests against such transfers. Transfers of divisional secretaries are being carried out targeting officers who are not yielding to the pressure of the structural genocide program of Colombo and not allowing Sinhala colonisation in border Tamil villages.
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EP councilor opposes transfer of divisional secretaries from Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 January 2012, 16:04 GMT]
The transfer of divisional secretaries in the Batticaloa district at the instance of SL administration in Colombo has created a stir among the public in the Batticaloa district. Eastern Provincial Councilor R.Thurairatnam has called for the immediate suspension of transfers of the divisional secretaries.
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EPDP accused of post-2006 killings as SLFP-EPDP feud escalates in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 January 2012, 23:58 GMT]
Pandemonium prevailed and Police was called to manage the altercation during a Jaffna Municipal Council meeting Friday when Nishanthan, an ex-member of the Eelam People Democratic Party (EPDP), and currently functioning under ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) label, accused EPDP of carrying out abductions, extortions, and gruesome killings that occurred in Jaffna after the breakdown of the peace process in 2006 under Sri Lanka military occupation, sources in Jaffna said. Nishanthan was a key activist within EPDP when EPDP was functioning as an armed-paramilitary unit under the command of Sri Lanka military intelligence. The exposé of EPDP complicity in killings was a manifestation of brewing infighting between the members of the EPDP and SLFP within the Jaffna Municipal Council, political observers in Jaffna said.
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Continuous rain devastates Batticaloa, Ampaa'rai, normalcy disrupted

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 December 2011, 07:07 GMT]
More than one hundred villages in fourteen DS divisions in the Batticaloa district are under water since the outbreak of torrential rain with gale, according to district secretariat sources. About seven hundred and fifteen have been displaced and sought refuge in Chiththaa'ndi Mahaa Viththiyaalayam as the houses in wards 3rd and 4th in Chiththaa'ndi village in Ea'raavoorpattu Chengkaladi DS division are under water. 75 percent of houses in Vellaave'li, Paddippazhai, Vavu'natheevu, Ea'raavoorpattu, Chengkaladi, Koa'ralaip-pattu South, Koa'ralaip-pattu, Koa'ralaip-pattu North, Koa'ralaip-pattu West and Ma'nmunaip-pattu North are under rain water.
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‘ICG report fails to cover genocide-intended sexual violence’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 December 2011, 05:42 GMT]
The International Crisis Group report titled ‘Sri Lanka: Women’s Insecurity in the North and East’ that was released on Tuesday touched upon problems faced by the Eezham Tamil women in their homelands at the hands of the occupying Sri Lankan military apparatus. While the report has been welcomed by some for its revelations, Eezham Tamil civil society activists in the homeland, academics and feminists came down heavily on the report for studying the gender problem in isolation without addressing either the national question of the Eezham Tamils or the process of structural genocide, which necessarily includes use of sexual violence, which is being carried out by the Sinhala majoritarian state to crush the Eezham Tamil nation. They also questioned the motives and practical effectiveness of such reports that seek to push the principal contradictions under the carpet.
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No infrastructure to take care of floods displaced genocide victims of Vanni

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 December 2011, 06:47 GMT]
11,000 people belonging to 2,556 families have been displaced from the low-lying lands of Ki'linochchi district this week following heavy rain and floods, according to District Secretariat officials in Ki'linochchi. Of these, only 1,443 persons of 349 families have been provided refuge by the SL administration. The remaining families have been struggling to find space with their relatives and friends elsewhere. Most of the ‘re-settled’ victims of genocide were living in temporary huts in the low-lying lands. But, the floods have taken away even their huts while destroying their agricultural produce, the livelihood for which the people had to borrow money from the SL banks. Despite the claims by the SL government that people have been resettled and their infrastructure restored, the district remains roofless to accommodate people affected by the floods, even after two years of the war.
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7 divisions flooded in Batticaloa district, more rains expected

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 December 2011, 11:55 GMT]
Seven DS divisions, Vavu'na-theevu, Chengkaladi, Ma'nmunaip-pattu, Koa'raip-pattu, Koa'raip-pattu West, Kaaththaankudi and Ma'nmunaip-pattu North in Batticaloa district have been affected badly due to the ongoing torrential rain with gale, according to District Secretariat officials.
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