Sri Lanka still precarious for returning Tamil asylum seekers, says Swiss NGO

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 March 2016, 18:34 GMT]
While Amnesty International and Swiss NGOs, including the Swiss Refugee Council, said that the situation for Tamils in Sri Lanka is still precarious and that it is too early for asylum seekers from Switzerland to be returned to Sri Lanka, the Swiss Government and the visiting Sri Lanka’s foreign minister, Mangala Samaraweera, signed a "migration partnership" the technical consulatations [on involuntarily returning Tamil refugees] of which is to take place soon, according to a Swiss Embassy press release.
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Genocidal Sri Lanka, IC abetters, not understood in Latin America, Africa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 February 2016, 20:17 GMT]
Latin American Herald Tribune featured an article on Thursday, projecting the so-called independence day of ‘Sri Lanka’ as promoting ‘national reconciliation’ and said: “In the final months of the war from March to May 2009, both the LTTE - which is listed as a terrorist organisation by 32 countries - and the Sri Lankan military were accused of war crimes, including genocide, against civilians. Genocide by both sides is the picture given. Last month, Reuter Africa came out with another story: “Ethnic minority Tamils were often favoured for higher government positions under British colonial rule. After independence in 1948, many lost their positions as successive governments pursued language and other policies favouring the majority Sinhalese population,” the story said.
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Repeal 6th Amendment for free discussion: VIS Jayapalan

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 December 2015, 08:55 GMT]
There could be no claim of reconciliation without the release of political prisoners in the island. Attempting reconciliation and engaging in reconciliation are two different things. So far, the incumbent SL president has only been attempting reconciliation, VIS Jayapalan, a well-known Eezham Tamil poet and an award-winning actor in Indian Tamil cinema, said in an interview to TamilNet Palaka’ni this week. Stating that a political solution, be it separation or federation, should be achieved through an open debate in a free environment between the Tamil-speaking people and the Sinhalese people, Mr Jayapalan urged the civil society in the South to realise the significance of creating the necessary non-violent space through making the SL State to repeal the 6th Amendment to the SL Constitution.
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SL military intelligence threatens Jaffna daily, reminds editors on ‘white-vans’ of past

[TamilNet, Sunday, 13 December 2015, 23:28 GMT]
Four Sri Lankan military intelligence operatives, who entered the office of the Jaffna edition of Thinakkural newspaper on Wednesday night, threatened the editorial staff for publishing a news item that exposed the ‘activities’ of certain surveillance operatives, who were camouflaged as journalists and deployed to monitor a meeting held on the previous day. The paper had published a story detailing the presence of four to six ‘operatives’, who were monitoring the participants at a meeting organised by the families of missing persons from all the 8 districts in the North and East on Tuesday. The SL military intelligence operatives who entered the office of the paper on Wednesday warned the editors to withdraw their story with a correction and apology to be issued on Thursday.
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Tamil civil groups under pressure to dilute their investigation demand

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 October 2015, 23:37 GMT]
A section of so-called human rights activists from South are exerting pressure on civil groups in North-East, including the Citizens' Committees, women groups, missing persons groups to take part in a deceptive move being organised in Colombo by Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera with the aim of projecting their participation as giving consent to Colombo's domestic investigations. The majority of the participants are from South. Ms Nimalka Fernando, a Sinhala Christian and the president of the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR), has joined Mr Samaraweera in protecting the interests of the new regime in Colombo, a citizens' committee leader in North told TamilNet on Monday. The Tamil civil groups met on Saturday in Jaffna to discuss how to face the move, which is scheduled on 29 October in Colombo.
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UNHRC ‘judgement’ harps on Samaraweera oration

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 October 2015, 17:02 GMT]
Except New Zealand, none of the State participants at the UNHRC on ‘Sri Lanka’, Wednesday, has touched the crux of the conflict in the island. Only the New Zealand representative ever uttered the word Tamil in urging solutions. The approach of the UN, set from the very beginning by the USA, totally disregards giving any open recognition to the national cause of the nation of Eezham Tamils and looks at the conflict entirely from the point of saving State in the island. What it painstakingly ‘recognises’ is never to offend the genocidal State. An added dimension visible in the latest UNHRC session is the highlight of the blanket term, “crimes by all sides” to get excused from the crime of not recognising the genocide committed on one by all. Again the line was originally set by the USA.
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TNA spokesman decries Sumanthiran discourse

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 June 2015, 23:53 GMT]
“Third party mediation and negotiations are important to resolve the Tamil national question. But, the process should be carried out in a proper context involving the actors with peoples mandate. The mediation should be undertaken by international actors, who are capable of course-correcting the Colombo regime”, TNA Parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran told TamilNet on Friday. Mr Premachandran, who is an official spokesman of the TNA was responding to an official statement coming from a confidential process embarked on by certain actors, involving the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera, a section of Tamil diaspora activists of the so-called Global Tamil Forum (GTF), a South African NGO known as ‘In Transformation Initiative’ (ITI), Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) official Martin Stürzinger and the failed Norwegian peace broker Erik Solheim.
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Edifying Tamil leadership to face South Africa succeeding Norway in deception

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 June 2015, 00:57 GMT]
The UK-based British Tamil Forum (BTF) and the so-called Global Tamil Forum (GTF), which are locked in a sectarian conflict with each other, have dragged almost all the Eezham Tamil diaspora outfits from the USA, Canada, Australia and several European countries into a two-pronged South Africa based discourse which the new Sri Lankan regime wants to exploit to its advantage to counter the internationalisation of the national question of Eezham Tamils, informed Tamil diaspora activists told TamilNet supplying documentary evidences of the interactions that have taken place in May and June 2015. It is historic duty of the Tamil diaspora to produce an appropriate leadership to advance the Tamil cause without diluting the fundamentals and falling prey to the ultimate culprits, the activists told TamilNet.
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Oppressed nations shouldn’t take mere existence of geopolitics for granted: Tamil academic

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 May 2015, 23:31 GMT]
“Despite the emergence of a multipolar world, in which international and regional powers will battle each other and intervene in various conflicts in order to enhance their respective geopolitical dominance, oppressed people and Eezham Tamils should be wary,” writes Norway-based Anthropology academic Athithan Jayapalan. The patronage given by rivalling geopolitical powers to the genocidal policies of Sri Lanka and Pakistan in South Asia imply that a multipolar world does not by itself serve the interest of oppressed nations, the academic from the second generation diaspora, concludes that the national political mobilization within the oppressed nations themselves and a global solidarity transcending the State borders, would create the necessary de-facto situations to empower the nations without States to achieve their freedom.
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Domestic investigations, even with external supervision, will not work: NESoHR

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 March 2015, 23:18 GMT]
Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera’s statement on Monday to the High Level Segment of the 28th UN Human Rights Council Session at Geneva, where he stated that “the content of the Report of OHCHR Investigation too can be taken into account by domestic investigative and judicial mechanisms,” is a point of contention said North East Secretariat on Human Rights (NESoHR) in a statement issued on Tuesday. None of the recommendations of the internal Commissions of Inquiry held in Sri Lanka has been implemented, the NESoHR said adding that even the international monitors, as in the case of the International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP), had to withdraw from the proceedings in the past. Mr Samaraweera was touching upon absurdity when he claimed that the civil war in the island had to be brought to an end to restore human rights, the statement further said.
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UN maintains ‘genocide without witnesses paradigm’ with Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 March 2015, 16:37 GMT]
When the genocidal war against the nation of Eezham Tamils took place in the island of Sri Lanka, the UN played a major role in keeping it as ‘war without witnesses’, by not bringing it to the international arena of discussion and action. The UN plays the same role in maintaining and continuing the ‘genocide without witnesses’ paradigm in the case of Eezham Tamils, by sabotaging and denying any international investigation on the matter, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island. The deferral of the OISL report is directly connected to the arrangement of the new regime in Colombo conducting a domestic investigation with the ‘label’ of UN supervision, which suits the original agenda of genocide without international scrutiny, designed by the ultimate culprits, the activists further said.
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Singapore Principles of 2013: Tamil polity taken for ride from Oslo to Singapore

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 January 2015, 07:19 GMT]
Right from the Indo-Lanka agreement of 1987 to Oslo Declaration of 2002 and to hitherto unrevealed Singapore Principles of 2013 that brought the Sampanthan polity into a conceptual framework for the recent regime change in Colombo, the external forces seeking to influence the affairs of the island have taken the Eezham Tamils for a ride to confine the Tamil polity into the unitary State of genocidal Sri Lanka without securing any concrete and descriptive guarantee from the Sinhala polity. By its latest move, the ITAK has pushed the Tamils back into the past, Tamil political observers in Jaffna said citing the so-called Singapore Principles from 2013. TamilNet brings out the text of the so-called Singapore Principles for the edification of global Tamils.
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Three opposition MPs to give evidence in “white flag” case

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 March 2011, 02:41 GMT]
Two parliamentarians of the main opposition United National Party (UNP) and a parliamentarian from the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) are among ten witnesses who will be giving evidence in the white flag case in which former Commander of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Sarath Fonseka is charged for causing disrepute to the Sri Lanka government by making allegedly false statements to The Sunday leader, an English weekly published in Colombo.
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FMM condemns arrest of printers producing posters against Rajapaksa's amendment

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 September 2010, 19:37 GMT]
The Free Media Movement on Friday condemned the arrest of the printer and seven workers of Sarala Graphics, Nugegoda, for printing a poster protesting against 18th Constitutional Amendment. On the night of September 7, 2010, as Parliament prepared to debate the Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka, the owner and press workers, including a woman, were arrested by the Sri Lankan police under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). Meanwhile, Mangala Samaraweera, the head of UNP media unit, has claimed responsibility for printing the poster. Informed media circles in Colombo said Rajapaksa brothers have instructed their media to step up campaign against Mr. Samaraweera.
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Samaraweera entangled in poster campaign against Rajapaksa - Dinamina

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 September 2010, 11:09 GMT]
Sri Lankan police have uncovered a 'clandestine' move to print several 'mudslinging' posters targeting Sri Lanka' President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Dinamina newspaper said in its lead story. Quoting police investigators, the article claimed that the group behind this attempt was opposition parliamentarian Mangala Samaraweera. The order to print the posters has allegedly being given to a printing press with links to the Janatha Simukthi Peramuna.
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Sri Lanka’s Lesson Learnt and Reconciliation Commission begins sitting

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 August 2010, 15:16 GMT]
The Lesson Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), consisting of eight members, chaired by the former Attorney General C. R. de Silva, commenced its sittings Wednesday morning at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute in Colombo 7, according to Commission’s Secretary S. M. Samarakoon. Bernard Goonatillake, former head of Sri Lanka's Peace Secretariat that was operational during the period of the conflict,is scheduled to give evidence on the opening day. Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa is to give evidence before the Commission 17 August. The Commission is to meet from August 11 till the 25th. Sessions on August 14th and 15th are to be held in Vavuniyaa.
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SLFP splinter group to join UNP

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 August 2010, 18:18 GMT]
The splinter group of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party led by Mangala Samaraweera has decided to join the main opposition United National Party (UNP) on August 6. Mangala Samaraweera will obtain UNP membership card along with his supporters from UNP leader Ranil Wickramasinghe.
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Move afoot to make Kumaratunga UNP MP

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 July 2010, 11:05 GMT]
Moves are afoot by the main opposition United National Party (UNP) to make Chandrika Kumaratunga a Member of Parliament through the UNP list, political sources in Colombo said. The move has been reportedly initiated by a splinter group of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), led by Mangala Samaraweera.
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Mixed responses from Buddhist prelates on Fonseka arrest

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 February 2010, 05:12 GMT]
Buddhist Chief Prelates (Mahanayakas) of Asgiriya and Malwatte Chapters have come out with mixed responses on Fonseka's arrest. While the Mahanayaka of Malwatte Chapter has said that he was awaiting response from the Sri Lankan president, saying that Mr. Rajapaksa "could have been in dark" while the arrest took place, the Mahanayaka of Asgiriya Chapter has deplored the sudden arrest of Sarath Fonseka. In the meantime, Sri Lankan opposition sources said they were awaiting a joint written statement from the main prelates. The Buddhist prelates exercise a dominant influence on the Sri Lankan regime. The prelates of four chapters will be meeting on 18 February to discuss Fonseka's arrest.
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Fonseka beaten, dragged during arrest – report

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 February 2010, 10:47 GMT]
General Sarath Fonseka, the former Sri Lankan military chief and defeated presidential candidate, was punched and dragged along the ground by troops led by a Major General who arrested him as he met political allies last night, the Daily Telegraph said Tuesday. “There was no decorum. To call it an arrest gives dignity and legality to what was a brutal abduction. He was beaten, dragged along the floor and bundled into a van," said opposition politician and Fonseka’s campaign spokesperson Mangala Samaraweera.
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