We always requested international investigation: TNA’s Suresh Premachandran

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 March 2012, 18:40 GMT]
“We have been to various countries like United State of America, Great Britain, Canada and South Africa, and we requested those countries that there must be an international investigation on the accountability, because the LLRC report does not have anything about the accountability as such,” said TNA parliamentarian Mr Suresh Premachandran in conducting a press meet at the TNA office, which is also the EPRLF office, in Jaffna on Sunday. On TNA’s talks with the SL government, Premachandran said Colombo has not yet fulfilled an understanding between Sampanthan and Rajapaksa that a bilateral agreement on solutions should precede before the TNA naming participants to the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC). Without third party mediation the talks are futile, as SL doesn’t want to settle the problem through power sharing, Premachandran said.
Full story >>

Land grabbed for Buddhist stupa, local people blocked at Kudumpimalai, Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 March 2012, 07:33 GMT]
Sri Lanka's Sinhala military occupying the scenic sacred hillock Kudumpimalai (Baron's Cap) in the Koa'ra'lappattu South Division of the Batticaloa district has not only appropriated five acres of land there to build a Buddhist stupa, but also blocks the local people from entering that area. The occupying military plans to convert the local sacred place of Eezham Tamils and a former jungle stronghold of the LTTE into a tourist place for the Sinhala-Buddhists from the south, informed civil officials of the division told TamilNet. The land has been appropriated at Alli-Oadai junction, 2km south of the hillock and the local people are blocked from going to that junction and beyond it, besides being prevented from entering their grazing lands in the nearby village Tharavai. The name of the junction also has been Sinhalicised similar to the Sinhalicisation of Kudumpimalai into Thoppigala.
Full story >>

US, Sri Lanka squabble whether hang or slaughter Eezham Tamil Nation

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 March 2012, 23:32 GMT]
The LLRC recommendation of the majoritarian and genocidal state of Sri Lanka is clear on the point that ethnic territories cannot exist in the island, and ‘trilingual’ society (ostensibly paving way for total Sinhalcisation) should be achieved by 2020. While Sri Lanka in Geneva sessions wants implementation of its agenda left completely to itself, the US-backed resolution seeks international endorsement to the LLRC recommendations and international commitment from Sri Lanka in the implementation and phases. In an exclusive interview to Ceylon Today on Thursday, the US ambassador in Colombo, Patricia Butanis praising the LLRC for coming out with “some excellent recommendations,” argued why then the qualms in publicly committing to implementation. The squabble is just on whether publicly hang or secretly slaughter the Tamil nation, commented an Eezham Tamil politician.
Full story >>

Enragement over US-India stand results in Sumanthiran-effigy in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 February 2012, 23:44 GMT]
The nominated parliamentarian of Tamil National Alliance (TNA) M.A. Sumanthiran faced the brunt of public enragement in Jaffna on Wednesday, for reflecting the stand of the USA and India, in handing over even the last of the trumps of Eezham Tamils to Sri Lankan state, by internalizing war-crimes accountability and political solution. Washington allegedly backs proposals at the UNHRC sessions in Geneva that will give international legitimacy to the LLRC hoodwink of Colombo and whatever the differences with New Delhi backing Colombo that could only be related to binding Colombo with a time frame for the implementation of the LLRC recommendations. Meanwhile, the stands of both the Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa and the DMK Chief Karunanidhi are also just confined to urging New Delhi to back the US proposal in Geneva that is ‘perceived’ to be against Sri Lanka.
Full story >>

RSF calls for condemnation of Sri Lanka over media rights violations

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 February 2012, 02:20 GMT]
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), in a media release issued Tuesday, called on members of the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) "to pass a resolution condemning the Sri Lankan government’s violations of freedom of information and to demand an end to threats and violence against news media and human rights defenders in Sri Lanka." The release also referred to TamilNet's struggle against the modern electronic form of suppression of media freedom saying, "[s]ince 25 February: Distributed Denial-of-Service Attacks (DDoS) have been disrupting web traffic of TamilNet.com. The service provider is struggling to keep the website online."
Full story >>

SLA, paramilitary, force Tamils in Batticaloa to take part in anti-UN protests

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 February 2012, 22:26 GMT]
SLA operated paramilitary operatives, dispatched by the occupying Sri Lanka Army in Batticaloa, visited the Village Development Council (VDC) leaders in various villages in the district on Monday instructing the heads of the VDCs to have at least 150 people to get on board the buses they would be bringing to transport civilians against their will to march from Batticaloa Hindu College to the Clock Tower in Batticaloa city. The heads of VDCs were told that they would have to resign their posts if they failed to meet the demand. The people, gathered against their will were then taken to Batticaloa city and were forced to burn the effigy of US President Barack Obama and to chant slogans against the UNHRC session taking place in Geneva.
Full story >>

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.
Full story >>

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.
Full story >>

Self-denial of heritage in Maldives sends message to Establishments

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 February 2012, 23:49 GMT]
A group of Maldivians who stormed into the National Museum at Male on the day Mr. Mohamed Nasheed resigned from the office of president, destroyed artefacts of pre-Islamic heritage on display. The whole pre-Islamic history is gone and the loss to the nation’s archaeological legacy can never be recouped, The Economic Times said Tuesday, citing Maldivian officials. Most of the artefacts, including statues smashed, belong to Maldivian Buddhism dating between c. 6 – 12 century CE. The vandals destroyed not only the religious heritage but also the literacy heritage as well, because many of the 30 odd coral-stone artefacts destroyed were inscribed with the earliest written records of the country. While media is busy on comparison with Afghanistan, the question arises why the situation deteriorated in Nasheed’s time, when the heritage had found no qualms during Gayoom’s long rule.
Full story >>

Buddhist monk on Sinhalicisation project in Batticaloa causes ethnic disharmony

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 February 2012, 23:55 GMT]
Venerable Ambitiya Sumanarathna Thera, the head of the Buddhist temple in Batticaloa, who conducted a fast-unto-death campaign in the year 2010 demanding Colombo to post Sinhala officers to all government departments in the predominantly Tamil-speaking district, has been waging a new fast-unto-death campaign from Tuesday this week. The new campaign is targeted against Tamils, who have been demanding resettlement in their occupied lands by documenting their land deeds. The monk, putting forward a false claim that officials in Batticaloa were issuing false land deeds to Tamils, claimed that the lands belonged to Sinhalese. He ended the fast-unto-death campaign after Colombo's paramilitary operative and a deputy minister in Rajpaksa's cabinet, Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, met the prelate and promised to forward his appeal to SL President on Wednesday.
Full story >>

Build capacity when regime tries to take away all capacity: Prof Gene Sharp

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 February 2012, 17:26 GMT]
In an exclusive interview to TamilNet on Friday in Oslo, Dr. Gene Sharp, Emeritus Professor of Political Science of the University of Massachusetts, provided some insights on non-violent strategies to be pursued by nations against states and powers that deny them their legitimate rights. “They have to build up some capacity for strength when the regime is trying to take away all capacity for strength from the oppressed people,” he said, adding, “We need to have a wise strategy – not something where you express anger but which achieves smaller victories and finally a big victory.” However, the leading theoretician of non-violent struggle who was not specifically addressing on any of the current struggles, conceded that “The situations are very different for different people of different countries.”
Full story >>

Pakistan seeks Colombo’s help in deploying genocidal model

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 February 2012, 11:38 GMT]
A high level team of Sri Lankan officials who visited Pakistan were actually on a mission to help Pakistan combat and crush the Baloch freedom fighters or Sarmachars demanding independence from the failing state in South Asia, said an Examiner feature by Ahmar Mustikhan on Monday. Sri Lanka president Mahinda Rajapaksa was on a two-day visit to Islamabad and signed three MoUs with Pakistan. But secret talks held during the visit were on Pakistan getting Colombo’s ‘expertise’ in crushing Tamil Tigers for deployment against the Balochistan movement, and this matter should be immediately reported to the International Criminal Court, the feature further said.
Full story >>

War crimes of ‘both sides’ or war crimes of all sides: Oslo film discussion stirs thoughts

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 February 2012, 17:01 GMT]
After a full house show of Beate Arnestad’s documentary on exiled Sinhala and Eezham Tamil journalists on Thursday in Oslo, Norwegian journalist Sverre Tom Radøy leading the discussion, prompted British journalist Frances Harrison talking on the sufferings of the civilians to elucidate on ‘war crimes of both sides’ and particularly those of the LTTE. Forced recruitment and preventing the civilians from going to the side of the Sri Lanka Army were the war crimes of the LTTE, Ms. Harrison specified. Confining the crimes to a paradigm ‘both sides’ is a tactic of the international architects of the war to circumvent their crimes and responsibility. Made to naively believe that justice would come from the very architects, the affected Tamils have failed in focussing their demand on the accountability of all sides that had committed the crimes, commented an observer to the show.
Full story >>

Illegal sand mining continues in East with Colombo backing

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 February 2012, 23:48 GMT]
Sri Lankan presidential sibling and ‘development’ minister Basil Rajapaksa, through an officer working in the Geological Unit of the District Secretariat of Batticaloa, has given permit to a Sinhala businessman N.T.I.Tilakaretna, a Sinhalese. The move was also backed by the Sri Lankan Government Agent in Batticaloa, according to civil sources at the Batticaloa District Secretariat. Tilakaretna has been allowing tractors to remove sand from the river after obtaining 2,000 rupees per tractor. Ten percent of the money goes to Basil Rajapakse and 5 percent is being given to the Officer-in-Charge of the SLA army camp at Mu'rakkoddaagn-cheanai, the sources further said.
Full story >>

Eezham Tamils await dividends to come from Mahendran’s book

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 February 2012, 22:23 GMT]
“It is not a mere documentation sharing opinion, but it is on the demand for justice by the genocide-surviving Eezham Tamils, the plight of whom has not been experienced by any other society in the world,” writes Communist Party of India stalwart C. Mahendran, in the introduction to his book on the Vanni War. He encapsulates the global shame in a nutshell when he says “Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal is the heroes’ land in the 21st century world, where life was the weapon to claim one’s land.” The book in Tamil, “Veezhveanen’ru Ninaiththaayoa” (Have you thought that I would fall), brought out in December 2011 by veteran media publications Vikatan, Chennai, is on hot sales and has already found overwhelming appreciation among Tamil readers all over the world. Any good book is eventually judged by the impact it makes on society and Eezham Tamils await that dividend to come from the Tamil-speaking world.
Full story >>

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.”
Full story >>

CPI moots Tamil Nadu State Assembly participation in Geneva HRC

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 February 2012, 17:56 GMT]
Tamil Nadu State Assembly should press New Delhi to make arrangements for its participation in the UN Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva in March to present the case of war crimes against Eezham Tamils, said, Communist Party of India’s MLA for Sivagangai, Mr. S. Gunasekaran, during debate on Governor’s Address in the Tamil Nadu Assembly. He reminded the Assembly on its earlier resolution on this issue and said that a case should be filed in the International Court of Justice against SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa for the genocide committed on Eezham Tamils. Deprivation of political, homeland and language rights of Eezham Tamils continues in the island and they are treated like slaves without security. SL has not even spent the Indian monetary assistance meant for Eezham Tamils sufficiently, the MLA said.
Full story >>

Colombo steps up Sinhalicisation of Batticaloa, Ampaa'rai border village

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 31 January 2012, 19:20 GMT]
Depriving the livelihood of resettled Tamils at 35th Colony, the Sri Lankan government authorities in Colombo have taken charge of the Tamil area, which comes under the Batticaloa district and the Eastern Provincial Council, aiming Sinhalicisation of the border village between the Batticaloa and Ampaa'rai district. The Tamil fishermen, who have been fishing in Navakkiri tank have now been denied access to the tank and only Sinhalese are allowed by the SL authorities to engage in fishing in the tank situated in the 35th Colony. The provincial minister responsible for fisheries affairs, Mr. Navaratnam, has also confirmed that the civil affairs at 35th Colony are being directly controlled from Colombo.
Full story >>

Sinhala gang attacks Tamil residents in Trinco suburb

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 January 2012, 16:56 GMT]
Four Tamil residents of Vinaayagapuram, a suburb in Trincomalee town, were injured, including one with severe injuries, when a gang of Sinhalese attacked them on Saturday evening around 6 p.m, sources in Trincomalee said. Thurainayagam Sanjeevan, 32, an employee of the Trincomalee office of a leading Tamil daily Virakesari, is in critical condition and has been admitted to the Trincomalee General Hospital. Other injured Tamils were discharged from the hospital after treatment, hospital sources said. The attackers had threatened the Tamil residents to vacate the village, according to the injured residents.
Full story >>

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.
Full story >>