Colonization to engulf Thiriyaay as Colombo allocates 3000 acres for Buddhist vihare

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 July 2011, 12:14 GMT]
Nearly three thousand acres in Thiriyaay, a traditional Tamil village, located about 42 km off north of Trincomalee town have been earmarked to be declared as sacred area for a Buddhist Vihare called Girihandu Seya. The Vihare caters exclusively for Sinhala Buddhists from the south of Sri Lanka.
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Colombo targeting Tamil civil service is more than revenge

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 July 2011, 18:02 GMT]
Orders have been issued by Sri Lanka president Mahinda Rajapaksa and by his sibling Basil Rajapaksa to colonial governor Maj. Gen. Chandrasri for immediate and full-swing replacement of Tamil civil service in the north. The act may superficially look as a revenge for the defeat in the civic elections, but it is actually aimed to make any political solution that will be ‘accounted’ to the outside world completely meaningless to Eezham Tamils, and is a part of a long-contemplated agenda of structural genocide, political observers said. Meanwhile, knowing what is happening and what will happen in demography, political representation, civil administration, militarisation and in all other respects, why should the TNA commit to seek solutions under a ‘united Sri Lanka’ just because the powers that abetted the genocide want it, ask non TNA Tamil nationalists.
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Army witnesses recount final orgy of massacre, rape, torture, mutilation

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 July 2011, 02:19 GMT]
A Sri Lanka Army (SLA) officer has given Channel 4 an account of how, following orders from Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the commander of the 58 Division, Brigadier (now Major General) Shavendra Silva gathered his officers in the closing days of the war and ordered them to take no prisoners when capturing the remainder of the enclave in which thousands of Tamils civilians and fighters were surrounded. Brig. Silva received the same orders that Mr. Gotabaya issued to all regiments, the officer who was then serving under Brig. Silva told Channel 4. Meanwhile, another Sri Lankan soldier with the 58 Division has given an eyewitness account of an orgy of mass murder, rape, torture and mutilation in the final days in which tens of thousands of Tamil civilians perished.
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Protests make India withdraw SLA training in Tamil Nadu

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 July 2011, 14:21 GMT]
A programme of the Indian military to train soldiers of the genocidal Army of Sri Lanka at the Madras Regimental Centre at Wellington in the Nilgiris District of Tamil Nadu was withdrawn after a protest of the people of Tamil Nadu staged by Periyar Dravida Kazhakam (PDK), Naam Thamizhar Party (NTP), Viduthali Chiruththaigal Katchi (VCK) and other activists groups on Friday. 25 soldiers of Sri Lanka’s Army who arrived at Wellington Thursday night for a three months training were sent back in a bus via Chennai, Indian officials said Saturday. About 200 activists participated in the protest demonstration at Wellington on Friday. A wordy quarrel took place between the Tamil Nadu police and a section of the agitators when the latter attempted to squat on road, PTI reported.
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Widespread SLA attacks reported on voters, candidates in Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 July 2011, 13:02 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army let loose its soldiers in civil cloths on house-to-house attack in many of the villages in Ki'linochchi district in the early hours of Saturday, causing panic and fear among the voters in Vanni and forcing the voters to stay inside their houses. The armed men in civil, speaking broken Tamil, came in vehicles as early as 3:00 a.m. and attacked the civilians instructing them to stay indoors on the election day. Knowing that it would be difficult to entirely change the mindset of the people of Jaffna, the SLA was ordered to stay inside the barracks in Jaffna. But, the SLA was deployed in Ki'linochchi, threatening both the candidates and voters, with a clear intent to capture the councils by intimidation.
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US official foresees elections in the north as way for ‘indigenous leadership’

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 July 2011, 12:17 GMT]
While the US Secretary of State Ms. Hillary Clinton visiting Chennai was looking at “some innovative and creative ideas” to break the impasse over the ‘Sri Lankan Tamils’ issue, a senior US State Department official told reporters in Chennai on Wednesday that the US government was looking towards Sri Lanka conducting provincial council elections in the north to facilitate the emergence of indigenous leadership for the first time in 30 years. Meanwhile, campaigning for Rajapaksa in the intimidated civic elections in the north that is now taking place ‘guided’ by the Rajapaksa regime and its occupying Army, SL minister Vasudeva Nanayakara on Tuesday said in Jaffna that Tamils should vote for Rajapaksa to “ensure that there is no foreign interferences.”
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Rajapaksa gives Tamil Nadu trio stage fright

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 July 2011, 02:47 GMT]
Three film singers from Tamil Nadu who had accepted a Sri Lankan government invitation to perform for Tamils in the former warzone town of Kilinochchi pulled out Thursday after finding out the event was to be part of the ruling party’s election campaign and that Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa would be attending, Indian press reports said. Mano, Krish and Suchitra (eds: single names only) were “shocked” to discover this whilst at Colombo airport waiting for their special military flight to Kilinochchi, and were hurriedly returning to Tamil Nadu, where their visit had triggered controversy, the reports said.
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India signs MoU with Colombo to ‘rehabilitate’ KKS harbour

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 July 2011, 00:27 GMT]
The government of India entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Rajapaksa regime of Sri Lanka on Thursday to carry out a “complex and wide-ranging project” to “rehabilitate” the Kaangkeasanthu'rai (KKS) harbour in the SL Army occupied High Security Zone in Valikaamam, Jaffna.
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SL Minister Nanayakara accepts mass killings of civilians in Vanni

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 July 2011, 22:57 GMT]
A top minister in Mahinda Rajapaksa regime has publicly accepted the mass-scale killing of Tamil civilians during the final months of the war in 2009. SL Minister and the leader of Democratic Left Front (DLF), Vasudeva Nanayakara on Tuesday said that his party accepted the important fact that innocent civilians have been killed during the Vanni war. Amid growing international pressure for an international probe into the credible allegations of war crimes in Sri Lanka, Mr. Nanayakara, who was on a propaganda drive seeking the public in Jaffna to support the Rajapaksa alliance in the upcoming civic elections in North, said that Tamils could only exert meaningful pressure on the SL government by supporting his alliance.
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Clinton meets Jayalalithaa in Chennai

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 July 2011, 17:00 GMT]
The United States is “looking at some innovative and creative ideas to break the impasse over the Sri Lankan Tamils issue,” PTI quoted visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telling Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa in Chennai Wednesday. The report did not elaborate. Meanwhile, in a public address Ms. Clinton said that India's example of multicultural democracy should serve as a model for Sri Lanka. Commenting on Clinton's remarks, Eezham Tamil political circles said Indian-modelled political solution will not work in the island when the military is Sinhalese. Centuries of political experience in the island shows that equal status of Tamils and Sinhalese is possible only when they have equal States, the political circles further commented.
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Australia’s cricketers should shun repressive Sri Lanka - TYO

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 19 July 2011, 01:30 GMT]
Australia’s cricketers should take a principled stand in defence of human rights and justice, and boycott Sri Lankan cricket until the Colombo government heeds international calls for an independent investigation into the mass killings of Tamil civilians in 2009, the Tamil Youth Organisation (TYO) urged Monday. “Sport is inseparable from politics. Nothing gives a repressive regime greater legitimacy, and makes light of its brutal conduct, than continuing sporting links,” the TYO said in a statement.
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ICG: Sri Lanka further from reconciliation than ever

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 July 2011, 17:28 GMT]
President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s authoritarian and Sinhalese nationalist post-war policies are undermining prospects for reconciling Sri Lanka’s ethnic communities, weakening democracy for all Sri Lankans and increasing the risk of a return to violent conflict, the International Crisis Group warned Monday, announcing its latest report, ‘Reconciliation in Sri Lanka: Harder than Ever’. “Sri Lanka may be ‘post-war’, but it will never be ‘post-conflict’ until all its people are free to build a credible narrative of its past and to play meaningful roles in their own governance, ” says Alan Keenan, Crisis Group’s Senior Analyst on Sri Lanka.
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Political prisoner admitted to Vavuniyaa hospital

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 July 2011, 08:48 GMT]
One of the 42 Tamil political prisoners, 40-year-old Kattaiyan Logeswaran, currently on fasting unto death campaign in Vavuniyaa prison demanding their release was admitted to the Vavuniyaa general hospital Sunday as his condition was reported to be critical.
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SL Army in Jaffna harasses JVP campaigners from South

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 July 2011, 18:02 GMT]
After curbing the Tamil National Alliance from conducting campaign meetings ahead of civic elections in North, the occupying Sri Lanka Army of Mahinda Rajapaksa regime now harasses the other opposition parties that come from the South for election campaign. The JVP campaigners in Jaffna told media Thursday that a Brigadier rank officer of the SL military headquarters in Palaali in Jaffna had phoned and threatened them when they went to the SL Police to complain against the harassments by the SLA soldiers.
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SL governor threatens Vanni NGOs to ‘donate’ money to Buddhist stupas

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 July 2011, 16:08 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s colonial governor for the country of Eezham Tamils in the north, Maj. Gen. Chandrasri is now completely obsessed with building Buddhist stupas, Sinhala colonisation and Sinhalicisation of administration, news sources in Jaffna said. Building Buddhist stupas at Old Park in Jaffna, where the provincial administration is located, and at Mullaiththeevu town, the occupying SL governor threatens the NGOs working in Vanni to pay ‘unaccounted’ money for his projects. NGOs working in Vanni have to get annual clearance from the SL president’s ‘special task force’ and the colonial governor makes use of this situation to fleece money from the NGOs.
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SL police refuses permission to TNA to hold election meetings

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 July 2011, 11:44 GMT]
Sri Lanka police in Jaffna refuses permission to civic election candidates of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to conduct public meetings. Instead, the ‘advise’ the candidates to engage in door-to-door campaign. But in the meantime, presidential sibling Basil Rajapaksa and a team of 13 SL ministers are camping in Jaffna to conduct Colombo’s campaign in various ways, misusing SL government’s administration and resources, complain the TNA candidates. SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa is also expected in Jaffna to campaign for the civic elections in the guise of opening a school building and laying foundation stones for certain projects.
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14-year-old boy taken for anti-UN demonstration reported missing

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 July 2011, 22:45 GMT]
A 14-year-old student of Yarltan College in Kaarainakar, Jaffna, Thiruchelvan Kajeethan, who was enticed by the EPDP and taken to Colombo to participate in the anti-UN panel report demonstration that took place on May Day, is so far missing. The parents of the grade-6 student, disappointed in getting a reply from the EPDP have approached TNA parliamentarians in Jaffna to find out what had happened to the boy. In recent times, there are many instances of school children, below the age of sixteen, missing in the country of Eezham Tamils.
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‘Flying Fox’ draws flak at home after Sri Lanka visit

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 July 2011, 08:10 GMT]
British Defence Secretary Liam Fox’s visit to Sri Lanka over the weekend has drawn the critical attention of the press back home. The Sun and the Daily Mail, two of Britain’s leading tabloid papers carried similar articles Tuesday questioning Dr. Fox’s penchant for foreign visits, and cited military brass as dubbing him the ‘the Flying Fox’, while The Times newspaper reported on criticisms by human rights and Tamil groups that his visit to Colombo undermined international efforts to censure the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa over war crimes in the final months of the island’s war in 2009.
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Sri Lanka holds Briton over Channel 4 documentary, as Fox meets Rajapaksa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 July 2011, 13:48 GMT]
Sri Lanka has arrested a Briton for allegedly helping Channel 4 television produce a documentary accusing Sri Lanka’s military of mass killings of civilians in the final months of the island’s war. Kandanam Jegadishwaram was arrested on Monday and a Colombo magistrate agreed Friday police can hold Kandanam Jegadishwaram for a month, press reports said Saturday. The British High Commission in Colombo told AFP it had no immediate information on the case. The arrest comes as British Defence Secretary visited Sri Lanka and met with President Mahinda Rajapakasa.
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Southern universities hold anti-SL government demonstration in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 July 2011, 02:57 GMT]
Teachers associations of universities in the south of the island of Sri Lanka held an anti-SL government demonstration and meeting in Jaffna on Friday that was also participated by teachers of the University of Jaffna. It was an impressive demonstration and meeting held in Jaffna in recent times, news sources in Jaffna said. Their demonstration march starting from the old railway station of Jaffna went through the Hospital Road and KKS Road of the heart of the city to reach the Veerasigham Hall, where more than 500 delegates mostly from the south held a meeting. Now only we come and see for ourselves the conditions in Jaffna that despite the complete end of the war even elected parliamentarians from this place are unable to anything, the university teachers from the south said in a press meet held in Jaffna, Friday.
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