Colombo seizes 4,000 acres of paddy lands from Tamil farmers in Ampaa'rai

[TamilNet, Saturday, 29 June 2013, 22:09 GMT]
Around 4,000 acres of paddy lands belonging to Eezham Tamil farmers in the western side of Thirukkoayil of Ampaa'rai district in the East are under appropriation by the Sri Lankan State in Colombo through its Department of Forest Conservation. This also includes more than 1,000 acres of lands with paddy crops. The Colombo Establishment is committing a systematic demographic genocide on the ancient Tamil villages in the East while the Establishments in Washington and New Delhi, fully aware of Sri Lanka's Sinhalicisation, Buddhicisation and Colonisation programmes, continue to provide the necessary ‘time and space’ to Sri Lanka by seeking to deceive Eezham Tamils with LLRC-based empty resolutions in Geneva and by upholding the 13th Amendment of the unitary constitution of Sri Lanka.
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Gotabhaya names TamilNet a ‘security threat’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 June 2013, 00:04 GMT]
While listing ‘national’ security threats faced by genocidal Sri Lanka, its Defence Secretary and presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa included the name of TamilNet and said that it is controlled by the Tamil Coordinating Committee, led by Nediyavan, which in turn has control over most of the assets of the LTTE’s international organisation. Gotabhaya who said it on 13 June, while addressing the Kotelawela Defence University, also said that now all the various intelligence services of his State are brought under one Chief of National Intelligence, who reports directly to him (as Defence Secretary). What Gotabhaya said on TamilNet either shows the ignorance of his intelligence or his intention to distort TamilNet’s image. TamilNet challenges him on the truth of his statement.
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BJP, RSS, Shiv Sena answerable to Dasgupta policy-line

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 June 2013, 06:33 GMT]
Whatever is the journalistic halo behind Swapan Dasgupta, his recent writings and utterances on the struggle of the genocide-facing nation of Eezham Tamils could have been ignored as coming from just another of the dubious ilk that writes for agendas, had he not been a member of the Rajapaksa-sponsored BJP-RSS-Shiv Sena delegation that went to Colombo and Jaffna. Now as he openly bares the line of thinking in the camp, the BJP-RSS-Shiv Sena lot aspiring for power in India, may have to answer to the world of Tamils and to the humanity in general whether it is aspiring to become worse than that of the present Establishments in New Delhi, Washington and Beijing, commented an activist of alternative politics in Jaffna, urging mainstream polity and public in Tamil Nadu to be prepared with the needed.
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Colombo schemes permanent occupation of two Tamil villages in Ampaa'rai

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 June 2013, 20:26 GMT]
Sinhala officials attached to Sri Lanka's Department of Forest Conservation, which comes under the SL Ministry of Environment and Renewable Energy, have surveyed this weekend two traditional Tamil villages in the Thirukkoayil DS division of Ampaa'rai district, in a move to plant trees in the lands that belong to uprooted Eezham Tamils, who have not been allowed to resettle in the villages of Thangkavealaayuthapuram and Kagnchi-kudichchaa'ru, news sources in Thirukkoayil told TamilNet Sunday. The Sinhala officials of the Eastern Provincial Council also back the move, the sources further said.
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Gajendrakumar exposes New Delhi’s deception behind 13th Amendment

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 June 2013, 06:33 GMT]
New Delhi that had wanted the LTTE to commit on federal solution as condition to bring in ceasefire, started arrogantly imposing the unitary 13 Amendment once the war ended in genocide, Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam exposes, bringing out the roles played by new Delhi’s National Security Advisor, M.K. Narayanan, and the former Foreign Secretary and the present NSA, Shivshankar Menon. When some of the TNA members attempted to explain that the 13th Amendment couldn’t be the way to find a political solution to the national question, Mr Narayanan responded in an angry tone stating that India knew what was good for Tamils much better than the Tamils themselves. The Indian delegation categorically told us that the 13th Amendment was the solution, Mr Gajendrakumar said.
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Gotabhaya statement reconfirms emptiness in PC model

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 May 2013, 11:31 GMT]
While New Delhi and Washington harp on either the 13th Amendment or holding Northern Provincial Elections (NPC) as solutions to the national question in the island of Sri Lanka, a statement coming from SL presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa reconfirms the unworkable nature of the Provincial Council (PC) model in a unitary constitution of the Sinhala state, Tamil political observers in the island said. Mr Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was warning the government of his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa that giving police and land powers to the provinces meant that the Northern Province comprising the districts of Jaffna, Mullaiththeevu, Vavuniyaa, Mannaar and Ki'linochchi could pose a ‘major security challenge’, reported the Island on Thursday.
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‘Do not consider powers culpable in Tamil genocide as saviours’: Sinhala academic

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 May 2013, 06:13 GMT]
“The international conspiracy was not against the Sri Lankan state, but against the Eelam Tamils as a nation,” said Sinhala academic Dr. Jude Lal Fernando, urging the Tamils to not consider the powers who were culpable in their genocide as saviours. In statement for Mu’l’livaaykkaal Remembrance Day, Dr. Fernando, lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin said “It is not only the Sri Lankan state, but all those who aided the state are guilty of genocide,” referring to US, UK and Indian support to the Sri Lankan state, asserting that the reluctance of the powers to recognize the genocide was in fact to cover it up. “As the genocide continues today with the blessings of the same powers that supported the Sri Lankan state we are been told to accept it in the name of post-conflict reconciliation and development,” he said, encouraging the Tamils to continue their struggle with the moral high ground.
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Genocide could be mandated by democracy of West: Malathy

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 May 2013, 10:58 GMT]
“Tamils agonize why the entire setup of Western institutions refuses to call what happened to us and what is happening to us is Genocide. Should the Tamils be surprised,” asked Dr N. Malathy, a key member of NESoHR and the author of ‘A Fleeting Moment in My Country’ at a meeting in Auckland, organized by the New Zealand Tamil Society on 5th May. “In this talk I have to convince you that there is nothing surprising in the behaviour of the Western institutions,” Malathy continued substantiating her stand and said that genocide can be mandated by a Western style of democracy. In meeting the situation, Tamils in Tamil Nadu have taken up their own course of action. Tamils in Tamil Eelam would act to suit their own conditions. The best for the diaspora is to protest in numbers as they did in 2009 and protest continuously, Malathy concluded.
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NZ Intelligence alleged of monitoring former Green MP for involvement in Tamil question

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 April 2013, 16:50 GMT]
New Zealand's Security Intelligence Service (SIS), which is part of the so-called Five Eyes intelligence network, comprising the intelligence agencies of Australia, Canada, Britain and the USA, was alleged of monitoring former Green party politician Keith Locke, who has been sympathetic to the Tamil cause. Mr Locke believes the SIS began covert operations on him in 2003, when he travelled to Sri Lanka, reports The Dominion Post. The former Green Party politician has demanded apology for illegal spying and that all 88 New Zealanders who were being spied on should be notified if the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) has illegally snooped on them.
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Prof Gamlath passes away

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 April 2013, 21:57 GMT]
Veteran Professor of Sinhala, Dr Sucharitha Gamlath passed away at the age of 79 in Colombo on Saturday and the funeral took place on Monday. Prof Gamlath was righteously anti-Establishment throughout his career and for nearly 15 years, the governments in Colombo kept him unemployed, which he faced heroically without compromising on his principles and convictions. To the end he steadfastly stood for the Tamil right to self-determination in the island of Sri Lanka. He was the first Professor of Sinhala at the University of Jaffna, appointed in 1975 (then the Jaffna Campus of the University of Sri Lanka) and his penalisation by the JR Jayawardane government took place in 1980 while he was serving at the University of Jaffna. TamilNet pays tribute to the scholar of a rare genre and expresses condolences to bereaving family members, friends and comrades.
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PKK leader declares ceasefire with Turkey, calls for peaceful solution

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 March 2013, 01:02 GMT]
Abdullah Ocalan, PKK founder-leader, has given a call for a ceasefire and for a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish national question through democratic means. In a statement from Ocalan read out by Kurdish legislators in Diyarbakir, Turkey on Thursday, coinciding with the celebrations of the Kurdish New Year festival Newroz, he said "let the arms silence, opinions and politics speak", further adding that “this is not an end, this is a beginning. It is not the end of our struggle, it is the start of a new sort of struggle.” Urging the Kurdish armed units to withdraw to Turkish borders, he called on people of “Armenian, Turkic, Assyrian, Arabic and other backgrounds to see the light of freedom and equality as much as Kurdish people do.” He was also of the opinion that a future solution for the Kurds should not be based on “conquest, denial, forced assimilation and annihilation”.
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Veteran humanitarian Eezham Tamil activist passes away in UK

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 February 2013, 00:40 GMT]
Dr. Namasivayam Sathiyamoorthy (N.S. Moorthy), a veteran Eezham Tamil activist who was instrumental in the organization of the humanitarian agencies TRO and Ve'n Pu'raa (White Pigeon), passed away at the age of 61 at London, UK. Dr. Sathiyamoorthy was involved in the national liberation struggle of the Eezham Tamils in the homeland from its early stages and was also a popularly recognized activist in democratic politics among the Tamil diaspora in the UK. Dr. Moorthy, as he was fondly called, was known for his dedication to the Tamils’ cause through his activism, his professional work and for his amicable nature, is mourned by a large number of Eezham Tamils across the world who personally knew his contributions. In UK, he was given the privilege of becoming a Freeman of the City of London in 1993, in recognition of his contribution in the field of medicine.
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Tamils raped in Sri Lanka custody - HRW

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 February 2013, 12:34 GMT]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released this week that Sri Lankan security forces have committed crimes of sexual violence against ethnic Tamils in state custody between 2006 and 2012. The said detainees were arrested because of their suspected links to the LTTE. The report gives 75 accounts of alleged sexual abuse and torture, saying most of them are backed by medical evidence.
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UN envoy to Burma laments condition of Kachin, Rohingya refugee camps

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 February 2013, 23:53 GMT]
Criticizing the Burmese government and Buddhist extremists in Burma for the pathetic conditions of camps for Internally Displaced Persons belonging to the Rohingya and Kachin ethnic communities, the UN Special Rapporteur to Burma Mr. Tomas Ojea Quintana, addressing a press conference on Saturday, compared the refugee camps to prisons, Burmese media reported. The camps are located in the Rakhine state of Burma which house over a 100000 Rohingya IDPs, who were displaced in last year’s ethnic violence, and in the Kachin state in North Burma, where Kachin rebels have been fighting for regional autonomy. Peace talks between the Kachin rebels and Burma have been on since early this February. The current Burmese government ruled by President Thein Sein, a former military commander, is considered by some analysts to be a moderate, pro-reform and pro-US regime.
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Military confrontations resurface in Colombia, 7 soldiers killed

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 February 2013, 17:37 GMT]
The rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have killed seven soldiers in clashes with the Colombian military on Wednesday. The attacks are seen as the biggest offensive by the FARC since peace talks between the rebel group and the Colombian government began last year. However, other news sources also infer that the latest FARC offensives are targeted at bringing the Colombian government to a ceasefire. Bogota has been arguing for a long time that it would agree to a truce only after a peace agreement has been arrived at.
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Nambiar, India's proxy in UN, complicit in white flag killings?

[TamilNet, Saturday, 12 January 2013, 23:55 GMT]
While the International Community which, blinded by the 9/11 terror, architected the annihilation of Tamils' primary safeguard, the LTTE, is left to savor the resulting horror state and the autocratic dystopia in Sri Lanka, Rights groups have accused the U.N. of being derelict in its duty to protect civilian lives. Vijay Nambiar, the Chef de Cabinet, who was a key official in shaping UN's Sri Lanka policy, is also accused of complicity in the "Whiteflag" incident where several surrendees were executed by the Sri Lanka military after being given assurances of safety by International actors. Nepotism and family connections between Ban Ki Moon and Nambiar, with personal links to India and Colombo, may also have contributed to the U.N.'s unwillingness to stop the Mu'l'livaaykkaal massacre, observers say.
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Colombo ventures to coach New Delhi on ‘Counterinsurgency’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 January 2013, 10:42 GMT]
After spearheading an internationally-coordinated counterinsurgency (COIN) operation against the LTTE which resulted in an internationally abetted genocide of the Eezham Tamils in May 2009, in which India played no small a role, Sri Lanka now claims that it can offer training to Indian and other military forces in COIN operations. The commitment of General Bikram Singh, the Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army, to Sri Lanka’s security and his implicit appreciation of the Sri Lanka model of COIN by his statements at the passing out parade at Sri Lanka Military Academy on 22 December should be a cause of concern for progressive civil society activists in India, for while the ‘Sri Lanka solution’ was possible in its specific case only by a combination of geo-political factors and genocidal intent, it holds out lessons that could threaten democratic traditions in any country.
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Takasu, Tamils' adversary in UN Security Council?

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 December 2012, 00:15 GMT]
Yukio Takasu, the 2009 President of the UN Security Council (UNSC) on the critical month of February, was one of the key UN officials who allegedly prevented Sri Lanka from being dragged into the UNSC for the unfolding mass scale killings in Mu'l'livaaykkaal, public statements made by UN officials during media stakes reveal. While some UN Security Council (UNSC) permanent members may have agreed with Takasu'a views, in a media stake out, Takasu lays out his "own" critical view of the "terrorist LTTE," and the primacy of political and security need to "defeat" the Tigers over imminent large scale civilian casualties. Political observers believe that Japanese cultural views on refugees, asylum seekers may provide clues to Takasu's approach and conduct in the UNSC that led to the disastrous outcome for the Tamil refugees trapped in Sri Lanka's civil war.
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Holmes, UN's smokescreen to Mu'l'livaaykkaal killings?

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 December 2012, 02:16 GMT]
Public statements made by UN officials during media stakeouts and briefings, Wikileaks exposures, and the testimony of twelve UN field staff reported earlier in TamilNet provide a blue-print to the strategy adopted by the UN to allow Sri Lanka to defeat the Tigers, and to ignore the mounting numbers of civilian casualties. This feature catalogues the statements from UN's former humanitarian chief, John Holmes, as he attempts to provide diplomatic cover to the slaughter taking place in Mu'l'livaaykkaal, repeatedly relying on Colombo's assurances on not using heavy weapons, and hesitating to provide casualty figures, a conduct comport with the "internal" strategy revealed by the then President of the United Nations Security Council, Yukio Takasu, that gave primacy to the need to eliminate the “terrorist LTTE …which had broken several ceasefire agreements."
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‘Independent civil society activism best tribute to Thamilchelvan’: Tamil Nadu writer

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 November 2012, 23:20 GMT]
Arguing that Sri Lanka’s genocidal war on the Eezham Tamils and the protracted genocide post-2009 was possible only due to the system of global injustice, Tamil Nadu based writer, poet and civil society activist Meena Kandasamy urged the Eezham Tamils in the island, the people of Tamil Nadu, the Tamil diaspora and other solidarity groups to form a ‘global civil society’ so as to politically and ideologically counter the designs of the establishments, in a commentary sent to TamilNet. Writing on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the assassination of S.P. Thamilchelvan, Ms. Kandasamy opines that such activism would be the best tribute to the legacy of the late political leader of the de-facto state of Tamil Eelam.
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