Asian Development Bank to fund Sinhalicisation port project in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 March 2017, 22:17 GMT]
7,000 million rupees have been allocated by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to upgrade one of the three harbours, which have been selected by genocidal Sri Lanka in the Jaffna district for Sinhalicisation through militarization and ‘development’, civil sources in Jaffna said. The Point Pedro Harbour, which has been a military zone for a long time and which has been deployed by the intruding Sinhala fishermen from South for Multi Day Boat fishing has already been taken over by Colombo’s Ports Authority (SLPA) and Ceylon Fishery Harbours Corporation (CFHC). SL Army’s 524 division is still stationed in the lands that belong to the Customs Department just opposite the PPT Harbour.
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Colombo deploys Sinhala Military Intelligence personnel as CEB workers in Battialoa

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 March 2017, 18:05 GMT]
The occupying Colombo has employed several Sinhala military intelligence personnel as meter readers and consumer coordinators of Ceylon Electricity Board from CEB branches operating from Kalladi and Kaaththaan-kudi. These workers, entering the houses of Tamils are involved in surveillance activities, say informed Tamil civil sources at Batticaloa District Secretariat. The district has already been struggling with Colombo appointed Sinhala workers in the public sector of the Tamil-speaking district and that too when there are thousands of qualified and unemployed Tamils in the district itself. Now, the military is also intervening into the public sector through its intelligence wing, the civil sources further said.
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Muslims in Mannaar expose systemic inability of SL State in delivering justice to victims

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 March 2017, 22:48 GMT]
“2 years or 20 years, it doesn't matter. You can't expect real justice to be delivered by the SL State,” commented Tamil-speaking Muslim activists in Mannnar while TamilNet recently interviewed three Muslim women who have been languishing without justice or remedy for 20 years. The occupying Sri Lanka Army shot and killed the fishermen from Erukkalampiddi-East on 23 May 1997. The massacre took place while the victims were on their way to the seashore in bicycles carrying their fishing nets in the early hours of the fateful Friday. The dead bodies were released to the families on a condition that they signed in a document stating that their husbands were LTTE members, says 44-year-old Rifanu Beham Yaseen, the widow of the late Meerasa Marikar Yaseen and a mother of two girls. Her husband was 32 when he was massacred by the SLA and Ms Rifanu was one-month pregnant carrying a second child.
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Maithiripala's petition system causes grievances to uprooted Tamils in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 March 2017, 22:41 GMT]
The occupying Army of genocidal Sri Lanka has started to harass the uprooted families in Valikaamam North in Jaffna, who have recently sent petitions to SL Presidential Secretariat through the ‘Tell the President of Sri Lanka’ programme. SL military officers are visiting the families that had complained about their lands and properties in militarized Valikaamam North. The visiting Sinhala military officers want the complaining families to sell their lands to military itself or to lease out their lands and properties on longer term contracts. SL military is seeking all means to permanently and legally grab the lands and properties in the coastal area that have been transformed into military resorts. Similarly, the owners of agricultural lands in the fertile red soil, have also been asked by the SL military to consider selling their lands to the occupying military.
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Handover investigations to international judicial mechanism, NPC tells Geneva

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 March 2017, 09:26 GMT]
While the uprooted people and the families of enforced disappeared in Trincomalee, Vavuniyaa, Mullaiththeevu, Ki'linochchi and Jaffna are staging continuous protests demanding the UN human rights regime in Geneva not to provide any more ‘time and space’ for the genocidal SL State and its military to escape accountability on international crimes committed in the land of Eezham Tamils, the elected council of Northern Province passed a resolution echoing the feelings of the people on the ground and urged the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to refer the case to an international judicial mechanism. “[W]ithout truth, justice and an equitable political solution, neither reconciliation nor permanent peace is possible”, the NPC resolution said and said that the international community should initiate a UN-mediated negotiation process to resolve the national question.
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SL Military Intelligence wages shadow war against Champoor people

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 March 2017, 23:13 GMT]
The intelligence wing of the occupying Sri Lanka Army in Moothoor East has been threatening the leaders of various social and justice organisations in an attempt to dismantle the entire social fabric that prevails among the resettled people of Champoor. There have been several reports of strict military surveillance on everything that moves in and out of Champoor and Tamil activists being forced to work as surveillance operatives. But, the latest move aims at dismantling the grassroots from sustaining their social fabric. The mediation board (I’nakka-chapai), Rural Development Society, Womens’ Development Society and the local justice systems that facilitate and mediate in disputes between the individuals in the society are facing serious threats from the SL military intelligence in recent days.
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Colombo's structural genocide against Eezham Tamils reaches its peak in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 March 2017, 22:38 GMT]
The structural genocide being waged by Colombo against the nation of Eezham Tamils has reached its peak in Mullaiththeevu district, particularly in Karai-thur'aip-pattu, says NPC Councillor T. Ravikaran in an interview to TamilNet. Tamil fishermen being systematically deprived of even accessing one of their fishing jetty (vaadi) is the latest contention. All the coastal points with vaadis have been seized from Tamils and given to Sinhalese. Tamil people were able to freely engage in their livelihood during the times of the LTTE. But, now they have fallen victims to the structural genocide although the physical genocide ended in May 2009. The Sinhala fishermen, who have been brought from South are using all possible means of banned forms of fishing destroying the fishing ecosystem, the Tamil fishermen complain.
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Japanese warship to visit genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 March 2017, 23:47 GMT]
The largest warship of Japan will be visiting ‘Sri Lanka’ in July, before joining the “Malabar joint naval exercise” with Indian and US naval vessels in the Indian Ocean, said media reports on Monday. In the vocabulary of the European colonialists, right from the Portuguese, the word Malabar was a reference to the combined land of Tamils and Malayalis. It was mostly meaning Tamil land. Washington, New Delhi and Tokyo, now taking up the ‘Malabar’ legacy of the colonial era, envisage partnership with genocidal Sri Lanka, but ignore or sabotage the righteous aspirations of the Stateless ‘Malabaries’. The three, along with the UK, were prime partners in fatally and unjustly tilting the balance against Tamils, favouring ‘Sri Lanka’ to execute genocide and to set course for the continued structural genocide of the nation of Eezham Tamils.
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Uprooted people of 5 coastal villages in Jaffna issue 4 weeks ultimatum to Colombo

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 March 2017, 22:21 GMT]
Three senior leaders of the newly launched ‘Five Villages Development Joint Committee’, representing 6,000 families from Kaangkeasan-thu'rai, Oo'ra'ni, Mayiliddi, Thaiyiddi and Palaali, the five coastal villages that have been subjected to military occupation and complete annihilation of civilian infrastructure during the past 27-years, declared this week that their organiastion would launch a mass struggle. They have issued 4 weeks of ultimatum to SL President to respond to their appeal. If there is no positive response to their final appeal, they would undertake a relentless mass struggle until full resettlement, said veteran rights activist Vijayaratnam Ratnarasah, who has been involved in trade union, civic bodies and a convenor of one of the first citizens’ committees in the Tamil homeland since 1960.
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Credibility of UNHRC at stake, say 21 Tamil civil groups in North East

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 March 2017, 23:40 GMT]
“It has thus become very clear that the co-sponsorship of Resolution 30/1 was an attempt to divert the UN Human Rights Council’s attention away from Sri Lanka,” said 21 civil groups and political parties in a statement issued on Thursday on the ‘USA Sri Lanka’ Consensus Resolution that scuttled Tamil demand for international investigations two years ago at Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council. “Sri Lanka’s subsequent behaviour following their co-sponsorship of Resolution 30/1 we believe threatens the credibility of the UN Human Rights Council,” the carefully worded statement of the civil society groups said. Escalation and not de-escalation of pressure on the Government is the real contribution that the international community can make towards enhancing the human rights situation in the North-East of Sri Lanka, the statement further said.
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Uprooted Tamils to launch mass struggle against SL military housing deception

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 March 2017, 20:50 GMT]
The organizations representing the uprooted people from Valikaamam North in Jaffna, who are all fed up by decades of deceptions by the changing regimes in Colombo that refuse to de-militarize and allow the people to resettle in their fertile villages, have resolved this week to step up their struggle by joint action in the future. Only some of the occupied lands were returned at Keappaa-pulavu and at Puthukkudiyiruppu. The occupying military is undeterred in its project of militarization. The human rights politics in Geneva advanced primarily by Obama’s USA bandwagon had completely neglected Tamil demands. While deploying Tamil victims and activists at side-events, the discourse targeting regime change through appeasing the genocidal State of Sri Lanka, has only contributed to accelerated militarization of Tamil homeland.
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Trevor Grant, veteran Australian friend of Eezham Tamils, passes away at 65

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 March 2017, 23:15 GMT]
Australian journalist and an advocate for Tamils rights, Trevor Grant, who has also written widely on SL State’s genocide against Eezham Tamils and on the complicity of the Western governments in the genocide, has passed away on Monday at the age of 65 after a courageous battle with cancer for 18 months. “As a sports journalist for 40 years, he took the mission of speaking truth to power more to heart than any of his kind,” wrote Greg Baum, the chief sports columnist and associate editor of The Age paying tribute to him in a memorial piece in the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday. In 2014, he authored a book titled Sri Lanka's Secrets – How the Rajapaksa regime gets away with Murder.
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Collaborate with Colombo or get lost in Geneva: SL President tells Tamils in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 05 March 2017, 23:22 GMT]
SL President Maithiripala Sirisena who visited Jaffna on Saturday was reiterating the same words of former SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa at both the military and civil event in Jaffna. His visit was fully packed with military events except a single event, which was a PR stunt of launching the “Tell the President” office in Jaffna. Mr Maithiripala Sirisena, who has been claiming earlier that he was also in command of the final phase of Vanni war in his capacity as a deputy defence minister in 2009, was addressing the SL military in Jaffna on Saturday vowing not to allow anyone to subject the troopers of the three armed forces to stand for criminal trials in connection with alleged war crimes. During his trip, Sirisena was not prepared to meet the demonstrating women who were searching for their kith and kin or the graduates demanding jobs.
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Wickramasinghe protects unpunished war criminals of SL Military Intelligence

[TamilNet, Saturday, 04 March 2017, 20:35 GMT]
SL Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe has secretly launched a plan to erase the records of military intelligence officers and operatives of the Military Intelligence who have been named with command responsibility by the affected victims and their families, particularly the kith and kin of Eezham Tamils subjected to enforced disappearances at the hands of occupying Sri Lankan military after MI operatives carried out arrests, detentions and abductions during the presidency of Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa. In an effort to get rid of the details of those named by the victims, the military intelligence officers and operatives are being transferred to separate divisions or offered early retirement, informed EPDP paramilitary sources told TamilNet on Saturday.
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British-recognised occupying SL military attempts rape in Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 March 2017, 23:36 GMT]
A soldier of the occupying Sinhala military under the command of Major General Ajith Karyakarawana on Friday evening attempted to rape a 56-year-old Tamil woman at Santha-puram, located near Ira'nai-madu, where the occupying military of genocidal Sri Lanka is maintaining its so-called Security Forces Head Quarters for Ki'linochchi with at least three divisions of Sinhala military and SL Air Force. The rape attempt comes a few days after Ms Laura Davies, the Deputy British High Commissioner in Colombo and Captain Stuart Andrew Borland, the British Defence Attaché in Colombo, were according diplomatic and military recognition to the occupying Sinhala military in the Tamil homeland by paying a visit and receiving a memento from Maj Gen Ajith Karayakarawana, the commander of the controversial military base that has been operating against the Eezham Tamils in Vanni.
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SL military threat against civil organisations reaches serious level in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 February 2017, 22:47 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala military was directly controlling the civil rights of the Eezham Tamils under the previous regime of Mahinda Rajapaksa. But, the SL military under the joint regime of Maithiripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickramasinghe, has chosen much worse forms of controlling the underlying social fabric of Eezham Tamils in the Eastern Province, complain Tamil activists from Rural Development Society (RDS) organisations and women’s rural organisations in Batticaloa district in the East. SL military intelligence, which has gathered details of RDS activists and the details of their families, has been exerting pressure on the activists to operate as its informants. All the RDS organisations in the 14 divisions of Batticaloa district are facing the same threat and harassment from the SL military.
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Popular Tamil Eelam singer SG Shanthan passes away

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 February 2017, 23:08 GMT]
Shanthalingam Gunaratnam (SG Shanthan), the most popular Eezham Tamil singer of songs in the Tamil Eelam liberation struggle so far, has passed away in Jaffna on Sunday at the age of 57 of kidney failure. The singer, known for his unique high-pitch singing of liberation songs, has recorded more than 250 Tamil Eelam songs and at least 350 devotional songs. One of his initial Tamil Eelam songs, “Intha ma'n engka'lin chontha ma'n” (this is our soil) sung 26 years ago, is still used as slogan by the people demanding de-militarisation of the occupied country of Eezham Tamils. Shanthan is gone but his voice will live in the hearts and minds of Eezham Tamils forever.
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Kaaththaankudi Muslims express solidarity with uprooted Keappaa-pulavu Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 February 2017, 22:25 GMT]
Two Muslim organisations, Kaaththa-nakar Arasiyat Ka'lam (Kaaththaan-kudi Forum of Politics) and the Progressive Council for National Integration, mobilised Muslims in Kaththaan-kudi (Kattankudy) outside Jamiullafireen Jummah Mosque after Friday prayers. “Let us begin afresh from our split-ups” and “Unity brings prosperity” were featured as the main slogans by the organisations. In the meantime, the families of enforced disappeared Tamils in Vavuniyaa in the Northern province resumed their struggle on Friday amidst a section of NGO agents were seeking to pacify the grassroots activists.
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LRC Director narrowly escapes assassination, land disputes in Batticaloa take violent turn

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 February 2017, 23:50 GMT]
Batticaloa District Director of Land Reforms Commission (LRC), Wimalarj Nesakumar, a Tamil from Ka'luthaava'lai, was shot and seriously injured by two unidentified men around 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday. Mr Wimalaraj, who emerged from his residence as unknown men wearing helmets called him by name, was shot at least three times. The attackers intended to kill him, his family told the SL Police. The LRC Director has sustained three gunshot wounds. The terrible incident has taken place at a time when the LRC Director was involved in exposing the nature of land grab in the ‘public lands’ in Ea'raavoor, according to informed civil sources. Some sections were quick to blame Muslims due to the nature of land grab at Eea'raavoor, while others say there could be deeper ‘counter insurgency’ motives behind the timing of the violent act.
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Sinhala military chases 850 Tamil escapees from military slavery in North

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 February 2017, 23:30 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala military of genocidal Sri Lanka has stepped up search operations against Eezham Tamils who have escaped from slavery ’employment’, which was carried out to document that the SL military was also recruiting Tamils in North. Around 1,000 Tamil men and women were deceptively recruited to subservient deployment as technicians, carpenters, painters, flower garden workers, plumbers, farm slaves and as female servants to Sinhala ‘war commanders’ residing inside so-called High Security Zones. These ‘workers’ were put on military's payroll and documented as Tamils serving in the genocidal military. More than 850 of the deceived and victimised males and females have managed to escape from the so-called military deployment. The SL military is now searching for the ‘missing’ slaves.
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