Politics of statements failing to call a spade a spade

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 March 2020, 21:51 GMT]
The latest presidential pardoning of a massacre-convicted SL Army soldier is an outcome of the Mahawansa mindset, which is the ideology triggering the specific intent (Dolus Specialis) for Tamil genocide. In the chosen island of “Sri Lanka,” it is the genocidal Mahawansa doctrine that ultimately determines the delivery of justice as well as sustaining the unitary character of the state. Any roadmap, which seeks to improve the Colombo-centric system through gradual reforms without reconfiguring the underlying state structure in the first place, only paves the way for reversing even the cosmetic outcomes of the concerned deceptive progress. Those who contribute to such an experiment, directly or indirectly — even if they intend to disprove the approach through partaking in it — are complicit in sophisticated genocide denial as long as they are not prepared to call a spade a spade.
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New Delhi's prolonged Kashmir-lockdown causes concerns amidst Corona pandemic

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 March 2020, 20:07 GMT]
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi has demanded the regional grouping SAARC place the COVID-19 Emergency Fund under the disposal of the Secretary-General of SAARC. New Delhi offered an initial contribution of US $10 million, which was followed by Colombo offering $5 million, Malé $2 million, Dhaka $1.5 million, Kathmandu $1 million and Thimphu $100,000. While the heads of states of seven countries took part in a video conference, Pakistan deployed Dr Zafar Mirza, a ministerial rank special assistant to its prime minister to represent the country. Dr Mirza was urging India to relax the lockdown in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. In the meantime, news reports from Srinagar said anxiety and fear were high in the Indian-administered Kashmir as the speed restriction imposed by New Delhi on internet services continues under the pandemic outbreak.
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Monk praises Gota for releasing SLA soldier from death row, celebrates genocidaire soldier as “hero”

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 March 2020, 23:38 GMT]
While all attention remains focused on the lethal Corona pandemic, SL President Gotabaya has chosen to silently release a Sinhala soldier, Sunil Ratnayake, who was sentenced to death in 2015 for one of the brutal massacres committed on Eezham Tamils. In a genocidal act, eight Tamil civilians, including a five-year-old child and two teenagers, were massacred by Ratnayake and five other soldiers at Mirusuvil in Jaffna on 19 December 2000. Ratnayake, a non-commissioned officer of the SL Army, was the only soldier to be punished by the court. The case was put off several times to facilitate escape routes to commissioned rank officers, except Ratnayake, whom the system intended to release at a later opportunity, as it has happened now, Tamil rights activists in Jaffna commented. In the meantime an extremist Sinhala Buddhist monk celebrated the release posting a video comment on Facebook.
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Island-wide Corona infection estimated at 550 with spread risk to 19,000 persons

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 March 2020, 23:06 GMT]
With 101 medically confirmed cases so far, the number of actual Corona-infected persons circulating within the peoples in the island could be around 550, according to a situation report issued by the Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) on Wednesday. The Colombo-based association estimated the contact-risk by these possible 550 patients at 19,000 individuals at present. It identified districts of Colombo, Gampaha, Kalutara, and Puththa'lam as high-risk areas. If the curfew is lifted, social distancing would be considerably affected, the report said proposing to extend the lockdown to 07 April.
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Colombo set to receive more concessional loans from China

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 March 2020, 22:05 GMT]
SL Cabinet Spokesman and Minister in Colombo’s Rajapaksa regime has told Daily Mirror that China Development Bank (CDB) would be extending an additional USD 700 million as a concessionary loan in addition to USD 500 million loans received last week. The credit is expected in May, the news report said. “We can use it for infrastructure development, budgetary support and debt servicing,” the Daily Mirror quoted the SL Minister as saying.
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Trump Administration politicises MCC assistance: US policy analyst

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 March 2020, 19:34 GMT]
The Millennium Challenge Corporation “issued a blow to its own model by using its programs in Kosovo as a political bargaining chip,” writes Sarah Rose, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Global Development, a think-tank based in Washington DC. Describing the last week development as an unprecedented move, the CGD analyst writes that the US foreign policy goal of exerting pressure on Kosovo to remove its tariffs on Serbian goods was “decidedly out of sync with the agency’s model.” The MCC, a US government agency intended to independently work to reduce global poverty through economic growth since its inception in 2004, has come under fire as being a strategic tool to advance foreign policy interests also in the Indo-Pacific and a hot topic in Kathmandu and Colombo.
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Bay of Bengal study notes development disparity between North-East and South

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 March 2020, 21:34 GMT]
All the successive regimes in Colombo have focused on improving the economy of the Sinhala South after the onslaught on Eezham Tamils in 2009. The SL State, which deploys ‘development’ coupled with geopolitics to sustain the protracted genocide against the nation of Eezham Tamils, has a particular focus on shipping when compared to other maritime industry sectors such as fisheries, tourism and energy, reveals a study conducted by One Earth Future (OEF), a non-profit foundation based in the USA. “Sri Lanka” stands out as an emerging global hub and a “regional leader” in shipping, the OEF’s Stable Seas program observes in the study published on Monday. Although the report fails to identify SL State’s structural discrimination against the stateless Eezham Tamils, it doesn’t miss to note the disparity on Human Development Index (HDI) between the coastal districts of North-East and the South.
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China Development Bank extends syndicated loan to Colombo by $500 million

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 March 2020, 22:57 GMT]
Upon the request of the SL Government, Beijing has upsized a syndicated loan with a ten-year tenure and a team from the China Development Bank (CDB) was in Colombo to sign the deal with the SL Government, the Daily Financial Times reported on Wednesday. The fresh funding from China would significantly assist Colombo in managing its debt financing, the news report opined. The latest upsizing adds a new extension to the initial $1 billion syndicated loan. The original loan was of an eight-year tenure from 2018. This has been expanded with a ten-year tenure and “more attractive terms”, the Daily FT reported earlier in the day.
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UN Rights Chief must act to refer “Sri Lanka” crimes to ICC

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 March 2020, 22:26 GMT]
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet should act, using powers vested with her, to prompt the UN Security Council to pass a referral to the ICC to investigate the crimes committed against the Tamils between 2002 and 2009 and post-2009, Tamil legal activists based in Jaffna said. The legal activists, who didn’t wish to be named due to the fear of persecution, said the Article 13(b) of the Rome Statute and Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, were the only available means towards an ICC-led criminal process. The Statute’s Article 15, Article 13(a) and (c) were not helpful in the case of Eezham Tamils, they said referring to the recent ICC Pre-Trial Chamber decisions on Myanmar (Rohingya) and Afghanistan situations.
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Phil Miller’s work reveals British role in dividing Tamils and Muslims in East: Dr Malathy

[TamilNet, Sunday, 15 March 2020, 18:46 GMT]
The British mercenary outfit Keenie Meenie Services (KMS), made up mostly of ex-SAS personnel, and serving the ‘anglophile’ SL President, the late Richard Junius Jayewardene by secretly training the Sinhala Special Task Force (STF) commandos against the armed struggle of Eezham Tamils back in the 1980s. The STF advised by the KMS on divide-and-rule and use of religion, recruited Tamil-speaking Muslims to commit massacres. All of this was done with full awareness of the British government, which too was worried about the solidarity between the Tamils and the Muslims, writes New Zealand based Dr N.Malathy in her book review on the recent book by UK-based Phil Miller. “Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away With War Crimes,” is making this vital revelation, writes the Tamil diaspora survivor of SL State’s 2009 genocidal onslaught on Eezham Tamils in Vanni.
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Moragoda’s “think tank” justifies Sinhala apprehension to MCC, proposes renegotiations

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 March 2020, 23:47 GMT]
The so-called Colombo-Trincomalee Economic Corridor (CTEC) was only a new name given to decades-old agenda of demographic genocide wedging territorial contiguity of the Tamil homeland. Previous Rajapaksa government named it “North Central Metro Region (NCMR)” as envisaged by its “National Physical Planning Department” in April 2010. The selection of districts for the implementation of one of the proposed Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) project on land administration has “ironically led to the perception that MCC was to build an economic corridor between Colombo and Trincomalee and facilitate a land grab by foreigners,” claims a recent writeup originating from Milinda Moragoda’s Pathfinder Foundation. The outfit claims its reading of the MCC proposal justified some of the public concerns [of the Sinhalese].
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SL State-funded Buddhist vihara declared opened in Ki'linochchi campus of Jaffna University

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 March 2020, 19:52 GMT]
Occupying Colombo launched its plan to construct a grand Buddhist vihara inside the Ki'linochchi campus of Jaffna University in 2018. Following the controversial move, the administration of Jaffna University allocated lands for the construction of Christian, Saiva, Islamic and Buddhist temples. However, only the Buddhist temple was awarded large sums of money from the SL State as well as by the extremist Buddhist organisations in the South. The construction launched during the previous regime was accelerated within the last three months. On Saturday, the Buddhist temple, named Sarasavi Viharaya, was declared opened amid a grand ceremony by the Sinhala students as well as the Sinhala Buddhist nationalist groups from the South.
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Australian, Russian frigates dock at Colombo port

[TamilNet, Sunday, 08 March 2020, 17:19 GMT]
New Delhi has postponed the biennial multilateral naval exercise MILAN-2020 due to the ongoing deadly coronavirus outbreak. The drill was to be the biggest Indian-led maritime exercise involving navies from forty countries and was scheduled to take place between March 18 -28 off the coast of Visakhapatnam coast in the Bay of Bengal. In the meantime, the Royal Australian Navy, one of the countries to take part in the Indian-led war games, has sent its naval ship HMAS Parramatta to Colombo to engage with the SL Navy between 07 March and 11 March. Also, Russian Navy ship Admiral Vinogradov has arrived in Colombo Port on a four-day visit. Both the naval ships docked at Colombo port on Saturday.
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Colombo brings back EPDP terror assassins from exile

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 March 2020, 23:42 GMT]
The military intelligence of occupying Colombo has allowed SL Cabinet Minister Douglas Devananda to bring back exiled assassins of his war-time paramilitary outfit EPDP back to the island and into Jaffna in the recent days, informed sources in Colombo said. Some of the EPDP terror operatives deployed by the SL intelligence establishment to commit targeted assassinations and abductions to destabilise the 2002 ceasefire towards the run-up to the genocidal onslaught in 2009 exiled during the previous Rajapaksa regime. These are the ones, now returning to Jaffna, the sources said.
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SL ‘Terrorist’ Investigation Division resumes abduction-style arrests in North

[TamilNet, Friday, 06 March 2020, 21:07 GMT]
Leaked reports from SL’ Terrorist’ Investigation Division (TID) in Jaffna to local media earlier this week claimed that it had detained four Tamil youth from Poonakari (Pooneryn) with explosives at an uninhabited area in Vallipuram in Vadamaraadchi in Jaffna on Tuesday night. There was no independent verification of the incident. So far, no one has lodged any complaint with the Jaffna office of the SL Human Rights Commission, according to Thangavel Kanagaraj, the coordinator of the commission. However, he was able to confirm that 40-year-old S. Uthayasivam, a resident of Maruthangkea’ni in Valikaamam East, was being detained by the TID.
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Increasing pattern of Sinhala officials controlling civil affairs in North-East: Wigneswaran, Mavai

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 March 2020, 23:21 GMT]
The previous regime in Colombo was employing Sinhalese from the South to the vacancies of unskilled labourers in the North. For example, Sinhala youth were deployed in large numbers for the job of electricity meter reading in households in the North. However, the present regime has gone a step further installing Sinhalese also in the top positions of the civil administration in the North-East, observed former Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran. He was responding to a question from TamilNet on the recent trends of Sinhalicisation and militarisation of the civil administration in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils at the prolonged absence of the elected provincial councils.
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Gotabaya's ex-commander turned foreign-secretary abets China's genocide of Uyghur Muslims

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 March 2020, 19:11 GMT]
Former SL Navy Commander Admiral (retd) Jayanath Siri Kumara Colombage, who serves SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa as additional secretary on foreign relations has defended China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims at the UN Human Rights Council. The Chinese and Cameroonian missions to the UN in Geneva were sponsoring a symposium as a side-event on Monday. “Every country should deal with terrorism using solutions that fit its conditions the best. The question of what kind of anti-terrorism measures should be taken in Xinjiang should be decided by the Chinese government. No one can tell China what it should do, just as no one can tell Sri Lanka what to do,” Colombage told Global Times on Wednesday. The “Admiral Professor,” a friend of pro-China Shavedra Silva, was talking to the Chinese paper after the symposium along with other “scholars” of his character and calibre from China and Serbia.
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Gotabaya dissolves SL Parliament, fixes elections to coincide with Easter attack anniversary

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 March 2020, 23:46 GMT]
SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has dissolved the SL Parliament using the executive powers vested with him to do so, six months earlier than its expiry, on midnight Monday. Fixing 25 April as the date for the new elections, Mr Gotabaya has issued an extra-ordinary Gazette notification specifying 12 - 19 March as the nomination period for 22 electoral districts in the island. Rajapaksa siblings aim at consolidating their power through securing a two-thirds majority in the 225 seat House to strengthen their autocracy as well as the collective autocracy, which is the unitary state of the Sinhala South against the occupied country of Eezham Tamils in the North-East.
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Colombo adopts Nepal’s approach on US MCC negotiations

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 March 2020, 23:31 GMT]
Unlike Nepal, the SL State is yet to sign the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) agreement with the US. While Nepal is struggling to renegotiate the already signed contract, Colombo is trying to review the approved terms and conditions during the previous regime. SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa would make a move in the direction of signing it after the forthcoming parliamentary elections, is the opinion prevailing among the hardline Sinhala nationalists, who are opposed to US-Indian interventions in the island. In the meantime, a committee appointed to review the proposed MCC Compact has submitted a “supplementary report” to SL Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa on Thursday. The report has proposed “appropriate corrections” and “suitable amendments” before obtaining “concurrence of the citizens” as well as the “approval of the Parliament.”
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MCC agreement with US continues to court controversy in Nepal

[TamilNet, Saturday, 29 February 2020, 23:17 GMT]
Nepal’s ruling Communist Party (NCP) appointed a task force to study provisions in the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) agreement it had entered with the US in 2017. The three-member task force was appointed following mounting criticism that the implementation of the US $500 million grant programme could infringe Nepal’s state sovereignty and coerce it into the US Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS). The task force submitted its report last week suggesting Kathmandu not endorse the Compact in its current form.
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