Genocide a national policy of Sri Lanka, says Tamil Nadu professor

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 January 2010, 11:59 GMT]
Genocide is a national policy to State in Sri Lanka since independence, says Professor Dheeran in Tamil Nadu in an article sent to TamilNet, citing the various facets, stages and sequences of State-orchestrated genocide against Tamils in the island, denying land, suffrage, polity, economy, culture and ultimately free physical existence. Eezham Tamils have more reasons to claim independence than many other such cases. The twist of the national question by the International Community only resulted in removal of guarantee against genocide. It paved way for China’s entry. The new equations provide new opportunities for the recognition of Tamil Eelam. The diaspora, free and powerful enough, should be steadfast in the only goal of liberation. Referendum is an international way to achieve it and efforts of re-mandating Vaddukkoaddai Resolution follow that line, he writes.
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Heritage genocide abetted by decades of Western funding

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 December 2009, 11:57 GMT]
Ever heard of ‘archaeology’ being first priority in a conquered territory? If not, then you don’t know Sri Lanka, writes an academic from Jaffna on Colombo’s heritage genocide. Colombo’s use of archaeology against Tamils is not new. But the dimensions to which Tamils are now exposed to are not only its acceleration but the tragedy of facing imposed ‘knowledge supremacy’ that only the Sinhalese can explore, excavate, manage and teach heritage. Sri Lankan state is not the only culprit. The West, especially the UK, US, Germany, France and Holland as well as India, Japan and Australia, the main countries that have been giving funds, training and scholarships to Sri Lanka and also the UN agencies have to be equally indicted for blindly following only State protocols and vested interests, without considering the long-term genocidal impact of their assistances in the island, he further writes.
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Tsunami victims remembered in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 December 2009, 02:26 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Jaffna transported nearly a thousand people in vehicles to Thaazhaiyadi in Jaffna Saturday where a memorial event was held for the victims killed by tsunami tidal wave five years ago, sources in Jaffna said. Tsunami had claimed 956 lives in Uduththu'rai area, 76 in Ma'natkaadu and 16 in Maathakal in Jaffna district. Persons who participated in the event said that the tsunami memorial monument erected by Liberation Tigers and the graves of tsunami victims had been destructed by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) during the war.
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Thousands attend Heroes day remembrance at Excel Centre, London

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 November 2009, 15:42 GMT]
Over 50,000 British Tamils gathered at the Tamil National Remembrance Day held in the Excel exhibition centre. Specially designed interior props and the lighting resembled the “Maveerar Thuyilum Illam” Graves of fallen heroes. British Tamils carrying red roses, Gloriosa lilies (Kaarthikaippoo: Tamil Eelam national flower) and lamps, are filing into the main venue, at the Excel Centre in East London, where large cut-outs of Tamil Eelam were displayed on either side of the stage.
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Mass graves fear prevents Colombo from seeking demining help - Sampanthan

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 October 2009, 11:35 GMT]
"The Sri Lanka government fears that, if the international community gets involved in the de-mining, they may stumble on to mass graves of Tamil victims killed during the last stages of fighting between the Sri Lanka military and the Tamil Tigers," said Parliamentary Group Leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), R. Sampathan, on Thursday accusing the Sri Lankan government of refusing to accept foreign assistance towards the de-mining parliamentary sources in Colombo said.
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Colombo has plans to colonize North with Buddhist Sinhalese – Suresh Premachandran

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 October 2009, 17:06 GMT]
The government of Sri Lanka is actively engaged in colonizing Ki’linochchi, Mullaiththeevu and Jaffna district with Sinhalese Buddhists in order to crush the demand for Eelam in the traditional homelands of the Tamils in the North, Suresh Premachandran, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Jaffna parliamentarian, said in a press meet held Monday in his Jaffna office. He further accused the government for not accepting help from International Community in de-mining Vanni as it does not want the persons from foreign countries to see the mass graves of civilians killed by its armed forces in the Vanni during the war. The MP also said that though the government says that it had resettled 40,000 IDPs from Vavuniyaa internment camps, 95% of them have been again detained in new internment camps in their respective home districts under the direct control of Sri Lankan forces.
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BBC: UN patience wears thin in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 September 2009, 12:59 GMT]
The United Nations says it cannot continue to indefinitely fund the sprawling, overcrowded and militarized camp in which Sri Lanka has interned hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians. Speaking to the BBC, the UN's Sri Lanka chief, Neil Buhne, said people should be allowed to leave the barbed wire-ringed Manik Farm camp. Mr Buhne also criticised Sri Lanka’s denial of access for the International Red Cross to 10,000 Tamils whom the government calls LTTE suspects. Meanwhile the UN says it is extremely concerned for two staff members arrested by Sri Lankan authorities in June, being amid reports they were mistreated during the early days of their detention.
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Poonthoaddam residents complain of stench from cemetary

[TamilNet, Saturday, 01 August 2009, 19:13 GMT]
Foul smell from Vavuniyaa-Poonthooddam general cemetery due to improper mass burial of dead from Sri Lanka miltary supervised Vanni internment camps which hold more than 300,000 Tamil civilians is posing health hazard to the village residents, civil society sources in Vavuniyaa said. Corpses are buried en masse in graves, and routinely, bodies of recently dead are placed over partly decomposed bodies buried earlier.
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Castes, religions and Eezham Tamil nationalism

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 July 2009, 23:34 GMT]
“Tamil nationalism needs to realise its potentialities and weaknesses in making it progressive, benevolent and an internationally recognised culture in the future world,” writes Opinion Columnist Ampalam. “The secular linguistic identity of Tamil nationalism, based on a classical language in which more than two millennia of human experience and discourses both spiritual and temporal are recorded, and its inclusiveness cum plurality are strong points in making criteria for nationalism and in contributing to the paradigm ‘culture and development’. But jingoism of religions, which soon will be used as cards by imperialisms regional as well as international, and castes cum hierarchies old as well as new, are the liabilities,” he further writes.
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ACF calls for international inquiry into Moothoor massacre

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 July 2009, 03:55 GMT]
Action Contre la Faim (ACF), a Paris-based NGO, in a press release issued Friday said that the 17 of its staff members shot dead in execution style in Moothoor Sri Lanka in August 2006 is one of the "most serious crimes ever committed against an NGO," and accused Sri Lanka of failing to identify the people responsible for the killings after "[t]hree Years of obstructionism, smokescreens, and politicized proceedings." ACF called on the European Union to initiate an international inquiry into the "massacre."
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Percival was not an apostate - Prof. Hoole

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 July 2009, 22:54 GMT]
“The late Rev. Dr. Kingsley Muthiah (former President of the Methodist Church of Sri Lanka) has told me of cowardly verbal claims that Percival turned apostate to undermine his efforts but this is the first time I have seen it being openly stated”, writes Professor Ratnajeevan Hoole responding to a statement appeared in a TamilNet feature that Percival deviated from evangelism and concentrated on education and accusing the article for adding another dimension to anti-Christian diatribes. Prof. Hoole says Jaffna Tamils have made an icon of Navalar as the translator of the Bible and as father of prose, but earliest Tamil prose may be traced to catechisms of the Roman Catholics.
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The Times calls for world boycott of Sri Lanka over detainees

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 11:59 GMT]
Expressing outrage at Sri Lanka’s treatment of Tamil detainees, The Times of London called Friday for the world to boycott the island until the detainees are released. “Sri Lanka wants no witnesses to what is now being done in these modern concentration camps. … None of [the IMF] money should be paid until independent aid agencies are guaranteed access to the Tamil camps and until Sri Lanka starts to release those detained. Other world bodies — the Commonwealth, the United Nations and even world cricketing organisations — should boycott Colombo until reconciliation begins,” the paper said in its editorial.
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Graves of Peter Percival, R B Foote, discovered at Yercaud

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 July 2009, 18:33 GMT]
A team of archaeologists located the graves of two illustrious scholars, Rev. Dr. Peter Percival (1803-1882) and his son-in-law Robert Bruce Foote (1834-1912), at Yercaud, a hill station near Salem in Tamil Nadu, reported The Hindu, Wednesday. Peter Percival was a former principal of Jaffna Central College, with whom Arumuga Navalar was associated with in his early days in translating the Bible into Tamil. The discovery was made when Prehistoric archaeologists Shanti Pappu, Kumar Akhilesh and V R Pappu set out on a mission to find the grave of Robert Bruce Foote (1834-1912), who is regarded as the pioneer of studies in Geology and Prehistory in India. Dr Shanti is working on a monograph on R B Foote, who first spotted evidence for Palaeolithic culture dating back to 500,000 years, in Tamil Nadu.
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NGO briefings in UN highlight Sri Lanka rights violations, Impunity

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 June 2009, 18:16 GMT]
International Non-Governmental Organisations - NGOs participating in the 11th session of the UN Human Rights Council had two different briefings, as parallel events to the main plenary, focusing mainly on Sri Lanka, one organized by Switzerland-based ECOSOC NGO, Interfaith International, and co-sponsored by the Foundation France Liberty – Danielle Mitterrand and International Education Development - IED, and the other briefing organized by Amnesty International and co-sponsored by Human rights Watch and the International Commission of Jurists.
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Avoid witch hunt, HRW tells Colombo

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 June 2009, 03:34 GMT]
Noting that "Disappearances" of ethnic Tamils in the north and east and in the capital, Colombo, allegedly by members of the security forces or Tamil armed groups remain a serious problem, New York based Human Rights Watch (HRW), in a press release issued today said, "[t]he Sri Lankan government needs to ensure that the abuses that occurred when LTTE strongholds fell in the past don't recur," and that Sri Lankan Government "should ensure that military defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam does not result in new "disappearances," unlawful killings or the jailing of government critics."
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Sri Lanka war crimes: Ban must speak, UN must investigate – The Times

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 June 2009, 10:51 GMT]
Following on from investigations published last week which revealed the United Nations was aware as 20,000 Tamil civilians were being slaughtered by the Sri Lanka Army, The Times newspaper called Monday on the UN to investigate the war crimes, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to speak out, and UK Foreign Minister David Miliband to press Mr. Ban. Saying “there is a terrible augury for such inexplicable reticence [by the Secretary-General],” to speak out, the paper recalled the UN’s “insouciance and failure” over the Srebrenica massacre of Muslims by Serbs and asked if the UN would scotch parallels for it in Sri Lanka.
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UN can investigate Sri Lanka’s actions - war crimes judge

[TamilNet, Sunday, 31 May 2009, 20:47 GMT]
The United Nations is able to investigate the war crimes which occurred recently in Sri Lanka, British human rights lawyer and international war crimes judge, Geoffrey Robertson QC said Sunday. The avenues for the UN include the UN Human Rights Committee, which can investigate individuals’ complaints against states under the International Convention on Human Rights, to which Sri Lanka is a signatory. The UN Human Rights Council, by contrast, is a “highly politicized” body staffed by diplomats of various countries, including those abusing human rights, rather than human rights experts, he said.
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The Times demands action over ‘monstrous collusion’ in slaughter of Tamils

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 May 2009, 15:59 GMT]
Pointing out that not only the United Nations but several Western governments knew of the ongoing slaughter of 20,000 Tamil civilians by the Sri Lanka Army, but kept silent for fear of upsetting the Colombo Government, The Times newspaper Saturday demanded international action to prevent further atrocities. “Such a monstrous collusion in covering up an atrocity must not go unchallenged. If the UN Human Rights Council refuses to investigate what has happened, the West must do so forthwith,” the paper said. “The silence of those who were warned of civilian deaths in Sri Lanka is shameful. They must speak out now to prevent future atrocities,” the editorial’s subtitle charged.
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20,000 Tamil civilians massacred by Sri Lanka – The Times

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 May 2009, 00:54 GMT]
Evidence gathered by The Times newspaper has revealed that at least 20,000 Tamil people were killed on the Mullaitivu beach by Sri Lanka Army shelling. Aerial photographs, official documents, witness accounts and expert testimony collected by the newspaper “present clear evidence of an atrocity that comes close to matching Srebrenica, Darfur and other massacres of civilians,” the paper’s editorial says. Confidential UN documents acquired by The Times record nearly 7,000 civilian deaths in the ‘no-fire’ zone up to the end of April. UN sources said that the toll then surged, with an average of 1,000 civilians killed each day until May 19.
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Apply adequate pressure on Colombo for ceasefire and negotiations: LTTE

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 31 March 2009, 01:09 GMT]
The LTTE is not a movement believing that war is the only means to achieve the aspirations of the people it represents. But, political solution needs an environment conducive to it. The IC can play a positive role by adequately pressurizing Colombo for ceasefire and by promoting negotiations between GoSL and the LTTE as equal partners with due recognition, said Selvaraja Pathmanathan, the LTTE plenipotentiary for international relations, in an interview to TamilNet on Monday. On the issue of civilians, Mr. Pathmanathan said they have already asked the IC, what international instruments now hold GoSL accountable for the denial of basic rights of the people already moved and presently living in the internment camps.
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