Thalaha-gam-waaduwa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 December 2014, 10:17 GMT]
The vicinity or neighbourhood of the village of the firm ground

The vicinity or neighbourhood of the village of Thalaa plants or trees
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Koomak-ku'lam, Kooman-ku'lam, Baka-moo'na

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 December 2014, 21:07 GMT]
The tank of Koomaa trees; or the tank of owls

The (place of) owls
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Tamil civil society formalises TCSF organisation

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 December 2014, 10:12 GMT]
A loosely organised network of Tamil Civil Society Activists from the North-East of Sri Lanka who had been functioning for the past five years under the leadership of the Mannaar Bishop have now formally constituted themselves as an organization – the Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF). A policy document setting out the aims, objectives and core beliefs of the organisation and a constitution were adopted by more than 60 Tamil Civil Society Activists who took part in the Annual General Meeting of the forum held in mid-November 2014. The aim of the TCSF forum is to protect and promote the existential rights of the Tamil people and the exercise of their right to self determine their social, political, linguistic, cultural and economic future. TCSF is a network of Tamil Civil Society Activists living and/or working primarily in the North-East part of the island.
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Arundhati misses Buddhist casteism, Wigneswaran massages Hindu imperialism

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 December 2014, 12:18 GMT]
Brilliantly exposing the legacy of Hinduism in the political, social, cultural and economic oppression committed in India by a small section against the vast majority of the masses, Indian writer Arundhati Roy in an article last month said: “Now, the caste system is up for export. Wherever Hindus go, they take it with them. It exists among the brutalised Tamils in Sri Lanka.” She sadly misses the caste structured Sinhala-Buddhism, with which now India’s Hindutva makes an unholy alliance through a genocidal route, in the process of empire building and consolidation of the traditional forces of oppression. Meanwhile, the Sanskrit sloka-reciting NPC chief minister Wigneswaran, attending World Hindu Conference in New Delhi last month, was appealing to ‘Sanaadhana Dharma’ for the salvation of Tamils, writes an academic in Jaffna.
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Sustaining egalitarian national culture is key to Tamil unity: Tamil academic

[TamilNet, Saturday, 29 November 2014, 09:09 GMT]
“The material force and the historical significance of the liberation struggle for [Tamil] Eelam, battled by the LTTE provided a counter-hegemonic source for all oppressed people to organize a sovereign and people-centered and highly effective liberation struggle, to the dismay of international and regional establishments,” writes Norway-based Anthropology academic Athithan Jayapalan, in an article on the role of national narratives of liberation and culture for the oppressed. “The destruction of the LTTE was a loss for oppressed people across the world and for people of South Asia in particular,” he writes.
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SL military arrests two Tamil youths in Batticaloa for Heroes Day SMS

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 November 2014, 20:48 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military that was spying on SMS messages exchanged among the young generation of Eezham Tamils in Batticaloa district on Thursday instructed the SL police to arrest and detain two Tamil youths at Vaazhaich-cheanai police division of Batticaloa district, news sources in Batticaloa said. The SL military had intensified deployment of military intelligence operatives in all places, from places of worship to private tuition centres in the Batticaloa district.
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Heroes Day in London highlights global significance of Tamil struggle

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 November 2014, 18:17 GMT]
Conveying a spirit of struggle taking the Tamil Eelam liberation movement as inspiration, speakers at the Maaveerar Naa'l (Tamil Eelam Heroes Day) event in London highlighted the global significance of the Tamils’ struggle. The powers who collaborated with genocidal Sri Lanka, who take a position of genocide-denial, who deny the nationhood and self-determination of the Eezham Tamils, who banned and still push for the ban of the LTTE – these are the issues that Tamils need to challenge, not just as an ethical responsibility, but also to set a paradigm-setting example for other nations without states, opined Tamil activist Lathan Suntharalingam who spoke at the event. Solidarity speakers at the event also conveyed a similar opinion as regards the nature of the Tamils’ struggle.
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Heroes Day marked in occupied Tamil Eelam

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 November 2014, 15:30 GMT]
Amidst hundreds of Sri Lankan soldiers deployed surrounding the University of Jaffna, a group of students who were inside the premises of the university lit the common flame of sacrifice at the Selvanagam Block. A selected group of journalists witnessed the event. Defying threats from the occupying Sri Lanka Army soldiers, bells were tolled at temples and churches. Sacrifices were offered at churches in Thenmaraadchi. Former LTTE members gathered at various places paying tribute to their fallen fighters. The families of the fighters who had laid down their lives for the liberation of Eezham Tamils, gathered at secret locations, made memorial monuments in paper and paid their tribute in a touching way, according to the journalists who witnessed the events.
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Tamils mark Pirapaharan's 60th birthday

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 November 2014, 06:17 GMT]
While Tamil poets, students and activists belonging to all Tamil nationalist movements in Tamil Nadu marked LTTE leader Velupillai Pirapaharan's 60th birth anniversary, political activists marked the day with planting trees at the birthplace of Mr Pirapaharan at Valveddithu'rai in Jaffna. The birth anniversary was also observed in several cities in the West.
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Es Po passes away in Australia

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 November 2014, 20:32 GMT]
Veteran Eezham Tamil creative writer, author, translator, columnist, literary critic and publisher S. Ponnuthurai passed away at the age of 82 in Sydney, Australia, on Wednesday. He was popularly known as Es Po. Born in 1932 at Nalloor in Jaffna, Es Po studied at Madras Christian College and at Annaamalai University. Writing nearly for six decades, Es Po was a school by himself in contemporary Tamil literature. His demise creates an irreplaceable vacuum in the literary world of Eezham Tamils. At a time, especially after 2009, when many Tamil academics, intellectuals and writers, thinking of ‘acceptability’ of the Establishments, were opportunistically detractive, evasive or ambiguous in their expressions on the national liberation of Eezham Tamils, Es Po's voice was the foremost in loudly justifying it.
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Tamil youth interrogated for alleged possession of Heroes Day poster

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 November 2014, 11:22 GMT]
Sri Lankan ’Terrorist’ Investigation Division (TID) is interrogating a youth Tamil activist, S. Sulaxan, from Meesaalai in Thenmaraadchi for alleged possession of Tamil Eelam Heroes Day posters, according to SL police in Thenmaraadchi. In the meantime, relatives of the detained youth said SL military intelligence operatives had seized a laptop computer from the youth, who has been a grassroot Tamil national activist in Meesaalai.
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Conveying message to Sinhala nation on presidential election

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 November 2014, 17:21 GMT]
If State Reform is the real question now in the presidential elections, it is better for Eezham Tamil politicians to leave it to the Sinhala nation to decide. But it is not simply keeping quiet or Tamils painting themselves into a corner. It is keeping quiet with a mission and conveying a message in no uncertain terms to the Sinhala nation and to the powers. In 1977, at the height of the pogrom, J. R. Jeyawardane asked Tamils whether they want peace or war. Now it is the turn of Tamil politicians to tell in a different way, whether the Sinhala nation wants peace by sharing territory and sovereignty in the island with the Eezham Tamil nation, so that the power games in the island could be faced jointly, or whether it wants to continue with the genocide to invite war – this time a war of competing imperialisms fulfilling their greed for the entire island.
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SL military raped conscripted Tamil women after Rajapaksa meeting

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 November 2014, 09:07 GMT]
47 Eezham Tamil women from Mullaiththeevu, recently conscripted to the occupying SL military and put under the Civil Security Department (CSD), were taken to Mihintale on 22 Saturday when SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa was on a trip to the ‘sacred city’. After the president of genocidal Sri Lanka requested the Tamil women to engage in campaign supporting him, the SL soldiers were having a party. Some of the 47 Tamil women were raped by the Sinhala soldiers and the others were subjected to sexual harassment, one of the victims told TamilNet on Monday. The women were also sexually harassed in the bus on their way back to Mullaiththeevu.
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Professor Chelva Kanaganayakam passes away

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 November 2014, 10:24 GMT]
Professor Chelva Kanaganayakam, an Eezham Tamil academic who held the rare distinction of being the professor of English in a reputed university of a native English-speaking country, Canada, passed away in Montreal on Sunday. He was Professor of English at the University of Toronto. Recently he has been awarded the highest literary recognition of the country, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. A function was held at Montreal related to the award. After attending the function, and while on his way to dinner that followed the function, he suffered a massive heart attack. He was 62. Professor Kanaganayakam’s father, Professor Chelvanayagam was a distinguished Tamil scholar at the University of Peradeniya in the 1960s. Kanaganayakam was Lecturer in English at the University of Jaffna in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
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Kodduk-ki'na'ru, Kodduk-kal, Uppuk-koddu

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 November 2014, 15:02 GMT]
The well walled by hollow wood

The block rocks or the barn/ hut-like rock

The salt storing barn or hut
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Recent books on regions of Tamil Eelam

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 November 2014, 10:40 GMT]
Four voluminous books have recently been published on the Batticaloa, Trincomalee, Vanni and Jaffna regions of the country of Eezham Tamils. The publications, resulting from the efforts and contributions of Eezham Tamils in the island and in the diaspora, show the rise of a new generation as well as the conviction of the old generation in documenting the history and culture of the regions and people of Tamil Eelam with a geographical sense of attachment. The political geographic nuance of the publications subtly responds to the New Delhi–Washington–Colombo genocide partners’ denial of territorial and historical sovereignty claim of the nation of Eezham Tamils in the island. On the other hand, the publications implicitly impel the Eezham Tamils of the various regions in the island to understand the milieu and needs of one another in strengthening the nation with new equations.
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Colombo constructed 463 Buddhist viharas in 2013 in North-East: TNA MP

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 November 2014, 08:09 GMT]
At the end of the year in 2012 there were 10,349 Buddhist temples in the Northern and Eastern provinces. But, at the end of the year 2013 the figure has increased to 10,812, according to Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian from Batticaloa Seenithamby Yogeswaran. The genocidal Sri Lankan State has constructed 463 new Buddhist temples in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils in one year alone. The structural genocide on Eezham Tamils is continuing unabated with the deployment of Sinhala ‘Army and Archaeology’ by Colombo, the ‘Time and Space’ provided through the Geneva discourse by the West and is encouraged by the nexus between the ‘Hindutva’ New Delhi and the ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ Colombo, commented Eezham Tamil political observers in the East.
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Norwegian doctor vows to challenge Israeli travel ban to Gaza

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 November 2014, 21:45 GMT]
Israel has recently blocked Mads Gilbert, professor and head of Emergency Medicine from the University Hospital of North Norway, from entering Gaza. After facing criticism from several holds, including the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Government of Israel changed its explanation that the Norwegian physician was no longer allowed to enter Israel. The outspoken trauma surgeon, who witnessed 51 days of Israeli onslaught on civilians during its 100-day war with Hamas in Gaza earlier this summer, internationally exposed the slaughter of the innocent civilians, stating that Israel was committing “state terrorism at highest levels.” Gilbert has vowed to fight against any restriction on his movement into Gaza.
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Interest in resettlement cost life to Nakuleswaran

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 November 2014, 23:50 GMT]
Funeral of assassinated Krishnasamy Nakuleswaran was held on Sunday at his village, Eekam-kudiyiruppu (settlement of sacrifice), at Ve’l’laang-ku’lam in Mannaar. 15 uniformed SL military men were busy taking photographs from different corners at the funeral and 70 of the 200 participants were intelligence operatives on surveillance assignment, residents told TamilNet Sunday. While many people believed that the SL military intelligence had chosen a target to create fear psychosis among the families of Tamil Heroes, the residents of the village were of the opinion that Nakuleswaran’s interest in working for the proper resettlement of his people had cost him his life. Nakuleswaran's assassination was timed to respond to the call made by C.V. Wigneswaran in Tamil Nadu on bringing back Eezham Tamil refugees in Tamil Nadu and resettling them in the North, political observers said.
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Penang conference demands IC to end SL military occupation, investigate genocide

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 November 2014, 12:27 GMT]
Malaysian and foreign delegates, who took part in an international Tamil conference, held in Georgetown, Penang, demanded UN referendum on Tamil Eelam, OISL investigations to also include genocide investigation and the international community to end Sri Lankan military occupation and Sinhala colonization of Tamil homeland. The conference was a success as it raised critical and far-reaching issues that often not raised in the Malaysian political milieu, Deputy Chief Minister of Penang, Professor P. Ramasamy, a long time advocate of the rights of Eezham Tamils, told TamilNet.
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