Self-immolated Senthilkumaran called for mass struggle to achieve Tamil Eelam

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 September 2013, 10:41 GMT]
35-year-old Senthilkumaran Ratnasingam, who immolated himself in front of the UN office at Geneva on Thursday had recorded a video message in the cell phone which was in his possession. The message has come out on Monday after the Switzerland police handed over the phone to the family. In his message Senthilkumaran called for a mass people's struggle to achieve an independent Tamil Eelam. "That is why I am sacrificing my life," the message said.
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SL colonial governor chooses to ‘boycott’ Swiss ‘development’ function in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 08 September 2013, 21:06 GMT]
A move by the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC) inviting the occupying Sri Lanka's colonial Governor in North, Major General (retd) GA Chandrasiri, as chief guest to the opening ceremony of two reconstructed schools in the Jaffna Peninsula on Thursday has ended up in the SL governor ‘boycotting’ the event, news sources in Uduththu'rai said. The controversial move by the SDC had received media attention prior to the event. Tamil politicians also protested against Chandrasiri using the occasion to wage election propaganda in favour of the UPFA government. However, the occupying SL military deployed its soldiers at the venue to demonstrate their occupation of the country of Eezham Tamils and to distribute leaflets canvassing among the public to support SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa's UPFA in the forthcoming PC elections in the North.
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UK ‘development’ means building genocidal State against Tamils

[TamilNet, Sunday, 08 September 2013, 08:41 GMT]
The UK and Scottish governments have been training more than 3,500 Sri Lankan police officers, including some senior commanders, since 2007, Herald Scotland reported Sunday. Reporting the findings by Corporate Watch, a non-profit research group, the paper cited several human rights campaigners as questioning the Scottish involvement with the Sri Lankan police. The training by Scottish police officers has also taken place when the notorious Special Task Force (STF), a full-fledged military outfit under the SL Police, was directly engaged in acts of genocide in the East as well as in Vanni. The ‘development’ ministry of UK (DFID) has been backing the project and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has defended the project and denied it was developing a police state.
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South African initiative props up ‘Sri Lankan’ identity

[TamilNet, Friday, 06 September 2013, 06:42 GMT]
A geopolitical axis of South Africa-Colombo-Singapore, held a “Dialogue promotion amongst Sri Lankans,” by convening a meeting of different political and academic stakeholders at Singapore last week. The very orientation of the axis, as the conference title implies, was to prop up the Sri Lankan State and to make Eezham Tamils to compromise with ‘Sri Lankan’ identity, despite decades of genocide and on-going genocide, Tamil observers in the island said. At least two Establishments of the West, Switzerland and Norway are said to be backing the South Africa process that has an 18 months history behind it. Eezham Tamils have rejected the Sri Lankan identity at the very official introduction of it along with the 1972 republican constitution.
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Eezham Tamil man self-immolates in front of Geneva UN office

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 September 2013, 18:22 GMT]
An Eezham Tamil diaspora Tamil man, 35-year-old Senthilkumaran Ratnasingam, has immolated himself in front of the UN office in Geneva on Thursday around 1:10 a.m. The authorities in Switzerland were initially reluctant to confirm or release the details of the incident. However, Tamil circles at Geneva told TamilNet that the Swiss police together with a group of Iranian activists, who were engaged in protests at the time of the incident, attempted to save his life and rushed him to Chuv hospital in Lausanne, where he succumbed to his injuries on Thursday around 4:15 p.m. Meanwhile, Iranian persons present at the site of the incident said they found a photo of LTTE leader V. Pirapaharan at the site. The latest self-immolation comes amidst disappointment prevailing among Eezham Tamils following the recent visit of UN Human Rights High Commissioner Navanetham Pillay to the island.
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Talking ‘development’ for taking nation and politics away

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 September 2013, 20:00 GMT]
The Norwegian Ambassador Grete Løchen saying last week that the diaspora should drop talking about Eezham to avoid feeding into the rhetoric of the Sri Lankan government, implies near-criminalisation of the struggle of the nation of Eezham Tamils, at the behest of the genocidal State of Sri Lanka. The Ambassador said it at a ‘development’ conference convened with an emphasized note that the intention was not to discuss the political situation in Sri Lanka in general or internal differences between Tamil political actors. Earlier the West criminalized the armed struggle of Eezham Tamils as international terrorism. If the diaspora keeps quiet, even the democratic struggle will be criminalized and gagged by the Establishment partners of Colombo just like the 6th Amendment to the constitution of Sri Lanka, cautioned Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island.
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Swiss agency brings in genocidal governor to open schools in Jaffna Peninsula

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 September 2013, 07:24 GMT]
The Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC), a Switzerland government ‘development’ outfit operating in the country of Eezham Tamils, shows its ‘cooperation’ with the genocidal Sinhala State and sends a humiliating development message to Tamils by bringing in the military governor occupying North, Maj. Gen. (retd) G. A. Chandrasri to open two schools at Thadduvaan-koddi and Uduth-thu’rai in the Jaffna Peninsula on Thursday, commented local people who provided a copy of the invitation to TamilNet. The SDC has made an impressive image among the people by the quality of the work it has done, but a ‘development’ that comes with impunity culture and justification of occupation is not development but spiritual and psychological subjugation and degradation, they further said.
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Parei-gama, Pu'raath-thoaddam

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 September 2013, 05:48 GMT]
The village of pigeons
The garden or orchard of pigeons
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Sinhala contractor scoops 500 acres of prehistoric gravel in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 September 2013, 04:36 GMT]
While a section of 400 Tamil families, who had sought refuge in Tamil Nadu 23 years ago in 1990 from Parappuk-kadanthaan village in Maanthai West in Mannaar, are trying to come back to their village, 1,500 acres of their lands have been appropriated with the backing of an SL minister and 500 acres of these lands have been illegally sold to a Sinhala trader from South, who has been scooping gravel deposits in the village. The gravel deposits are part of a geological feature called Ira'nai-madu formation that bears crucial evidence for prehistoric human habitation in the island. As such gravel deposits are mostly found on floodplains, scooping the gravel could cause environmental disasters related to drainage, cautioned the local people living with the environment and knowledgeable about the consequences of gravel scooping.
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UN faces political pressure from powers that withhold casualty figures: Jude Lal

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 September 2013, 23:21 GMT]
While the UN Security Council is the most decisive political organ, why did the US chose to move the UN Human Rights Commission and that too avoiding any reference to UN's own Expert Panel report, questions Dr. Jude Lal Fernando, one of the organizers of the Peoples' Tribunal on Sri Lanka held in Dublin in 2010, explaining the ‘tension’ found within the UN human rights and humanitarian system. Observing two reactions by the UN system, he also details how the casualty figures were intentionally withheld by major powers during war to let the SL State to complete its genocidal onslaught. Even now, the powers sitting on the issue at the UN are exerting political pressure on the system to control and to ‘interpret’ the vast pool of evidence that is against the SL State as well as themselves, Dr Fernando said in a video interview to TamilNet on Saturday.
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‘Military presence in North-East worrying’: Navi Pillay

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 August 2013, 21:09 GMT]
“I was concerned to hear about the degree to which the military appears to be putting down roots and becoming involved in what should be civilian activities, for instance education, agriculture and even tourism,” Ms Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said at a press conference in Colombo on Saturday. Speaking at the conclusion of her visit to the island, Ms Pillay said that that the military presence in the North-East seemed “much greater than is needed for strictly military or reconstruction purposes,” also referring to the vulnerability of women to sexual abuse. While sympathizing with the spirit of the address of Ms Pillay, who has been at the receiving end of vulgar verbal abuse from Sinhala nationalists, Tamil activists in the island expressed regret that she was still conferring legitimacy to the GoSL’s genocidal blueprint called LLRC.
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Australia’s refugee policy draws flak from UNHRC, activists

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 August 2013, 20:26 GMT]
“Australia’s indefinite detention of 46 recognized refugees on security grounds amounted to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, inflicting serious psychological harm on them,” the UNHRC said in a statement last week. The statement further said that Australia should release the refugees, of whom 42 are Tamils from Sri Lanka, who have been held for at least two and a half years, and offer them compensation and rehabilitation. Speaking to TamilNet on the UNHRC observations, Trevor Grant, veteran journalist and spokesperson for the Tamil Refugee Council, said the judgement vindicated the strong belief of many advocates and lawyers that indefinite detention was not only illegal but intolerable in a just society. However, the Australia’s Coalition still maintains a hardline approach against refugees.
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Norwegian ambassador in Colombo bares agenda in Oslo

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 August 2013, 00:58 GMT]
Norway, once hoodwinked the nation of Eezham Tamils with an ‘internal self-determination’ formula in the Oslo Declaration, now bares its deceptive face by talking about ‘development’ of Tamils with diaspora ‘partnership’ within a ‘Sri Lankan minority’ formula and the PC model. While the Norwegian ambassador in Colombo Ms Grete Løchen was baring the agenda in Oslo on Monday, the Tamil participants looped in were not only confirmed revisionists, habitual upholders of the Sri Lankan State and tangent-polity activists, but were also the representatives of the NCET, Tamil Women Organisation, a TCC outfit and the TECH-Norway. If the agenda can’t be perceived with its nuances and rejected outright at the face of Norway, the diaspora will prove only its impotence, commented Tamils for alternative politics in the island.
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Chempi-kaladdi, Chempan-ku’ndu

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 August 2013, 01:07 GMT]
The stone outcrop terrain of Chempai plants
The natural pond found with Chempai plants
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SL forces chase out Tamils waiting to see Navi Pillay in Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 August 2013, 00:47 GMT]
Sri Lankan military intelligence and SL policemen brutally attacked and chased out a group of 30 families and relatives of missing persons, who had gathered near Paranthan junction in Ki’linochchi district on Tuesday to express their message to the visiting UN Human Rights Commissioner Ms Navanetham Pillay. The families had come as they were told that Navi Pillay would be traveling through A9 on a visit to Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal from Jaffna. Commenting on the nature of the public response to Ms Pillai’s visit to the North, observers said that had Ban Ki Moon come, people wouldn’t have cared or even if they had gathered they wouldn’t have shed tears but would have responded differently.
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Pothuwa-gonna, Divul-gane

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 August 2013, 23:38 GMT]
The grassland forest/ The grass corner.
The wood-apple jungle/ The corner of wood-apple trees.
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Fundamentals diluted behind the scene in Colombo

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 August 2013, 19:09 GMT]
An elitist group of Tamil lawyers and law academics who have become entrenched in the Colombo-centric system, are collaborating with a section of the foreign Establishments in making Tamil demands ‘non-descript’. Removing the notion of Nation, they talk about self-determination that is not self-determination. In their terminology, ‘Nation’ becomes ‘people’ or ‘nationality’; ‘traditional homeland’ becomes ‘historical habitation’; and ‘Tamil homeland’ becomes ‘contiguous and preponderantly Tamil Speaking Northern and Eastern Provinces’. In an anti-thesis to Tamil Sovereignty Cognition approach based on historical sovereignty, earned sovereignty and remedial sovereignty, they talk about ‘shared sovereignty’, writes an informed Tamil activist in Colombo.
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Trust only the peoples of the Palk Bay: Jaffna fishermen leader

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 August 2013, 08:01 GMT]
The perspective of the coastal people of North is that the States of Sri Lanka and India collaborate in the destruction of Eezham Tamils, said Mr N.V. Subramaniam, a fisheries society leader from Maathakal in Jaffna, who is taking part in the Northern Provincial Council elections representing the Tamil National Alliance. Based on his experience in the grassroots activism and participation in the negotiations and meetings held in India and in Colombo, Mr Subramaniam said the coastal people of North had lost all hope in negotiating with the Establishments of both the States. Instead, the only hope for the fishermen now is strengthening the understanding between the fishermen societies across the Palk Strait and also with the fishermen from South in a people-to-people discourse.
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Tamil Nadu students burn 13th Amendment, call for referendum

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 August 2013, 21:17 GMT]
Tamil students burnt symbolic copies of the 13th Amendment at a protest at Va'l'luvar Koaddam, Chennai on Sunday, urging that only an internationally monitored referendum could provide a solution to the national question of the Eezham Tamil nation. The protestors also called for the expulsion of genocidal Sri Lanka from the Commonwealth.
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Conceiving and designing strategy for ‘Struggle and Development’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 August 2013, 20:08 GMT]
Tamil activists have to reject outright any suggestion of ‘partnership’ with genocidal Colombo in the international ‘development’ agendas. They should insist and wage a struggle for a direct deal, writes an academic in Jaffna cautioning against a current move of the Establishments in linking development with the PC-LLRC process, aimed at the annihilation of the identity and territoriality of the nation of Eezham Tamils. Development doesn’t come without justice. Every generation has to be provided with the struggle of its own times, as a righteous struggle only brings in true social progress and development. Genocide-facing Tamils have to conceive and design strategies of their own for a paradigm of “Struggle and Development,” he further said.
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