Kerala researcher speaks on facets of Indo-Eezham discourse

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 April 2013, 07:35 GMT]
“Eelam and Kerala share similar history. We were ruled by the same colonial powers, the Portuguese, Dutch and later English. Kerala is not very far from Eelam and the war in Eelam was something happening right in front of our eyes. Yet Eelam never became the agenda before any political organizations in Kerala. Keralites were in the streets in solidarity with Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan. This never happened in the case of Eelam,” said Dr Vinod Krishnan from Kerala in an exclusive interview to TamilNet this week. Dr Krishnan, an academic researcher involved in studies related to social exclusion in South and Southeast Asia, is currently attached to the Centre for Research and Education for Social Transformation (CREST) in India.
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Colombo revives colonial rule to monitor foreign tourists

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 April 2013, 20:26 GMT]
Citing an obscure 1886 ordinance of the colonial times of British Ceylon, that has been largely ignored for decades, the Sri Lankan Police now says that it will monitor foreign tourists’ whereabouts in the entire island, a report by the International Business Times said Wednesday. The news report in the IBT has come while Eezham Tamils world over have been campaigning against tourists visiting the Sri Lankan ‘killing fields’.
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Tamil activist Neethan Shan elected to represent NDP at federal level

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 April 2013, 00:58 GMT]
"As regards [Canada’s] foreign policy on Sri Lanka, I will continue to advocate for recognizing the political aspirations of the Eezham Tamils in the homeland and to push for justice for genocide and war crimes committed on the Tamil nation by the Sri Lankan state,” said 34-year-old Eezham Tamil activist Neethan Shan, who has been elected to represent Ontario at the federal level for the New Democratic Party (NDP) on Saturday.
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Three-pronged land grab against Eezham Tamils stepped up in Ampaa’rai

[TamilNet, Monday, 15 April 2013, 23:41 GMT]
The occupying SL military, Buddhist monks and Sinhala civil officials have stepped up appropriating lands belonging to Eezham Tamils in Ampaa’rai district. The instructions for land grab come from Colombo and the appropriation of Tamils’ lands has accelerated since the Provincial Council elections in the East and the recent ‘development’ exhibition held in Ampaa'rai. Threatened by prevailing ‘disappearances’ and other forms of harassments in the district, the victims hesitate to lodge complaints with the SL Police.
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Kamal Haasan, Prakash Raj strengthen ‘encyclopaedia’ myth on Sambar

[TamilNet, Monday, 15 April 2013, 20:57 GMT]
A Vijay TV programme for ‘Winning One Crore’ on Monday, anchored by Prakash Raj and participated by Kamal Haasan, both celebrities of Indian cinema, said the famous Tamil Nadu food preparation Chaampaar (Sambar) got its name from the Maratha ruler Shahuji at Thanjavur, who invented the recipe and named it after Sambhaji, son of the Maratha king Shivaji. Chaampaar (Sambar) got the name as it is prepared by making Champaaram (ground paste of spices) and the use of the word Champaaram is found in Tamil inscriptions predating Shahuji or Sambhaji, Eezham Tamil academic circles told TamilNet, citing inscriptions and the usage of the words Champal in Eezham Tamil and Sambol in Sinhala for the paste made of spices together with coconut.
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Plight of UAE refugees expose human rights deception of IC, UN

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 April 2013, 08:08 GMT]
No country in the West should have any problem with providing political asylum to the fleeing Tamil Journalist Ms Lokini Rathimohan, currently held at detention in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), rights activists in the island concerned with the protection of journalists fleeing genocidal Sri Lanka told TamilNet. As the journalist's name and photos have been published in the international media now and as there have been write-ups in the hostile press in Colombo suggesting to the SL government to get her deported to Colombo to ‘disprove’ the killing of Isaippiriya, a colleague of Lokini at the National Television of Tamileelam (NTT), the need to assure Lokini's security has become much more important than ever before, the activists further said. In the meantime, a former administrative official at the NTT confirmed that Ms Lokini was not an LTTE member, but was an employed journalist.
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TN government requested to protect heritage site of Eezham Tamils in Chithamparam

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 April 2013, 00:05 GMT]
Eezham Tamil circles in the island and in the diaspora, connected to charities established in Chithamparam by their ancestors, request the Tamil Nadu government, especially the Chief Minister Ms Jayalalithaa, to make legislation to protect the charity enclave at Chithamparam and to promote it as a heritage site of Eezham Tamils, participated by Eezham Tamils in the island and in the diaspora. They cited at the promotion Sri Lanka’s Maha Bodhi Society gets in India, but the dilapidated condition of the Tamil-Saiva heritage site of Eezham Tamils in Tamil Nadu. The Eezham Tamil charities at Chithamparam that record from the times of the Kingdom of Jaffna and that make an enclave around the Gnaanap-pirakaasar Tank are found in almost ruined conditions today.
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Geneva resolution answerable to arson committed on Tamil press: Jaffna activist

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 April 2013, 15:37 GMT]
Burning the press of Eezham Tamils in the island has more than three decades of history. The office and machinery of the Jaffna-based Tamil Daily Eezha Naadu was burnt down the very night the Jaffna Public Library was put to ashes in 1981. Arson was once again committed on Eezha Naadu while the IPKF of the New Delhi Establishment was occupying Jaffna. The Washington-New Delhi deception carried out in the name of Geneva resolution, allowing Sri Lanka to escape from genocide indictment and to continue with structural genocide, is answerable to the current attacks and arson committed on the press of Eezham Tamils in the island, said a new generation political activist in Jaffna.
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Armed squad attacks Tamil paper office in Jaffna setting ablaze press machines

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 April 2013, 07:03 GMT]
An armed squad, allegedly operated by the Sri Lankan military intelligence, stormed the main office of the Uthayan Tamil daily in the city of Jaffna in the early hours of Saturday, setting ablaze the press machines and the copies of printed papers that were ready for distribution. The squad chased media workers away at gun point and poured petrol on the papers and machinery in the fourth attack to be reported on the popular Tamil daily since January this year. The pre-dawn attack, carried out Saturday at 4:45 a.m., comes 10 days after a similar attack on its Ki'linochchi office this month. Colombo's systematic attack on the Tamil daily, owned by Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian E. Saravanapavan, seeks to destabilize the operation and dissemination of the paper in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils, especially before conducting elections to Northern Provincial Council.
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Australian detainees demanding release enter fifth day of hunger-strike

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 April 2013, 10:33 GMT]
27 asylum seekers, including 24 Eezham Tamils, kept in Broadmeadows detention centre in Melbourne, Australia are entering the fifth day of hunger-strike demanding release. The Tamil refugees had arrived in Australia by boat in 2009 and have been in detention ever since as the Australian government considered them a ‘security threat’, even as they get support from Australian media and civil society activists. They include 4 women and 7 children below the age of ten, some still toddlers. Speaking to TamilNet from the detention centre, a 40 year old detainee said that despite being recognized as refugees by the UNHCR, there was no move by any international agency or by the Australian government to release them into normal society. “We are like a people without a future. Some individuals in depression are also feeling that suicide would be better than such a life,” he said.
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Kurulu-wæwa, Kuruvi-ku'lama

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 April 2013, 21:10 GMT]
The tank of birds
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NZ Intelligence alleged of monitoring former Green MP for involvement in Tamil question

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 April 2013, 16:50 GMT]
New Zealand's Security Intelligence Service (SIS), which is part of the so-called Five Eyes intelligence network, comprising the intelligence agencies of Australia, Canada, Britain and the USA, was alleged of monitoring former Green party politician Keith Locke, who has been sympathetic to the Tamil cause. Mr Locke believes the SIS began covert operations on him in 2003, when he travelled to Sri Lanka, reports The Dominion Post. The former Green Party politician has demanded apology for illegal spying and that all 88 New Zealanders who were being spied on should be notified if the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) has illegally snooped on them.
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Colombo answers Indian political visit by simultaneously inviting Pak defence visit

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 April 2013, 12:00 GMT]
While representatives of a section of Indian political parties were on a fact finding mission to the island, meeting various Tamil political, civil society, chamber of commerce and former civil members in Jaffna on Tuesday and Wednesday under the aegis of the Indian High Commission and the Indian Consulate in Jaffna, the SL government in Colombo is engaging with a high level Pakistani Defence delegation comprising 19 members who are on a one-week visit to the island. The visit by Pakistani defence delegation follows the visit of the Chinese Deputy Minister of Intelligence last week.
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‘TN student movement opens possibilities of new political futures’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 April 2013, 22:41 GMT]
The Tamil Nadu student movement that has “thrown up a new young leadership” that is unaffiliated to any political party and is challenging the US-sponsored UNHRC resolution on conceptually firm grounds “clearly shows that here is a new generation of Tamils which is imagining new political futures,” write Prof MSS Pandian and PhD scholar A. Kalaiarasan in a commentary published on the April 13 issue of the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW). In the article titled ‘A Tamil Spring?’ making a concise sociological analysis of the evolution of the student protests, the authors show how the student uprising, besides affecting the mass sentiments of the TN public and effecting greater awareness on the nuances of the Tamil Eelam struggle, is also influencing, challenging and changing the political discourse of parliamentary parties in Tamil Nadu.
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Wild elephants deployed by Colombo's forest department claim lives of Tamils in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 April 2013, 09:12 GMT]
Sri Lankan Forest Department, in recent weeks, has brought in a number of wild elephants from Sinhala areas into the jungles adjacent to Koa'ra'laip-pattu South Division of the Batticaloa district, where uprooted Tamil people have resettled after the end of war. The Divisional Secretary of Koa'ra'laippattu South, Mr Thanabalasundaram, when contacted by reporters in Batticaloa, admitted that two Tamil civilians have been killed within the last 30 days by the wild elephants that have gone amok on the villagers and their properties. The lives and the livelihood of 3,000 Tamil villagers are threatened by the presence of more than 50 wild elephants of the Sinhala forest department.
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Explosion claims life of de-mining worker in Mukamaalai

[TamilNet, Monday, 08 April 2013, 14:09 GMT]
A Halo Trust worker lost his life in a landmine explosion Monday morning, while he was engaged in de-mining at Mukamaalai, a former Forward Defence Line (FDL). The tragic incident, comes at a time when the occupying Colombo is bent on expelling all independent de-mining NGOs and the SL military is poised to take control of even the last-phase quality assurance being carried out by the UN agencies.
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‘Tamil Nadu, diaspora youth brook no compromise on Tamil Eelam’

[TamilNet, Monday, 08 April 2013, 04:31 GMT]
Tamil students and activists in Tamil Nadu and the Eezham Tamil diaspora have firmly voiced for the creation of a sovereign Tamil Eelam in their recent protests. The trend set by the student upsurge in TN has inspired the diaspora youth to conceptually challenge the International Community of Establishments. A strong realization of the necessity of a struggle addressing the ICE and to course correct pro-establishment elements is being strongly felt among second-generation activists in the diaspora. This understanding was reflected by Tamil youth and grassroots activists from Tamil Nadu, Canada and UK.
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Trichy gathering condemns “US–Indian betrayal” of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Monday, 08 April 2013, 02:05 GMT]
Addressing a mass gathering of students and common people in Trichy (Thiruchchi) district, Tamil Nadu, student leaders, youth activists, and veteran political activists condemned the betrayal of the Eezham Tamil nation by the US-Indian axis, further accusing them of abetting the genocidal Sri Lankan state, on Sunday. Not only India, but the entire world has turned its attention on the mass struggle waged by our students in Tamil Nadu over the last month, said the organisers of the gathering. If the Indian government does not pay heed to the just demands put forth by the student protestors across Tamil Nadu, the students will begin and intensify civil disobedience campaigns, student activists from Thiruchchi told TamilNet.
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Student uprising becomes theme of cultural event in Canada

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 April 2013, 19:16 GMT]
The recent student upsurge demanding Tamil Eelam as the solution to the national question of Eezham Tamils became the main theme of a live show staged by the second-generation diaspora students in Canada last Sunday. The programme, titled “I’lantha’lir – Discover Your Roots”, through multiple stage-acts, offered a live narration of the history of the Tamil liberation struggle, divided into notable time periods within the history.
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Sri Lanka is Sinhala to Colombo film industry, media and academics

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 April 2013, 19:57 GMT]
Responding to the protest waged by the Actor’s Guild of the Tamil Nadu Film industry in Chennai against the genocide of Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka, a Colombo media Ceylon Today on Thursday came out with a feature written by a “special Correspondent,” titled “A friend turned foe.” The feature detailed the long and two-way connections between the film industries of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. The implied message, against the backdrop of ‘economic embrace’ contemplated in the corporate circles of India, is that ‘business should not be affected.’ Whether India’s economic embrace of the Sinhala State should take place over the annihilation of the nation of Eezham Tamils, and whether the Indian Establishment and corporatism are unable to conceive anything alternative, are the questions righteously raised by the protest coming from the Tamil artists, writes an academic in Jaffna.
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