Colombo rushes ahead with exploitative expansion of salterns in North

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 17 September 2019, 23:50 GMT]
The occupying Colombo’s unitary state mechanism is alienating large tracts of lands, both officially and unofficially, for commercial actors from the South of the island. Tamil agents, including one paramilitary organiser of Karuna Group, are being used as the proxies to showcase that the SL State is ‘ethnically impartial’ in the allocations, informed Tamil servants at the Ki'linochchi District Secretariat said. They suspect the involvement of SL military corporatism in the schemes. In the meantime, Chairman of Karaichchi Divisional Council (PS), A. Velamalikithan, when contacted by TamilNet, described the extent of illegal construction work that has already commenced without securing the required permissions from the elected Council and the Divisional Secretariats concerned.
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SL Governor dodges Ki'linochchi DCC meeting, Colombo's military and departments confronted

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 July 2019, 23:13 GMT]
The so-called Civil Security Division (CSD) and the occupying SL Army, which come under the SL Defence Ministry in Colombo continue to occupy more than 400 acres of farmlands in Ki'linochchi district. The Tamil people suspect the SL Police of backing the Sinhala miners who operate almost all the tipper trucks, which scoop the sands in the region excessively. At the same time, various departments working under the unitary system of the SL State continue to exercise their power in seizing the properties ignoring the divisional authorities and the civic councils. Knowing that these crucial matters were scheduled to be taken up for discussion at a plenary session, Suren Raghavan, the deceitful Tamil SL Governor to North, was absconding from attending the District Coordination Committee meeting on Monday.
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Toxic cancer medicines transported from South for improper disposal in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 08 July 2019, 22:59 GMT]
Unused and outdated cancer treatment medicines, which are extremely toxic to humans and animals, are being transported from Anuradhapura Cancer Hospital and disposed through an average medical waste incinerator at Thellip-pazhai Cancer Hospital, informed medical sources in Jaffna told TamilNet this week. The equipment is not made to handle such a large quantity of cytotoxic drugs at necessary high temperature. The disposal tool at use doesn't meet the required standards for burning the poisonous human-made chemicals that turn into dioxins, which could cause many new types of cancers to the resettling Eezham Tamils in Valikaamam North, the informed health-workers warned. Several truckloads of outdated cancer medicines have been disposed throughout the last three years, they said.
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Sinhala forensic archaeology academic rejects BETA findings

[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 March 2019, 23:13 GMT]
The Hong Kong-based Asia Times on Friday said Forensic Archaeological Consultant Professor at the University of Kelaniya, Raj Somadeva, as vehemently rejecting the radiocarbon dating results obtained from Beta Analytic on the alleged samples from Mannar mass grave. “There is a non-compatibility between materials and artefacts we unearthed from the mass grave and the results the American laboratory have given us. Therefore, it is difficult to accept this carbon dating,” Somadeva was quoted as saying by the Asia Times.
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Chemical weapon in KLIA and cluster bomb in Vanni

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 February 2017, 22:20 GMT]
AFP reports on Friday, citing Malaysian Police, indicated that the North Korean leader’s estranged half brother was assassinated at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) with a lethal nerve agent called VX, manufactured for chemical warfare and listed by the UN as a weapon of mass destruction. As the question comes how the chemical weapon came to Malaysia, AFP cited ‘Sri Lankan’ Terrorism Professor Rohan Gunaratna stationed in Singapore saying that North Korea has previously used diplomatic pouches to smuggle items. The IC, its media and terrorism research outfits, miserably failing in international investigation on how the cluster bomb had reached genocidal Sri Lanka and was deployed against Tamil civilian masses herded into a zone in Vanni in a war upheld by a bandwagon, could only make a poor show on the current crime committed at KLIA, commented Tamil political observers.
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Structural genocide against Tamil fishermen reaches all-time high in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 January 2017, 23:38 GMT]
The structural genocide being waged by the Colombo Establishment, particularly against the Eezham Tamil fishermen in Mullaiththeevu district, has reached an all-time high in the history of the district, says Mariyathas Anthonipillai, the chairman of the Federation of Fisheries Associations in the district, told TamilNet on Monday. More than 50% of the coastal stretch with access to fish has been taken over by the intruding fishermen from South. “If the SL Fisheries Ministry gives permission to put up 20 different sites along Mullaiththeevu coast for fishermen from South, the intruders go to the extent of putting vaadis at 80 places. The native fishermen are not even allowed to have their huts at one single place between Nallatha'n'nith-thoduvaay in the north of the district to Kokkuth-thoduvaay and Mukaththuvaaram in the south of the district,” Mr Mariyathas said.
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Lawyers demand UN action into allegations of Colombo deploying chemical substances on POWs

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 September 2016, 23:46 GMT]
“Accusation by former LTTE cadres that they were administered with poisonous and chemical substances during rehabilitation period resulting in their being afflicted with serious physical disabilities have raised concerns as regards the accountability and justice process,” said K.S. Ratnavale and V. Puvitharan, the conveners of Tamil Lawyers Forum in an open appeal issued on Sunday to the UN Human Rights Council demanding international action. “The very nature of poisonous substance makes it difficult for medical personnel to identify or detect such substance on the mere examination of victims. It behoves the scientists with medical background and expertise and not merely medical doctors to identify the effects of injestion of external substances in the body,” the appeal coming from the TFL said.
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Deminers remain tight-lipped over crucial traces of cluster, chemical UXOs deployed in genocide

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 June 2016, 15:47 GMT]
A supervisor rank worker associated with demining work carried out by Swiss Foundation for Mine Action (FSD) and was deployed in clearing Unexploded ordnance (UXO) between 2010 and 2014 in Puthukkudiyiruppu (PTK) where SL military deployed cluster bombs and chemical weapons during the genocidal onslaught in 2009, told TamilNet this week that the hierarchy of the FSD, when alerted about the traces of cluster bombs and crucial human skeletal remains indicating deployment of chemical warheads, communicated the matter to the SL military under Gotabhaya Rajapaksa's military establishment, which was quick to remove the traces. If the workers revealed the findings, the FSD would lose its project and they would risk losing their jobs as funds coming from USA, Japan and EU would go to other mine clearing agencies, the workers were told by the FSD hierarchy.
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Avurik-kaadu, Vearkkuththik-kadavai, Beru-wala

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 June 2015, 22:05 GMT]
The place found with dense growth of indigo plants

The dye-root diggers' place to pass through

The place found with dense growth of indigo plants or the jungle of Agrotistachys indica shrubs
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Sivaram commemorated in Tamil Nadu on 10th anniversary of his assassination

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2015, 10:29 GMT]
The 10th death anniversary of assassination of Senior Editor at TamilNet, an Eezham Tamil intellectual, journalist, political analyst and activist Dharmeratnam Sivaram (Taraki) was marked on Tuesday in Chennai. Sivaram, beside his profound love for his people, was a genuine internationalist who dedicated his life and writing- to quote him in his own words, “…to create a body of knowledge to help oppressed people all over the world help themselves to get out from under oppression; to disseminate this body of knowledge.” A decade after his assassination by the hands of the Sri Lankan state, Eelam and much of the oppressed nations of the world which he espoused solidarity with and desired to aid are still beleaguered and subjected to counter-insurgency perpetuated by their respective oppressor states aided by world powers.
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Documentary released on Chunnaakam water-pollution issue

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 April 2015, 22:55 GMT]
A new group of documentary makers in Jaffna have released a documentary in Tamil on the ongoing environmental debate regarding the alleged pollution prevailing in Chunnaakam area in Jaffna. Due to the dumping of chemical material by the fossil fuel station in Chunnaakam, the wells around the area have been contaminated by petroleum waste and a toxic heavy metal, maintain a large group of activists, doctors and lawyers in Jaffna. However, the Sri Lankan state-owned company running the power station has deployed all its resources to discredit the campaign by the activists and there have been serious questions on the role played by the politicians in the issue.
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Growing nexus between India’s corporates and diplomatic minds

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 March 2015, 20:13 GMT]
Ms. Nirupama Menon Rao, a former foreign secretary of the New Delhi Establishment, has been appointed on Thursday as an independent director of the board of an Ambani-led media company that owns CNN-IBN and CNBC in India, according to an Associated Press report on Friday. Mr Mukesh Ambani the second richest Indian, heads the petrochemicals to telecoms corporate, Reliance Industries Ltd. Sponsored by this Ambani conglomerate, The Observer Research Foundation (ORF) was vocal in supporting Rajapaksa as well as the Colombo-centric State in the island. Ms Nirupama Menon Rao served as New Delhi’s High Commissioner in Colombo (2004 - 2006) and later became Foreign Secretary (August 2009 to July 2011), before going as New Delhi’s ambassador to Washington – all during the NSA tenure of MK Narayanan and Shiv Shankar Menon.
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‘Proliferation of micronarratives assists the logic of counterinsurgency’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 June 2014, 23:48 GMT]
In the context of the Tamil Eelam liberation struggle, when a “micronarrative” discourse about gender, caste, region or other “special interest groups” claims autonomous status, “when it divorces itself from the primary contradiction between the Tamil nationalist metanarrative and the Sri Lankan state, it only ends up fracturing a resistance movement against genocide” argues Karthick RM. In an article published on Indian journal Sanhati, providing examples of how such differences were used to fracture the Eezham Tamils liberation struggle in the past and the present, he shows that such “dissidence” only assists the logic of counterinsurgency (COIN). Drawing from classical and contemporary COIN experts and from the writings of psychologists, Mr. Karthick also observes how such micronarratives and a defeatist mentality complement each other.
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Colombo ‘reveals’ US connections in cluster bomb use

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 January 2014, 15:55 GMT]
United States Pacific Command (USPACOM) advised the Sri Lankan Defence Establishment to purchase Cluster Bomb Units (CBUs) during the peace talks mediated by Norway in 2002. The Island paper, which gives media space for PSYOP and information war waged by the SL military Establishment, on Monday released portions of an alleged FOUO-classified document of the US Defence Establishment. The ‘leak’ was made to remind the US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues Stephen J. Rapp, that Colombo was having proofs of ‘US complicity’ in the genocidal onslaught it waged on Eezham Tamils, an informed journalist from South told TamilNet. Colombo’s Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa himself timed the ‘leak’, the journalist further said.
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Stephen Rapp was briefed on structural genocide at Bishop's House in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 January 2014, 17:06 GMT]
After having caused massive deaths and disappearances on the Tamil civilian population during the times of war, the Sri Lankan State now continues to commit acts of structural genocide in the Tamil land. This aims at causing demographic and identity change, ethnic subordination and dilution of Tamils political power, the Bishop of Mannaar Rt. Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph told the visiting US diplomat on Wednesday. The visiting delegation was primarily interested in the details of the ‘war crimes’ during the final months of the war, according to Mannaar Bishop. Mr Rapp was told that an international investigation was necessary, not to punish any individual, but to create a conducive environment, which would in turn cause an attitudinal change on the part of the Sri Lankan State.
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Catholic peace group in Jaffna details structural genocide to Apostolic Nuncio

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 October 2013, 15:28 GMT]
The Chairman of Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Diocese of Jaffna, Fr. S.V.B Mangalarajah, has written a detailed letter on Friday to the permanent diplomatic representative of the Holy See in Colombo, Most Rev. Dr. Joseph Spiteri, elucidating the structural genocide being carried out by occupying Sri Lanka on the country of Eezham Tamils. The letter comes following the move by the Colombo's colonial regime handing over a report to the Apostolic Nuncio, detailing the so-called development activities carried out in North and East. The JPC Chairman was categoric in his letter that external ‘development’ cannot substitute the settling of the political solution and urged the Vatican to exert political pressure on Sri Lanka to put forward a political solution framework. The detailed letter summarises the genocidal programme of the Sri Lankan State under 10 topics.
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Hypocrisy at best: US policy towards Syria and Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 June 2013, 13:44 GMT]
US media reported on Wednesday that the CIA has begun shipping of arms to Syrian rebels to counter Bashar al-Assad’s forces. This move comes in spite of strong opposition from UNSC member Russia and warnings by a UN expert that increase in flow of weapons into Syria would only escalate the conflict. Likewise, American diplomat Susan Rice termed UNSC’s inaction on Syria a “stain” on the body. The hypocrisy of assisting Sri Lanka in its genocidal war on the Tamil nation while crying foul over al-Assad’s operations apart, the US through its actions on Syria makes it clear once again that the UNHRC, UNSC are of least concern should the US decide to intervene in a conflict. Given this nature of US foreign policy, till how long then will the Tamil Geneva pundits continue to believe in the impotent resolutions on Sri Lanka in the UNHRC, questions a political analyst in Colombo.
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Tamils were not the ‘favoured’ under British colonialism: Theva Rajan

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 April 2013, 23:44 GMT]
It is noted that D S Senanayake advised the British to grant independence to Ceylon early, citing that the Tamils will be problematic as they were followers of Gandhian principles led by the Jaffna Youth League that agitated for full independence, writes Mr. A Theva Rajan in New Zealand, commenting further on a TamilNet feature last Saturday that refuted a repeatedly told myth about British colonialism favouring Tamils. The feature, “Tehelka report misled on British treatment of Tamils,” challenged a recent statement by Ms Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga that the frustration of Tamils was due to lost privileges they had enjoyed under British favouritism aimed at ‘divide and rule’. The myth, constructed by Sinhala polity to justify State-conducted genocide in the island has misled a recent report by Tehelka too.
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Genocidal double talk by India, US - Prof. Boyle

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 March 2013, 01:46 GMT]
Professor Francis A. Boyle, an expert in international law, called the statements made by the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, and by India's ambassador to the U.N., Dilip Sinha, after the adoption of the US resolution on Sri Lanka in the Geneva sessions of the UNHCR, as "genocidal double-talk," pointing out the "blatant hypocrisy" in praising a resolution that looked at Colombo to implement the recommendation of its local "truth" commission. While rights groups and Tamils demanded an "international" investigation into the killings in Mu'l'l'vaaykkaal, leaked U.S. State Department memos had earlier revealed US officials acknowledging the futility of local investigations when culpability for the war-crimes pointed at Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse and his siblings.
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SL minister hands over appropriated public lands in Mannaar to southern companies

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 February 2013, 23:52 GMT]
Several acres of state lands in Mannaar district are being distributed to private sector establishments of the South on the ‘recommendations’ of a Sri Lankan Cabinet Minister Rishard Badurdeen with false deeds, while thousands of people residing in the district are languishing without lands for their existence, especially in Mannaar DS division, civil officials in Mannaar told TamilNet.
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