Occupying Sinhala military reminds Eezham Tamils of whose elections they partake

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 04 August 2020, 20:57 GMT]
The occupying military of genocidal Sri Lanka has been harassing the Tamil candidates contesting in the general elections, particularly Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF) led by Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam and Tamil Makkal Thesiya Koottani (TMTK) led by CV Wigneswaran in the Northern and Eastern provinces. The SL Army has been deploying surveillance teams and field-bike units during their campaign meetings. The TNPF has publicly alleged that SL military intelligence operatives were behaving in a threatening manner in their election meetings. The SL military intelligence had also threatened its candidates in Batticaloa to withdraw from the elections, the TNPF blamed. TMTK Leader and former Chief Minister of Northern Province, Justice Wigneswaran, was harassed by the field-bike group of the SL Army recently, when he went for an election meeting to Kurunakar, a suburb of Jaffna.
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University students mark Black July Remembrance in Jaffna, Vavuniyaa and Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 July 2020, 22:46 GMT]
Tamil university students in Jaffna, Vavuniyaa and Batticaloa staged remembrance events within their university premises. Jaffna University Student Union leaders, who gathered at their office lighting candles for the victims of the 1983 SL State-sponsored pogrom against Tamils in the island said Black July remembrance must be integral to the process of international justice on Tamil genocide. Remembrance events were also observed at Vavuniyaa campus and the Eastern University. In the meantime, Tamil political parties that usually organise Black July Remembrance events, were too busy this time with their election campaign.
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Gotabaya backtracks on Colombo’s assurances to New Delhi: Sumanthiran

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 January 2020, 23:31 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran has said that SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was regressing from the assurances made by his predecessors, including his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, to New Delhi on three occasions about the full implementation of the 13th Amendment. When India intervened in 1987, Colombo turned towards the “right direction” and started to “acknowledge the diversity of its peoples,” by amending the Constitution, the TNA parliamentarian said. The equal status between the peoples in the island is not dependent on their respective numerical strength. “This principle must be acknowledged if our democracy is to survive and indeed flourish, and not regress into naked majoritarianism. Regretfully, in his address to Parliament on 3rd January 2020 the President has articulated such a regressive position,” he said.
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SL Forest Department remains unmoved by uprooted Tamils’ demand for resettlement

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 August 2019, 07:04 GMT]
The uprooted people of Kanakar-kiraamam village, a Tamil settlement located 7 km north of Poththtuvil in Ampaa'rai district, are yet to see any change in the attitude of the SL Forest Department, which has seized their lands violating the law of the SL State itself. The people have been staging a continuous protest since 13 August 2018. Former Eastern Provincial Land Commissioner Kathrigamathamby Kurunathan confronted the SL Forest Department on 20 July exposing the mischievous way the land grab was executed, and the officials attached to the department agreed to release the lands. However, nothing has taken place, even as the protesters completed 365 days of protest on 13 August. It is the SL Forest Department, which is the chief trouble-maker, says Mrs Rangathenna, a mother taking part in the protest.
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Book on Santhiya becomes narration of Tamil struggle incorporating Marxist ideas in early 80s

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 August 2019, 23:28 GMT]
Ben Hillier, the editor of Australia’s leading socialist publication, Red Flag, wanted to recount the life of Santhiya, a former LTTE cadre who had perished in an Indonesian detention centre in late 2017. Her tragic death occurred as a result of the anti-refugee and anti-Tamil struggle policies practised by Australia. In his efforts to trace her life the editor of the Red Flag travelled to Jakarta, Indonesia and then to the occupied country of Eezham Tamils with the support of the Tamil Refugee Council (TRC) a grassroots diaspora group in Australia. Ben Hillier, who travelled to the occupied country and learned more about the sacrifices made by the Eezham Tamils, particularly the Tamil women, authored his book “Losing Santhiya: On Life and Loss in the Struggle for Tamil Eelam” in July.
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Students, TNPF mark 36th Black July Remembrance in Jaffna, Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 July 2019, 23:38 GMT]
The student community of the University of Jaffna and Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) offices in the North and the East marked the 36th anniversary of the collective trauma of the ‘Black July’, the SL state-sponsored genocidal pogrom that claimed the lives of more than 3,000 Tamil residents in the south of the island in 1983. Tamil-speaking Muslim students also took part in the remembrance event organised by the students in Jaffna.
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PTA claimed life of upcountry Tamil political prisoner: Fr Shaktivel

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 June 2019, 20:20 GMT]
It was the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) that ultimately claimed the life of 62-year-old Muththaiah Sagadevan, who was severely affected by various diseases during his 14 years of detention. He passed away at the National Hospital in Colombo under the prolonged PTA-custody on 22 June, said Rev Fr M Shaktivel, the co-chairperson of the Action Committee to Free Tamil Political Prisoners. The TID detained Sagadevan in 2005. It took three years to file a case against him in 2008. But, the baseless PTA case was being dragged on for so long destroying his psychological and physical health. The misery has been caused by the new regime which has failed to recognise the PTA detainees of the LTTE times as political prisoners, Fr Shakthivel said. The international community was also calling for the scrapping of the PTA, he noted.
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Kokku'laay-centric united action needed to counter Colombo wedging North-East

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 June 2019, 20:36 GMT]
The resettled Tamil residents of the strategic Thennai-maravadi village bordering the Northern and Eastern Provinces in the Trincomalee district are facing Sinhala colonisation and Sinhala Buddhicisation of Tamil heritage sites on two fronts, at Pa'nikka-vayal to its west and at Kanthasaami-malai, which extends eastwards into Kokku'laay lagoon. The Sinhala colonisation and the Buddhicisation of Tamil heritage site of Kanthasaami-malai are being accelerated under the Emergency Regulations and the situation prevailing after the Easter Sunday attacks that have triggered the extremist monks to escalate their chauvinistic schemes in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils. The two-pronged attack, which is being stepped up in the recent days, is part of a larger design of permanently wedging the territorial contiguity of the Tamil homeland along the narrow border between the North and the East.
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IC failing to impose mediated solution, ultimately responsible for escalating Sinhala chauvinism

[TamilNet, Friday, 31 May 2019, 22:11 GMT]
Even though one feared the outbreak of an anti-Muslim pogrom immediately after the Easter attacks, silence prevailed for two weeks. Then the mob violence targeted the properties of Muslim traders. It was not an act of immediate responsive impulse, but an engineered move instigated by an organised force. Despite their differences in the scale, there are certain similarities between the 1983 Black July anti-Tamil pogrom and the post-2009 anti-Muslim pogroms, says Batticaloa-based human rights activist Kathir Barathythasan. During the war, the International Community (IC) was acting as a mediator. But, it was also abetting the SL State, causing massive civilian deaths. The IC, now wants the anti-terror legislation to fit its global designs ignoring the drastic internal consequences. The IC must, therefore, be convinced to deliver a negotiated settlement to the national question, he said.
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SL Archaeology Dept steps up controversial construction work in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 May 2019, 17:37 GMT]
The SL Archaeology Department, which had stopped the controversial construction of a building at the hill-top of Kanthasaami-malai in the strategically located ancient village of Thennai-maravadi at the provincial border between the North and East, has all of a sudden accelerated the building project hurriedly completing the building, violating the ban imposed by the Divisional Secretariat. Eezham Tamil residents, their Rural Development Society (RDS) and the trustee board of the 400-year-old Saiva Kanthasaami-temple, have complained on Monday and Wednesday this week. Thennai-maravadi was the seat of a Tamil Vanni chieftaincy until the Dutch times in the mid 17th century. The interior hamlet is situated in the narrow strategic corridor linking the Northern and Eastern provinces, 70 km north of Trincomalee city.
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Colombo ‘reminds’ Eezham Tamils on significance of theorising war historiography

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 March 2019, 19:47 GMT]
Occupying Colombo's Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) has filed a ‘B Report’ requesting the Magistrates’ Court in Jaffna to demand the editor of Colombo-based Thamizhth-thanthi weekly to reveal the author and the source of an article, which was published in May 2018. The article was about the late Brigadier Balraj, a highly esteemed military commander of the LTTE, who played the key role in the Tiger victory of the Elephant Pass garrison in 2000. The TID has approached the SL Court in January 2019, eight months after the article, titled “Balraj, the unparalleled war hero of the 21st century”, appeared. The SL State wants to suppress the media freedom of Eezham Tamil writers to file articles under pen names. It wants the editors to impose self-censorship and not to protect the identity of the authors. Colombo wants to make an example through this case, journalists in Jaffna said.
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Tamils mark Shivaratri at base of hill seized by SL Archaeology Department in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 March 2019, 19:42 GMT]
The uprooted families of the ancient Tamil village of Thennai-maravadi in the northern Trincomalee marked a Pongkal feast on Monday at the base of Kanthasaami-malai. The ritual was staged in objection to the Archaeology Department of the unitary state genocidal Sri Lanka, which was refusing to allow the people to access the temple of their folk-deity, Murukan, at the top of the hill where they used to observe Shivaratri in the past. The move comes amidst tension prevailing at Thirukkoa'nesvaram temple in Trincomalee where the SL Archaeology Department and Sinhala colonisers have desecrated the statue of Sivalingam, which was put up along the pathway to the temple on the occasion of Shivaratri festival. Colombo is trying to convert the hilltop of Kanthasaami-malai into a Buddhist temple, the uprooted Tamils said.
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Monks incite SL paramilitary to Sinhalicise Tamil heritage site in Trincomalee North

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 December 2018, 23:16 GMT]
An extremist section of the Sinhala-Buddhist Theravada monks establishment, which has been trying for more almost ten years to claim the ancient Tamil village of Thennai-maravadi as a heritage and archaeology site of Sinhala Buddhism, abandoned their attempt to erect a Buddhist temple at the lands of the Tamil village deity of Kanthasaami. However, the monks left behind noticeboards claiming the Saiva (Hindu) temple lands, where they conducted the excavations, as coming under the purview of the SL Department of Archaeology. Recently, on 30th November, Sinhala paramilitary personnel of the so-called ‘Civil Defence Force’ have put up foundations for a building inside the demarcated lands. If the seized properties of the Hindu temple come under the SL Archaeology department, how could the CDF personnel start constructing structures inside the grounds, the resettled Tamils questioned.
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Colombo refuses resettlement of 173 families in coastal village of Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 October 2018, 17:31 GMT]
SL Forest Department is refusing to release more than 200 acres of agricultural and residential lands that belonged to 173 Eezham Tamil families of Kaara-munai, a coastal village located 47 km northwest of Batticaloa city, civil sources at the Batticaloa District Secretariat said. The people were chased out from their village first during the anti-Tamil pogroms in 1983. Then, during the times of war, they were again chased out in 1990. Also after the end of the war, they were again chased out in 2015. The uprooted people are languishing without proper livelihood elsewhere in Maangkea'ni and urge their lands to be released back to them.
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TELO councillor of NPC questions ‘achievements’ of TNA hierarchy

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 July 2018, 18:34 GMT]
35 years have elapsed since pogrom of Black July, which was waged against the Eezham Tamils with the sponsorship of the UNP regime at that time. The incumbent SL Prime Minister, Ranil Wickramasinghe of the UNP, was a cabinet minister at that time when his fellow cabinet ministers were actively backing the pogrom. The late J.R. Jayawardene, who was the president at that time, came with the infamous declaration ‘war for war, peace for peace’ and escalated the pogrom. This month, Ranil Wickramasinghe has been visiting Jaffna to deceive the Tamil people with so-called development, says NPC Councillor Vinthan Kanagaratnam of the TELO. He called it a shame that the TNA parliamentarians were collaborating with the UNP-SLFP government even after failing to win anything tangible from them.
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Remembering 35th Black July with Tamil resolve

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 July 2018, 07:51 GMT]
This week, Eezham Tamils in the homeland and the Tamil Diaspora mark the 35th anniversary of the collective trauma of the ‘Black July’, the SL state-sponsored genocidal pogrom that claimed the lives of more than 3,000 Tamil residents in the south of the island in 1983. The key lesson learned throughout the years of the pogroms, massacres, genocidal war and finally the post-war structural genocide, which is aimed at dismantling the existence of Eezham Tamils as a nation, is a hard reality. The genocide originating from the Mahawansa mind-set always gets its way, not because of the strength of the Sinhala nation, but mainly because the external State actors sustaining the Colombo-centric approach, is that lesson. Thus, the collaborationists and the negotiators among the Eezham Tamils were always doomed to failure, Tamil political observers in Jaffna commented.
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Jaffna students demand US and UN agenda-setters to declare PTA detainees as political prisoners

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 November 2017, 23:44 GMT]
More than 1,000 Tamil students from across the faculties of Jaffna University as well as the students from the College of Education, Jaffna Technical College and High Tech institute took to the streets in Jaffna on Tuesday demanding the main intervening actors of the International Establishment to recognise the Tamil prisoners detained under the so-called Prevention of Terrorism Act as Political Prisoners. They handed over open and urgent appeals addressed to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the President of UNHRC and to the US Permanent Mission for UN in Geneva, which has been behind the drafting of the ‘consensus’ resolution with the SL State in Geneva Human Rights Council in 2015 and with postponing a final evaluation by two more years in 2017. The student leaders handed over the appeals through the UN Residential Office in Jaffna and the American Corner in the city.
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Colombo wants to transfer cases of 38 Tamil prisoners to courts in Sinhala suburb

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 January 2017, 15:36 GMT]
SL Attorney General’s Department, which has been trying to transfer the cases of Tamil political prisoners away from the courts in the North and East, is now applying the same tactic also in Colombo by attempting to transfer the cases from Colombo Court to Homagama, an all-Sinhala area situated 30 km southwest of Colombo city, Tamil lawyers in Colombo said. The cases of 38 Tamil political prisoners are going to be transferred to the courts in Homagama and it will not be easy for the Tamil detainees and their families to secure Tamil-speaking lawyers, who are prepared to travel from Colombo to Homagama, says TNA Parliamentarian Mr Charles Nirmalanthan.
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CBK answerable for crimes committed under her regime: Ananthy Sasitharan

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 31 August 2016, 20:43 GMT]
Executive Presidents of the SL State in the past and at the present are accountable and answerable for the crimes committed during their regimes, said Ananthy Sasitharan on Tuesday. She was targeting former SL President Chandrika Kumaratunga (CBK), who is now heading the Office for National Unity and Reconciliation (ONUR), as responsible, accountable and answerable for the crimes committed during her rule. “If the current and former presidents are serious about reconciliation, they should first stop calling the genocidal war a ‘humanitarian war’. They should officially recognize the Tamil struggle as a liberation struggle and those who participated in it as freedom fighters without any qualms or reluctance. We can only start reconciliation from a position that those who were made to disappear were not terrorists,” Ananthy has said vowing to step up the campaign for international justice.
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UNP answerable for 1983 genocidal pogrom: Batticaloa UNP Organiser

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 July 2016, 23:14 GMT]
“Although I am involved in UNP politics for 46 years, I am first a Tamil in my heart. There is no denying that UNP is responsible on the accountability for 1983 pogrom and other governments in Colombo for the crimes committed during their regime,” said Batticaloa District UNP organiser, Aloysius Thambimuthu Masilamani, responding to a question on UNP's reaction to the issue raised this week by Northern Provincial Councillor M.K. Shivajilingam that how could Tamils expect Justice for 2009 genocidal crimes from the UNP regime, which has failed to deliver accountability for 1983 pogrom against Tamils for 33 years. “What happened on 23 July 1983 was nothing else than a genocide. “Even my political mentor Devanayagam described it as a barbaric act at that time and Cyril Mathew demanded him to withdraw that description. But, Denavayagam stood by it,” Mr Aloysius Masilamani told TamilNet.
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