Resentment between SL forces and Tamils escalates in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 June 2020, 19:20 GMT]
Frustration and resentment against the occupying SL military and the SL police are escalating in Jaffna peninsula as witnessed in various incidents in recent times. On Tuesday, a group of Tamil residents in Analai-theevu islet assaulted SL Navy officers, who were threatening their fellow residents receiving treatment at the local hospital after being attacked by SL Navy personnel in an earlier clash. The SL Navy imposed a travel blockade for two days and harassed the people. The dispute was reported after SL Navy men started to roam around the residential areas with suspicious intent, Tamil families in the islet said.
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SL military seizes up to fifty schools in North for quarantine purposes amidst public objections

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 April 2020, 20:05 GMT]
The occupying SL military has seized around fifty schools in the Northern Province in recent days intending to convert these as Quarantine Centres (QCs) sparking protests from the public and educational organisations. People were protesting at Araali in Vadduk-koaddai in Jaffna. General Secretary of the Ceylon Teachers’ Union Joseph Stalin has condemned the move. However, the SL military continues to relocate the furniture away from the schools and bring people to the seized schools. While there was no identified pattern of COVID-19 spread in Mullaith-theevu, Ki'linochcih and Mannaar districts of the Northern Province as well as the islets off Jaffna, the militarised QCs in large numbers in the midst of densely populated areas have caused fear among the public.
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COVID curfews hurt livelihood of resettled people of Ira'nai-theevu twin-islet

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 April 2020, 14:06 GMT]
The SL fisheries authorities have neglected marketing arrangements for the fish caught by the recently resettled Tamil fishers of Ira'nai-theevu twin-islets that lie 12 nautical miles from the western coast of Ki'linochchi district. The prices have dropped from 1,000 rupees to 300 rupees for one-kilo crabs and from 800 rupees to 200 rupees for cuttlefish catch. More than sixty families are residing in Ira'nai-theevu without permanent housing. The people of the islets facing the Palk Bay are also deprived of community assistance during the curfew. In the meantime, there were reports of COVID-19 infections at the SL military-operated Quarantine Center at Muzhangkaavil, a coastal hamlet located near their temporary settlement, Ira'nai-maathaa-nakar in the mainland. Those infected were medical personnel brought for quarantine from the South.
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Colombo uses COVID-19 situation to militarise civil administration in North

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 April 2020, 20:19 GMT]
The Community Based Organisations and Non-Governmental Organisations involved in assisting the people, who have lost their livelihood due to the long-lasting curfew imposed to control the spread of COVID-19 pandemic, are complaining about military restrictions hampering their work in Jaffna. The occupying SL military has beefed up its checkpoints on the main highways that connect peninsular Jaffna with the Vanni mainland and the rest of the island. The SL soldiers operating the Elephant Pass (EPS) and Poonakari (Pooneryn) checkpoints are refusing to accept the documents provided to the organisations even though the SL Police has sanctioned such permits at the request of Village (GS) and Divisional Secretaries in the public sector.
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Shavendra-ban, COVID-19 no hindrance to SL Navy “Balanced Style” training with US Green Berets

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 April 2020, 22:23 GMT]
Members of a US Army Special Forces (Green Berets) Operational Detachment Alpha (SFOD-A) team, attached to the US Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) have conducted a four-week-long training with two notorious wartime formations of the occupying navy of genocidal Sri Lanka in Trincomalee in March. The Green Berets providing specialised training to SL Navy has a long history. The “Operation Balanced Style” sessions went on at secret locations in the South in 1996 and 2001. After 2009, the USINDOPACOM started to conduct naval port visits, various training programmes including the latest Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET). The US military has also experimented with “temporary air logistics hub concept” as well as grooming a marine force for the unitary state in the Sinhalicised and militarised district of the capital city of the occupied country of Eezham Tamils.
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Indian Coast Guard trespassed into waters off Jaffna, 18 fishers detained since 03 October

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 October 2019, 20:17 GMT]
Ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu, where Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to host an informal summit, the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) has stepped up patrol activities in the Palk Straits and the Bay of Bengal. On 03 October, the ICG has trespassed into the waters off Jaffna peninsula and detained eighteen poor Eezham Tamil fishers, who were engaged in crab fishing off Ezhuvai-theevu island in an offshore vessel with 18 feet fishing bay. The families are yet to hear from the detained fishermen who are believed to be in the custody of Tamil Nadu Police in Puzhal prison, Annalingam Annarasa, the deputy chairman of Jaffna Islets Fisheries Federation said on Tuesday. Ezhuvai-theevu is the island that is seen first when coming from the Indian coast to Kayts Harbour.
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SLA Jaffna commander refuses to release Palaali lands at meeting presided by Wickramasinghe

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 August 2019, 23:08 GMT]
The commander of the SL Army in Jaffna Major General Ruwan Wanigasooriya, has openly refused to release the SL military-occupied lands in Palaali and Vasaavi'laan citing the expansion of Palaali airport. The revelation was made at the District Coordinating Committee meeting which was presided by the visiting SL Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe at the District Secretariat of Jaffna on Saturday. The scheme is projected as ‘development’ by New Delhi and Colombo while the uprooted people of the villages demand their lands released back to them. The TNA is observing silence. However, the uprooted land-owners are not going to tolerate the military grabbing these lands anymore permanently, said Chairman of Valikaamam North Resettlement Committee Mr Shageevan Shanmugalingam, who is also an elected member of the Divisional Council of Valikaamam North.
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SL State-run sea cucumber farming becomes major threat to Tamil fishers of North

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 May 2019, 20:58 GMT]
The occupying unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka is scheming to shrink the coastal fishing access to Eezham Tamil fishers in the islets and along the west coast of Vanni, where the resettled Tamils are already struggling with limited access to their coastal belt due to militarization and other activities from the South. Several new locations have been identified by the SL state-run National Aquaculture Development Authority (NAQDA) and the SL National Aquatic Resources Research And Development Agency (NARA), informed sources at Jaffna District Secretariat told TamilNet on Tuesday.
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SLA deployed Tamils as human shields in 1990, activists allege mass graves in Jaffna islet

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 April 2019, 21:01 GMT]
The occupying SL Navy harassed 25 Tamil protesters who had mobilised to wage a peaceful protest against the seizure of their lands at Ma’ndai-theevu, an islet off Jaffna, by photographing and recording them. However, the protesters successfully blocked the survey officials for the second time in two years. After the last attempt in June 2018, on Thursday the SL Survey Department tried again to measure the eighteen acres of residential and agricultural lands belonging to eleven families. The lands in question are already fenced off within the premises of SLNS Welusumana naval base and are declared as a no-go zone by the SL Navy, which wants to militarise them permanently. Ma’ndai-theevu, an islet located at a strategic locality towards the entrance from the Palk Bay into the Jaffna lagoon, needs to be subjected to excavations for alleged mass graves, say Tamil rights activists in Jaffna.
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SL Navy restricts humanitarian access to resettling people of Ira'nai-theevu

[TamilNet, Monday, 07 January 2019, 22:21 GMT]
Nine months have elapsed since the uprooted people embarked on a courageous sea landing to SL Navy occupied twin-islet of Ira'nai-theevu at the western coast of Vanni. Only a few toilets and temporary huts have been provided to them. While the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is set to assist the resettled people with necessary facilities such as access to potable water, the SL Navy stationed at Muzhangkaavil along the coast of the Vanni mainland has restricted the NGOs and community organisations from accessing the twin-islets, which it regards as a ‘high-security zone’. The local workers of the UNDP and other NGOs as well as the community-based organisations, trying to visit Ira'nai-theevu are facing strict procedures and are subjected to surveillance as if they were enemies entering the property of the SL Navy, humanitarian workers said.
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SL military wants Cooray to liaise with Tamil diaspora industrialists from islets off Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 December 2018, 22:31 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala Navy and its intelligence wing have drawn a plan to recruit and deceive the business elite among the Tamils in the Northern Province, particularly the Tamil diaspora industrialists who hail from the islets off Jaffna, with the propaganda of ‘development’, informed sources at Ooraath-thu'rai (Kayts) told TamilNet this week. Under the pretext of facilitating infrastructure investment from the Tamil diaspora, the SL Navy wants to maintain its hold and open up the islets for more Sinhala tourists from the South with a large-scale trade and cultural Sinhalicisaiton of the islands. As part of this military conceived programme, the SL Governor is actively engaged in collecting details of Tamil diaspora industrialists and business owners, who are exiled in the West from the islets, the sources further said.
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SL military postpones land release for 2 years as UN awarded Colombo with 2 more years in Geneva

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 October 2017, 23:35 GMT]
The occupying SL military in North, which has heavily militarised Jaffna peninsula, the islets off Jaffna and the Vanni mainland, is now claiming that no further lands would be released for the coming two years. 50-year-old Kalathevy Rajan, a mother uprooted from Palaali and stranded at Antony-puram in Vazhalaay, says that the latest stand of the SL military has dashed her hopes of gaining back her lands. The latest move aims to test the limits of patience and toleration of the uprooted people, who have been staging continuous protests. It also signals that the external ‘strategic partners’ are encouraging genocidal Sri Lanka, which is engaged in military training with the US forces in the occupied homeland of Eezham Tamils. Future protests need to be addressed to the international Establishments rather to the Colombo Establishment, political observers in Jaffna commented.
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Uprooted people find houses destroyed by SL Navy in Ira'nai-theevu after 2008

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 September 2017, 18:18 GMT]
There were almost 190 concrete-built houses, which stood in good shape when the SL Navy occupied Ira'nai-theevu twin-islands, which are situated 12 nautical miles west of Muzhangkaavil along the coast of Vanni in the Palk Bay. There was no military confrontations wihtin the islands in 2007-2008 when SL Navy occupied the islets. However, last week, three representatives of the protesting villagers, who went to witness the surveying of the lands, were shocked to see majority of their houses being razed to the ground by the occupying SL Navy. Only around 45 houses have standing structures. Among these, 15 to 20 houses could be reconstructed without much investment. The occupying SL Navy should bear the responsibility for the full and partial destruction of 187 houses, they said. Prior to 2007, the owners had dismantled only 3 houses, the villagers further said.
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Ira'nai-theevu without Tamil people constitutes threat against Indian security in Palk Bay

[TamilNet, Thursday, 31 August 2017, 22:43 GMT]
Occupying Sinhala Navy was adamantly refusing to release the occupied residential and livelihood twin-islet of Ira'nai-theevu, informed Ilangkai Thamizh Arasuk Kadchi (ITAK) sources told TamilNet. The SL Navy officers were citing the ‘defence’ of the so-called ‘sovereignty’ of genocidal Sri Lanka as the prime reason, at a meeting held in Muzhangkaavil on Thursday, when two ITAK MPs from Vanni met SL ‘State Minister’ for Defence Ruwan Wijewardene, SL Navy commanders and D.M. Swaminthan, a SL ‘Cabinet Minister’ of Resettlement, Prison and Hindu affairs. Finally, a token measure has been promised in the form of allowing Poonakari Divisional Secretariat to survey only 159 of the entire 1,200 acres of lands. At least 783 Eezham Tamil families were living there when they were uprooted for the first time on 10 August 1992. The islets have continuous residential history of 400 years.
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Chinese interests eye India's closest coast in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 12 August 2017, 20:56 GMT]
Occupying Colombo is silently promoting Chinese firms to enter militarised Poonakari (Pooneryn), which is situated in a controlling location linking Vanni with Jaffna Peninsula, with Palk Bay and Jaffna Lagoon on either side. During the times of Rajapaksa regime, China was showing interest in a plan for building an airport in Poonakari. Under Maithiripala and Wickramasinghe, Chinese firms are being invited by Colombo without the knowledge of Northern Provincial Council. In the meantime, Chinese fishing firms are also entering Ariyaalai East and the islets off Jaffna for fishing and freshwater crab farming. The SL Ministry of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, which is complicit in grabbing the territorial seas of Vanni away from Eezham Tamils, is bringing in Chinese firms to Ariyaalai East and the islands off Jaffna without informing the NPC, civil sources in Jaffna said.
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Indian mission in Jaffna entertains Sinhala monk engaged in controversial Vihara project

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 July 2017, 20:47 GMT]
Consul General of India in Jaffna A. Natarajan was visiting the Chief Incumbent monk of Nagadeepa vihara in Naiyinaa-theevu, Navadagala Paduma Kiththi Tissa Thero on Wednesday. The CGI visiting the Sinhala-Buddhist monk at Nayinaatheevu, who is treated by the occupying Sinhala Navy as a commander as standing above the executive SL President, is sending wrong signals to Eezham Tamils and the people of Tamil Nadu State in India, commented Tamil political activists in Jaffna. The extremist monk who doesn't adhere to the civic rule or the provincial council in North has recently recommenced the controversial construction of 67-feet Buddha statue. The visit also comes after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the island on International Vesak Day two months ago.
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SL military disregards civic ban, continues construction of Buddhist vihara in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 May 2017, 23:45 GMT]
The occupying Colombo recently launched the construction of a Buddhist vihara at Naavatkuzhi, which is being Sinhalicised through militarisation and housing schemes for Sinhala colonists. During the Vesak in May 2017, ceremonial construction of a big Vihara establishment was begun. On Tuesday, Chaavakachcheari Divisional Council came with an interim order instructing those engaged in the construction of Buddhist vihara to halt all construction activities as permission to construct the Buddhist Establishment has not been properly obtained from the local body. However, SL Army personnel continued the construction work disregarding the instructions from the civic body, sources in Naavatkuzhi said.
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Aṇṇamār-tiṭal, Mayila-kas-tiṭar, Paṟaiya-tiṭṭi, Tīṭai/ Tiruṭai

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 April 2017, 20:15 GMT]
The raised ground of the deity Aṇṇamār

The raised ground having Mayilai trees or shrubs

The raised-ground settlement of Paraiyar community

The sandbank islet or shoal (in the Adamas Bridge reef)
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Pūvarasan-kulama, Teppan-kulama, Pusiyan-kulama, Veruň-kulama

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 April 2017, 21:30 GMT]
The Portia-tree tank

The tank in which rafts are used; or the tank in which the raft-festival is conducted

The empty tank; or the tank found with mildew or moss

The empty tank
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Kaṭṭuk-kuḷam, Pallavarāyaṉ-kaṭṭuk-kuḷam, Cēttuk-kuḷam, Āmpal-kuḷam

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 April 2017, 21:00 GMT]
The dammed tank or reservoir

The tank, the dam of which was built by Pallavarāyaṉ

The muddy pond or tank

The pond or tank of a kind of waterlily
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