Mass-rape alleged in Theavipuram amid civilan slaughter

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 March 2012, 04:34 GMT]
Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group that seeks legal redress to Tamil victims of war, said Saturday that the organization is piecing together evidence based on an eye-witness testimony that up to 20 women, separated from nearly 200 civilians who surrendered to the SLA, were alleged to have been raped by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers near the village of Theavipuram, in Mullaiththeevu, in April 2009. While lack of witness protection programs in Sri lanka, and threat to life of witnesses who appear against Sri Lanka military have placed TAG's legal effort in UK on hold, TAG said that the recent legal action in UK involving Ex-Army Commander, Prasanna de Silva, may provide the momentum required to seek witnesses and to obtain corroborative evidence to identify the perpetrators of the alleged crime.
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Occupying SL Army operates behind narcotics trade in Tamil country

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 March 2012, 22:57 GMT]
Sri Lankan military intelligence is allegedly behind a systematic programme of narcotics trade in the North and East of Eezham Tamils homeland, aiming the Tamil students as the target group, reliable sources in Jaffna told TamilNet Friday. On Thursday, three narcotics traders, including the distributors from South, were arrested on Somasundaram Road near the District Secretariat of Jaffna, while they were distributing narcotics. Narcotics dealers sent from South engage in the trade involving former members of Tamil paramilitary groups, news sources further said. However, the Sri Lankan police remained tight-lipped on the arrest of southern narcotics drug dealers on Thursday in the area having leading Tamil schools.
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Sinhala land-grabbers trigger abduction of Tamil youth in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 March 2012, 07:22 GMT]
Armed men of allegedly Sri Lanka Army operated white-van squad Wednesday night have abducted a 22-year-old Tamil youth, Ananda Kishore Thanikaasalam, while the youth was at sleep at his house at mid-night. The abduction comes following threats to the Tamil family at Paalcheanai in Kathirave'li of Vaakarai region in Batticaloa district by Sinhalese to hand over their 8 acres of palm grove with more than 1,500 trees, owned by the family for more than 40 years. On 19 March, a police team claiming as investigative officers from 4th floor CID branch in Colombo came to their house and took away a copy of the land deed. Following the involvement of the CID on the land grab issue, the family lodged a complaint with Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission in Batticaloa. After the abduction, the family has lodged a complaint with the SL Police.
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Headline Today's “I witnessed Genocide” wins journalism award in New Delhi

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 March 2012, 06:01 GMT]
Indian television Headlines Today journalist Priyamvatha's investigative reports from Vanni last year titled "I Witnessed Genocide: Inside Sri Lanka's killing fields," has won the prestigious "Best Investigative Report" award at the 2012 News Television Award in New Delhi, media sources in Chennai said.
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Pakistan paper compares White-Van squad to Black Prados

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 March 2012, 11:52 GMT]
Reporting a conference titled ‘Different Worlds, Similar Threats’, jointly organized at the University of California by four media organizations and participated by journalists from different parts of the world, The News, the largest English newspaper of Pakistan, on Wednesday said: “If the black Prado is a sign of fear for Pakistani journalists for its frequent use in state-sponsored abduction, the word ‘white van’ is nightmarish for Sri Lankan journalists as they are used by intelligence agencies for abducting journalists and human right activists.” Iqbal Athas, the former defense columnist of Sunday Times, exiled in 2009, took part in the conference giving a presentation.
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Case shows vulnerability at the top of world’s financial institutions

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 March 2012, 05:05 GMT]
Immediately after the Vanni War, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) committed the worst financial misdeed of coming to the rescue of genocidal Sri Lanka in July 2009, by passing a whopping US$ 2600 million loan. Colombo’s Central Bank chairman AN Cabraal described the IMF decision as a “big victory” and a “huge boost in confidence” for Sri Lanka, adding, “The IMF has accepted the Mahinda Chintanaya policy.” The USA, UK, France and Germany having around 30 per cent of the IMF votes, only chose to abstain but didn’t block the loan. French national Mr Dominique Strauss-Kahn was the Managing Director of the IMF during that time. Recent revelations of the life style at the highest echelons of world’s financial control show how vulnerable they are to petty influences.
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Hindu Council objects Buddhist Vihara replacing Saiva temple in Kokku'laay

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 March 2012, 16:24 GMT]
The construction of a Buddhist Vihara in the site after the destruction of several decade old Pi'l'laiyaar temple at Kokku'laay in Mullaith-theevu district cannot be allowed, said C.Yogeswaran, Batticaloa district Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian in a memorandum to Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister D.M.Jayatrena who also hold the post of Ministry of Buddha Sasana. Mr Yogeswaran has sent the memorandum in the capacity of vice president of All Ceylon Hindu Council.
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Eezham Tamil youth in Canada challenge connivance with LLRC-based resolution

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 March 2012, 08:38 GMT]
Second generation Eezham Tamil youth in Canada strongly criticized the support lent to the pro-LLRC US resolution by some diaspora organizations at a panel discussion organized by the National Council of Canadian Tamils on Saturday about the recent United Nations Human Rights Council meeting. While the older generation on the panel were welcoming the US resolution as a “step in the right direction”, the youth activists criticized it for being a “step backward”. Urging the diaspora leadership to have a “slightly longer memory than the last four weeks,” Krisna Saravanamuttu of the NCCT said that the US resolution was “fundamentally flawed” because it used the LLRC as a basis for achieving accountability and a political solution from the Sri Lankan government guilty of genocide.
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Eezham Tamils in Sydney protest against SL ‘reconciliation’ propaganda

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 March 2012, 01:42 GMT]
The High Commissioner of Sri Lanka to Australia, Admiral (retd) Tissara Samarasinghe, who was the former SL Navy commander during the times of the genocidal war, was confronted at Epping, a suburb of Sydney in Australia, by Eezham Tamil protestors on Sunday, when the commander alleged of war-crimes came to Epping Leisure Centre to attend a question-and-answer session organized by the so-called Sri Lankan Reconciliation Forum (SLRF).
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Colombo censors BBC Tamil, Sinhala services

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 March 2012, 22:33 GMT]
Sri Lankan state-run Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC), which relays BBC's Tamil and Sinhala services in the island, avoided airing Sandeshya, the BBC Sinhala service on Sunday. In the meantime, BBC's Tamil language service 'Thamizhoasai' was jammed on Friday and Saturday.
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India placates Sri Lanka, claims it had ‘balanced’ US resolution

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 March 2012, 08:51 GMT]
Soon after the successful adoption of the pro-LLRC US resolution, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sent a letter to the Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa claiming that the Indians “spared no effort and were successful in introducing an element of balance in the language of the resolution”. Openly admitting how India had gone out of the way to water down the resolution to make it “non-intrusive” so as to defend Sri Lanka’s sovereignty, he emphasised on a political solution based on the 13th amendment model.
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Sri Lanka steps up threats on journalists and NGO activists

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 March 2012, 07:46 GMT]
In the wake of two powerful documentaries that have been released this year, ‘Silenced Voices’ by Norwegian film-maker Beate Arnestad, and Channel 4’s ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields : War Crimes Unpunished’, and a resolution voted demanding domestic action by Sri Lanka, Colombo's media has increased threats against journalists and activists both in its territory and abroad as well. In a recent wave of smear campaigns, the state-owned Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Limited, better known as Lake House, and the state run Independent Television Network have targeted journalists, branding them as ‘terrorists’ and ‘traitors’. “Lake House, which controls many newspapers and TV stations, is using accusations of terrorism, separatism and collaborating with the LTTE as a weapon to undermine those who defend freedom of information and media freedom,” a release of Reporters without Borders said.
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TNPF cautions ‘first step’ myth of UN resolution

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 March 2012, 22:58 GMT]
Projecting the watered down resolution passed at the UNHRC that doesn’t recognize the genocide committed on Eezham Tamils and that doesn’t call for international investigation, but stops only at implementing the flawed LLRC recommendations as a ‘first step to victory’ is sawing false hopes in the minds of Eezham Tamils, said Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) in the island in a press release on Friday. Confining the phenomenon to mere war crimes, the application of limited pressure serves only the interests of certain competing powers that consider the whole island as a single unit to make their economic inroads. Certain forces use Tamil aspirations for only a regime change in the island, TNPF said.
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Colombo accelerates Sinhala colonisation of coastal Vanni

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 March 2012, 15:08 GMT]
SL President's son and Hambantota district parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa has stepped up Sinhala occupation of coastal villages of Mullaiththeevu and Ma'nal Aa'ru (Weli Oya) districts of Vanni mainland this week, civil sources in Mullaiththeevu told TamilNet. Hundreds of Sinhala fishermen were brought from South on Wednesday morning in 20 lorries with their boats and fishing equipments to Chemmalai, a coastal village of Mullaiththeevu district. Local Tamil fishermen who objected the move were assaulted by the occupying Sri Lanka Army and chased away. The SL military officials told Tamils that the fishermen from South had obtained 8-month pass to settle in Chemmalai for fishing. In the meantime Tamil families that resettled in Kokku'laay after 23 years have come under assault by SL military and Sinhalese settlers.
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Watered-down resolution passes in UNHRC, stops short of international investigations

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 March 2012, 13:57 GMT]
The UN Rights Council on Thursday approved the LLRC-based US-tabled resolution urging Colombo to probe Human Rights violations domestically with assistance and advice from the UN rights body. The resolution stopped short of calling for an international investigation. In the 47-member UNHRC, 24 countries including India, voted for the resolution while 15 voted against. 8 countries abstained. Meanwhile, Chinese news agency Xinhua reported SL minister Laksman Yapa Abeywardene as saying that Colombo's relationship with close neighbor India and powerful USA would not be changed despite the resolution passed in UN Human Rights Council. "Whatever decisions taken by India and the U.S. with regard to the resolution, that will be limited to that issue only," the Sri Lankan minister said.
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Cannot expect solutions from NGOs tied to western bureaucracies: Kurdish Activist

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 20:54 GMT]
Stating that oppressed nations must enforce their own agendas and not rely on NGOs like ICG for solutions, Kurdish activist in UK, Mehmet Aksoy, argued that such NGOs were entrenched in bureaucracies, at a seminar on ‘State Repression and the Struggle for Self-determination: Strategies for Resistance’ organized by Campaign against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC) on Sunday. The meeting at the University of London Union, London was held in association with diaspora organizations of Kurds, Balochs, Eezham Tamils, Basques, and Sindhis. The Eezham Tamil activists spoke about how the double standards in dealing with the Tamils deployed by the western governments gave a green signal for the GoSL to carry out its genocidal offensive in May 2009.
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De-miners locate remains of cluster bomb in Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 20:32 GMT]
A container allegedly deployed by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) to carry cluster bomblets has been recovered recently by the de-miners of the humanitarian de-mining agency Halo Trust near a house at Thiruvaiuyaa'ru, 3 km east of Ki'linochchi town, media sources told TamilNet on Wednesday providing a photo displaying the container placed at the office of the Halo Trust. The markings on the case have been masked by painting, allegedly by the SLAF before the bombardment, a practice observed following the exposure of SLAF deploying banned weapons in 2009. Despite the systematic destruction of crucial evidences of war-crimes and genocide in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils following May 2009 by the Sri Lankan military, humanitarian de-miners have obtained parts of cluster bombs that were heavily used by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) during the war, the sources further said.
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China card misleads Indian public

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 06:38 GMT]
“The question that needs to be answered now is should the UPA government [in New Delhi] be more worried about alliance politics or China’s growing dominance in South Asia,” asks a news feature appeared in The Times of India on Tuesday. By taking a stand to vote against Sri Lanka at Geneva, the UPA government for the moment seems to have calmed the political furore. But bypassing one crisis India seems to find itself in a potentially bigger threat of leaving Sri Lanka in the hands of China, the feature said. If the thrust of the Times of India feature is to discourage India from acting on Sri Lanka by showing the China card, the media is misleading the Indian public, said an Eezham Tamil politician in the island.
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Centre for Peace and Reconciliation attacked in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 March 2012, 10:30 GMT]
Four armed personnel, allegedly from the occupying Sri Lankan military's Intelligence, on Saturday attacked Tamil civilians who had gathered at the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation (CPR) at Grousseault Road in Jaffna City to receive free legal assistance in their effort to locate their kith and kin whose whereabouts are not known following the undeclared arrests, abductions during the mass incarceration and white-van abductions in Jaffna peninsula and Vanni. The CPR, which is run by the Church, regularly conducts free legal aid for victims of human rights violations. The attackers beat the victims and threw dirt on them forcing them to flee the Centre. Meanwhle, SL military intelligence operatives were questioning the whereabouts of a priest of the CPR alleging that he had gone to attend the Human Rights Council sessions taking place in Geneva.
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Jayalalithaa blasts New Delhi supporting US-bailout of Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 March 2012, 19:45 GMT]
Coming hard on Indian Prime Minister’s announcement in the parliament on Monday forenoon that India is inclined to vote in favour of the US-resolution at Geneva UNHRC, the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms Jayalalithaa on Monday evening described the stand as evasive and useless as it is not answering an earlier TN Assembly resolution calling for international investigation on the war crimes and genocide. According to Jayalalithaa, both New Delhi and the DMK chief Karunanidhi once again enact a drama similar to the one in the last days of the Vanni war in hoodwinking Tamils. Leaving aside seeking a commitment from Sri Lanka to report to the UNHRC on progress, the US-tabled resolution at Geneva leaves everything in the hands of Sri Lanka and harps on only implementing Sri Lanka’s own LLRC recommendations.
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India inclined to vote in favour of US resolution: Manmohan Singh

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 March 2012, 07:36 GMT]
Following extreme pressure from all the political parties and movements in Tamil Nadu, especially after the debate following the recent follow-up documentary by the Channel-4 received its highest attention in Tamil Nadu, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday informed the Indian Parliament that India is inclined to vote in favour of the US resolution on Sri Lanka in the UN Human Rights Council, initial reports from New Delhi said.
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Shavendra Silva declared "persona non grata" to British event

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 March 2012, 15:25 GMT]
The U.K.'s United Nation Mission in New York, decided not to invite Sri Lanka's Acting Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and ex-Major General in Sri Lankan Army (SLA), Shavendra Silva, to the Commonwealth Day reception, triggering a boycott from Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to the UN, Dr Palitha Kohona, the current co-chair of the Commonwealth Caucus in New York, media in Colombo reported.
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MIA tweets on Channel-4, creates wide war-crimes publicity

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 March 2012, 03:49 GMT]
Maya Arulpragasam (popularly known as MIA), the Jaffna born music phenom, created unexpected world-wide publicity for the Channel-4's recently released documentary on Sri Lanka's war-crimes when she entered a tweet debate with CNN's Anderson Cooper when she tweeted her followers suggesting "they also tune in," and then singled out Cooper, tweeting, "someone should make @andersoncooper watch it / film it and show the world what happens when respected journos get it wrong #killingfields." In her following tweet, she said that Cooper had called her "a terrorist for speaking out."
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Eezham Tamils demonstrate outside US Embassy in London

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 March 2012, 23:08 GMT]
Targeting the US draft resolution to be tabled in Geneva later this month, hundreds of Tamils gathered outside the US Embassy in London on Friday demanding that an independent international investigation into the genocide of Eezham Tamils in their homeland be included in the resolution at the 19th session of the UN Human Rights Council. Arranged at short notice by the Tamil Coordinating Committee UK (TCCUK), the demonstration drew a cross section of Eezham Tamils in the UK, including significant number of youth. Demonstrators held placards that identified Eezham Tamils as a nation and asked the international community to initiate a UN-sponsored referendum to resolve their national question.
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Ram journalism faces criticism in JNU for pro-Sri Lanka bias, endorsing genocide

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 March 2012, 06:04 GMT]
Activists of Delhi Tamil Students’ Union, Democratic Students Union, Students for Resistance and other common students raised slogans against N. Ram accusing him of being a ‘media fascist’ and ‘a stooge of Rajapaksa’ at a public meeting in JNU after his reply to a question on The Hindu’s role in whitewashing the Sri Lankan state genocide of the Eezham Tamils, wherein he had extensively blamed the LTTE. The meeting on ‘Paid news and media ethics’ was organized at JNU on Wednesday by the Student’s Federation of India, which is the students wing of the CPI(M). The fact that N.Ram and The Hindu have unethically manipulated news to cover up the war crimes of Colombo makes them complicit in the genocide committed on the Eezham Tamils, a Tamil Nadu research scholar in JNU told TamilNet.
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Indian Army commander meets occupying Sinhala commander in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 March 2012, 18:56 GMT]
Indian military’s southern commander Lt.Gen. AK Singh, making a one-day visit to Jaffna, met Sri Lanka’s occupying military commander in Jaffna, Maj. Gen. Mahinda Kadurusinghé on Tuesday to be briefed about the ‘security situation’ and about the ‘resettlement, rehabilitation, reintegration and development’ processes undertaken by the genocidal military in Jaffna. Sri Lanka enjoys a rare privilege of having ‘military to military’ relationship with India that allows relatively free communication between the officials of the two militaries. The Indian commander also met the SL colonial governor in Jaffna, Maj. Gen. Chandrasri.
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Detention without trial, Amnesty blasts Sri Lanka's rights record

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 March 2012, 02:48 GMT]
"Hundreds of people languish in arbitrary, illegal and often incommunicado detention in Sri Lanka, vulnerable to torture and extrajudicial execution, despite the end of the country’s long conflict... arbitrary and illegal detention and enforced disappearances remain routine in Sri Lanka, where human rights abuses of all types go uninvestigated and unpunished," Amnesty International said in a new report "Locked away: Sri Lanka's security detainees," released Tuesday.
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Boyle warns Tamil diaspora against "Stall and Delay" diplomacy at UNHRC

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 March 2012, 23:55 GMT]
Noting the U.S. ambassador to UNHRC Eileen Donahoe's statement that the resolution forwarded by the U.S. has been toned down from an earlier version that sought a government action plan on accountability and reconciliation by June, to now calling for the U.N. Human Rights Commissioner to report to the council a year from now on the steps Sri Lanka has taken," Professor Boyle, an expert in international law and a keen observer of Sri Lanka politics, said the U.S. Government is going along with the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) strategy to run the clock out on the Tamils, just as the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians with USA support. The Tamil diaspora and supporters like us should not fall into this trap, but instead come up with a entirely new strategy."
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Dr. Manoharan rejects Colombo's proposal, demands release of CoI report

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 March 2012, 01:39 GMT]
Dr Kasippillai Manoharan, the father of Ragihar, one of the student victims of the Trinco-5 killings, rejected Colombo's proposal in Geneva that Colombo would reopen investigations into the 2006 killing of five students in Trincomalee and 17 aid workers at Muthoor saying that Colombo's assurances are another ploy to buy time to sidestep incriminating the alleged killers, the Special Task Force (STF). Dr Manoharan added that, while there were serious flaws in the Commission of Inquiries that completed investigations of the Trinco students killing, Colombo, before attempting to mislead the world again, should first release the CoI report that might contain useful details into the identity of his son's killers.
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Salvadoran Ex-defense minister convicted of torture, ordered deported

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 March 2012, 13:46 GMT]
A U.S. immigration judge has ruled that there are sufficient grounds to begin deportation proceedings against a former Salvadoran defense minister for his alleged involvement in torture and extrajudicial killings in the Central American country in the 1980s, Reuters reported. Center for Justice & Accountability (CJA), a human rights group involved in the case, praised the ruling saying it was "the first judicial affirmation of Mr Casanova's role in those horrendous crimes."
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Tamil plaintiffs to appeal ruling on war crimes case against Rajapakse

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 March 2012, 16:37 GMT]
Bruce Fein, the attorney for the three Tamil plaintiffs who filed war-crimes charges against Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse, said Saturday that his clients have given consent to file an appeal against the ruling by the District Court of District of Columbia. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said in the Court opinion that she had to dismiss the case because the Obama administration had said Rajapakse was immune from litigation as a foreign head of state. The appeal will be heard by a panel of three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit after the notice of appeal is filed within 30 days of the lower court ruling on the case.
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US-resolution inadequate, India should seize opportunity: New Delhi-based CHRI

[TamilNet, Friday, 09 March 2012, 19:28 GMT]
“The proposed resolution does not go far enough. It will not immediately call for direly needed international investigations — a bitter disappointment. In this context, the proposed resolution must not preclude future UNHRC efforts that demand justice, accountability and international investigations in Sri Lanka. The resolution should be voted on only as a first step in the right direction, and not as a final step to water down scrutiny or as a tactic to delay urgently needed justice in Sri Lanka,” said Maja Daruwala, Director of the New Delhi-based Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) in a feature appeared in The Indian Express, Friday. She urged India to seize the opportunity and sway votes at UNHRC in favour of accountability in Sri Lanka.
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Protest sends away Sri Lanka’s law academic in Tamil Nadu conference

[TamilNet, Friday, 09 March 2012, 09:55 GMT]
Organizers of an international conference at Manonmaniam Sundaranar University in Thirunelvely, Tamil Nadu, decided to escort out Ms Jeeva Niriella of the Colombo University law faculty through the side door, when barging in protestors accusing Sri Lanka of genocide demanded Jeeva to leave India. The afternoon session of the 3-day conference on Thursday was disrupted to the disbelief and shock of the organisers, reported Times of India on Friday. During the morning session, Ms. Niriella was eulogising ‘women empowerment’ in Sri Lanka, citing Srimao Bandaranayake, world’s first woman prime minister and the current chief justice who is a woman. She was silent to a question about large-scale crimes committed on women in the island.
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SL soldiers clash, killing 3 among them inside camp in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 09 March 2012, 06:15 GMT]
A clash among the occupying soldiers at a major Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camp in the Jaffna peninsula has taken the lives of at least 3 and has injured many on Friday morning, news sources in Jaffna said. The SLA camp is located along the A9 Highway, at Nu'naavil, 5 km south of Chaavakachcheari town. In a territory where the occupying soldiers in the camps often exceed the number of local people, such clashes within the SLA are common, sporadically ending with killings, the sources further said.
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Promote Dublin report, build solidarity, recognize Self-Determination: grassroots activists in UK

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 March 2012, 21:22 GMT]
Grassroots activists of the British Tamil Forum (BTF) and journalists from the UK-based International Association of Tamil Journalists (IATJ), who came together with leftist activists of the Socialist Resistance (SR) and Denmark-based leftist activist Ron Ridenour, in a meeting held in London on Wednesday, resolved to promote the findings of the Dublin Tribunal on Sri Lanka and to give foremost priority to the work on building solidarity with trade unions and progressive groups in the UK on the campaign to recognize Tamils Right to Self-Determination. The meeting which was chaired by Fred Leplat of the SR, also had participants from the NSSP, Sri Lanka.
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US-resolution binds Tamils to less than the 13th Amendment

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 March 2012, 07:01 GMT]
A draft resolution that appears in media reports as has been tabled by the USA at Geneva UNHCR, while specifying the ‘constructive’ LLRC recommendations that has to be implemented, talks of only de-militarizing the North but not the East and confines the model of political solution to undefined devolution of powers to the provinces and not to the North-East homeland of Eezham Tamils. While internationally binding Tamils to further dilution of the already inadequate provisions of the Indo-Lanka Agreement, the US-resolution giving international endorsement to LLRC-implementation bails out Sri Lankan state and its regime from international investigations of the genocidal crimes and from the need of any constitutional restructure of the unitary state.
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Thousands gather in Geneva denouncing deceptive deliberations

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 March 2012, 17:25 GMT]
While the USA and Sri Lanka and their respective blocs at UNHRC squabble whether the LLRC machination against the nation of Eezham Tamils has to be left to Sri Lanka or internationally monitored in implementation, thousands of Eezham Tamils gathered in Geneva on Monday, denounced the deceptive deliberations and demanded international investigation on the genocide, recognition of the sovereignty of the nation of Eezham Tamils and called for a UN-sponsored referendum among Tamils in the island and in the diaspora. The demonstration organized by Walk for Justice and backed by the Tamil Coordination Committees (TCC) of various countries in the Europe also demanded the immediate release of detainees in the island and removal of occupying Sinhala military from the Tamil homeland.
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Tamil Nadu demands India to declare Rajapaksa guilty of genocide

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 March 2012, 13:07 GMT]
In a pan-Tamil Nadu fasting campaign organised by the Communist Party of India with the support of many major political parties of Tamil Nadu on Tuesday, the Government of India was urged to declare Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa as guilty of genocide. The CPI demand supported by the ruling AIDMK and by political parties MDMK, VCK and Tamil National Communist Party gains much significance against the backdrop of repeated bailouts of the Rajapaksa regime in the international forums by the New Delhi Establishment, political observers in Chennai said. The main fasting campaign, participated by a large number of party activists, took place in front of the Thaamparam divisional secretariat in Chennai.
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Five ex-LTTE members abducted since February 27

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 March 2012, 02:13 GMT]
Five former members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who were released last year by the occupying SL forces for integration with their families after the genocidal SL military's ‘rehabilitation’ programme, have been reported missing last week.
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Nimalarajan murder-suspect rapes and kills 13-year-old girl, villagers enraged

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 March 2012, 23:06 GMT]
An EPDP paramilitary operative on Saturday raped and killed a 13-year-old student of Neduntheevu Maha Viththiyaalayam, Jesudasan Lakshini, triggering anger among the villagers of Neduntheevu (Delf), an islet off Jaffna. The villages encircled the camps of the Sri Lanka Navy and the SL Police on Sunday and demanded that the civilian representatives of the islet should be present to monitor that investigations were being carried out. The suspect was earlier arrested in connection with Nimalarajan killing, but escaped legal processing with the backing of SL Police, the residents alleged.
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Worried Colombo consulted top D.C. law firm for advice

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 March 2012, 15:22 GMT]
John Bellinger, currently a senior partner in a large Washington Law firm, and formerly the legal adviser to the State Department in the Bush Administration, writes in a popular website that the Sri Lankan Government consulted him for advice on the war-crimes charges against Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse in the D.C. District Court. The article also discloses that Sri Lanka requested the U.S. State Department to intervene in the Rajapakse war-crimes case more than nine-months ago, but the State Department delayed issuing the "Suggestion of immunity" until after Judge Kotelly formally requested the views of the U.S. Government. Judge Kotelly dismissed the case on the grounds of Head of State Immunity.
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Colombo harasses Tamil politicians, civil officials

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 March 2012, 11:21 GMT]
Sri Lankan ‘Criminal Investigation Department’ in Colombo has stepped up harassments on Tamil politicians and civil officials summoning them for investigation meetings in Colombo. A politician and a medical officer have been recently ‘invited’ to appear in Colombo without providing any information on why they were being ‘investigated’. Colombo government has again started to systematically harass the active sections Eezham Tamils, seeking to dis-empower them by de-motivating and demoralising such activists.
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Land grabbed for Buddhist stupa, local people blocked at Kudumpimalai, Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 March 2012, 07:33 GMT]
Sri Lanka's Sinhala military occupying the scenic sacred hillock Kudumpimalai (Baron's Cap) in the Koa'ra'lappattu South Division of the Batticaloa district has not only appropriated five acres of land there to build a Buddhist stupa, but also blocks the local people from entering that area. The occupying military plans to convert the local sacred place of Eezham Tamils and a former jungle stronghold of the LTTE into a tourist place for the Sinhala-Buddhists from the south, informed civil officials of the division told TamilNet. The land has been appropriated at Alli-Oadai junction, 2km south of the hillock and the local people are blocked from going to that junction and beyond it, besides being prevented from entering their grazing lands in the nearby village Tharavai. The name of the junction also has been Sinhalicised similar to the Sinhalicisation of Kudumpimalai into Thoppigala.
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US demand on Sri Lanka is not enough: UNSG Panel of Experts

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 March 2012, 19:08 GMT]
Recalling the 2009 blunder by UN Human Rights Council of praising Sri Lanka for its bloody finish to the civil war and stating that the war in its final days had cost as many as 40,000 deaths, the three UN Secretary General's Expert Panel Members, Marzuki Darusman, Steven Ratner and Yasmin Sooka, on Friday said “it is time for the council to correct its embarrassing decision from 2009.” While crediting US for its efforts, the experts of UN panel said: “Yet such a demand is not enough.” Given Sri Lanka's unwillingness to take concrete steps, the best way to get to the truth is for the council to “create an independent investigative body to determine the facts and identify those responsible, as we recommended in our report,” the trio said in an Op-Ed article published in the New York Times.
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Supreme Court's June ruling can undermine Rajapakse verdict, says Fein

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 March 2012, 01:40 GMT]
Commenting that the District of Columbia District Court’s dismissal of the Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA) claims by three Tamil plaintiffs against Sri Lanka's President Rajapaksa in his individual capacity for complicity in at least six extra-judicial killings, Bruce Fein, the attorney for the plaintiffs, said that the dismissal was ill-reasoned. Mr Fein added that the ruling is vulnerable to reversal upon an appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and that the ruling expected in June on Mohamad v. Palestinian Authority, where the issue is centered around the meaning of the word "individual," may also overturn the ruling on the case against Rajapakse.
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Head of State immunity saves Rajapakse from war-crimes charges

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 March 2012, 12:42 GMT]
Noting that "two centuries of case law and basic constitutional and statutory principles prevent this court from allowing the plaintiffs' complaint to move forward at this time,'' District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly Wednesday, in the ruling on the case against Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse on war crime charges filed by three Tamil plaintiffs, said she had to dismiss the suit against President Rajapaksa because the Obama administration had said he was immune from litigation as a foreign head of state.
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