Rajapakse immune from war crime charges while in office, rules US Court

[TamilNet, Sunday, 31 March 2013, 12:04 GMT]
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit in the opinion delivered this week on the appeal case against Sri Lanka's President Rajpakse filed by three Tamil plaintiffs claiming civil damages on war-crimes charges ruled that "as a consequence of the [U.S.] State Department’s suggestion of immunity, the defendant [Rajapakse] is entitled to head of state immunity under the common law while he remains in office...," and affirmed the judgment of the district court dismissing the plaintiffs’ complaint. The plaintiffs' attorney Bruce Fein told TamilNet that he will advise his clients and the sponsoring organization if they should consider filing a writ of certiorari keep the option open to move the case further forward to the Supreme Court.
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SL military operatives attack ITAK meeting in Ki'linochchi, 20 wounded

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 March 2013, 08:04 GMT]
Four Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians, Mavai Senathirajah, S. Sritharan, E. Saravanapavan and MA Sumanthiran, who visited Ki'linochchi Saturday for a meeting at Sritharan MP's office, were besieged by a Sinhala mob, numbering more than 100, that attacked the meeting at 11:00 a.m. The alleged SL military intelligence operatives, carrying Lion flags, were shouting slogans against the TNA and were pelting stones on the public meeting. 20 people have sustained injuries. The public providing security to the TNA parliamentarians caught two of the Sinhala attackers. However, the SL police, who came to the site 75 minutes after the report of the attack, allowed the two alleged military personnel to walk free without detaining them for investigations. The brutal assault has been carried out in a similar fashion as the attack reported at Thellippazhai in Jaffna in June 2011.
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TN resolution needs to be legally and politically binding: SP Udayakumar

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 March 2013, 02:53 GMT]
Recognizing the significance of the resolution passed in Tamil Nadu state assembly recently calling for a UN referendum among the Eezham Tamils, TN grassroots activist SP Udayakumar emphasised that the resolution needs to be made politically and legally binding. “Tamil Nadu resolutions are only resolutions right now. We need to make them legally binding,” he said in a video interview to TamilNet from Idinthakarai. Likewise, speaking on the student protests in Tamil Nadu, Mr. Udayakumar, who is at the heart of the peaceful struggle against the nuclear reactor in Koodangku’lam, further said that it was too early for the students to give up the protests unless “the Tamil Nadu resolution is accepted by the Indian parliament and if the India government is willing to act on it”.
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TNA MP cautions on PC elections harped on by Geneva resolution

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 March 2013, 15:05 GMT]
“We are a distinct Nation with historic records in this soil, proving our evolution [as a Nation]. The Sinhala Nation destroyed us. A nation was destroyed by another nation here. But, the international community has handed us over to those who destroyed us to investigate the crimes against us; we have been handed over to those who fired upon us; to those who fired shells on us; to those who fired phosphorus bombs against us; to those who fired cluster munitions on us. How can you expect justice from this country [of the Sinhala Nation],” asked Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian Sivagnanam Sritharan, in a press meet in Jaffna on Wednesday. “Therefore, an intervention by the international community is a must and an urgent one,” failing which the existence of the Tamil nation in the island would be wiped out from the maps of the world, he further said.
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SL military launches intelligence operations to monitor Muslim youth of Mannaar

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 March 2013, 13:43 GMT]
While the Sinhala Buddhist organizations, with alleged backing from certain sections of Colombo government, have stepped up attacks on places of worships of the Muslims in the South and a hate campaign against Halal meet is being whipped up, the Sri Lankan military intelligence operatives in Mannaar district have started to ‘observe’ Muslim youth under a military operation termed as ‘preventive measures’. The SL police sources in Mannaar said Muslim youth who might contemplate on armed resistance against the Sinhala extremist elements in South are being monitored in recent days, both day and night.
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SL Navy appropriates lands of Muslims in Pulmoaddai

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 March 2013, 11:40 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Navy in Trincomalee district has appropriated lands belonging to Muslim villagers in Ma'nki'ndimalai, Ponmalai-kudaa, Theaththaatheevu and Veerantheevu in Pulmoaddai village that comes under the Kuchchave'li DS division in Trincomalee district. SLN sources say that these lands are urgently needed to construct camps. The villagers who were displaced during the war, who now want to resettle in their villages, are being prevented by the Sinhala Navy that tells them to find alternative places.
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SL military steps up militarisation of Batticaloa, new camp at Tsunami settlement

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 March 2013, 07:59 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army is constructing a new army camp in Ma'nmunai-North DS division of Batticaloa district, at a site where Tsunami affected people are settled. The residents of the Tsunami Housing Scheme area of Ma'nmunai North, threatened by the construction of the new military base, questioned the motive behind the establishment of a new camp, while a camp is already situated at Paalameen-madu, just one km close to the site. An SL police station, at Kokkuvil, is also in the close proximity. The sheer extensiveness and intensity of SL militarization and Sinhalicisation of the predominantly Tamil district in the East, are not even taken up for any discussion by the so-called international community that ‘hailed’ the ‘liberation’ of the East by genocidal Sri Lanka in 2007, Batticaloa Tamil activists said.
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Tamil Nadu Assembly resolves for UN referendum on separate Eelam

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 March 2013, 10:03 GMT]
In a historic move, the Tamil Nadu State Assembly on Wednesday, unanimously passed a resolution for bringing in arrangements at the level of the UN Security Council to conduct a referendum among Eezham Tamils in the island as well as in the diaspora on the question of Separate Eelam. In addition, the resolution passed at the Tamil Nadu Assembly demanded the Government of India to stop calling Sri Lanka a friendly country. The resolution also included the earlier demands ie., Independent International Investigations on Genocide and War Crimes as well as imposition of economic sanctions on Sri Lanka. The resolution, unanimously passed, was moved by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms Jayalalithaa.
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BBC blames Sri Lanka for targetted interference, suspends broadcasts

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 March 2013, 03:50 GMT]
"We regret the disruption in service to our loyal audiences in Sri Lanka, but such targeted interference in our programmes is a serious breach of trust with those audiences, which the BBC cannot allow," BBC World Service Director Peter Horrocks announced Tuesday suspending broadcasts to Sri Lanka. Both English language and Tamil services broadcast via the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) have been stopped with immediate effect, the BBC reported.
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Ambassador Blake cannot reverse Tamil genocide: Prof. Boyle

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 March 2013, 00:43 GMT]
Responding to the statements made during the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, Robert Blake's, interview with the BBC, where Blake appears to characterize the "GOSL’s mass extermination of over 100,000 Tamils in Vanni in 2009" as nothing more than “some of the negative trends that have occurred with respect to rule of law and human rights in Sri Lanka," that needs to be "reversed," Professor Francis A. Boyle, an expert in international law, said, while Blake cannot reverse the genocide, the "start of “revers{ing}” them is to establish an International Investigative Commission in order to prosecute them." Blake also denies in the interview that he [and the international community] had any knowledge of the magnitude of the casualties during the final months of the war.
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SL Forest Department lets loose wild elephants on resettled Tamils in Ampaa'rai

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 March 2013, 12:28 GMT]
Wild elephants in large numbers are systematically driven into villages where Tamils predominantly live in the Ampaa'rai district by a section of Sinhalese connected to the Sri Lankan Forest Department, presumably to prevent the uprooted Eezham Tamils from returning and resettling in their places of origin, sources in Ampaa'rai said. The Colombo government that exploits the poverty status of these people, while not providing them with the basic amenities, sponsors Sinhala colonisation schemes that also include settlement of SL military men in the area. So far, after 2009, seven new Sri Lanka Army camps have been established in Ampaa'rai district.
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Queen to skip CHOGM - paper

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 March 2013, 11:34 GMT]
Quoting officials from the Commonwealth Secretariat, Sunday Guardian, an Indian English paper, said that the November scheduled Commonwealth Head of States Meeting (CHOGM) in Colombo will "most likely go ahead," several heads of government will boycott "in protest at Sri Lanka's human rights record," and that Queen Elizabeth, is "almost certain to skip the meeting". Former UK Foreign Secretaries Malcolm Rifkind and David Miliband had jointly called the Queen's scheduled attendance at the Colombo CHOGM "grotesque", a sentiment apparently shared by the David Cameron government, the paper said.
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Colombo accelerates Sinhala colonisation in Trincomalee district

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 March 2013, 13:23 GMT]
The SL government is actively engaged in settling Sinhalese families from the Southern districts of the country in Sri Mangalapura, a Sinhala village in the Seruwila electorate in the Trincomalee district. Temporary huts are hurriedly constructed in Sri Mangalapura to accommodate hundreds of southern Sinhalese families brought to Trincomalee district, news sources in Trincomalee said. Tamil civil sources say this is an attempt by the Colombo government to change the demography of the Trincomalee district.
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‘US resolution annihilates aspiration of Eezham Tamils’: Tamil Nadu writer

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 March 2013, 00:43 GMT]
Criticizing the pro-LLRC US resolution passed at Geneva, Tamil Nadu based writer, activist and poet, Meena Kandasamy argues that “Carrying out the diktats of such a document will only annihilate the genuine aspirations and right to self-determination of the Eelam Tamils” basing her argument on the fact that the LLRC categorically denies the existence of a Tamil homeland in the North and East of the island of Sri Lanka. Criticizing both the US and India for abetting the genocide of the Eezham Tamil nation, she further states “Justice in this unipolar world revolves around the UN and the imperialist powers that it serves. Even though the Eelam Tamils have historical sovereignty and earned sovereignty, if they believe that separation alone can guarantee them safety, their last recourse to save themselves from complete extermination is to stake a claim to remedial sovereignty before the UN.”
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Geneva resolution will impede progress: NYT

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 March 2013, 20:42 GMT]
The Human Rights Council voted once again to urge the Sri Lankan government to investigate “alleged violations of human rights” for the growing evidence that government soldiers killed tens of thousands of civilians in their bloody campaign to crush the LTTE. "But as with last year’s resolution, this year’s Council vote offers little more than hand-wringing," an opinion column in the New York Times said, adding, "[w]hile they carry symbolic weight, such resolutions may, in fact, be impeding progress rather than facilitating it."
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New US Secretary of State responsible for Geneva injustice: Boyle

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 March 2013, 15:15 GMT]
The New US Secretary of State John Kerry, who assumed office on 1 Feb 2013, was the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations in 2009 that brought out a report advising the USA to help Sri Lanka’s military without insisting on political solutions. Finding a clear link between the 2009 Kerry Report and Kerry’s State Department, US Professor of Law, Francis A Boyle said, "The callous and callow Kerry Report came right after the GOSL genocidal massacre of about 100,000 Tamils in Vanni, recommending that the United States government abandon all principles and instead aid and abet the continued GOSL repression and persecution of the Tamils. That is precisely the policy we now see in operation with Kerry as U.S. Secretary of State. This latest UNHRC Resolution sponsored by Kerry’s State Department and acting pursuant to his instructions proves it. Kerry should be fired," said Boyle.
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95 Tamil girls ‘alter’ the image, says 300,000 strong Sinhala military

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 March 2013, 14:09 GMT]
The 300,000-strong genocidal Sinhala military of Sri Lanka on Thursday took ‘pride’ in recruiting for the first time 95 Tamil girls for ‘office’ work and said that it is an evidence for the military not discriminating on ethnicity. Out of 150 Tamil girls who were originally forced to enter Sri Lanka’s military, 55 managed to escape. During the ‘training,’ around 20 driven to the stage of hysteria were admitted in hospital. The Tamil psychiatry doctor who came forward to their help himself was branded as mentally challenged. He is imprisoned and yet to be released. On the passing out parade day, four of the girls fainted, while their kith and kin were helplessly watching. Promises were made for one million rupees housing aid and 44 girls received Indian-made scooters, but parents complained that their daughters, held against their will, are not allowed to visit homes.
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Australia's vote at Geneva raises questions

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 March 2013, 19:53 GMT]
While rights group and Tamils dismissed the US resolution passed in the UNHRC sessions in Geneva as toothless and as allowing space to Colombo to continue with the structural genocide of Tamils, Australia was reluctant to endorse even this resolution, and voted at the last minute because of "concerns it would offend the ruling Rajapaksa brothers," Australia's ABC news reported quoting executive director of the New York based rights group Human Rights Watch [HRW], Kenneth Roth. "It is pretty clear Australia's policy toward Sri Lanka is the asylum seeker tail wagging the bilateral dog," Roth said.
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Tamil protest in Italy draws support of rights group

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 March 2013, 13:46 GMT]
At a protest organised by the Tamil organisations in the city of Palermo in Italy on Friday, Marco Farina, the head of Human Rights Youth Organisation (HRYO), a youth group that studies about non-violence, pacifism, and tolerance for change and voices for the civil and human rights, pledged his organization's support for the self-determination of the Eezham Tamils.
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Tamil National People’s Front rejects Geneva resolution

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 March 2013, 00:07 GMT]
“The resolution asks that local mechanisms to be put in place in order to carry out the investigations. We find it unacceptable and we reject it completely. […] The second reason why we reject the resolution is that it puts emphasis and a lot of faith in the recommendations of the LLRC report. […] And finally, the third reason, why we distance ourselves from this resolution is, because unlike the first resolution passed in 2012, in this resolution there is a specific mention of the provincial council system. […] Our party’s considered view is that we are not only unable to associate ourselves anywhere close with the resolution, but also that we have come to a difficult decision of rejecting the decision that was passed,” announced Mr Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, President of the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF), at the Press Club meet in Jaffna on Friday.
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Australian Greens Senator criticizes support to empty US resolution

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 March 2013, 03:44 GMT]
Responding to a motion passed in the Australian Federal Parliament on Thursday which welcomed the Australian government’s decision to support the US resolution at Geneva, Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon said “the Australian Greens cannot congratulate the government in supporting the empty US-initiated resolution on Sri Lanka, tabled at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. It is weak because it urges the Sri Lankan government to implement its own investigation into the war crimes that it is accused of committing.” The motion, which is not binding but is significant as a statement of position, that was tabled by Senators Madigan and Xenophon was passed by the senate. In a separate statement, Ms. Rhiannon also called for an independent international investigation on Sri Lanka, referring to the demands of the Tamil Nadu student protestors.
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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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TN upsurge transcending establishments inspires NZ Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 March 2013, 01:12 GMT]
In a demonstration held in Auckland in New Zealand on Wednesday, the demonstrators profusely thanked the students of Tamils Nadu for internationally highlighting the genocide issue of Eezham Tamils at a most wanted time and for taking the issue beyond the party politics of India in convincing the world that creation of Tamil Eelam is the only solution. “Our struggle begins here and a hard road is ahead,” said one of the speakers at the demonstration, participated by professionals, university students and a large number of women. New Zealand Tamils were one of the first to openly caution the entire diaspora last month itself on the dangers portended by the ‘doing nothing’ approach of the USA towards the question of Eezham Tamils.
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PKK leader declares ceasefire with Turkey, calls for peaceful solution

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 March 2013, 01:02 GMT]
Abdullah Ocalan, PKK founder-leader, has given a call for a ceasefire and for a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish national question through democratic means. In a statement from Ocalan read out by Kurdish legislators in Diyarbakir, Turkey on Thursday, coinciding with the celebrations of the Kurdish New Year festival Newroz, he said "let the arms silence, opinions and politics speak", further adding that “this is not an end, this is a beginning. It is not the end of our struggle, it is the start of a new sort of struggle.” Urging the Kurdish armed units to withdraw to Turkish borders, he called on people of “Armenian, Turkic, Assyrian, Arabic and other backgrounds to see the light of freedom and equality as much as Kurdish people do.” He was also of the opinion that a future solution for the Kurds should not be based on “conquest, denial, forced assimilation and annihilation”.
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Diaspora youth join Tamil Nadu students in protest

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 March 2013, 03:46 GMT]
In a demonstration of solidarity with the demands of the Tamil Nadu students’ uprising, Eezham Tamil diaspora youth across several western countries have come out in protest against the pro-LLRC US resolution tabled at Geneva and pushing for a just political solution for the Eezham Tamil nation facing genocidal oppression in its occupied homeland. The protesters were unanimous in rejecting any resolution that binds the Eezham Tamil nation to unitary Sri Lanka. A copy of the US resolution was also burnt in Toronto, where solidarity groups had also participated in protests. While student protests occurred in London, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Toronto, Copenhagen and Oslo on Wednesday, a hunger strike was initiated by students in Sydney on Thursday, and further protests are scheduled in the coming days in major cities in western countries.
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Unprecedented demonstration in Tamil Nadu denounces empty resolution at Geneva

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 March 2013, 03:29 GMT]
Several hundreds of thousands people across Tamil Nadu took to streets on Wednesday in a students-led demonstration unprecedented in recent decades in Tamil Nadu, denouncing the US-tabled empty resolution further diluted by New Delhi at Geneva, and demanding international investigations and plebiscite on the question of Eezham Tamils. Peaceful demonstrations took place at every part of Tamil Nadu, including all the major cities. Conservative estimates put the total number of participants, mostly students, at a million. The positions taken by Washington and New Delhi, the leading architects and abetters to the genocidal war in the island, in bringing out a deceptive resolution at Geneva have contributed immensely to the confirmed awareness among the people of Tamil Nadu that Tamil Eelam is the only solution to the genocide-affected Eezham Tamils, political observers in Chennai commented.
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India to build and launch satellites for genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 March 2013, 03:04 GMT]
India is likely to initiate discussions with Sri Lankan authorities on bilateral cooperation in space-related activities, including building, launching and operating satellites, said The Hindu on Thursday, citing New Delhi’s Government sources. The move is to counter Chinese–Sri Lankan collaboration in the area of space, as a Sri Lankan firm is likely to launch a communication satellite with Chinese help in 2015, The Hindu further said.
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Adopting draft resolution will violate Genocide Convention, says Boyle

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 March 2013, 00:01 GMT]
Commenting on the draft resolution being circulated by the United States at the the Geneva sessions of the UNHRC, Francis Boyle, Professor at the School of Law, University of Illinois and an expert in international law said that UNHRC and its member states, by adopting the draft resolution (3rd draft) will be abetting the on-going systematic structural genocide in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The vote on Sri Lanka resolution is likely to take place as early as Thursday, according to sources in Geneva.
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Tamil Nadu boils - WSJ

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 March 2013, 04:26 GMT]
Thousands of students across Tamil Nadu have launched protests urging India to move a resolution in the UNHCR meeting in Geneva against Sri Lanka's war crimes, Wall Street Jounal, Indian edition, reported. Nearly 500 students have been arrested across Tamil Nadu in the past three days "for fasting, picketing and boycotting classes," according to the State's Police Commissioner. Meanwhile, New York Times commented that "[t]he recent upheaval in Tamil Nadu has been sparked by the recent release of disturbing photographs of the body of the former Tamil rebel leader’s 12-year old son, who appeared to have been shot at close range in the chest, and a report on the continued abuse of Tamils in Sri Lanka."
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German Left youth group conveys solidarity with Tamil Nadu protesters

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 March 2013, 03:31 GMT]
The North Rhine-Westphalia youth wing of the Die Linke leftist political party in Germany conveyed its solidarity with the student upsurge in Tamil Nadu in a statement released on Tuesday. Criticizing the US administration for supporting Sri Lanka owing to “geo-strategic interests in the region”, the statement further called on the German federal government “to push for an international, independent investigation of the genocide, as well as to support a referendum on an independent Tamil state.” Speaking to TamilNet, Balakrishnan Koculan, a leftist Eezham Tamil youth activist from the same party, criticized those sections of diaspora organizations that compromised principled Tamil politics unwilling to criticize the US, urging the diaspora youth to join in protest along with the Tamil Nadu students.
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Confusion prevails among pro-Establishment lobbyists in Geneva

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 19 March 2013, 16:30 GMT]
While the students of Tamil Nadu and the grassroots among the global Tamil diaspora exposed the danger of the US-proposed, LLRC-based, empty resolution from its very inception in the 22nd UNHRC session, a section of the Establishment-centric lobbyists were pinning hopes on the resolution. However, they were taken aback Tuesday, when they were shown the latest amendments that had been made to the draft, informed sources at Geneva told TamilNet.
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Karunanidhi pulls out from New Delhi Establishment

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 19 March 2013, 13:52 GMT]
DMK chief Mr M Karunanidhi in a press meet in Chennai on Tuesday announced the decision of his party pulling out from the ruling Congress coalition and cabinet at New Delhi. Continuing any further in the Indian Central Government is committing great evil to Tamil people, after the Indian Government has largely diluted the US resolution and didn’t consider the suggestions made by the DMK, and as there is a situation created that is not going to help the Eezham Tamils in any way, Mr. Karunanidhi told media. There could be no ambiguity in opinion that Rajapakse regime committed genocide in Tamil Eelam, Mr Karunanidhi said. Paying heroes’ homage (Veera Va’nakkam) to the Tamil fighters and their families who laid down their lives in the Eezham War, Mr Karunanidhi said they fought for idealistic victory, while people lacking Tamil feeling ridiculed at them.
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Rape and murder of Tamil women by Sri Lankan forces aims at genocide: NZ Tamils

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 March 2013, 23:56 GMT]
In a letter addressed to Ms. Navaneetham Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, on Sunday, the Tamil Action Front of New Zealand (TAFNZ), citing established cases of the rape and murder of Tamil Women by the Sinhala military of Sri Lanka, said that there is a pattern of structural genocide being meticulously executed by Sri Lanka, irrespective of who is in power. What is new is the openly declared policy of the Rajapaksa regime to complete the genocide with tacit international support and by calculated false propaganda materialized through wine, women, diamonds and dollars, the TAFNZ letter signed by its coordinator, Mr. A. Theva Rajan, accused.
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Jayalalithaa urging international investigation cum interim setup slips in solution

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 March 2013, 23:28 GMT]
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms. Jayalalithaa in a letter addressed to Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh on Monday, demanded India to “strengthen” the US resolution tabled at Geneva by including an “unequivocal call for a credible, independent, international mechanism to prosecute genocide, war crimes and war criminals.” She wanted the process, including bringing the responsible for trial before an International Court, to be completed within six months for reporting at UNHRC next March. The CM, implying an international interim setup, has also urged India to modify the resolution so that Sri Lanka has to accept an international institution to act on reconciliation coupled with “a pragmatic political package,” making Tamils equal citizens on par with Sinhalese. However, her outlook for solutions was based on a ‘Sri Lankan Tamil minority’ framework.
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TN readies biers for US resolution, demands genocide acceptance, interim set-up, referendum

[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 March 2013, 23:19 GMT]
Declare genocide, announce international investigations on Sri Lanka, bring forth interim administration and conduct UN referendum to do justice to the question of Eezham Tamils, demanded thousands of protestors, who gathered at Marina Beach in Chennai in Tamil Nadu on Sunday. Meanwhile, students of the Indian Institute of Technology in Chennai (IIT), an internationally renowned all-India institute, came out in solidarity with the student upsurge, by observing a day-long fast. Despite the attempt of Tamil Nadu state to deter the upsurge by closing a section of government colleges, the student movement gained momentum during the weekend. In the struggle demanding justice, the students' movement prepares biers to take the US resolution to ‘cremation’ on Monday, news sources in Tamil Nadu said.
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Kapila Jeyasekara, alleged killer of Trinco-5 students, appointed Vanni DIG

[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 March 2013, 10:16 GMT]
H.D.K.S. Kapila Jeyasekera, who rose in ranks as the Superintendent of Police (SP) from the Special Task Force (STF), and who was alleged to have been responsible for the extra-judicial execution of five Trincomalee students in 2006, and other killings in Trincomalee during 2006, including the ACF-17 killings, has been appointed as the Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) to the Ki'linochchi and Mullaiththeevu district, Jaffna Tamil daily Uthayan reported. Mr Jeyasekara is also a close ally of Sri Lanka's Defense Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, and has been kept out of visible public presence after Jeyasekera was accused of a serious security lapse involving India's Prime Minister during his visit to Colombo in 2008.
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Commonwealth's quandary over CHOGM in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 March 2013, 21:25 GMT]
If the Commmonwealth Head of States Meeting (CHOGM) were held in Colombo this November, "what’s at stake is the reputation of the Commonwealth...," and, as the host, "it [Commonwealth] will be led by a country that committed war crimes on a scale that the UN says, "represented a grave assault on the entire regime of international law,"" says Francis Harrison, a former reporter for the BBC in Colombo. Canada’s Harper has said he will not attend a Colombo meeting, UK's key foreign affairs committee has recommended the Prime Minister not to attend, and there is wide speculation that the Queen will not attend.
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Karunanidhi indicates quitting GOI if international investigations not taken up

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 March 2013, 13:17 GMT]
If the Government of India is not going to take an effort to modify the US-tabled resolution at Geneva, to have provisions without any ambiguity for an independent international investigation on the genocide that took place in Ilangkai [Sri Lanka], for the identification of the war criminals responsible and for action within a stipulated period of time, there would be no point in the DMK continuing any further in the cabinet of the Government of India, said a press statement of the DMK chief Mr. M. Karunanidhi, released from the DMK Headquarters on Friday.
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US resolution burnt in front of US Embassy in London

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 March 2013, 12:26 GMT]
Hundreds of Eezham Tamils gathered in front of the US Embassy in London on Friday evening, burnt the copy of the US resolution tabled at the UNHRC session in Geneva and the copy of the LLRC recommendations of Sri Lanka, based on which the USA has tabled the resolution. All the speakers at the protest welcomed the student uprising in Tamil Nadu opposing the US designs as an inspiration to global Tamils in continuing the struggle of Eezham Tamils. Viewing the US resolution as one that is facilitating the agenda of the genocidal State and regime of Sri Lanka in the annihilation of the nation of Eezham Tamils, the demonstrators demanded protection and solutions based on identity, territoriality and sovereignty of Eezham Tamils as a nation in the island. The protestors who gathered at a short notice braved rains and detractors pinning hopes on the USA.
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Gajendrakumar at UN calls for transitional administration to safeguard Tamil Nation

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 March 2013, 15:48 GMT]
Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the president of Tamil National Peoples' Front (TNPF), who addressed the UPR Review session in Geneva on Friday, has called for an internationally supervised transitional administration of the Tamil homeland in the North and East of the island of Sri Lanka. Noting that the genuine grievances and aspirations of Eezham Tamils are reduced to “mere individual human rights problems” rather than the “destruction of their Nation”, Mr. Gajendrakumar, who represented the NGO, International Education Development (IED), at the UN forum called for independent international investigation on Sri Lanka. In a carefully drafted statement, he further said that the UPR is “de-Tamilized” to the point that, anyone not fully cognizant of the facts of the 65 year long Tamil-Sinhala conflict would not even know who is to be a party to “reconciliation.”
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USA continues to harp on implementing Sri Lanka's LLRC

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 March 2013, 13:21 GMT]
Seeing a ‘broad spectrum of recommendations’ in the so-called Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) of Sri Lanka, the delegation representing the USA at the UPR review sessions of the UN Human Rights Council on Friday continued to harp on Sri Lanka's own LLRC, avoiding any reference to international investigations on Sri Lanka. The US position was only differeniating between the internal mechanisms of Sri Lanka, namely the National Action Plan and the LLRC.
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Colombo executing structural genocide, not reconciliation - Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 March 2013, 11:54 GMT]
Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the President of the Tamil National People's Front, in a discussion with Phil Miller of "Open Democracy" in Geneva, criticized the language of "reconciliation" promoted by British officials and asserts that “structural genocide, not reconciliation, is the phrase which most accurately describes what is going on,” and adds that “[t]he land grab is not peculiar to this [Rajapakse] regime. It has been happening for the last 65 years. The only time it stopped was during the armed struggle of the LTTE, because then Sinhalese people were not willing to settle in the north and east, where a de-facto Tamil state existed."
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Tamil Nadu student upsurge gains momentum overcoming manipulations

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 March 2013, 06:03 GMT]
The Tamil Nadu student protests against the pro-LLRC US resolution being tabled at Geneva has intensified in all major towns and cities even despite attempts by certain sections of the Indian media and certain political elements to twist the purpose of the protest, Thanjavur based sources told TamilNet. A protest involving over 5000 students took place on Wednesday at Thanjavur, a city of great historical and cultural importance to Tamils. Speaking to TamilNet, the sources said that while the student protests across Tamil Nadu were all about rejecting the US resolution as it did not meet any of the just expectations of the Eezham Tamils, some sections of the media and political circles were trying to give a false image that the students were urging India to support this hollow resolution.
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U.S. Congressman calls for International Investigation into war-crimes

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 March 2013, 01:13 GMT]
U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a letter to Secretary Kerry on Wednesday, expressed serious concern regarding the deterioration of democracy and the lack of progress on reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka, and added that "now is the time for the State Department to support calls for an Independent International Investigation into allegations of war crimes in Sri Lanka." The Congressman's call answers those who argue among Tamils that the tabled resolution already has provisions for international investigation.
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Kurdish leadership accuses imperialist powers for Eezham Tamil tragedy

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 March 2013, 19:14 GMT]
In a solidarity message to the Eezham Tamils’ liberation struggle sent to TamilNet, the Executive Council of the Koma Civaken Kurdistan (KCK), condemned “the massacre and humanitarian tragedy that were executed by the occupying army of Sri Lanka with the support of imperialist powers”, accusing the UN and the world powers of their complicity in this mass atrocity on the Eezham Tamils. The KCK, or the Union of Communities in Kurdistan, an organization founded by the leader of the Kurdish liberation struggle Abdullah Ocalan, drawing parallels with the internationally-abetted oppression of the Kurdish nation and the Eezham Tamil nation, further emphasised the need for a continued solidarity and exchange of ideas between the two national liberation struggles.
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Protest in Australia rejects LLRC-based US resolution, demands Tamil Eelam

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 March 2013, 05:32 GMT]
Hundreds of Tamils and several non-Tamil protesters gathered at Canberra, Australia in front of the Parliament House, denouncing a LLRC based political solution as a farce and demanding the creation of Tamil Eelam. The Eezham Tamil protesters, who conveyed their admiration for and solidarity with the students’ upsurge in Tamil Nadu, were also of the opinion that the impact of the Tamil Nadu protests had reached Australia, a representative of the Campaign for Tamil Justice told TamilNet. The demonstrators marched to the embassies of the US, India, UK and the EU and submitted their demands to the respective embassies. Speaking to TamilNet, Trevor Grant, former chief sports writer at the Age opined that the proposed US resolution at Geneva would only encourage “the Rajapaksa regime to continue its carefully-planned genocide of Tamils.”
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Rajapaksa ad says Tamils are happy about IA at Hambantota

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 March 2013, 16:26 GMT]
While even the flights to India from the Palaali airport became non-operational for the last 35 years, a newspaper advertisement of Colombo government in Sinhala this week showed a person dressed as a Tamil father, standing against a background of palmyra palms, telling that he is ‘happy’ about the Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport at Hambantota, since his son has found a job there. When the Sinhalese workforce brought from the South are grabbing every single job in new infrastructure projects in the North-East and while the Tamil lands are kept under military occupation, the state propaganda paints a picture of a 'Happy Tamil' who even manages to get jobs at the development projects in the deep south, commented media sources in the island.
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Tamil Nadu students burn US draft resolution

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 March 2013, 00:28 GMT]
Protest started by the Loyola College students in Chennai against an empty US resolution on Sri Lanka at Geneva and the Tamil Nadu State Government action against the protest, have triggered spontaneous statewide student uprising that is not depending on any political party, news sources in Tamil Nadu said. Students of instituions such as the Annamalai University in Chithamparam and St. Xavier’s College, an autonomous university institution at Paa’laiyang-koaddai in Thirunelveali, have burnt the copies of the US draft resolution tabled at Geneva for discussion on Friday, saying that the draft only bails out the genocide-accused Sri Lankan State. Meanwhile, student protests took place in every part of Tamil Nadu and All Colleges Students Federation for the Liberation of Tamil Eelam has come out with a 9-point demand.
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Commonwealth day brings to focus war crimes, Sri Lanka, CHOGM

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 March 2013, 11:14 GMT]
Canada's Liberal leader Bob Rae, Former Conservative foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Labour's former foreign secretary, David Miliband, and Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, Douglas Alexander, in statements made on the Commonwealth Day, and speaking to news media called for focus on the war-crimes committed in Sri Lanka and joined the opposition to having the Commonwealth Head of Government Meeting (CHOGM) held in Sri Lanka this November.
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Colombo deploys former LTTE members to twist opposition to US resolution

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 March 2013, 07:32 GMT]
While the Tamil Nadu students in an unprecedented international approach have risen up targeting the hollow resolution tabled by the USA at Geneva, and have come out with 9 demands addressed to New Delhi and Tamil Nadu governments, Colombo engineering an ironical twist to the Tamil uprising, organised a simulated anti-resolution demonstration in Vanni on Tuesday directed by the Sinhala military with the forced participation of former LTTE members, who are now kept as farm labourers by the military. The demonstration was scheduled to take place in Ki’linochchi and Mullaiththeevu by placing the detained former LTTE members in the forefront, followed by public passers-by who were detained for this purpose by the SL military on Tuesday morning. But, the plan flopped and the SL military had to bring in Sinhalese from Mannaar in 3 buses to stage the demonstration in Ki'linochchi.
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Student protests across Tamil Nadu intensify against US resolution

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 March 2013, 20:41 GMT]
While the students of Loyola have been coerced to end their hunger-strike after their arrest in early hours of Monday, their three day fast has sparked off protests across Tamil Nadu. Students from colleges and universities in Chennai, Chidambaram, Chengalpet, Coimbatore, Kumbakonam, Trichy, Tanjore and Tirunelveli have begun mass protests condemning the pro-LLRC US resolution and urging for a referendum among the Eezham Tamils for a sovereign Tamil Eelam as the only just political solution. Grassroots mobilization that is not affiliated to any political party but based on correct concepts is credited to the success of these protests, sources from Tamil Nadu told TamilNet.
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US resolution ‘guides’ UK Labour to support Sri Lanka venue of CHOGM

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 March 2013, 20:23 GMT]
The US draft resolution at Geneva that is based on Sri Lanka’s LLRC recommendations and that neither welcomes international investigation nor initiates any meaningful new action on Sri Lanka, also undermines efforts to check Sri Lanka through the Commonwealth, political observers said. The US resolution subverts any opposition to the CHOGM taking place in the island or the Colombo regime leading the Commonwealth for the next two years. Losing no time in playing second fiddle to Washington’s patronage to genocidal Sri Lanka, the UK’s Labour shadow foreign secretary, Douglas Alexander, subtly urging the UK government not to boycott the Colombo summit of CHOGM, said on Monday that “the British Government should keep its attendance at this summit under review as it awaits effective action from the Sri Lankan Government.”
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Fasting Loyola students arrested by police, protests to continue

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 March 2013, 06:18 GMT]
In a sudden operation conducted around midnight, the Tamil Nadu police swooped on the eight Loyola College students who were on an indefinite hunger-strike against the pro-LLRC US resolution and have forcibly removed them from the venue of their protest at Koyambedu, Chennai, on Monday. The students, who had begun their fast on Friday, have been taken to the Royapettah General Hospital. Also, around 200 supporters of the students were detained in a community hall near the protest venue. While this move is seen as a draconian curbing of rising sentiments among Tamil Nadu students against those who extend legitimacy to the genocidal Sri Lankan state, sources in Chennai also told TamilNet that the eight students were firm that even if they were arrested they would not give up their protest.
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Tutu, Robinson call for shift of CHOGM venue

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 March 2013, 02:12 GMT]
Nobel laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu and the first female President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, both members of The Elders, a group of independent leaders working for peace, justice and human rights, supported the "calls by Sri Lankan civil society, and by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, for an independent and credible international investigation into alleged violations of human rights and international humanitarian law perpetrated by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam," and urged "the Commonwealth to seriously reconsider appointing Sri Lanka as its chair for 2013-15, as it currently plans to do. In this role, Sri Lanka would host the biennial meeting of Commonwealth heads of government (CHOGM) in November this year," Times of India reported.
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Tamil women in UK begin campaign to highlight genocidal sexual abuse by Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 March 2013, 09:04 GMT]
Seeking to inform the British public on the sexual abuse perpetrated on Tamil women by the Sri Lankan state forces, Tamil women activists in the UK began a campaign on International Women’s Day, from the Boudica statue in Westminster, London, which is an important cultural symbol in British history. “The systematic sexual violence against Tamil women by the Sri Lankan state is not cases of individual human rights violations but part of an intended genocide to break the Eezham Tamil nation. This is a structural problem in unitary Sri Lanka and the International Community should recognize that only in an independent Tamil Eelam, Tamil women can aspire for a life with dignity and safety,” Bairavi Ratnabal, second generation Eezham Tamil youth activist told TamilNet.
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Colombo attempts to resurrect bogey of suicide terror

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 March 2013, 02:35 GMT]
Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to the UN, and the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Penn State University co-sponsored "a dialogue" Friday on suicide bombers in New York, and how the Government of Sri Lanka eliminated the menace and successfully prosecuted the war on terror, sources attending the event told TamilNet. The belated attempt to rekindle the "suicide terror" factor, four years after the Mu'l'livaaykaal massacre and the death of LTTE leadership, was a desperate diversionary measure to shift the increasing focus from Sri Lanka's human rights violations and alleged complicity in mass atrocities, Tamil circles commented.
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Sinhala military ‘ragging’ university entrants continues

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 March 2013, 01:25 GMT]
Sinhala military ragging students entering the universities, in the name of obligatory residential ‘leadership training’ given in the military camps in the island of Sri Lanka, continues unchecked for the third year. The programme is a double ragging to the Tamil students, from the SL military side as well as from the side of fellow Sinhala students, news sources in the island said.
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U.S. judges, Fein in oral legal battle over war-crimes immunity

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 March 2013, 00:35 GMT]
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit judges, Friday 10:00 a.m., engaged with Tamil plaintiffs' attorney in what appeared as an intense and gripping legal battle to decide whether the "Head of State Immunity," as presumed to apply under U.S. Common Law, is trumped by the narrowly tailored Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA), a statute that allows victims to bring a legal action on "an individual" who committed torture and/or extrajudicial killing in the Manoharan et al v. Rajapakse appeal. United States Department of Justice (DoJ) attorney argued suggesting immunity for Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse, and Patton Boggs, a D.C. Law firm representing Rajapakse, played a minor supplementary role to DoJ attorneys, in filing legal motions, and in the oral argument.
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Chennai college students on indefinite hunger-strike condemn US resolution

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 March 2013, 18:24 GMT]
Eight students of Loyola College, Chennai, who have begun an indefinite hunger-strike on Friday calling for a UN referendum among the Eezham Tamils, have also condemned the pro-LLRC US resolution to be tabled at Geneva, accusing it of bailing out genocidal Sri Lanka. Speaking to TamilNet, Mr. Britto, one of the protesting students, outlining the demands of the hunger-strike, said that the current US resolution was a farce that would completely cover-up the genocide of the Eezham Tamils and strengthen the hands of the perpetrators. The protestors also told TamilNet if their hunger-strike was not paid heed to by the Central Government, they would undertake a Civil Disobedience campaign throughout Tamil Nadu to boycott paying taxes to the Indian state that is endorsing the genocide of their brethren.
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Indian Muslim party demands justice for genocide of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 March 2013, 01:03 GMT]
The Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), a pan-Indian Muslim political party, protested on Thursday outside the UN office at Delhi demanding justice for the genocide-affected nation of the Eezham Tamils. Stating that there was a “gradual genocide” of the Eezham Tamil nation going on in the occupied homeland of the Eezham Tamils, the protestors placed four principal demands to the UN and India, namely to pass a resolution against the Sri Lankan state recognizing its crime of genocide, to punish the perpetrators of gross human rights violations, to ensure the trial of Sri Lankan war criminals in the International Criminal Court and to punish the perpetrators of sexual violence against Tamil women.
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US UNHRC inaction not inconsistent with saving Rajapakse in US Courts, says TAG

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 March 2013, 01:03 GMT]
The resolution tabled in the Geneva UNHCR sessions by the USA in concert with India, which sidesteps forcing an independent international investigation into the Mu'l'livaaykaal killings, and misleads the Eezham Tamils into a mirage that international community will seek accountability, appears entirely consistent with the intervention of the U.S. State Department in the legal actions pursued by Tamil plaintiffs against Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse, legal sources in Washington said. U.S. is acting as a proxy to Rajapakses in filing legal briefs and replacing Patton Boggs as "the attorneys" for Rajapakse.
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USA releases draft resolution for discussion in Geneva

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 March 2013, 13:16 GMT]
On the 22nd session of UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) taking place in Geneva from 25 February to 22 March, a draft of the resolution to be tabled by the USA on Sri Lanka, has been released for discussion on Thursday, news sources in Geneva said providing scanned version of the draft to media.
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‘US resolution will not give Tamils justice’: Vaiko

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 March 2013, 07:22 GMT]
Stating that only an internationally monitored referendum among Eezham Tamils for an independent state of Tamil Eelam and an independent international investigation into genocidal war crimes of Sri Lanka would provide justice, MDMK leader Vaiko, in a statement on Wednesday asserted that the upcoming US resolution at Geneva falls drastically short of providing any justice to the genocide-affected nation of the Eezham Tamils. In the statement Mr. Vaiko also criticized political parties in India for holding up the US resolution as an appropriate step forward. Separately, protests against Sri Lanka have been intensifying across Tamil Nadu.
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Worsening human rights woes drive political skulduggery

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 March 2013, 00:56 GMT]
While Tamils unitedly view the Mu'l'livaaykaal killings as an international crime of genocidal proportions committed by the State, Colombo, sensing the tightening of the rights noose around its neck at the UNHCR and beyond, is resorting to political skulduggery, even while Tamils look suspiciously at the international actors, particularly India and the U.S. Both India and the U.S., even while armed with credible evidence of Rajapaksas' complicity in the genocidal crimes, continue to allow Colombo space and time to act on "improving" the rights climate, while Colombo continues its cultural genocide, and aggressively erases any remaining evidence of mass atrocities.
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Sinhala Buddha-Sasana custodians not recognizing nuns accuse Cholas

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 March 2013, 00:20 GMT]
With the fall of Anuradhapura to the “Chola invaders” in AD 1017, the Bikkhuni order (the Order of Buddhist Nuns) disappeared and became non-operational. Even though the Bikkhu Order of the males in the island was revived later with the help of the Theravada Buddhist monks of Burma, the Bikkhuni order could not be revived according to Theravada traditions, because the Theravada countries like Burma, Siam, Cambodia and Laos didn’t have nuns. Hence, recognising those who now claim as Bikkhunis in the island is not very satisfactory, commented, Registrar of the Asgiriya Chapter and academic of the Bikkhu University in Anuradhapura, Ven. Anamaduwe Dhammadassa Thero as cited by the latest edition of the Sunday Leader. [Anamaduwe is recent Sinhalicisation of a Tamil village Aanai-madu in NW province, meaning the pond of elephants]
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Colombo instructs SL intelligence to curb protests against SL State

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 March 2013, 23:52 GMT]
As the world’s attention is focused on Colombo’s crimes against Tamils, the intelligence offices of the occupying Sri Lankan military in North and East have received fresh instructions from the SL Defence Ministry in Colombo to stop people from mobilizing protests demanding the release of Tamil prisoners in the Sri Lankan prisons and to curb protests against the creation of Sinhala Military Zones in the Tamil homeland. On Tuesday, SL intelligence officers were directly involved in harassing and blocking around 700 protestors from the five districts in North, who were boarding the buses heading to Colombo for the protest which took place in front of the UN office in Colombo on Wednesday.
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39-year-old man reported missing in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 March 2013, 23:07 GMT]
A 39-year-old man who was earlier abducted by a “white van” squad and released later, has been again reported missing since Sunday evening, according a complaint registered with the SL Human Rights Commission office in Jaffna.
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Veteran Eezham Tamil journalist, poet, Parvathinathasivam passes away

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 March 2013, 17:16 GMT]
Pulavar Parvathinathasivam, poet, journalist, author and Tamil scholar passed away in Jaffna on Tuesday morning at the age of 77. Coming from an illustrious family of Tamil scholars in Jaffna, Parvathi-natha-sivam was further inspired in his outlook and writings by his association with the renowned Tamil poet Bharathidasan in the late 1950s. Starting his journalistic career with Suthanthiran, he served as editor of the weekly edition of Eezhanaadu daily in Jaffna for a long time in the 1970s and 80s. Later, he worked for Uthayan in the 90s and also contributed to Murasoli, Sanjeevi and Thinakkural. The funeral ceremonies will take place at his family’s present residence at Nanthaavil Lane in Kokkuvil on Wednesday. His ancestral house at Maaviddapuram, coming under the SL military-occupied HSZ for two decades, was released recently, but in a completely razed-down condition.
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BJP cell of Tamil Nadu ex-servicemen apologises to Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 March 2013, 02:42 GMT]
“The deepest psychological wound rankling the minds of every veteran in Tamilnadu is the killing of Tamilians during the Indo-Srilankan war of 1987-90 by the Indian Armed Forces,” says the President of the Tamil Nadu BJP Ex-Servicemen’s Cell, Lt Col CR Sundar, in a statement circulated to media this week. Had the war crimes been taken up for investigations at that time itself, the later tragedy befallen on Tamils in the island could have been averted, he told Tamil Nadu correspondent of TamilNet on Tuesday. The need that has arisen for Tamil ex-servicemen to take up party line of politics on the Eezham Tamil issue is a significant development in India, political observers said.
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Thousands rallying in Geneva question TNA MPs on compromise

[TamilNet, Monday, 04 March 2013, 23:34 GMT]
Thousands of Eezham Tamils from across Europe, who took part in a rally at Geneva on Monday demanded a UN sponsored referendum for a sovereign Tamil Eelam. In the meantime, sections of protestors, who confluenced in Geneva, approached the hotel where TNA politicians, who had come to attend a conference, were residing. Parliamentarians Maavai Seanthirajah and Ariyanethran were encircled by the people who questioned them on the compromising polity forgetting fundamentals adopted by the TNA leadership. According to informed circles, TNA leader Mr Sampanthan in London last week has claimed that the US government use to extend invitations for talks only to him and to Mr Sumanthiran.
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Tamil Nadu activist self-immolates demanding justice for Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Monday, 04 March 2013, 23:10 GMT]
Demanding justice for the Eezham Tamils and international action against the genocide-accused Sri Lankan state, a social activist from Kadaloor (Cuddalore), Tamil Nadu immolated himself on Monday. Citing police sources, the PTI reported that Mani, a 41-year-old social worker of coastal Nallavaadu village in Kadaloor district, “doused himself with petrol and set himself ablaze” at the Collectorate complex, raising slogans against Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and demanding that he be tried in the International Court for alleged war crimes. Later reports said Mr. Mani succumbed to his serious injuries at the Kadaloor government hospital. Separately, there have been protests in Chennai against Sri Lanka in the context of the upcoming session in Geneva.
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Sri Lanka CHOGM boycott calls multiply

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 March 2013, 21:45 GMT]
While former British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, in a video message to the 22nd Sessions of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), called for a shift in venue for the Commonwealth Head of Governments Meeting (CHOGM) now scheduled to be held in Sri Lanka this November, the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales (BHRC) and the eminent human rights lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson QC, released a report criticizing the impeachment of Sri Lanka's Chief Justice, called for the suspension of Sri Lanka from the Commonwealth, and urged the Queen not to attend the November Heads of Government meeting if held in Sri Lanka.
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Moon praises unpublished "whitewash" report on Sri Lanka - ICP

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 March 2013, 21:12 GMT]
Inner City Press [ICP], a media organization that covers UN in-house and international stories, and which exposed the submission of the privately organized "Observation Project" report to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, said Sunday that in the first media question to Ban in Geneva, Ban "praised" the report saying that he "recognized through our meeting with them [the five ambassadors - Japan, Romania, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Sri Lanka] the important steps taken by the Government of Sri Lanka since the end of the conflict."
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Freedom Group accuses UKBA of withholding Sri Lanka torture information

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 March 2013, 19:23 GMT]
Freedom from Torture (FFT), a UK-based rights group, accused the UK Border Agency of withholding statistics for the last quarter of 2012 while the Agency planned for a mass removal of Tamils, including those whose protection claims have been refused, on the 28 February to Sri Lanka. Presenting data obtained from the Border Agency using the 'Freedom of Information (FOI) Act' the rights group said, "UK has granted refugee status to at least 15 people who were previously removed from the UK to Sri Lanka where they claim to have been tortured or otherwise harmed."
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Nailing genocidaires

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 March 2013, 17:05 GMT]
When Sri Lanka is being hauled naked with alleged international crimes committed against its own Tamil citizens exposed to the rest of the world in the UN's Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva this week, two other stories of genocidaires nabbed and brought to justice in other parts of the world drew media headlines. Yvonne Basebya, 66, becomes first Dutch citizen to be convicted in Denmark for complicity in the Rwandan genocide, and the former Guatemalan president, José Efraín Ríos Montt, was ordered to stand trial in the Guatamalan national court for genocide and crimes against humanity carried out during his seventeen month dictatorship between 1982 and 1983.
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Condemn genocide in a single-line resolution at Geneva: AIADMK tells New Delhi

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 March 2013, 00:28 GMT]
“India should move a single-line resolution in the Council condemning the genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka and demand an independent international investigation,” said AIADMK’s MP, Dr. Maitreyan, during the parliamentary debate in New Delhi on Wednesday. Citing Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms. Jayalalithaa linking the war crimes to the days of the Nazi Germany of Hitler, Dr. V. Maitreyan condemned Indian Foreign Minister calling Sri Lanka a friendly country. “Sri Lanka, as a friendly country, is a thing of the past. How can a country, which carried out a systematic genocide of my umbilical-cord brethren, Tamils, be termed as a friendly country,” he asked, blaming India for diluting the impact of the UNHRC resolution last year, by softening its tone, tenor and contents.
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Daily Mirror fabricates news: Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 March 2013, 00:01 GMT]
“It is sometimes possible for journalists to misunderstand what is being said, and as a result misquote. But in this case, the major part of the said news item is entirely fabricated,” says Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam responding to Colombo-based English media Daily Mirror reporting his speech at the Press Club in Jaffna on Monday. While he had cited the report of Ms. Navi Pillai in appreciation for evidencing the grave violations committed against Tamils in the last one year, the Daily Mirror titled its news report on Wednesday as “Pillai responsible, says Ponnambalam,” Gajendrakumar said. Following protests by Gajendrakumar, Daily Mirror carried another report on Thursday, titled “Ponnambalam clarifies.” This was even more disappointing and completely inadequate, Gajendrakumar told TamilNet.
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