SL military rule stepped up in North, wartime restrictions re-introduced

[TamilNet, Monday, 31 March 2014, 19:44 GMT]
Clamping down on civilian life in the North, the occupying Sri Lankan military has re-introduced pass system for fishermen in the North to access their seas, putting up check posts on the roads, dawn to dusk search operations and military patrols of armed soldiers in the Northern province, especially targeting coastal areas. In the meantime, the occupying Sri Lankan military has ‘arrested’ at least 44 Eelam Tamils between 07 March and 27 March, news sources in Jaffna said. Most of them have been arrested in abduction style. The iron fist control on the civilian life seeks to silence all activism and threatens the witnesses who have been prepared to witness against the genocidal crimes by the Sri Lankan State, rights activists in Jaffna told TamilNet. Civilian movement was at standstill during the nights as if a curfew has been clamped down at several locations of the peninsula.
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New Delhi imperialism’s show of ‘culture’ in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 31 March 2014, 05:15 GMT]
The full moon day that falls in the traditional solar month of March–April is a major festival day for Saivaite Eezham Tamils as well as Tamils in Tamil Nadu. Known as Pangkuni Uththaram, it marks the grand finale of the annual festival, including the car festival, of all the Siva temples. The folk of Tamil Nadu and the Up-Country Tamils of Tamil Nadu origin in the island celebrate it as Kaaman festival, marking Siva reducing Kaaman (cupid) into ashes. It is a major festival for the Up-Country Tamils. But this year, the New Delhi Establishment’s Consulate General in Jaffna, brought in a ‘cultural’ concept altogether new to Tamils in the island, by introducing Holi and smearing colours on that day.
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Tamil Nadu prisoner under Colombo’s PTA custody begins hunger strike

[TamilNet, Sunday, 30 March 2014, 10:02 GMT]
An Indian citizen from Tamil Nadu, who has been jailed in Colombo for five years, has launched hunger-strike unto death demanding his fate known to the world, after he has been subjected to severe harassment by the Sri Lankan ‘Terrorist Investigation Division’ and the prison authorities, reliable sources told TamilNet on Sunday. The victim, John Peter Vijayendran, is a political prisoner, who has been jailed in Colombo’s Magazine prison and recently transferred to a prison in Negombo, the sources further said.
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OHCHR investigation sabotaged by several quarters

[TamilNet, Saturday, 29 March 2014, 10:16 GMT]
“An intrusive investigation has so far not yielded genuine reconciliation, and a life of dignity and self-respect for people anywhere. Sri Lanka can’t be any different,” said The Hindu in an editorial on Saturday, shedding crocodile tears for the dignity and self respect of Eezham Tamils and joining the forces that are determined to sabotage even a weak international investigation at the outset. The freedom of the investigation on the ground has already been ditched by the US withdrawing the demilitarisation part of the resolution, and the international weight as well as the result yielding capacity of the investigation has considerably been wrecked by New Delhi abstaining from the voting and openly declaring against the investigation, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island.
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Tamil civil society disappointed with UNHRC resolution, New Delhi's stand

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 March 2014, 12:10 GMT]
While expressing appreciation for those countries that voted for the resolution and expressing their disappointment on the conduct of India at the UNHRC, Mannaar Bishop Rt Rev Rayappu Joseph and Jaffna University law academic Kumaravadivel Guruparan, in a statement issued on behalf of the Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF) on Thursday, expressed their deep regret that the resolution does not provide for the establishment of a robust mechanism of international investigations in the form of an International Commission of Inquiry.
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UNHRC passes resolution on Sri Lanka seeking another UN report

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 March 2014, 16:48 GMT]
The resolution on Sri Lanka framed by the United States and the UK with the backing of 36 other Member States of the United Nations, passed with 23 of 47 Member States of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) voting for the resolution, 12 voting against and 12 abstaining. The resolution has failed to call for a full fledged independent international investigations and to propose an international mechanism to put an end to the ongoing genocide against the nation of Eelam Tamils. India and Japan have abstained from voting. Pakistan and Maldives voted against and South Korea voted for the US proposed resolution.
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SL military detains 28 Tamils in 2 weeks

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 March 2014, 11:00 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military, launching house-to-house search in the North and East has targeted former LTTE members, has detained at least 28 Tamils within the last two weeks. The Sinhala military, unfolding a concocted scene of regrouping of the LTTE, initially ‘abducted’ two persons in Pazhai on charges of distributing leaflets and later arrested a mother and daughter on 13th March in Tharumapuram in Ki'linochchi. Several arbitrary ‘arrests’ have been made since then. While pro-Sri Lankan groups were projecting so-called 'LTTE terrorism’ as the key issue in Geneva as a smokescreen to deviate the global focus, the SL military intelligence operatives have been deployed in an unprecedented terror operation after 2009, as a tactic to support their ‘Geneva strategy’, Tamil rights activists in Ki'linochchi said.
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TNPF: Only a UN Special Tribunal can deliver justice to Sri Lanka's genocidal criminality

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 March 2014, 19:39 GMT]
During the General Debate on the United Nations Human Rights High Commissioner's report on Sri Lanka, 26th Wednesday, the President of Tamil National People's Front [TNPF], Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, while concurring with the People's Tribunal that there is on-going genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka, said that "the remedy for violations at the level of gravity that occurred ultimately, cannot be anything short of a judicial process through the ICC [International Criminal Court] or an Ad Hoc special tribunal," adding, "[a]nything less would undermine the concept of international justice and the application of humanitarian law." Selvarajah Kajendran, General Secretary, TNPF, and Visvalingam Manivannan, National Organiser, TNPF, also spoke on the other weaknesses in the UN resolution.
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UN resolution neither prevents nor punishes GoSL genocide, says Boyle

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 March 2014, 03:18 GMT]
While noting that "“investigation” by the UNHCR is better than nothing—with all due and sincere respect for the UNHCR," Professor Boyle, an expert in international law, said, dissemination of that “investigation” will be subject to the control of the UN Human Rights Council for political reasons and the dissemination of that UNHCR “investigation” will be dragged out for as long as possible by the Human Rights Council, thus enabling the GOSL to continue its campaign of ongoing genocide against the Tamils despite the requirement of article 1 of the Genocide Convention that every UN Human Rights Council state member is obligated both “to prevent and to punish” the GOSL genocide against the Tamils," Boyle said.
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Activists from homeland, diaspora address UNHRC

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 March 2014, 15:34 GMT]
The Deputy Chairman of Valikaamam North Piratheasa Chapai (PS) and the president of Vali North Displaced Peoples Rehabilitation Organisation, S. Shageevan spoke at UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday demanding global focus on the ideology-driven genocide against Tamil people in the North and East of the island. In the meantime, Tamil diaspora activist Krisna Saravanamuttu from the National Council of Canadian Tamils (NCCT) addressing the Council on the same session said that Tamil people are enduring a slow, but relentless, genocide. “The Tamil struggle today is about the survival of our people against genocide by the Sri Lankan state to destroy our sovereign national existence in the island’s NorthEast,” Krisna Saravanamuttu said.
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Guruparan addresses de-Tamilization, dichotomization in Geneva narrative

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 March 2014, 04:44 GMT]
“Unless we take a critical stance in terms of what is happening in Geneva and unless we move away from the approach that all roads lead to Geneva in terms of how Tamil problems are going to be looked at, we are not going to identify the alternatives,” Tamil civil society activist and Jaffna University law academic Kumaravadivel Guruparan said while discussing whether the resolution to be tabled in Geneva is part of solution or problem. On the question, if not for this resolution what is the alternative, he said: “If we approach the resolution critically and people are made to understand what the resolution is about, at least the space of identifying the alternative will come about. It is that creation of that space for looking for alternatives that I am arguing for. That will come about only by taking stock a realistic, pragmatic and honest take over this resolution.”
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UNHRC resolution with weak mandate will not help Tamils, says Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 March 2014, 23:58 GMT]
Noting that the Resolution tabled at the UNHRC Geneva meeting falls short in establishing a required accountability mechanism through a UN-controlled transitional administration that has the capacity to create an environment to gather evidence of what happened during the war, Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the president of the Tamil National People’s Front, said in a press meet held in Geneva on Friday that the weak mandate of the resolution will not only fail to bring about positive changes to Tamil people on the ground, but will also encourage the Sri Lankan government to continue to carry out the sort of actions that they have been carrying out.
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Risking even their lives, Tamils demand international investigations: Mannaar Bishop

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 March 2014, 06:47 GMT]
The rulers of the Sri Lankan State are not prepared to come to light; they continue with their activities in darkness. They are capable of telling bigger lies than Satan’s biggest lies, said Rt. Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph, the Catholic Bishop of Mannaar, taking part at a peaceful rally in Mannaar on Friday. Even the investigations that are about to commence with international monitoring, as it is being proposed now, are not adequate, he said. “We don’t need it. The Sri Lankan State is capable of guiding even that process under the darkness. The Sri Lankan government is capable in twisting everything through its propaganda orchestration. We also know what happened to the doctors who came from the war zone. As far we as we are concerned, there should only be an international investigation that could bring justice,” the Bishop said.
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Tamil university students attacked in their homeland by Sinhala students

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 March 2014, 14:29 GMT]
All Tamil students from the first year have vacated the hostel of the Eastern University at Vanthaa’ru-mooalai in Batticaloa on Saturday following a brutal attack by Sinhala hostel inmates on 1st year Tamil students who were having a birth day party on Thursday midnight. More than 45 Sinhala students, armed with batons, penknives and iron-boxes, assaulted the Tamil students at the party causing serious injuries to 7 Tamil students. 2 Sinhala students were also injured in the clashes that followed. The Sinhala policemen at the police post had refused to intervene to stop the clash.
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Lawyers release testimony of Vipooshika, details confirm SL military trap

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 March 2014, 10:01 GMT]
Lawyers in Colombo working on a Fundamental Rights case, have released a translated text of the letter written by 13-year-old Vipooshika on what happened to them on 13 March 2014 and in the continued detention. The details given by her confirms the earlier reports of alleged trap set by the SL military Establishment and the reports of assault and intimidation. The letter further establishes how the Judicial Medical Officer (JMO) in Vavuniyaa cooperated with the Sri Lankan military establishment to intimidate the women.
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Abductions, arrests spread to Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 March 2014, 17:43 GMT]
More than 10 Sri Lankan military operatives, who came in a white-van and motorbikes Thursday night abducted a 40-year-old father of three at Kottaavaththai in Ka'rana-vaay North in Vadamaraadchi. The abduction took place at gunpoint as neighbours gathered at the site in defence of the victim. At the same time, a 35-year-old fisherman was ‘abducted’ at Vettilaik-kea'ni in Vadamaraadchi East. The military operatives gave a note in Sinhala to his wife stating that the Sri Lankan Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) has detained him, news sources in Jaffna said.
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Key sabotage in US draft lies in withdrawal of demilitarisation

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 March 2014, 16:00 GMT]
The US draft resolution that will be tabled at the UNHCR, initially talking of demilitarisation and then deleting it, amounts to encouragement of Sinhala militarisation in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils, and the results are already showing in the SL military activities, said Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island. The removal of demilitarisation is done with the particular intention of nullifying even the weak investigative mechanism of the OHCHR brought out in the draft, as witnesses will have no freedom to facilitate a genuine investigation in a genocidal-militarised environment, the activists said.
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Fear psychosis grips Vanni as SL military clamps down on Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 March 2014, 08:08 GMT]
The occupying SL military system, emboldened by the extension of one more year to continue its iron fist manoeuvrings to continue to engineer demographic, cultural and structural genocide on the nation of Eelam Tamils, has used 2014 March sessions in Geneva to project an enemy in its imagination, bringing again untold miseries for the thousands of families that have been affected by the genocidal onslaught in 2009. On Wednesday and Thursday, the districts of Ki'linochchi and Mullaiththeevu witnessed military round up operations as never before in recent years after the war. Several villagers were brought to open grounds, filtered one-by-one, arrests made and threats issued by Sinhala soldiers who are made to believe by Colombo that former LTTE members were regrouping to wage another armed struggle. A fear psychosis has gripped the people of Vanni.
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Moongkilaa'ru victims slain by heavy weapons: forensic report

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 March 2014, 07:26 GMT]
A forensic team that inspected the skeletons of the victims from a bunker at Moongkilaa'ru have submitted their report to Mullaiththeevu District Court stating that they have found 11 pieces of shrapnel used in artillery and mortar shells. The 9 victims were slain in Sri Lanka Army fired shells during the mass exodus by the civilians from the so-called ‘No Fire Zone’ which was targeted by the SL military fire during the genocidal onslaught. Hundreds of civilians perished in the shelling along the road and the families and relatives were not able to conduct proper burial. Volunteers who helped to bury the victims say most of the victims buried at the said bunker belonged to a single family from Thiruvaiyaa’ru in Ki’inochchi district.
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Geneva press conference to discuss nature of US resolution

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 March 2014, 20:24 GMT]
Civil society activists and Tamil politicians from the homeland join together with Diaspora activists and exiled journalists to look into the question whether the US draft resolution being framed at the Human Rights Council would be a part of the solution or part of the problem in bringing a solution to the 60-year-old genocide of Eezham Tamils in their homeland on Friday at a side event in Geneva addressing a press conference at Geneva Press Club on Friday, Professor R. Sri Ranjan from the University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Canada, told TamilNet on Thursday. The event would explore the multiple aspects of the resolution and whether UNHRC as a body failed in its mandate to protect a persecuted people who face a most brutal form of genocidal oppression in their homeland. The press conference will also be webcast at 11:00 a.m. CET.
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Canadian students highlight genocide in letter to Harper

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 March 2014, 12:36 GMT]
Canada's largest student union, representing more than 50,000 students, in a letter to Canadian Prime Minister Harper, expressed solidarity with "the Tamil people calling for justice and accountability for the victims of ongoing structural genocide," and said they join other several Rights organizations in "demanding a sustainable and just political solution for an indiscriminate right to Tamil autonomyh in Sri Lanka and and end to systemic and physical acts of genocide to the Tamil people by the Sri Lankan Government."
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Colombo malicious in twisting Ananthi's Geneva speech

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 March 2014, 16:01 GMT]
Responding to Sri Lankan delegation's accusation on her address at Geneva, Northern Provincial Council (NPC) member Ananthi Sasitharan on Wednesday defended her statements in Geneva saying that she didn't violate any protocol of the Provincial Council system or that of the Sri Lankan State. “In fact, I went to Geneva following the democratic decision by the NPC,” she said. Also, the Sri Lankan delegation was malicious in projecting that she was using the term “Tamil Eelam”. Ms Ananthi said she was only using the term “Eelam Tamils,” which is the cultural identity of the Tamils in the island. I don't want to go into the discussion of the term that they have twisted is lawful or not. But, I was only using the term “Eelam Tamils” and the full text of my speeches will be made available by the UN Human Rights Council if anyone want to verify it, she further said.
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UN uses Tamils to 'learn lessons' but denies justice to their genocide: Ananthi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 March 2014, 12:42 GMT]
The Right to Protect (R2P) concept, accepted by the World Summit in 2005, has totally failed to save Eelam Tamils from the genocidal war in 2009, said NPC councillor, Ms Ananthi Sasitharan at the UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday in Geneva. She addressed the council twice, one of them being in Tamil language. Although the United Nation, which has admitted its systemic failure on the conflict, chose to learn lessons from the failures in the island and came up with the Rights Up Front initiative, it has failed to deliver justice to the victims on whose fate these lessons were learned, Ms Ananthi told the Council. “As the victims of a continued genocide, we are disappointed with the resolutions being tabled at this respected assembly, year after year, failing to address the root-problem, which is genocide,” she told the Council.
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Sri Lankan TID releases Fr. Praveen, Ruki Fernando

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 March 2014, 07:51 GMT]
While the Sri Lankan Government delegation in Geneva responded Tuesday evening defending the claims of the Sri Lankan Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) to the concerns raised by several NGOs against the TID detention of the Human Rights defenders Rev Fr Praveen and Mr Ruki Fernando, both the human rights activists were released a few hours later by the TID due to mounting pressure abroad and in the island. The SL delegation in Geneva came with a ‘point of order’ statement saying that both the activists were linked to someone named K.P Selvanayagam alias Gobi, who had been overseas and was ‘reviving the LTTE’ through ‘regrouping unemployed local youth’. Tamil activist Jeyakumari was in detention for harbouring Gobi, the SL delegation said.
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Journalists in North receive death threats over phone

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 March 2014, 23:49 GMT]
A section of Tamil journalists in North, who have been subjected to investigations and harassment by the Sri Lankan military intelligence in the recent past on Tuesday said they were receiving phone calls with death threats this week. The Sri Lankan military was using a projected image of ‘LTTE regrouping’ to silence the journalists and civil activists, especially during the 25th session of the human rights council in Geneva. In the meantime a top commander of the Sri Lanka Army has told a rights activist in Colombo that the whole Geneva discourse would end as the talk of USA sending ship to evacuate LTTE political leaders while brokering a surrender-deal at the end of Vanni war in 2009.
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Time for International Investigations, says Camp

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 March 2014, 01:03 GMT]
Sri Lanka "looks to be drifting toward authoritarianism. Journalists are terrified and intimidated by arrests and mysterious assaults on those critical of the government....The once-independent judiciary has learned not to challenge the government's edicts. The war-heavy defense establishment carries out many internal security functions, and "white vans" have become synonymous with the disappearance of dissidents who speak out against the government," writes Donald Camp, a retired foreign service officer at the US Department of State, adding, "after five years of stalling by the government [Colombo], it is time for an international investigation to do what Colombo has been unwilling to do."
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SL military deploys terror in Vanni, Priest, NGO activist under TID arrest

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 March 2014, 05:47 GMT]
Human Rights defender Rev. Fr. Praveen, the former director of the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation (CPR), who had been subjected to harassment by the occupying SL military several times before, has been arrested by the occupying Sri Lankan military and Police on Sunday night together with a human rights activist from Colombo, Ruki Fernando, when the two human rights activists were trying to locate information on what had happened to 13-year-old Vipooshika and her mother Jeyakumari at Tharumapuram in Ki’lnochchi. Ruki Fernando is a human rights adivisor with INFORM. In the meantime, a reliable source inside the Sri Lankan police revealed some exclusive details to a media source in Colombo on what happened to the arrested Jeyakumari and her daughter.
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Details emerge on brutal arrest of pregnant mother in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 March 2014, 04:34 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military and police arrested a 26-year-old pregnant mother at Uppuve’li in Troncomalee on 11 March. The 4-year-old boy of the mother was attacked when he cried during the arrest of her mother. The brutal arrest has come after her husband had been reported missing. “Balakuruparan has been abducted from his house in Jaffna. While we were struggling to get him released, our 7-month pregnant daughter has been arrested in a brutal way,” the parents said. The family and relatives are yet to receive any legal assistance.
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Anglican priest receives death threat following reports of mass grave in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 March 2014, 03:09 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military has issued death threats to Rev Fr. N. Prabahar, an Anglican Priest who resides close to Trincomalee harbour, after an alleged mass grave site has been concealed by the SL military at Makeasvara playgrounds in the stadium premises. The mass grave was discovered on 13 February. In the meantime, an NGO activist in Trincomalee, who didn’t wish to be named, said there were at least 15 skeletal remains in the alleged mass grave.
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SL military steps up harassment on IDPs as US draft drops ‘de-militarisation’ in Geneva

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 March 2014, 23:20 GMT]
As the US draft that already failed Tamils by dropping international investigation on Sri Lankan State gets further watered down in its demands at the corridor discourse at Human Rights Council in Geneva, the occupying SL military in North and East of the island has strengthened its grip on Tamil people who have been determined with seeking justice on the ground. While those demanding the SL State to reveal the whereabouts of their missing family members in the North are subjected to harassments by the intelligence wing of the SL military, the uprooted Champoor Tamils still languishing in temporary huts in four camps in Moothoor East in Trincomalee are left to rotten with deteriorating health conditions in their camps, the women in the camps complain.
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Protesters demand immediate release of Jeyakumari

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 March 2014, 19:47 GMT]
Condemning the arrest of Jeyakumari Balendran and her daughter at Musilampaddi in Tharumapuram, Ki’linochchi and demanding immediate release of Jeyakumari who has been remanded at Boosa jail, Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF) and All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC) organised a protest in Vavuniyaa, which was well attended by political activists, councillors and Catholic priests and nuns, who demanded international attention and immediate release of the victim turned activist Jeyakumari.
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Genocidal Sri Lanka sends message to children and families voicing for their missing

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 March 2014, 15:15 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army arrested a 13-year-old girl and her 48-year-old mother, the only remaining female members of a family that has lost three men in the war, two of them died in the war and the last one missing after he surrendered to the Sri Lanka Army at the end of war in 2009. The two traumatized victims were voicing for the release of the only male, whose whereabouts are not revealed by the SL military. The mother, Jeyakumari Balendren, went to LLRC and to all the protests and became a leading activist in mobilizing the families of the missing in Ki’linochchi district. The daughter Vipooshika became the symbol of young children searching for their loved ones. Now, Colombo has sent the mother to Boosa prison in South and the daughter to so-called ‘Juvenile Correction and Rehabilitation Centre’ in North through its judiciary.
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Ananthi delivers another UNHRC address on genocide investigation

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 March 2014, 15:38 GMT]
“We request this assembly to call for international investigation on genocide, and as an immediate step, to come out with a mechanism to stop the on-going genocide of Eelam Tamils,” Ms Ananthi Sasitharan told the UN Human Rights Council at Geneva, delivering a second address under the General Debate on Friday. The resolutions passed in the recent years and the draft resolution to be submitted this year have disappointed the Tamils as these resolutions have failed to address the main problems of the victims, she told the Council. As an immediate step, she urged the international community to come out with a mechanism to stop the on-going genocide of Eelam Tamils.
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Ananthi addresses UNHRC in Geneva on continued genocide against Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 March 2014, 14:13 GMT]
Ms Ananthi Sasitharan, the popular TNA councillor of the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) on Friday addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council's 25th session taking place in Geneva. She requested the UN system to take “bold steps in understanding the 60-year-long genocide and investigate it through an independent international investigation.” Addressing the UNHRCs General Debate, the 47-year-old mother of three told the Council that the children affected in any war spend a lifetime to recover from the impact. “But, the Eelam Tamil children face a continued war with genocidal intent,” she said urging “concrete actions to safeguard our children from becoming permanent victims to the genocide.”
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Colombo stages 'LTTE regrouping' scene in Vanni

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 March 2014, 11:31 GMT]
Deploying hundreds of soldiers after detaining a 48-year-old mother and her 13-year-old daughter on Thursday, the Sri Lankan military has rounded up the village of Tharmapuram in Ki'linochchi, cutting off the contact between the village and the outside world, news sources in Ki'linochchi said. The SL military is attempting to create a scene of ‘LTTE regrouping’ through its intelligence operations to support its propaganda in Geneva, sources close to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in Ki'linochchi said.
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SLA sets arrest of teen girl and mother figured in British PM's visit to Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 March 2014, 06:20 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military in Ki'linochchi has arrested a 13-year-old girl and her 48-year-old mother, sending shock waves across the entire Tamil nation on Thursday. The girl, Vipooshika Balendren has become a symbol of young children seeking the whereabouts of their family members, as she used to attend the peaceful protests crying in search for her brother, touching the hearts of the people. In a move, believed to be a trap to target the girl and her mother, more than 350 Sri Lankan soldiers rounded up their village Thursday evening in an encounter like operation claiming that they were looking for a ‘terrorist’. The SL military is detaining the girl and her mother, Jeyakkumari Balendran, news sources in Ki'linochchi told TamilNet Thursday night.
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New Delhi FM wants Tamils to talk to Colombo for India to have leverage

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 March 2014, 07:20 GMT]
The New Delhi Establishment’s Foreign Minister, Mr. Salman Khurshid, in answering a question after his address at the SOAS in London on Wednesday, said, “Tamils should have a dialogue with the government. Then only we can have a leverage on Sri Lankan government.” With a record on complicity in Colombo’s genocidal war and on-going structural genocide of Eezham Tamils; record on tilting the balance in favour of Colombo, and with a long record on setting diktats to the Tamil leadership on what to talk, New Delhi now expecting Tamils to start ‘dialogue’ is for the confirmation of the genocide and for bailing out Colombo from international investigations, Tamil activists in London commented.
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US satellite data becomes public in monitoring Ukraine, searching MH370

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 March 2014, 08:21 GMT]
Inviting world public in the search for the missing MH370, a US firm, DigitalGlobe, has thrown open its data from five orbiting satellites. The resolution of the images would be to the extent of half a meter of ocean surface per computer screen. While this is a free service, termed as “crowdsourcing,” the firm’s data on a fee-basis was also open to the public on Ukraine violence and some natural disasters in the past month. The service is termed “First Look Event Service.” While some countries have such a capacity, their Establishments also have the capacity of coursing a genocidal war without witnesses and shielding it for five years, as in the case of Mu’l’livaaykkaal, Tamil political observers said.
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Dormant diaspora rises up against US draft, demands genocide investigation, plebiscite

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 March 2014, 23:33 GMT]
In an unprecedented gathering after May 2009, around 10,000 diaspora Eezham Tamils gathered in Geneva on Monday demanding international investigations on genocide and a UN plebiscite on independent an sovereign Tamil Eelam. Disappointed with the discourse in Geneva and losing their trust in the pro-Establishment lobbyists, the Eezham Tamils have begun to rally behind the network of the grassroots organisations in Europe, that were hitherto silently watching the process. Dr Denis Halliday, the former assistant secretary-general of the United Nations, who was one of the judges at the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) on Sri Lanka (Bremen Session) addressed the gathering.
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Muslims in Musali division protest against SL military land grab

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 March 2014, 07:28 GMT]
Muslims from Ma’richchuk-kaddi village in Musali DS division in Mannaar sat on the Puththa’lam – Mannaar Road at Maraikkaar-theevu on Sunday and demonstrated against Colombo’s seizure of their lands including their cemetery. The families, uprooted from Musali in 1990, came to Musali division to resettle from Puththa’lam after Muslim ministers aligned with Colombo government promised them resettlement. Ma’richchuk-kaddi is the border between the Northern and Northwestern Provinces.
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Emboldened Colombo ‘mobilizes’ Ampaa’rai Tamils in favour of Rajapaksa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 March 2014, 16:18 GMT]
While Tamil Naitonal Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians are asked by the Washington and London to lobby Australia and India to gain support to the watered-down resolution to be tabled in Geneva later this month, the occupying Colombo has managed to mobilize 750 Tamils, through various manipulations, to march in a rally carrying placards in support of SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa, news sources in Ampaa’rai said. Sri Lankan military operatives, extremist Sinhala Buddhist Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Power Force) activists, Samurdhi and Devineguma ‘development’ workers were deployed to bring Tamil people from various villages of Ampaa’rai district to the pro-Rajapaksa rally staged in Kalmunai. In an orchestrated move, media personnel were brought from Colombo to witness the manipulated rally at Kalmunai.
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NPC minister condemns Colombo for twisting facts on Moongkilaa'ru victims

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 March 2014, 09:58 GMT]
On 28 February, a bunker with dead bodies was located at Moongkilaa'ru in Mullaiththeevu district. Those who perished were people slain in the genocidal onslaught in 2009. But, the Sri Lankan government is only interested in twisting facts and the relatives of the victims are denied of establishing the identity of their kith and kin, said T. Krukularajah, the education minister of the Northern Provincial Council at a meeting organised in Ki'linochchi on the International Women's Day on Saturday. In the meantime, a social worker from Vanni told TamilNet on Sunday that the 9 people exhumed at Moongkilaa'ru were victims of Sri Lankan military attack on civilians and that he was among those who burried them to give the family a decent burial.
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Colombo twists facts, stops excavation of Mannaar mass grave

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 March 2014, 23:32 GMT]
A person of social leadership living at Maanthai in Mannaar for more than 50 years categorically told TamilNet on Saturday that there was never a burial site at the locality near the historic Thirukkeatheesvaram temple as being claimed by the Sri Lankan Archaeological Department. The Colombo government abruptly ended the exhumation of human skeletons from a mass grave where more than 80 human skeletons have been recovered since December 20, 2013. The latest move by Colombo to dismiss the claim of mass grave comes as the issue gained the attention of UN Hight Commissioner for Human Rights Ms Navi Pillay in her recommendations urged the SL government to undertake an independent and credible criminal and forensic investigations with international assistance into all alleged violations of human rights and humanitarian law, including recently discovered mass graves.
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IC has deceived Tamils on international investigations: Ananthi Sasistharan

[TamilNet, Thursday, 06 March 2014, 13:01 GMT]
“The International Community has deceived the genocide affected Tamils on delivering international investigations,” said Ananthi Sasitharan, a councillor of the Northern Provincial Council, at a press conference held in Jaffna on Thursday. “The draft resolution being circulated in Geneva has failed to satisfy even the minimum expectations. It has totally disregarded the repeated requests from Tamils to the IC to deliver international investigations. Furthermore, it is in complete contrast to the impressions given to the Tamils by the international community in recent times,” she told the press. Ms Ananthi Sasistharan also blamed TNA national list parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran for having instructed her to be silent at a crucial meeting with the representatives of 18 countries during her recent visit to Geneva.
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USA ignores requests of Mannaar Bishop on UNHRC Resolution

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 March 2014, 14:57 GMT]
Bishop of Mannaar Rt. Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph had sent a model resolution to the foreign diplomatic missions, including the Embassy of USA in Colombo, well in advance of the draft resolution by the USA was leaked in Geneva this Monday. The proposal presented by Mannaar Bishop was demanding international investigations on genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Prepared by the Tamil Civil Society Forum, the proposal also called upon the “UN Secretary General and the UN Security Council to activate procedures that will lead to a UN sponsored international mechanism to assess the democratic aspirations of the Tamil People, both in the homeland and in the diaspora for a permanent political solution.”
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Journalists blocked from inspecting alleged massacre site in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 04 March 2014, 21:39 GMT]
Following the discovery of a human skull near Muttave'li playgrounds situated in front of the historic Thirukkoa'neasvarar shrine in Trincomalee on 13 February, the occupying SL military has been deployed at the site to hide the issue from the attention of media, journalists in Trincomalee said. Heavy vehicles that have been brought to the locality are reportedly engaged in removing the remaining traces, informed sources further said. The SL soldiers at the site have not allowed journalists to inspect the site.
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Tamil politicians demand international investigation at Jaffna protest

[TamilNet, Sunday, 02 March 2014, 23:36 GMT]
When Sinhala prisoners protested in Kandy, Namal Rajapaksa, the son of SL President went to the prison and ordered a report on the condition of prisoners. But, when Tamil political prisoners and prisoners of war, subjected to torture on a daily basis, stage protests, no one from the SL government cares about visiting them, said Sundaram Mahendran, the head of the Colombo based Committee on Missing Persons on Sunday when addressing the people protesting against the mysterious death of a Tamil prisoner Gopithas Visuvalingam, a British citizen who was imprisoned in Colombo since 2007. The protest was staged in the morning of the funeral day of the victim Gopithas, who is a father of two from the UK.
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Britain neglected British Tamil suspiciously died in Sri Lanka's prison

[TamilNet, Saturday, 01 March 2014, 23:43 GMT]
The relatives of a 43-year-old British Eelam Tamil, Gopithas Visuvalingam, who died in the Sri Lankan jail under suspicious circumstances on 24 February, blame Colombo for torture of Tamil political prisoners. Mr Gopithas, a British national and father of two, was arrested in Colombo in March 2007 and jailed without any charges till 2012, when he was finally charged and ‘convicted’ for assisting the LTTE. Gopithas had told his aged father, who was visiting him in prison recently that he feared for his life at the hands of operatives, who were under the direct command of the SL presidential sibling and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa before the jail term was over. The family and the relatives of the victim are disappointed with the lack of legal assistance from the British High Commission in Colombo, news sources in Jaffna said.
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