Muslims join Tamils opposing Colombo's suppression of Thileepan Remembrance in North

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 September 2020, 23:19 GMT]
Tamil business and student communities in the North-East observed hartal on Monday condemning SL State's widespread hostility towards the annual commemoration of Lt Col Thileepan on Saturday. Occupying Colombo's police and military were trying to block the business owners from conducting the shutdown. However, the business chambers didn't succumb to the pressure. Also, Muslim traders in the cities of North fully observed shutdown. They also marked hartal in their residential suburbs in Jaffna showing solidarity with Eezham Tamils. Except for the hospitals and necessary public transportation, the cities and towns were at a standstill in Jaffna, Mullaiththeevu, Vavuniyaa and Mannaar.
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Tamils unify to mark Thileepan Remembrance, brave Colombo's suppression of memorialisation

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 September 2020, 12:05 GMT]
Colombo's widespread attempts through SL judiciary, Police and military covering all the potential memorial sites and the Maaveerar square within the University of Jaffna, didn't manage to curb Eezham Tamils, their grassroots activists and politicians from marking the collective memorialisation events on Saturday on the occasion of 33rd commemoration of Lt Col Thileepan. Jaffna University students took part in three events in Jaffna, Chaavakachcheari and Vavuniyaa North. All mainstream Tamil parties doing politics on Tamil nationalist platform were brought together by the pressure from Tamil media, grassroots activists and the students who were responding to the suppression coming from Colombo. All Tamil dailies published in the Tamil homeland gave prominence to Thileepan Remembrance and highlighted Colombo's harassment against the collective memorialisation events.
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Commemorating sacrifices of Tamil struggle is an inalienable right, not a subject for ‘SL permission’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 26 September 2020, 09:10 GMT]
Veteran human rights activist and Catholic priest Fr M. Sakthivel has condemned Tamil political parties for having lowered their moral standards to the level of seeking permission from the SL State to commemorate the sacrifices made in the Tamil struggle. His comments come following the members of the political parties writing a letter to the head of the occupying state of genocidal Sri Lanka to lift the ‘ban’ enforced through its judiciary and police on marking Lt Col Thileepan’s 33rd commemoration. Tamils held all their struggle related remembrance events, including all the Mu’l’ livaaykkaal Remembrance events after 2009, as part of their inalienable right as they regard such remembrance as an inalienable exercise of their right of self-determination, Fr Sakthivel observed.
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South Asia mourns SPB's demise

[TamilNet, Friday, 25 September 2020, 22:08 GMT]
The demise of legendary and iconic South Asian singer SP Balasubrahmanyam (74), who captivated millions of hearts world over, has left an enormous void in the music world. The singer genius gave more than 40,000 tracks with versatility in sixteen languages, most of them in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam in a span of half a century of musical life. SPB, who was based in Chennai, set the benchmark for pronunciation not only in his mother tongue Telugu but also for singing Tamil playback songs in Tamil Nadu. TamilNet joins the millions of people in paying tribute to the greatest music legend of our times. Artist Pugazhenthi from Tamil Nadu shares with TamilNet his memories of SPB coming forward to sing freedom songs for Eezham Tamils and their liberation movement in 2007.
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English version not available

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 September 2020, 22:36 GMT]

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Jude Lal Fernando’s Sputnik interview exposes unfolding British duplicity on KMS ‘investigations’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 September 2020, 15:41 GMT]
The UK investigative journalist Phil Miller has revealed with an immense amount of details how the UK’s security company, Keenie Meenie Services (aka KMS), was involved in training the SL commando force, the Special Task Force (STF), which massacred, abducted and tortured scores of Tamils in the island. However, British paramilitary forces like Keenie Meenie give ‘credible deniability’ to the British state. Even the use of the word ‘mercenary’ is misleading, says Professor Jude Lal Fernando of Trinity College, Dublin, in an interview to Sputnik on Thursday. The exiled Sinhala academic and activist, who has been actively engaged in seeking global justice to Tamil genocide, claimed that the British paramilitary was operating “only within the interests of the British state and as part of the state”.
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Gotabaya's ‘Task Force’ monk threatens Tamils to stay away from their paddy fields in Thiriyaay

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 September 2020, 22:03 GMT]
The extremist Sinhala Buddhist monk based in Arisimalai in Pulmoaddai, Panamure Thilakawansha Thero, has threatened Eezham Tamil farmers of Thiriyaay in Kuchchave'li division of Trincomalee district to stay away from their agricultural lands on Wednesday. Panamure Thilakawansha is the monk whom the SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has referred as “chief prelate for the Northern and Eastern Provinces” in his Presidential Task Force for ‘archaeological heritage management’ in the East. He has claimed that ancient Buddhist artefacts were lying spread across more than one thousand acres spanning six farming tracts. The Tamil farmers have demanded the Tamil National Alliance and other Tamil national political parties to act against the move.
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Colombo extends genocidal land grab targeting farmlands of Tamils along NE border: Ravikaran

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 September 2020, 23:36 GMT]
SL departments of Forest and Wildlife Conservation, which come under the SL unitary state have expanded the land grab to agricultural lands of Eezham Tamils along the border between the Northern and Eastern provinces in Mullaiththeevu. Former Northern Provincial Councillor, Thurairajah Ravikaran, witnessed a few days ago the two departments seizing 503 acres of lands belonging to 110 Tamil landowners in Akkarai-ve'li, Periya-ve'li, Ka'n'naaddi, Panichchamoaddai and Maariyaa-munai, the agricultural areas facing the bordering Thennai-maravadi village of Trincomalee district. Both the SL department guards have gone to the extent of arresting and filing lawsuits against the Tamil farmers who have legally owned the lands which they have inherited from their ancestors.
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