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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2020 election resembles 1970 polls that formed genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 August 2020, 10:08 GMT]
The SLFP led by Srimao Bandaranaike replaced the British drafted Ceylon constitution doing away even the minimal and symbolic safeguards for external justice through the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. Enacting a unitary constitution without the democratic mandate of Eezham Tamils, Ceylon was transformed unilaterally into genocidal Sri Lanka by the Sinhala politicians. Now, the SLFP is replaced by the SLPP, ten years after genocidal annihilation of the armed movement and the de-facto state of Tamil Eelam. The SLPP is poised to enact a constitutional discourse emboldening the unitary state towards the final phase of heritage and structural genocide in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils. As far as the Eezham Tamils are concerned, there is very little left for them to achieve within the scope of SL Parliamentary politics.
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SLMC Chairman: Time for joint Tamil-Muslim efforts

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 June 2020, 18:17 GMT]
Intellectuals, civil society activists and politicians among the Tamils and the Muslims should jointly design a joint programme if their people are to exist with self-respect, said A.L. Abdul Majeed, the chairman of Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC). The Tamils and Muslims are confronting an existential threat. The tendency is going to worsen further with dire consequences to their collective rights. His party favoured a merged North-East Province, Mr Majeed, who once served as a councillor in the merged province, said. The majority of the Muslim people in the de-merged North and East will follow suit if a convincing formula was to be conceived for their coexistence within the merged unit. India needs to be reminded of its historical responsibility in ensuring the merger, he added.
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Divisional Secretary, TNA MPs must act to release Chegnchoalai lands: civil activist

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 08 October 2019, 18:43 GMT]
The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) seems to have blindly applied the 2013 Circular of the SL State to arrive at its recommendation to reverse the ownership of Chegnchoalai orphanage lands at Malaiyaa'la-puram in Ki'linochchi. The circular proposes that the original landowners, displaced during the times of war, were the rightful owners to their properties. However, the HRCSL has failed to take all the facts regarding the Chegnchoalai lands, says civil activist from Karaichchi, Mr Murugiah Thamilchelvan. The Divisional Secretary and Tamil National Alliance Parliamentarians should take responsibility and cancel the decision mooted by the HRCSL, he said.
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Colombo-centric ‘development’ threatens Tamil as medium of instruction in North

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 September 2019, 22:29 GMT]
Jaffna Fisheries Societies Federation has expressed concerns over the looming danger of Sinhalicisation of Fisheries Education in the North. The Sinhalicisation is done through making English as the medium of instruction and populating the students from the South. The move should also be seen with the Sinhala colonisation of the jetties and ports in the Tamil homeland through the so-called mega-development schemes such as the recently started construction of the fishing port in Point Pedro and projects such as the “Enterprise Sri Lanka,” spearheaded by various ministries, departments and authorities of the occupying unitary state in Colombo, according to V. Thavachelvan, the president of Jaffna Fisheries Federation.
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SL Police bans playing devotional songs at Vedukku-naa'ri temple in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 September 2019, 20:48 GMT]
The SL Police from Nedungkea'ni police station has instructed the trustee board of Vedukku-naa'ri Aathi-Lingkeasvarar temple in Vavuniyaa North not to use loudspeakers to play devotional songs during the annual temple festival. The SL Archaeology Department started to claim the locality as coming under its purview last year in August and deployed the SL Police to block Tamil devotees from setting up a ladder to the hilltop. When the dispute went to the courts, the local community was allowed to proceed with the deity rituals without engaging in any construction work. This year, the SL Police has restricted the devotees even from playing devotional songs, commented Thamilchelvan Thurairajah, an elected councillor at the Civic Divisional Council of Vavuniyaa North.
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SL Police goes door-to-door collecting details of residents in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 28 July 2019, 18:06 GMT]
Occupying Colombo’s police has started to collect details of persons residing in each house in the police division of Kaaththaan-kudi in Batticaloa district. Tamil residents in Chelvaa-nakar, which comes under the administrative division of Ma’n-munaip-pattu, complained that the police personnel were visiting each household since 27 July. The SL Police demands there must be a household leader for every house, and that person should put a signature in a document where details of every resident are registered.
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Mother dies after searching for missing son for 11 years

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 July 2019, 22:54 GMT]
A 74-year-old mother of a Tamil male subjected to enforced disappearance eleven years ago in Mannaar has passed away after suffering a heart attack in Mullaiththeevu on Wednesday. The representatives of the district organisation of the families of persons subjected to enforced disappearances said that the mother, Thresamma Sebamalai, was an active member in their continuous protest during the past 869 days. She was trying to trace the whereabouts of her son for the past 11 years. Mrs Sebamalai was living at Ira'naip-paalai in Puthuk-kudiyiruppu.
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Time for Canadian Eezham Tamils to chart next course of diaspora action

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 June 2019, 23:39 GMT]
The political parties in Canada have unanimously called upon the UN to “establish an international independent investigation into the allegations of genocide against Tamils committed in Sri Lanka including the last phase of the armed conflict in 2009” along with two other demands to Colombo. A resolution was unanimously adopted extending condolences to all of the victims of violence while demanding the SL government to deliver justice to the Easter Sunday attacks, including protection of all religious places of worship and to fulfil its obligations made in Geneva within a clearly specified timeframe. Welcoming the move, the Tamil activists in the island urged the Canadian Tamil diaspora to concentrate on educating their host country on the unworkability of transitional justice in the island without international investigations on the genocide taking precedence over the other two demands.
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Metanarrative of Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal, geopolitics and secularism: Jude Lal Fernando

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 May 2019, 00:28 GMT]
The outside powers, be it USA, UK, China or India, are always pre-occupied with the geo-strategic location of the island. During the British colonial period, the Sinhalese were made to believe that they were closer to the British than to the Tamils (Tamils were the ‘invaders’). This resulted in a religiously defined Sinhala Buddhist unitary, which sought to consolidate itself after the ‘independence’. The genocidal process was the outcome. The Tamil liberation struggle, which was a secular nationalist struggle, culminated into the Tamil Eelam state and stopped the genocide. The 2009 onslaught not only destroyed the human lives, but also the secular nationalist liberational ethos. After the Easter Sunday attack in 2019, religious conflicts have been imposed with global implications. Professor Jude Lal Fernando explains the metanarrative and proposes an action to overcome the challenges.
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Kalaikkoan's premonition proved right, Tamils cannot shy away from international struggle

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 May 2019, 23:41 GMT]
The chauvinist elements in the South which were behind the State-sponsored anti-Tamil pogrom in 1958 also chose to warn the Muslims and the Burghers that they would be the next targets in the aftermath. Many Tamils were chased out from South to Jaffna and Batticaloa, But they would be eradicated from there as well, in the future, through Sinhala militarisation, the warning claimed. Fifty years later, Colombo and the powers abetting its war, would be achieving that if the war was allowed to proceed the course it was taking, warned Kalaikkoan master, the head of LTTE's Navam Academy, in 2009. The 36-year-old student of history, who had almost lost sight in both of his eyes was an articulate teacher. He was subjected to enforced disappearance at the hands of the SL military on 17 May 2009. TamilNet releases the unedited audio of the Satellite phone communication with him from 13 April 2009.
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Manipulations at work to nullify NPC-evolved identity to Eezham Tamils food court

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 March 2019, 17:11 GMT]
The forces opposed to the concept of allowing Eezham Tamils to articulate a collective identity to their traditional food court have pressurised the elected divisional council (Piratheasa chapai) of Vavuniyaa North to deviate from the unilaterally democratic decision adopted by the council a month ago to name the latest restaurant as ‘Ammaachchi’. The council was manipulated to change the name to "Vanni A'ru-chuvai-akam" before inviting former SL President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga who is leading Colombo's Office of National Unity and Reconciliation (ONUR) to inaugurate the restaurant on Thursday.
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Colombo accelerates Sinhalicisaton of disputed heritage hilltop in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 12 January 2019, 22:38 GMT]
A team of technicians from the SL Archaeology Department were deployed to copy stone inscriptions found at the disputed heritage site of Vedukku-naa'ri hill-top in Vavuniyaa on Thursday and Friday. The members of the group were claiming that they had come following special requests from the District Secretary of Vavuniyaa, a Sinhalese, and the secretariat of the SL President Maithiripala Sirisena, said Thamilchelvan Thurairajah, an elected councillor at the Civic Divisional Council of Vavuniyaa North, who confronted and interacted with the team on Thursday. Two armed Special Task Force commandos and two police officers were providing ‘security’ to the technicians to carry out the recordings on Thursday and Friday. They were also making some other measurements at the hilltop, the witnesses said.
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HR Day protests in North-East met with violence, SL Police displays hostility

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 December 2018, 23:08 GMT]
Four Tamil protesters were admitted to Trincomalee hospital as unknown masked men assaulted the Tamils from Moothoor East, who rallied in front of the Trincomalee Bus stand Monday morning for a peaceful protest in connection with International Human Rights Day. The families of the enforced disappeared, and the villagers from Padu-kaadu and Muthalai-madu, whose lands have been seized by the occupying SL military, were staging the protest. In the meantime, the SL Police at Chunnaakam in Jaffna threatened the Tamil villagers of Uduvil who protested in front of the DS office on Monday urging it to not hand over a private property, which the police wants to seize for its use. Later, on Monday night, a petrol bomb was thrown at the property. The people suspect that the SL police was behind the attack, in an apparent threat to force the owners of a fitness centre to vacate the lands.
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Kalaignar Karunanidhi passes away at 94

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 August 2018, 16:58 GMT]
Former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu State and the Chief of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Muthuvel Karunanidhi, popularly known as ‘Kalaignar’, has passed away at the age of 94 in Chennai, TamilNadu, on Tuesday. Apart from his acumen in adjusting policy to the prevailing circumstances and persistent role in dialectically shaping the politics of Tamil Nadu, Kalaignar was also a veteran writer, playwright, scriptwriter, poet and an orator contributing to Tamil literature and cinema. His demise marks the end of a political era, represented along with the late former chief minister personalities such as C.N. Annadurai (Anna), M.G.Ramachandran and J Jayalalithaa, all of whom originated from the secular Dravidian movement, which emerged as a counter-hegemonic force in Tamil Nadu politics in the early 20th century.
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Remembering 35th Black July with Tamil resolve

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 July 2018, 07:51 GMT]
This week, Eezham Tamils in the homeland and the Tamil Diaspora mark the 35th anniversary of the collective trauma of the ‘Black July’, the SL state-sponsored genocidal pogrom that claimed the lives of more than 3,000 Tamil residents in the south of the island in 1983. The key lesson learned throughout the years of the pogroms, massacres, genocidal war and finally the post-war structural genocide, which is aimed at dismantling the existence of Eezham Tamils as a nation, is a hard reality. The genocide originating from the Mahawansa mind-set always gets its way, not because of the strength of the Sinhala nation, but mainly because the external State actors sustaining the Colombo-centric approach, is that lesson. Thus, the collaborationists and the negotiators among the Eezham Tamils were always doomed to failure, Tamil political observers in Jaffna commented.
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Sinhalas have come in big way, as opening of Kandyan Kingdom: Rt Rev Jebanesan

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 June 2018, 23:38 GMT]
Tamils had been the first inhabitants and an original people of this island. Although some historians accept that fact, the present Sinhala historians do not take it. Back in the old days, when H.C. Ray was the professor of history at the University of Ceylon, he used to refute the claim that Tamils were interlopers. The interlopers were the Sinhalas and not the Tamils, he used to say. However, one is unable to resonate that fact anymore, says Rt Rev Dr S Jebanesan, the former Bishop of the Jaffna Diocese of the Church of South India, in an exclusive interview to TamilNet. The tyranny of the ‘majority’ is dominating the post-colonial political discourses and the case of ‘Sri Lanka’ is a classic example of this trend, the scholar of philosophy, theology as well as the Tamil and English languages, said.
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Uprooted Tamils embark on courageous sea landing, SL navy restrained at Ira'nai-theevu

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 April 2018, 21:35 GMT]
Four hundred uprooted Eezham Tamils, who have been waging a continuous protest since May 01, 2017 at Muzhangkaavil along the western coast of Vanni, embarked on a historic sea journey to the twin-islet of Ira'nai-theevu on the 359th day of their protest on Wednesday. They were vowing to resettle back in their native place braving any objection coming from the occupying SL Navy, The Sinhala sailors present at the naval detachment restrained as their officers were embarrassed by the courage of the people. The people went there in 46 boats. Seven Catholic priests, including their parish priest Fr Arudchelvan, accompanied them. The people are now staying at the premises of the Church of Our Lady of Holy Rosary and at the Catholic Tamil Mixed School in the twin-islet, which is located 12 nautical miles from the coast of the mainland in Mannaar facing the Palk Bay.
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NPC finally awakens against SL Mahaweli Authority obstructing territorial integrity of Tamil homeland

[TamilNet, Friday, 06 April 2018, 06:35 GMT]
The Northern Provincial Council has discussed the genocidal land grab choking the territorial contiguity of the traditional homeland of Eezham Tamils in the North-East of the island in a special sitting on Thursday. The move comes after years of reports highlighting how SL President Maithiripala Sirisena has been committing a systematic genocidal land grab and demographic genocide against Eezham Tamils through the so-called Mahaweli development ministry since 1997, when he took control of the department for the first time. The NPC finally seems to address the precarious issue in a proper context. However, it remains to be seen whether the NPC and the Tamil leadership are prepared to declare all Sinhala colonisations in the North and East that took place after 1956 as illegal, commented Tamil academic circles in Jaffna on Friday.
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