Boyle prefers IIIM demand over ICC-referral, says specific reference to genocide essential

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 January 2021, 00:04 GMT]
The Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) has made it clear that it will not cooperate with the UNHRC. It is time for the UNHRC to take action against the GoSL, said Professor Francis Boyle, an international law expert who teaches at the University of Illinois College of Law in the USA. Human Rights High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet could forward the situation to the Security Council or the General Assembly if she wants to, he said, responding to a set of questions coming from the Tamil politicians on the ground. However, getting a new resolution with specific reference to genocide is essential, Prof Boyle said. “You have to keep up the reference to genocide. This is the gravamen of your Complaint against the GoSL.” Asked whether he preferred the demand for ICC-referral over the IIIM demand, he said: “I would go for the IIIM along the lines of Syria and for the same reasons”.
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UN Rights Chief joins her predecessors in watering down collective rights of genocide affected people

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 15 September 2020, 06:37 GMT]
Without imposing a robust follow-up on the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka, which withdrew its support to UN Human Rights Resolution 30/1 that failed to address genocide justice, international investigations and ensure the collective rights of the people of the occupied traditional Tamil homeland in the North-East, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet was just “encouraging” the Council to “give renewed attention to Sri Lanka, in view of the need to prevent threats to peace, reconciliation and sustainable development.” Ms Bachelet was only referring to “commitments” made by the Rajapaksa regime “since it withdrew its support for resolution 30/1”.
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Michelle Bachelet calls Tamils a ‘minority’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 February 2020, 23:23 GMT]
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, who gave an oral update on her annual report on the human rights situation in “Sri Lanka” recognised the fundamental problem in the island as that the state of “Sri Lanka” not addressing impunity for past violations. The SL State has not undertaken the security sector reforms needed to address the “drivers and enablers” of the violations, she said. The UN Rights Chief was also regretting to the SL withdrawal of co-sponsorship to the consensus UNHRC resolutions noted that the new SL government had announced a “very different approach” to the commitments previously made. However, Ms Bachelet referred to the occupied nation of Eezham Tamils with a distinct homeland in the North-East as a “minority” in the island.
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UN continues to commit systemic failure through recognising constitution of genocidal “Sri Lanka”

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 February 2020, 23:34 GMT]
One of the main underlying arguments used by the SL State to withdraw its “co-sponsorship” of the UNHRC Resolution was that the past SL government had co-sponsored it violating the principles and framework of the so-called Constitution of the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka. That “Constitution” is fundamentally illegal as far as the occupied nation of Eezham Tamils is concerned. So far, “co-sponsorship” with the genocidal state and “containment” of the genocide-affected nation, was the narrative played out in the UN Human Rights Council. If the entire Geneva-based discourse was meant to be a remedy for what the UN itself has accepted as the systemic failure on its part, it just got “downgraded” into a systemic failure of the UNHRC. The global community has a shared responsibility not to allow the domino effect of the ‘systemic failure’ spiral itself in a vicious circle.
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UN human rights system in Geneva lacks courage to make “Sri Lanka” a Permanent Agenda Item

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 February 2020, 20:04 GMT]
The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Resolution 30/1 adopted in 2015 was fundamentally flawed as it was based on the “Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Investigation on Sri Lanka” (OISL). The OISL was not mandated to investigate decades-long Tamil genocide as it was conceived as an “internationalised” extension of the Rajapaksa regime’s “Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission” (LLRC), a blueprint for post-2009 genocide. Now, the LLRC-inventors are back, and they are at loggerheads with the inventors of the International-LLRC (OISL). The acid test for the High Commissioner, her office, the OHCHR and the 47-member UNHRC is the notion of SL “co-sponsorship”. If the human rights regime in Geneva wants to save its credibility, it has to make the human rights situation in “Sri Lanka” a Permanent Agenda Item to the council. But, it lacks such courage.
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Demand Tokyo Co-chairs, India to bring international mediation between Tamils and GoSL

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 November 2019, 19:59 GMT]
Unlike during the genocidal onslaught in 2009, the US and India are now more tightly intertwined in their foreign policy approach on the maritime affairs of the states in the Indian Ocean. There is a joint Indo-Pacific outlook, especially after the 2013 launch of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). There would be no different approaches or nuances between the two powers, as it was the case in the previous decade. The US and India, along with two other key partners in the region, Japan and Australia, would be acting en bloc. The Rajapaksa establishment is very well aware of this reality. It is time that Tamils muster their historic courage and articulate a joint demand for international mediation. It is also the time that the foreign actors who were pulling the wrong strings during the 2009 genocide and its aftermath now take account of their earlier practices.
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US ambassador-turned-consultant hints at capitalising on ‘shared interests’ with Gotabaya

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 November 2019, 23:04 GMT]
“The key question for the United States is now whether the two countries [Sri Lanka and the US] can reset their dialogue on the Indo-Pacific and regional peace and capitalize on the interests they share,” says Ambassador Teresita Schaffer, a retired career member of the U.S. Foreign Service and a former U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka (1992-1995). In an interview conducted for the blog of the Council on Foreign Relations, by Alyssa Ayres, one of her colleague at the Washington DC based consulting firm, McLarty Associates, Shaffer mentions one of the ‘interests’ shared by the US as “preventing the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam from resuming their campaign”.
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Blake's Colombo lecture reminds Tamils of bureaucracy abetting 2009 genocide

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 May 2019, 16:57 GMT]
Former US Ambassador Robert O. Blake was visiting Colombo on Tuesday to deliver a lecture titled ‘US Foreign Policy towards China and South Asia and what it means for Sri Lanka’. He was advising Colombo to tackle the response to the Easter Sunday attacks by drawing lessons from the 2001 Bush Administration and form an intelligence coordinating body of technocrats not to miss any single lead of information on potential attacks. Former SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was precisely doing that during the war, he said. He also warned against over-reacting as the US did after 9/11 by expanding government surveillance without appropriate constitutional checks. On geopolitics, Mr Blake was enticing Colombo to engage with China, the USA and other countries in parallel, a paradigm which enabled Colombo to annihilate the military power of Tamils through a genocidal onslaught in 2009.
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Sumanthiran's rationality exposes Wigneswaran's gullibility

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 April 2019, 22:11 GMT]
ITAK Parliamentarian and President Counsel M.A. Sumanthiran, a proven ‘revisionist’ of Eezham Tamils’ external right of self-determination who sophisticatedly denies Tamil genocide, has now assailed former NPC Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran, who mistakenly or deceptively ended up harping on IIGEP as a precedent-setting argument to justify the illogical demand for hybrid courts. After Sumanthiran's intervention, which was highlighted by Jaffna daily Kaalaik-Kathir on 31st March, Wigneswaran issued a new statement on the same day – this time in Tamil only – and said he was not asking to set up a group like the IIGEP. His initial statement also pointed out that the act of IIGEP dissolving itself was an example why an international investigation was necessary in the island, he reiterated.
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UNHRC ‘Sri Lanka’ roadmap premeditated not to deliver genocide justice to Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 March 2019, 15:28 GMT]
The successive UN Human Rights High Commissioners starting from the Canadian jurist Louise Arbour (2004–2008), South African Tamil jurist Navaneetham Pillay (2008-2014), Jordanian diplomat Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein (2014-2018) and the incumbent Chilean politician Michelle Bachelet, have all been following the same roadmap, laid out during the times of Ms Arbour at height of the genocidal war. That approach was based on the paradigm of avoiding looking into the crime of genocide, equating the GoSL and the LTTE and only concentrating on the war crimes and crimes against humanity that occurred during the last phase of the war in 2009. The roadmap came to light, straight from the horse's mouth in 2010 when Ms Arbour was the head of the ‘International Crisis Group’ (ICG). The paradigm was also a part of the larger ‘intended’ failure on the part of the UN system.
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Tamil parties failing to single-mindedly demand genocide justice, more dangerous than ITAK

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 March 2019, 14:11 GMT]
The Eezham Tamils need to objectively and scientifically distinguish the competing discourses of the collaborative politics of the ITAK and the actors claiming to counter the wrong narrative of the ITAK. While the ITAK is lost to ‘quisling politics’, there is a danger that the emerging alternative actors also succumbing to a rather dangerous ‘diplopia politics’, which is a double-option trap. The bedrock of both the deceptions is the overt orientation of relying upon the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR), tasked to promote and protect the human rights and function also as the secretariat of the UNHRC. It is important that Tamils should engage and interact with UN bodies. However, limiting the demands to the inside-the-box thinking of that system is more disastrous than the ITAK advocating quisling politics.
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Naval partnerships off Tamil Eelam coast need perusal at backdrop of structural genocide

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 September 2018, 22:59 GMT]
Japan’s Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera visited Colombo from 20th to 22nd August and met high officials of the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka, discussing maritime security and development of port facilities. His visits focused on the ports in Colombo, Hambantota and in particular Trincomalee, the capital of the occupied country of Eezham Tamils. The following Week, Japan’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs Kazuyuki Nakane visited Colombo, amongst others to inaugurate the commissioning ceremony of two state-of-the-art patrol-ships worth around 11 million dollars donated by Japan to the SL Coast Guard. The Japanese collaboration with genocidal Sri Lanka comes as part of a joint U.S., India and Japanese geopolitical move, Tamil political observers in Trincomalee said.
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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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Militarisation of housing contract frustrates storm affected Tamils in Ampaa'rai North

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 April 2018, 18:49 GMT]
Tamil residents have expressed serious concerns over the occupying Sinhala military of genocidal Sri Lanka emerging as the contractor of reconstructing the roofs of a housing scheme with 684 apartments, which come under two village (GS) divisions in Periya-neelaava'nai of Kalmunai administrative division in the Ampaa'rai district, along the border of the Batticaloa district. The residents are in shock after learning that the apartments, initially constructed by the SL Foreign Ministry exploiting international funds in the aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami catastrophe, are not strong enough to bear roofs of traditional tiles. The SL military contractors are now going to put up lighter roofing sheets, which are prone to wind suction during extreme weather, informed civil sources in the division told TamilNet.
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Jaffna students demand US and UN agenda-setters to declare PTA detainees as political prisoners

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 November 2017, 23:44 GMT]
More than 1,000 Tamil students from across the faculties of Jaffna University as well as the students from the College of Education, Jaffna Technical College and High Tech institute took to the streets in Jaffna on Tuesday demanding the main intervening actors of the International Establishment to recognise the Tamil prisoners detained under the so-called Prevention of Terrorism Act as Political Prisoners. They handed over open and urgent appeals addressed to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the President of UNHRC and to the US Permanent Mission for UN in Geneva, which has been behind the drafting of the ‘consensus’ resolution with the SL State in Geneva Human Rights Council in 2015 and with postponing a final evaluation by two more years in 2017. The student leaders handed over the appeals through the UN Residential Office in Jaffna and the American Corner in the city.
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Factoring political solution more important than addressing human rights: Prof Ramasamy

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 November 2017, 21:33 GMT]
Not only did the Sri Lankan regime won the war against the Tamil liberation force, it might even win the propaganda war if the problems of Tamils in the island are exclusively focused on human rights to the neglect of the fundamental question of a long lasting political solution, commented Deputy Chief Minister of Penang state in Malaysia, Professor P. Ramasamy, told TamilNet on Monday. “Yes, human rights must be addressed, but in the larger context of the Tamil political question. It would make no sense just to address the human rights issues without factoring the political solution,” the longtime advocate of the rights of Eezham Tamils said. Focusing primarily on human rights might be an irritant to the Sri Lankan regime, but it may prefer it simply because it diverts the attention from the need of a political solution of Tamils, he further said.
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MCC should not insult Tamils by inviting ‘Sri Lankan’ envoy: Deputy CM of Penang

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 November 2017, 20:55 GMT]
The Deputy Chief Minister of Penang state in Malaysia Professor P. Ramasamy, who is a long time advocate of the rights of Eezham Tamils, on Wednesday condemned the Malaysian Ceylonese Congress (MCC) for inviting the SL High Commissioner to Malaysia to grace a biennial dinner, which is being organised on November 25, 2017. The Chief Minister of Penang has also been invited to deliver a keynote address at the dinner. “I am not sure whether the Chief Minister of Penang would be accepting this invitation. However since the Penang state government has taken a strong stand against the Sri Lankan government for its abuse of human rights among Tamils, it is unlikely that he will attend,” the Deputy CM said.
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SL constitutional discourse seen coupled with ‘Vision 2025’ policy of genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Sunday, 08 October 2017, 23:00 GMT]
The World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have influenced the Colombo-based unitary system to prepare ‘Vision 2025’, a policy which gives a face-lift to the ‘development paradigm’ of genocidal Sri Lanka. The drafters of SL Constitution, engineering ‘reforms’ in the unitary system, are also the agents serving the external masters. The new constitution is going to be the bed-rock for many more so-called reforms and Acts to be enacted in future to permanently lock the island as a single-unit into the bandwagonism of the West. New Delhi has already been locked in the grid as a ‘Strategic Partner’. The interim report on the constitutional discourse should be seen coupled with ‘Vision 2025’, launched in September jointly by SL President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
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NPC to lodge legal action against SL Forest Department’s seizure of peoples’ lands

[TamilNet, Thursday, 24 August 2017, 23:55 GMT]
Several complaints have been made from Mullaiththeevu district prompting the Northern Provincial Council to seriously consider lodging a legal action against the conduct of Colombo’s Forest Department, NPC circles in Jaffna said. Occupying Colombo's Forest Department and Department of Wildlife Conservation have been deployed for several years in systematically transforming the private and most of the non-residential lands in Mannaar and Vanni into the property of the SL State through blindly deploying the statutes, ordinances and acts of the unitary constitution of genocidal ‘Sri Lanka’. In the meantime, the West has been playing a destructive ‘diplomacy’ by abetting the SL State as it was doing during the times of war, ruining the very survival of the nation of Eezham Tamils in their homeland.
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Lawyers demand UN action into allegations of Colombo deploying chemical substances on POWs

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 September 2016, 23:46 GMT]
“Accusation by former LTTE cadres that they were administered with poisonous and chemical substances during rehabilitation period resulting in their being afflicted with serious physical disabilities have raised concerns as regards the accountability and justice process,” said K.S. Ratnavale and V. Puvitharan, the conveners of Tamil Lawyers Forum in an open appeal issued on Sunday to the UN Human Rights Council demanding international action. “The very nature of poisonous substance makes it difficult for medical personnel to identify or detect such substance on the mere examination of victims. It behoves the scientists with medical background and expertise and not merely medical doctors to identify the effects of injestion of external substances in the body,” the appeal coming from the TFL said.
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