Ananthi blames war criminal Silva for blocking collective memorial at Mu'l'livaaykkaal

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 May 2021, 19:23 GMT]
SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Commander of the SL Army, General Shavendra Silva, have deployed the occupying military to suppress the 12th collective Mu'l'ivaaykkaal Remembrance of Tamil Genocide at the sacred memorial site, said former councillor Ms Ananthy Sasitharan on Monday. She was talking to TamilNet after the SL military blocked her from entering Mullaiththeevu. The SL military was using Covid-19 as an excuse to shut down two divisions surrounding the memorial place. War criminal Silva, who commanded the notorious 58th Division that waged the genocidal onslaught in Vanni in May 2009, is now leading Colombo's Operation Centre for Preventing COVID-19 Outbreak in addition to being the commander of the SL Army. His military men were also responsible for destroying, desecrating the memorial lamp and removing the enormous memorial stone brought to Vanni from Jaffna on 12 May.
Full story >>

Tamils witness false dilemma in Geneva as geopolitical formations pit against each other

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 February 2021, 11:53 GMT]
SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s ‘balancing act’ has tightly pitted the US-UK-India axis of bandwagoning strategic partners against the China-Russia-Pakistan formation at Geneva. US Ambassador Ms Alaina Teplitz in Colombo was making a North trip as Pakistan’s prime minister visited Colombo. Simultaneously, the politics of human rights was unfolding in Geneva at the Interactive Dialogue on Thursday after Ms Michelle Bachelet, the UN Human Rights High Commissioner and the former president of Chile, presented her report on Wednesday. As usual, the UN High Commissioner’s Report was strongly worded than what one could expect from a resolution being tabled by parties with a vested interest. Eelam Tamils, who demand specific referral to the main crime of genocide from the UN High Commissioner and the UNHRC Resolution, have to confront a false dichotomy once again.
Full story >>

Tamil activists resisted three sources of outside influence while drafting demands to UNHRC

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 January 2021, 23:44 GMT]
The joint demands formulated by the Tamil national political parties towards the United Nations make specific reference to genocide twice. The four-point document gains significance as Parliamentary Group Leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Mr R Sampanthan has endorsed it with his signature, said former Northern Provincial Council Minister Ms Ananthy Sasitharan. Mr M A Sumanthiran representing the TNA in the negotiations finally agreed to make the specific reference after TELO Parliamentarian Selvam Adaikalanathan seemingly insisted for it, she said. TELO is a party of the TNA with three parliamentary seats. In an explosive and lengthy comment to TamilNet, Sasitharan narrated how the foreign powers and NGO agenda-setters were attempting to influence the process from three fronts. She considered Dr Guruparan Kumaravadivel as the behind-the-scene drafter of the final document.
Full story >>

Colombo’s brutal suppression of Tamil Heroes’ Day counter-productive to stated objectives: Tamil MP

[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 December 2020, 15:44 GMT]
Emboldened with a two-thirds majority in the SL Parliament, the regime of Rajapaksa has chosen to suppress Tamil remembrance days, particularly the Maaveear Naa'l (Tamil Eelam Heroes’ Day) this year. The Rajapaksa regime was short-sighted in using the opportunity to showcase to its southern audience that it was more determined than its predecessor in blocking November 27 Remembrance. However, the brutal manner in which the SL State and its judiciary suppressed the collective remembrance events received more attention not only among the Tamil youth in the North and the East but also in the South, said ITAK (TNA) Parliamentarian from Batticaloa Shanakiyan Rasamanickam. “I received phone calls from Up-Country Tamil youth from Deniyaya and Matara in the down south to Kandy and Colombo,” he said adding that even fifteen and sixteen-year-old youth were posing questions.
Full story >>

Occupied Tamil Eelam marks Heroes' Day indoors, SL military detains seminary principal

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 November 2020, 16:44 GMT]
The Police of the occupying state of genocidal Sri Lanka detained a Tamil Catholic priest, S. Baskaran, who is the principal of St. Martin’s Seminary while conducting Tamil Eelam Heroes’ Day remembrance at the entrance of the seminary, located near the Bishop’s House in Jaffna. Amidst tightened harassment from the SL military and the police against public remembrance events, the people and their political representatives resolvedly and emotionally marked the commemoration lighting flames of sacrifice inside their premises. The mobilisation for indoor remembrance has drawn the attention of the younger generation of Tamils like never before in the post-2009 context, journalists in Jaffna said. All the occupying Sinhala soldiers and the police personnel were deployed in the public places, junctions and along the road everywhere, reminding the people the level of military occupation.
Full story >>

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.
Full story >>

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”.
Full story >>

Diaspora youth group re-aligns Tamil narrative on enforced disappearances

[TamilNet, Friday, 04 September 2020, 22:13 GMT]
The misrepresentation and interpretation of enforced Tamil disappearances and Tamil Prisoners of War (POWs) represent an extension of Colombo’s genocidal agenda which continues to be mirrored through the engagements of the genocidal state’s global counterparts. In that regard, the Swiss-based Tamil Youth group – “Phoenix – the Next Generation” have condemned such internal and external diversions away from the contextualisation of enforced Tamil disappearances as a component of Colombo’s genocidal agenda through a social media initiative coinciding with the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances.
Full story >>

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”.
Full story >>

Families of war-disappeared send strong message braving SL restrictions on International Day

[TamilNet, Monday, 31 August 2020, 16:36 GMT]
The district organisations of the families of Eezham Tamils subjected to enforced disappearances at the hands of the occupying SL military and its paramilitary groups courageously staged protests in the North and East passing a strong message to the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka on the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances on 30th August. Tamil protesters who mobilised in Batticaloa passed a strong message to the Rajapaksa establishment as they refused to adhere to the restrictions placed on them by the SL judiciary and the police. District coordinator, Amalanayaki Amalraj, received an interim order from Batticaloa Magistrate, AC Rizwan, following SL Police OIC, Samantha Bandara’s accusation that she was trying to convene more than one thousand people violating the pandemic restrictions.
Full story >>

Tamil nation-oriented parties challenged in East

[TamilNet, Thursday, 06 August 2020, 17:22 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is set to win six of thirteen seats of the Northern province in the SL Parliament. The competing Tamil national rights-oriented parties, the TNPF (Tamil Congress) and Tamil Makkal Thesiya Kootani (TMTK) would be securing one seat each, electing a federalism-oriented majority of eight Tamil parliamentarians from the province. However, in the most populous Eastern province with a significant mix of Sinhala and Muslim voters, the TNA is gaining only three of sixteen seats, two in Batticaloa and one in Trincomalee, entirely losing Ampaa'rai. Former paramilitary operative Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan alias Karuna waged an anti-Muslim campaign in Ampaa'rai to woo the voters, making his opportunistic politics out of the collective failure by the TNA, TNPF and the TMTK in the East.
Full story >>

Criminals banished from South deployed for Sinhala colonisation in Musali, Mannaar

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 July 2020, 20:09 GMT]
Criminals and former military men absconding from law enforcement authorities for crimes committed in the South, particularly those with a previous military background, have been provided with an escape route if they agree to take part as settlers in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils. The tendency has been observed in Ko'ndaichchi in Musali division of Mannaar district, informed sources in the division said. In addition to Sinhala workers who previously worked in Ko'ndaichchi cashew farm, there are tens of Sinhala colonists with criminal background from Colombo, Kegalle, Matara and Gampaha districts in the South. Although only twenty-seven families are registered in the voters' registry, and they were provided with housing scheme, there are scores of other Sinhalese living in the so-called “Sinhala Gammana” village in Ko'ndaichchi.
Full story >>

Sinhala ‘Army & Archaeology’ target 600 sites for heritage occupation in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 July 2020, 23:38 GMT]
Colombo's Sinhala ‘Army and Archaeology’ have identified around six hundred various sites for ‘heritage’ occupation in Batticaloa district alone. There are Saiva and folk-deity temples of Eezham Tamils in most of these places. The Government officials at the District Secretariat have been explicitly instructed to inform the SL Presidential Secretariat about organisations and individuals failing to ‘cooperate’ with SL Archaeology Department and the monks of the Presidential Task Force for so-called Archaeological Heritage Management in the Eastern Province, Batticaloa District Secretary (Government Agent) Ms Kalamathy Pathmarajah has told civil society activists in a meeting on Wednesday.
Full story >>

SL Navy ‘updates’ records of ex-LTTE members in Moothoor East

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 July 2020, 22:14 GMT]
The occupying SL Navy stationed in Champoor, Moothoor East of Trincomalee district, has started contacting former LTTE members in Moothoor East to “update” their details on current affiliations, Rural Development Society members in Paaddaa'li-puram said. Conducting village-by-village and door-by-door visits or phone conversations, the predominantly Sinhala SL Navy is updating the current status of every former Tamil fighters synchronising the details. The executive president and the Sinhala military of the occupying unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka seem to be caught up in paranoia that a regrouping of Tamil armed movement was taking place, RDS representatives said.
Full story >>

CBK, Kadirgamar condemned at Navaali genocidal massacre remembrance event

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 July 2020, 03:40 GMT]
SL Foreign Minister in 1995, the late Lakshman Kadirgamar, a Tamil, denied that Colombo had carried out the massacre targeting St Peters Church in Navaali. It has taken 25 years for the then SL President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (CBK) to admit it to some extent, and that too as an incidental one 4 km away from the battlefield, Rev Fr SJ Emmanuel observed in his speech. He blamed not only Kadirgamar and CBK but also the Sinhala Catholic establishment as well as sections of Tamil Catholic priesthood for failing to speak the truth about the attack. Tamil politician MK Shivajilingam said CBK had failed to admit the nature of the crime. “It is not an accidental event of dropping a parcel. The bombers targeted the church with 13 bombs,” he said. Former NPC Councillor Ananthy Sasitharan said the chain of attacks including Chemma'ni mass graves establishes that they were premeditated.
Full story >>

SL Police harasses Shivajilingam at 25th Remembrance of Navaali massacre in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2020, 00:05 GMT]
Hundreds of people emotionally marked the 25th remembrance of 147 Tamil men, women and children who perished in SL Air Force bombing and artillery attacks when they had sought refuge at two temples at Navaali in Jaffna on 09th July 1995. On Thursday, the Sinhala police of occupying Colombo was trying to block former TNA parliamentarian and former provincial councillor M.K. Shivajilingam when he went to the remembrance event. On Wednesday, the SL Police was attempting to secure a court order against the participation of the Tamil politician in the remembrance. Mr Shivajilingam, who has been in the forefront championing the right of Eezham Tamils memorialisation events, especially after 2009, was however allowed to take part by the courts. Yet, the SL Police was harassing him at the site, irking the Tamils.
Full story >>

University students, Shivajilingam brave SL harassment to commemorate fallen Black Tigers

[TamilNet, Sunday, 05 July 2020, 23:06 GMT]
Reacting to SL military harassment against paying tribute to Tamil war hero Captain Miller and other Black Tigers at Nelliyadi in Vadamaraadchi, Jaffna, Tamil students at the University of Jaffna lit the flame of sacrifice within the university premises at 7:05 pm at the time of the death of Miller on Sunday. The students released the photos to journalists in Jaffna. The reaction came as the occupying SL military and police in Jaffna blocked Tamil political parties and their representatives from paying tribute to the Tamil heroes on Black Tigers Day. Former TNA Parliamentarian M.K. Shivajilingam also braved to mark the day at a public event in Vadamaraadchi on Sunday.
Full story >>

After Naavat-kuzhi, Colombo targets Poonakari for Sinhala colonisation across Jaffna lagoon

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 July 2020, 19:28 GMT]
Strategically located Naavat-kuzhi in Jaffna peninsula and Poonakari across the Jaffna lagoon at the entrance to the peninsula in the mainland were systematically targeted for Sinhalicisation by occupying Colombo during the previous Rajapaksa regime. Politicians, including Rajapaksa family members, were directly involved in grabbing lands and farms in Poonakari. Sinhala colonists were brought to Naavat-kuzhi in Jaffna. The colonisation of Naavatkuzhi carried out clandestinely during the Rajapaksa rule gained “legal” status under the Sirisena-Wickramasinghe rule that followed. Sections of Sinhala nationalists who joined the US bandwagon, such as Patali Champika Ranawake, allocated lands and housing schemes to the colonists. They also completed a Buddhist stupa. Now, the Rajapaksa regime is back in business escalating the project into Poonakari, informed Tamil officials in Jaffna said.
Full story >>

New secret unit among four SL military and police squads competing to arrest Tamil youth in North

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 July 2020, 13:22 GMT]
Four SL military and police squads, including a new secret unit led by a Police Deputy Inspector General (DIG) based in Colombo, have been detaining Tamils under the allegation of attempting to regroup armed struggle. Apart from the notorious ‘Terrorist Investigation Division,’ based in Colombo, the new unit led by another DIG is also operating from Colombo with field trips to all the five districts of North, informed sources in Jaffna said. Four different “networks” of Tamil youth have been detained in Magazine New Remand Prison in Colombo in the recent months, the sources further said. In the meantime, Coordinator of SL Human Rights Commission in Jaffna, Thangavel Kanagaraj, has admitted that his office had received an increased number of complaints in June. At least one of those detained were below the age of 18.
Full story >>

Tamils blocked from accessing properties near SL Navy training base in Champoor, Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 June 2020, 22:10 GMT]
The occupying SL Navy in Champoor in Trincomalee has deceived twenty poverty-stricken Tamil families into clearing one-hundred acres of lands located between SLNS Vidura base and the nearby Munpa'l'li Murukan temple with the false promise of resettlement. Five months ago, the SL Navy told the resettling Tamil families that they could move back into 300 acres of their properties. In their drive to get back their lands, the families went to the extent of borrowing money to clean up the bushes and trees. When one-third of the work was complete towards the end of May, the SL Navy refused access to the lands. SLNS Vidura is SL Navy's naval training base of the SL marines, established and groomed by the US Indo Pacific Command since 2017.
Full story >>