Navi Pillay explains ‘human rights’ limitations in Geneva on Tamil genocide

[TamilNet, Sunday, 21 March 2021, 13:34 GMT]
The manifestation of a “pre-existing strategy” using archaeology and historic preservation as guises for political or religious agendas has been observed by the UN Special Rapporteurs visiting Sri Lanka in recent years. Today’s international law has not provided universal human right to land. However, SL State’s violations of the land rights of “marginalised communities” could be addressed under the normative framework of international law, said Dr Navanetham Pillay. She mentioned the violation of the Right of Self-Determination. Pillay appeared as a keynote speaker at a conference titled “Loss of the Tamil Homeland,” which was convened by Justice C.V. Wigneswaran on Saturday. She was confronting TamilNet’s questions over her failure to call for investigations on Tamil genocide, which includes examining the “pre-existing strategy” for all the crimes committed against Tamils in the past.
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Unprecedented P2P uprising paves the way for rights-oriented politics of Tamils and Muslims

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 February 2021, 23:16 GMT]
The Tamil-speaking people in the North-East have waged an unprecedented post-2009 march from Poththuvil in Ampaa’rai in the East to Polika’ndi in Jaffna. Confronting the legal barriers and the roadblocks put up by the SL Police and the notorious Special Task Force (STF) commandos, the people across the eight districts of the North-East mobilised outmanoeuvring the ‘disciplining mechanisms’ of the Sinhala-Buddhist ethnocratic rulers in Colombo. The five-day march, named as “Poththuvil to Polika'ndi” (P2P), was organised ahead of the 46th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva. The rally concluded on Sunday demanding international justice for genocide reiterating the fundamental principles, the Right of Self-Determination and Eezham Tamils’ nationhood. The P2P mobilisation also demanded an immediate end to the discriminatory forced cremation of COVID-19 Muslim victims.
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Gotabaya sets up deceptive COI citing ‘sovereignty’ and ‘non-aligned’ foreign policy

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 January 2021, 08:01 GMT]
Adding to the series of deceit by his predecessors and using the same modus operandi, SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has now appointed another domestic Commission of Inquiry (COI) on accountability. The three-member COI, announced through an extraordinary Gazette Notification on Thursday is tasked to find out about the preceding domestic COIs and Committees revelations on “any human rights violations, serious violations of the international humanitarian law and other such serious offences”. Further stating in the gazette that even though Colombo has withdrawn from “co-sponsorship policy”, it would continue to “work with the United Nations and its Agencies to achieve accountability and human resource development for achieving sustainable peace and reconciliation”.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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Sumanthiran alleged of exerting Colombo’s influence to tamper with preferential vote counts

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 August 2020, 01:05 GMT]
The supporters of two leading candidates of Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in the Jaffna electorate vehemently protested against an alleged move to tamper with the preferential vote counts in Jaffna to the favour of MA Sumanthiran, who was ranked fifth for the most part the counting process. Two of TNA’s candidates, Dharmalingam Sitharthan (PLOTE) and Sashikala Raviraj (ITAK) were carefully following the development to ensure that the hierarchy of their party doesn’t exert back-door influence to alter their preferential vote counts. The supporters of Sitharthan and Sashikala alleged that the government officials were acting on instructions from their superiors. SL Police and STF commandos were providing security to Mr Sumanthiran, and they assaulted the protesters outside the counting centre. When Sashikala left the centre, she refused police protection.
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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.
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Manifestos of TNA, TNPF and TMTK expose lacuna, hint areas for corrections of Tamil polity

[TamilNet, Sunday, 02 August 2020, 18:29 GMT]
The revisionist ITAK hierarchy-led Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has issued its manifesto exposing and justifying its deviationist and revisionist approach to the Tamil national question in the island. The TNA, which is engaged in Quisling politics post-2009, issued its proclamation in Tamil and English as it has nothing to ‘fear’ from the judiciary of genocidal Sri Lanka and its Sixth Amendment. In the meantime, the TNPF and the TMTK, both claiming to be more struggle-centric and principles-oriented, have ‘tactically’ avoided issuing their proclamations in English for reasons best known to themselves. Journalists in Jaffna said both the alliances were dodging questions on the topic.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Pompeo talks about US reposturing troops, mentions India, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 June 2020, 23:53 GMT]
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, responding a question on the recent decision by US President Donald Trump concerning the reduction of the US forces present in Germany, said the judgement was about how the US was going to posture its resources around the world. “[I]n certain places there will be fewer American resources. There’ll be other places – I just talked about the threat from the Chinese Communist Party, so now threats to India, threats to Vietnam, threats to Malaysia, Indonesia, South China Sea challenges, the Philippines. We’re going to make sure we’re postured appropriately to counter the PLA. The remarks of the US State Secretary and former CIA Director in an online meeting with German Marshall Fund’s Brussels Forum came on Thursday, a day before US Defence Secretary Mark Esper was set to visit London and Brussels.
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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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Sinhala media questions Gotabaya’s alleged pro-MCC ‘connections’ with US

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 June 2020, 23:39 GMT]
Sinhala media in the South have started to raise questions on SL President Gotabaya’s intermediaries connected to Milinda Moragoda’s Pathfinder outfit, which wants to promote a slightly modified Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) project. The issue also gained focus, especially in connection with SL Police brutally suppressing a George Floyd protest held outside the US Embassy in Colombo on Tuesday. The role of four personalities, Senior SL Presidential Advisor Lalith Weeratunga, Additional Secretary to SL President Admiral (retd) Jayanath Colombage, SL Presidential Secretary P. B. Jayasundera and SL Ports Authority Chairman Lt Gen (retd) Daya Ratnayaka was taken up in the live political programme, “Salakuna” on Hiru TV already on Monday.
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