Activists discuss strategies of resistance at London event

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 July 2013, 23:33 GMT]
Activists involved with different contemporary political and social movements came together on Thursday at an event in London to discuss strategies of resistance in the 21st Century. Titled ‘Modern Day Protest’, the event was chaired Hugh Muir, columnist with the Guardian, and saw the panellists, with experience in different spheres and types of activism, engage in lively debate and sharing their views on the models of effective activism to be considered especially in the West. Eezham Tamil activist Gobi Sivanthan’s argument that non-violent direct action was a very effective strategy to be pursued in the West given the level of criminalization of activists and protests was taken up well by the participants.
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Can Power, silent on Sri Lanka genocide, redeem herself in UN, asks Boyle

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 July 2013, 00:50 GMT]
The Director of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights of the U.S. National Security Council, Samantha Power, who has been nominated for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has been attending a Senate hearing on the nomination this week where she has been forcefully advocating action to stop “the grotesque atrocities being carried out by the Assad regime,” Washington media reported. Professor Boyle, pointing out Power's conspicuous silence during the killing of Tamil civilians reaching genocidal proportions by the Sri Lanka military, said that Power now has a chance to "redeem" herself by establishing an International Criminal Tribunal for Sri Lanka, as did her predecessor Madeline Albright to the former Yugoslavia.
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Habitual detraction of due justice to Eezham Tamils continues in Indian media

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 July 2013, 04:51 GMT]
“In order to allay Sinhalese apprehensions, iron-clad guarantees should be provided that devolution to provinces should not lead to demand for separation,” writes V. Suryanarayan, in an opinion feature “Ethnic riddle in Sri Lanka,” appeared in The New Indian Express on Wednesday. “The Achenese model should be of relevance because like the Sinhalese, the Javanese are also opposed to federalism. The special autonomy status to Acheh, it must be underlined, is within the constitutional framework of a unitary Indonesia,” he further writes. Whatever that has happened or continue to happen, Eezham Tamils should never get independence and the Sinhalese should be appeased at any cost, even in their opposition to federalism, is the thrust of the opinion, on which the impunity of genocidal Sri Lanka is firmly anchored, responds TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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Affiliating Trinco university campus with Anuradhapura: civil society calls for protest

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 July 2013, 12:33 GMT]
In one of the worst moves of educational genocide of Eezham Tamils, efforts are now being undertaken to affiliate the Trincomalee Campus of the Eastern University with the Rajarata University of Anuradhapura, informed sources in Trincomalee told TamilNet on Thursday. The university-level educational institutions of Tamils in Jaffna and Batticaloa, started by the missionaries in the 19th century, became secondary schools when the British rule transferring power to the Sinhalese towards its closing days, encouraged only a Colombo-centric education. Later, when the Tamils demanded a university after the so-called independence, they wanted it to be based in Trincomalee. Affiliating the Trincomalee Campus with the Sinhala University at Anuradhapura is the height of educational genocide, said, Tamil academic and civil circles in the East.
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Political solution comes only when military-geostrategy approach overpowered

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 July 2013, 02:51 GMT]
The recent joint US-Sri Lankan military exercise in Trincomalee, coming after Colombo announcing the ‘arrest’ of a few police personnel for the massacre of five Tamil students in Trincomalee, signals that the USA is again sending a message to China that it still considers the island in the Indian Ocean Region as a US-Indian territory, says a geopolitical analyst in Trincomalee. The development also signals to Tamils that powers locked in the geopolitical game are only seeking eyewash and token responses from the Sri Lankan State. Political solution will never come unless masses overpower the rotten military-geostrategy approach of the powers, forcing them to seek alternatives, the analyst said.
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Kumaarapuram massacre case comes up for trial after 17 years

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 July 2013, 10:44 GMT]
Four witnesses to the February 1996 brutal massacre of 24 Tamils by the occupying Sri Lanka Army (SLA) at Kumaarapuram village in Trincomalee district have been summoned to appear on Wednesday in Anuradhapura High Court that is situated in predominantly Sinhala district. The trial in the case is listed for hearing on July 17, July 18 and July 19 more than 17 years after the genocidal massacre. Many of the witnesses are poor labourers who do not know Sinhala.Meanwhile observes say that the Colombo government hoodwinks the international community on one side summoning the witnesses to give evidence and the on the other hand threatening them not to appear in court to give evidence.
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Jayalalithaa fears New Delhi, Colombo weakening Tamils further

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 July 2013, 23:53 GMT]
Citing moves to repeal the 13Th Amendment, public stand of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa in this regard and a recent meeting of Basil Rajapaksa with New Delhi, presumably to justify Colombo’s stand, the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Ms J. Jayalalithaa in a letter to New Delhi’s PM on Sunday urged India not to give in to Colombo’s moves to take away even the limited political rights of Tamils. Also citing the 2007 demerger of the North and East “as a sinister first step leading to the eventual abrogation and repeal of the 13th Amendment, which has starkly appeared on the agenda now,” Ms. Jayalalithaa’s letter implied her fear of New Delhi further collaborating with Colombo against Tamils in the island, political observers said.
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Diaspora youth release Policy Document to chart course of struggle post-Mu’l’livaaykkaal

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 July 2013, 22:20 GMT]
Second-generation diaspora youth activists came together to release a Policy Document to chart the course of the Eezham Tamils’ struggle, assessing political developments post- May 2009. After interactive sessions held from July 6-7 at an event titled ‘Seeking Perception sans Conditioning: Charting the Course of Struggle in Assessment of Post-Mullivaaikkaal’, eight activists from Europe, Australia and Canada asserted the need for holding the recognition of a sovereign nationhood of the Eezham Tamils as basis for a principled minimal demand of the Eezham Tamil nation, grounding it in the School of Thought of the Eezham Tamils’ struggle. Calling for a critical engagement with the International Community, the youth activists declared that Tamil organizations must be held accountable to the democratic will of the people, urging the formation of a robust Tamil civil society in the diaspora.
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‘Abuse of Tamil women part and parcel of intended genocide’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 July 2013, 11:02 GMT]
The abuse of Eezham Tamil women committed by the Sri Lankan state apparatus should not be seen as individual human rights violations but as a part and parcel of an intended genocide of a protracted nature, write Dr. N. Malathy, key member of NESoHR and author of ‘A Fleeting Moment in my Country’ and RM Karthick, research scholar at University of Essex, UK. In an article published on Indian journal Sanhati’s 6th issue for 2013, the authors, criticizing international organizations for their failure to properly deal with the issue of genocidal rape by Sri Lankan forces, also call on the Tamil community to have a change of social approach towards rape survivors, noting how violence against Tamil women is deeply intertwined with communal identity.
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Sinhala military takes up Buddhicisation of East

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 July 2013, 05:59 GMT]
The Sinhala military occupying the East of the country of Eezham Tamils is directly engaged in Buddhicising the province, news sources in Batticaloa said, citing the mushrooming Buddha statues in the district in the recent times. Meanwhile, Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian Mr R. Thurairatnam said that an effort is now being undertaken to create permanent Buddhist establishments out of the improvised Buddhist shrines built in the SL military camps. Such shrines were ostensibly built for the ‘religious purposes’ of the occupying military and they could be found everywhere, as the Sinhala military is occupying every junction and other strategic locations.
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Genocidal intent of Serbian leader a factor in UN reinstating of charges

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 July 2013, 23:54 GMT]
The UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague has reinstated the charge of genocide against former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic on the basis of evidence that could indicate that the Serbian leader possessed genocidal intent in the campaign again Muslims and non-Serbs at the beginning of the Bosnian war in 1992. This move “reversed the former Bosnian Serb president's acquittal last year on one of the two genocide charges he faces, but it does not amount to a conviction,” The Guardian reported on Thursday. But the ruling means that Karadzic has to face a further charge of genocide, in addition to ten other charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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Malaysia should boycott CHOGM, IC should call for referendum: Penang Dy-CM

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 July 2013, 19:31 GMT]
Malaysia should not participate in CHOGM in Colombo simply because what took place in 2009 was a genocide against Tamil people. Unless the Sri Lankan government is taken to task on the genocide against Tamils, I think the Commonwealth countries should boycott CHOGM in Colombo this year, said Malaysia’s Penang State Deputy Chief Minister, Prof Ramasamy in an exclusive interview to TamilNet this week. While the Tamil issue has been so much internationalised, countries like India try to go back to the 13th Amendment. Rather than undemocratically imposing a solution, I suggest that the International Community should call for a referendum among Tamils, whether they want a separate state or not, because it was the Tamils who were victimised. Let’s not judge from what others say, let’s ask what the Tamils want, he further said.
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Parliamentarians banned while military stages programmes in schools in North

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 July 2013, 23:55 GMT]
A circular sent to schools in the Northern Province of the country of Eezham Tamils at the orders of the occupying governor of the Sinhala State, Maj. Gen. G.A. Chandrasri aimed at banning Tamil parliamentarians participating any school programmes in the province. The circular dated 20 June and signed by Education, Culture and Sports Secretary, S. Sathiaseelan, functioning under the Sinhala governor, said that without prior permission from the SL governor, no function could take place in the schools in which parliamentarians participate. The target is the TNA-MPs, public circles said. Meanwhile, schools in Vanni, especially the Ki’linochchi High School, have become permanent programme centres for the occupying Sinhala military, said TNA-MP Mr Sritharan.
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India, Sri Lanka, Maldives frame maritime security pact

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 July 2013, 23:15 GMT]
At the conclusion of a meeting on ‘Trilateral Cooperation on Maritime Security’ held in Colombo on Monday, India, Sri Lanka and Maldives have entered into a maritime security pact to ensure tripartite co-operation in sea routes in the region. The agreement was signed by Shivshanker Menon, National Security Advisor of India, Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and Maldives’ Defence Minister Mohamed Nazim. Concurrently, reports also say that Mr. Menon was in the island with a six-member delegation to plead with the Rajapaksa government to provide devolution to the Tamils on the basis of the 13th Amendment, which has been rejected time and again by the Eezham Tamil people, “for early political settlement and national reconciliation.”
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Occupying SLA hoodwinks resettlement of uprooted people in Champoor, Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Monday, 08 July 2013, 14:55 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army and the Trincomalee district Government Agent, who is also a retired Major General in the army, have been spreading false information via media regarding the resettlement of uprooted Tamil villagers from Champoor area in Trincomalee. Uprooted people are not resettled in their original villages in Champoor area. Some selected displaced who preferred to move out of the IDP camps due to personal reasons are settled in alternative sites that are not fit for habitation, according to reports emerging from the area.
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TNA fails on several counts: S.K. Sitrampalam

[TamilNet, Monday, 08 July 2013, 07:20 GMT]
In the opinion of political analysts, the polity of Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is nothing but playing a stooge to the USA and India – time after time and without any returns – said Dr. S.K. Sitrampalam, Emeritus Professor of Jaffna University and a senior ITAK leader, while addressing the Jaffna Press Club on Saturday. TNA has failed in mobilising a people’s struggle, failed in politicising people on the question of rights, failed in placing a full-fledged federal solution draft as an alternative to separate Tamil Eelam, failed in forging alliance with Muslims and Up-country Tamils, failed in addressing Sinhala people on the justice behind the Tamil struggle, failed in effectively using the post-war international situation and failed in transparency within the alliance itself, Sitrampalam said.
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Sri Lanka diplomat's twitter tirade jeopardizes British PM's CHOGM visit

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 July 2013, 02:14 GMT]
Sri Lanka's self-proclaimed "new school diplomat" and consul-general in Sydney, Bandula Jayasekara's twitter attacks against the Channel-4 film maker and British national, Callum Macrae, may cause potentially embarrassing diplomatic fallouts in the UK ahead of the Commonwealth Head of Government Meeting (CHOGM) scheduled to be held in November this year, political sources in Australia said. Mr Jayasekara has labeled Macrae as an "LTTE terrorist from London," and has threatened that he will block Macrae getting a visa to attend the CHOGM in Colombo. Macrae is currently touring Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Canada to screen the film, No Fire Zone: The Killing fields of Sri Lanka, which tells the story of the last 138 days of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009.
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USA, India, UNHRC answerable to provincial meddling in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 July 2013, 23:56 GMT]
However condemned by Eezham Tamils, the USA and India have committed on several occasions to ‘provincial’ solutions to the national crisis of Eezham Tamils. The ‘provincial’ wording has also got into the UNHRC resolution, tabled and fine-tuned by the two and passed by 47 Establishments. But, what do they say for Colombo’s current meddling in creating a new Sinhala division, Weli-oya, in the Northern Province, by altering district boundaries and thus endangering the province’s demographic security and contiguity, ask Eezham Tamil civil service circles in the island. While official survey maps show that the Vavuniyaa district of the Northern Province has a boundary with the East, it is now erased out in the 2012 census map, while Anuradhapura will fill the gap.
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Sinhalicisation, demographic wedging accelerated in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 July 2013, 17:11 GMT]
Sinhalicisation of the Mullaith-theevu district of the Northern Province and demographically wedging it from the adjacent Trincomalee district of the Eastern Province in the country of Eezham Tamils, is structuralised in an accelerated way by the occupying genocidal Sri Lanka through recent activities in the newly created division called ‘Weli-oya.’ The name of the division itself is Sinhalicisation of its Tamil name Ma’nal-aa’ru. At the end of the war the Establishments of the USA, India, several other stooges and the UN were in complicity in sending the Eezham Tamils into barbed-wire camps. While their resettlement is stalled in many ways, every structural effort is now being made with full financial and material support to bring in Sinhalese into the land of Tamils.
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Twelve STF arrested for 2006 killing of five Trinco students

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 July 2013, 23:59 GMT]
Twelve members of Sri Lanka Police Special Task Force (STF) were arrested in connection with the extra-judicial killings of five Tamil students, all aged 21, at a beach in Trincomallee on 2nd January 2006, and remanded in custody till the July 18th court hearing, Colombo media reported Friday. Colombo has been resisting pursuing the killers amidst accusations that high-level officials connected to the Government were allegedly complicit in the killings. Amnesty International, and Dr Manoharan, the father of one of the victims, Ragihar, have relentlessly raised the matter in the UN and other international human rights fora. Polical observers speculate that the arrests are likely intended to mitigate serious fallouts from the impending visit to Sri Lanka of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay.
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