Pita-kotte, Pita-kotuwa, Pettah

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 February 2013, 08:31 GMT]
The outside of the fort/
The backside of the fort
The extramural suburb of the fort/
The town adjacent to the fort

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Weak UN resolution caused Colombo to sustain lack of political will: Christian clergy

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 19 February 2013, 20:46 GMT]
“What we have seen since the rather weak resolution adopted at the 19th session of the Council is a total lack of political will on the part of the government to implement recommendations therein, such as the call for investigations into allegations of international law during the final stages of the conflict and cooperation with the UN Special Procedures,” said 133 priests of various Christian denominations in the North and East in an appeal to UN Human Rights Council on Monday. They urged the Council not to interpret the problem as ‘lack of capacity’ by the SL State. Despite the deviatory tone in using the terms such as ‘internal self-determination’ and the orchestrated deception of the so-called ‘stronger resolution’, the priests from the gagged country of Eezham Tamils didn't fail in establishing what was taking place on the ground as protracted genocide against the Tamil people.
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Flood victims deprived of relief by Colombo

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 February 2013, 23:35 GMT]
63,386 members of 13,903 families have been displaced in the Northern and Eastern provinces while two died and one hundred thousand and thirty four thousand persons have been affected in the whole island due to torrential rain with strong winds in recent days. Hundreds of acres of paddy crops ready for harvesting are under water and harvested paddy crops floating in flood water. But no action has been taken to provide any relief to affected families, civil officials say. Heavy torrential rains and floods have repeatedly affected the lives of the people struggling to resettle in their homeland subjected to structural genocide by the occupying Sinhala military and its administrative apparatus in the North and East.
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British arms sales to Colombo continue

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 February 2013, 11:10 GMT]
Despite Sri Lanka's dire human rights record, and the Foreign Office still classifying Sri Lanka as a “country of concern” for rights abuses, British small arms and weaponry worth at least £3m including pistols, rifles, assault rifles, body armour and combat shotguns were sold in the three months between July and September last year, The Independent reported. The figures on Britain’s most recent arms sales come from the Government’s own Export Controls Organisation, the paper said.
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Sinhala militarisation, genocide in East goes unnoticed, unaccounted

[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 February 2013, 10:51 GMT]
In the name of a Sinhala-titled programme ‘Divineguma,’ Colombo intensively spearheads structural genocide of Eezham Tamils in the East. It has now gone to the extent of mushrooming Sinhala military camps and settlements running grocery shops and restaurants to the public. The only major construction activity in the East is the construction of Sinhala military camps. By talking only of the North and leaving out the East, the visiting foreign dignitaries buttressing State in the island systematically obscure what is happening in the East and imply that the annihilation of the nation of Eezham Tamils in the East is ‘normal and acceptable’. The line of subversion started when Mr. Robert Blake was the US ambassador in Colombo after the SL military capture of the East from the LTTE, and the line was later taken up by the Indians, political activists in the East said.
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UK under secretary gives ‘friendly’ advice to genocidal Colombo

[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 February 2013, 04:30 GMT]
Stating that the genocide-accused Mahinda Rajapaksa “has banished terrorism from his country and ushered in a new period of prosperity”, Alistair Burt, British Under Secretary of State at the FCO, advised Colombo to learn from the British experience in Northern Ireland and to implement the LLRC recommendations, in an article written for the Canadian news agency The Globe and Mail, on Friday. Mr. Burt was making these comments after a tour of the militarily occupied Tamil homeland earlier this month, which was criticized by civil society activists in the North as a “war picnic”. Grassroots Eezham Tamil activists in the UK came down on the Conservative minister’s article, alleging that it was lending legitimacy to the genocidal Sri Lankan state.
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"Free pass on rights violations, a dangerous precedent"

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 February 2013, 15:57 GMT]
"The end of war has not augured a return to normalcy in Sri Lanka’s North and East. Rather, there are clear, indisputable indications that conditions are getting worse. Consequently, international condemnation of the country’s human rights record is not only justified; it is essential. Giving Sri Lanka a free pass on human rights and reconciliation would set a damaging precedent that could take decades to overcome. If the time for more resolute action has not yet arrived, will it ever?" asks an analytical article on Foreign Policy (FP) magazine's website.
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Major Sinhala colony crops up at entrance to Jaffna city

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 February 2013, 11:06 GMT]
A permanent Sinhala colony is in the making at Naavat-kuzhi in Jaffna with the assistance and backing of the genocidal government in Colombo and with the protection of its occupying Sinhala military in Jaffna. Buddhist associations in the south and EPDP collaborating with the Rajapaksa regime are also involved in the process, news sources in Jaffna said. Naavat-kuzhi is a major junction located 5km east of Jaffna city, where the two highways A9 and A32 that come from the south join and enter into the city. To give protection to the colony, a Sinhala military camp is also established there amidst the colonisers. The Sinhala colony at the location is planned to control the arteries of the city and to even Sinhalicise Jaffna city itself, as similar tactics were tested earlier at Trincomalee, the sources further said.
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Swiss, South Africa reconciliation attempt in Sri Lanka ‘ill-conceived’, says ICG

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 February 2013, 00:59 GMT]
Switzerland's backing of a South African post-Apartheid reconciliation initiative to bring adversarial parties in Sri Lanka to the negotiating table, is ill-conceived and has little chance of yielding any positive results, Alan Keenan, an ICG [International Crisis Group] Sri Lanka expert commented. Keenan "accused the Sri Lankan government of having no interest in fair negotiations with Tamil political parties, no intention to devolve meaningful power to the Tamil-majority northern province or the Tamil-speaking majority eastern province, and of going back on its many promises." The Swiss government funding and the South African brokering were behind the GTF convened and Burghof Foundation facilitated Berlin conference, informed circles say.
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SL military operatives attack peaceful protest against Jaffna SMZ

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 February 2013, 12:20 GMT]
More than ten Sri Lankan military operatives, co-mingling with and camouflaging as protestors in front of Thurkkai Amman temple in Thellippazhai, where a token fast against Colombo converting the former SL Miltiary High Security Zone (HSZ) into Sinhala Military Zone (SMZ) in Jaffna, attacked the peaceful protestors on Friday. The attack came after the SL Opposition Leader Ranil Wickramasinghe had left the site taking part and addressing the protestors. The SL military men went amok on Tamil parliamentarians and journalists at the site of the protest. However, the attackers who were causing panic among the participants were confronted by the protestors. More than one hundred SL policemen silently watched the unfolding episode without restraining or arresting the civil clad military operatives.
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Colombo shuns Tamil representation in Delimitation Committee in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 February 2013, 23:47 GMT]
Not a single Tamil officer was appointed to the six-member Trincomalee District Local Authorities Delimitation Committee that is headed by the Sri Lankan Government Agent (SLGA) who is a retired Major General of the occupying Sri Lanka Army, civil sources in Trincomalee said. Four members are Sinhalese, including the SLGA, and the remaining two are Muslims. The Trincomalee District Local Authorities Delimitation Committee is empowered to demarcate the boundaries of the existing wards and carve out new wards of the 13 local authorities under the Amended Local Government Ordinance.
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Colombo discriminates Tamil farmers in disaster relief distribution

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 February 2013, 21:01 GMT]
Sri Lankan government in Colombo is discriminating Tamil farmers in Northern Province in distributing disaster relief following recent natural disasters, farmers representatives in Mannaar said, announcing a fasting campaign on February 18 at Uyilangku’lam in Mannaar.
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Navi Pillay pre-concludes ‘procedures’ to adopt by UNHRC process

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 February 2013, 22:46 GMT]
While the US officials, who visited the island of Sri Lanka last month, were talking of tabling a ‘procedural resolution’ to approach affairs of the island at the March sessions of the UNHRC in Geneva, the report that has come from the office of Ms Navi Pillai (OHCHR) on Monday outlined what procedures have to be taken to further the processes started with last year’s resolution at the UNHRC. When the US-tabled resolution, watered down by India and passed last year, was fundamentally responsible for the acceleration of structural genocide of Eezham Tamils as witnessed in the course of the year, any further ‘procedural’ enhancement of the resolution is like decorating the rat’s tail with a silk tassel, as the saying in Tamil goes (eli vaalukku padduk kungncham), commented human rights activists in Jaffna.
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SL commander admits converting HSZ into permanent Sinhala Military Zone (SMZ)

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 February 2013, 07:04 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s military commander occupying Jaffna, Maj. Gen. Mahinda Hathurusinghe, on Monday openly admitted to media in Jaffna that the so-called High Security Zone of Valikaamam on the Northern coast of Jaffna Peninsula, occupied and displaced of its Tamil inhabitants in the guise of High Security Zone (HSZ) two decades ago, will now be converted into a permanent Sri Lanka/ Sinhala Military Zone (SMZ). Meanwhile, genocidal Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa, visiting Jaffna on Monday, has opened a ‘tourist resort’ of the SL Navy at Mayiliddi in the said SMZ. The major fishing port of Eezham Tamils at Mayiliddi will cease to exist hereafter and the occupying Sinhala military has undertaken cultivation of onions using spring irrigation in the traditional horticultural lands of Eezham Tamils in the SMZ that has been created.
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SL military demolishes Hundreds of Tamil houses in Jaffna ‘HSZ’

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 February 2013, 23:08 GMT]
In a sudden and swift move, Sri Lanka military occupying Jaffna has started demolishing hundreds of houses of Eezham Tamils in the stretch of land at Valikaamam that was occupied by the Sinhala military in the guise of ‘High Security Zone (HSZ)’ two decades back. The war is over, proclaims everyone, including the USA and India. The Tamil public righteously expected the return of their houses and ancestral properties if the war was over. There was propaganda that resettlement takes place stage by stage in the HSZ, which was also endorsed by all the Establishments in complicity. Then how, why, and with what authority vested with whom, the decision has been now taken to raze down the ancestral houses of Eezham Tamils in the so-called HSZ, ask the concerned people up-rooted for more than two decades and finally lost everything to the designs of the genocidal partners.
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Hospital becomes breeding ground for disharmony between Tamils, Muslims in Ampaa’rai

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 February 2013, 22:16 GMT]
The Base hospital of Kalmunai North in Ampaa’rai district has become a breeding ground for disharmony between Tamils and Muslims following systematic posting of 22 Muslim health workers with the backing of SL ministers aligned with the Colombo regime with an intention of causing communal dissension, health officials at the hospital say.
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CHOGM boycott calls for renewed action on Sri Lanka judicial independence

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 February 2013, 17:58 GMT]
As Canada continues to voice its call for boycott of Commonwealth summit scheduled to be held in Sri Lanka in November this year, Commonwealth officials renewed efforts to nudge Sri Lanka to adhere to principles of judicial independence, after Colombo defied international appeals and sacked its chief justice in January. Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma is holding talks with Sri Lankan leaders in Colombo on the rule of law and the separation of powers, AFP reported.
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Uprooted Champoor families live in fear following arrest of 7 persons by TID

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 February 2013, 20:11 GMT]
Tension and fear prevail among uprooted Tamil families from Champoor area currently being sheltered in temporary sheds described as welfare centres at four places, Kaddai-pa'richchaan, Paddith-thidal, Ma'nat-cheanai and Ki'liveddi since the arrest of seven Tamils by a special TID team from Colombo last week alleging them as LTTE members. Two of them are inmates of Paddith-thidal welfare camp. They are all breadwinners of their families. They were taken to a place out of the Trincomalee district for military ‘rehabilitation’.
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‘Extra-constitutional interim solution to counter Sinhala militarization must be probed’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 February 2013, 17:33 GMT]
Arguing that while the strategy for Tamils world over should be the restoration of Eezham Tamil sovereignty over their traditional homeland, RM Karthick writes that the Tamil diaspora organizations must arrive at a consensus for an immediate tactic to alleviate the mutilation of the Eezham Tamil nation in the Tamil homeland by the occupying Sinhala military via an interim solution of an intervention of international powers in the island to facilitate the dismantling of the Sinhala military apparatus. Contending that such an interim solution should not give any legitimacy whatsoever to the Sri Lankan constitution, the writer further argues that any interim solution can be successful only on an extra-constitutional basis that has pre-constitutional recognition of the Eezham Tamil nation’s territoriality and historical sovereignty.
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Poonakari becomes another major hub of Sinhala militarisation, colonisation

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 February 2013, 07:50 GMT]
Similar to the so-called High Security Zone (HSZ) on the northern coast of Jaffna Peninsula, including KKS harbour and Palaali airport that has now become a permanent enclave for Sinhala military cantonment, colonisation and corporatism, another enclave in the Poonakari division is in the making, news sources in Vanni said. Around 31,000 Sinhala military personnel are stationed in the Poonakari division where currently only 6216 families live, which means that for every Tamil family there are 5 personnel from the genocidal military. While the SL military alone occupies 800 acres of land, the Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s siblings Basil and Gotabhaya, and progeny Namal have appropriated many more acres of land. Building a Chinese assisted international airport at Poonakari is in the centre of the plans.
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