Mukkuvath-thoduvaay

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 May 2015, 17:08 GMT]
The touching sandbar (crossing point or ferrying point at the lagoon mouth) of the Mukkuvar community
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I'raal-kuzhi villagers protest against sand-scooping

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 May 2015, 20:58 GMT]
The Eezham Tamil villagers of I'raal-kuzhi, a small hamlet about 10 square km, situated along one of the two rivers where Mahaweli ganga is branching off into the sea in Moothoor division of Trincomalee district, protested on Wednesday against the unabated sand-scooping carried out by wealthy businessmen from Moothoor. The people living in the low-lying land have been struggling for long time unable to withstand the rainy and flooding seasons. The businessmen who operate with the backing of politicians in power have been engaged in the systematic exploitation for a long time. In addition to the danger of water entering their village, the systematic exploitation irreversibly destroys the environment of the region, the protesters complained.
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NPC Minister demands de-militarisation of Chu'ndiku'lam Bird Sanctuary

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 May 2015, 22:08 GMT]
The Northern Provincial Council (NPC) Minister, responsible for the environmental affairs Ponnuthurai Ayngaranesan has stated that the NPC was demanding the occupying Sri Lanka Navy to hand over the environmental tourism related establishments it has established in the bird sanctuary of Chu'ndik-ku'lam. Like the forest department of the Tamil Nadu government and the local people have been protecting the Veadanthaangkal Bird Sanctuary, which is situated in Chengkalpaddu District of Tamil Nadu, the people in Vadamaraadchi East and the ministry at the NPC with the responsibility of protecting the environment want to take over the affairs of their environment from the military, he said. The people-environment relationship in the North-East would be best taken care of by the people in their traditional homeland than a [occupying] military, he said.
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CMPC in Tamil Nadu pays tribute to Eezham Tamil Journalist Sivaram

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 May 2015, 17:19 GMT]
Centre of Media Persons for Change (CMPC), a journalist movement based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, observed 10th year anniversary of the assassination of Eezham Tamil journalist Sivaram Dharmeratnam (Taraki) at a journalists meeting, which was organised on Sunday to mark the World Press Freedom Day and the 5th year of the CMPC movement, media sources in Chennai said. Young journalists from mainstream media groups participated in the event discussing conflict-reporting, self-realization on the role of the journalists in the larger society dominated by a corporate culture, commitment to principled approaches and focus on human rights of the oppressed nations and people.
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SL Governor continues ‘LLRC agenda’ of Sinhalicisation in Northern Province

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 May 2015, 22:12 GMT]
The incumbent Sri Lankan Governor of Northern Province, HMGS Palihakkara, who was one of the eight panellists appointed by former SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa to the so-called Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), has instructed the SL Government Agents in the Northern Province to channel more resources to the Sinhala settlements initiated during the Rajapaksa regime in the North, civil sources in Jaffna said. In the meantime, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) provincial councillor K.T. Linganathan, who is from Nedungkea'ni, Vavuniyaa, on Sunday said elected Tamil representatives were being refused access to an accelerated Sinhala colonisation scheme at Kokkachchaan-ku'lam, which has been Sinhalicised into Kalabogaswewa with 5,000 Sinhala settlers. The occupation, initiated during the previous regime, is now being expanded with new housing schemes.
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Puzhuthi-vayal

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 May 2015, 13:18 GMT]
The loose, dusty-soiled, paddy field
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British Tamils should start backing Scottish Nationalist Party

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 May 2015, 23:18 GMT]
The British elections should teach the lesson and open the eyes of Eezham Tamils in the UK, who shamefully count on the Labour and Conservative parties. If the Eezham Tamils in the UK wish to make a fundamental theoretical point for their own benefit and for the cause of the nations without State all over the world, it is time that they should start actively voicing and working for the Scottish Nationalist Party, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in Jaffna. The theoretical foundations laid by the English outlook on the island of Ceylon 200 years ago are the ones that are now followed by Washington and New Delhi and still haunt the nation of Eezham Tamils in the island. They have to be challenged in their very birthplace, the activists further said.
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Swaminathan's secretary admits SL military delaying release of lands

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 May 2015, 23:07 GMT]
The Sri Lankan government, which recently released some pockets of lands in the occupied Valikaamam North, has come up with a ‘new excuse’ for the delay in releasing the lands back to the people at a meeting held at Jaffna District Secretariat on Friday. Ranjini Nadarasapillai, the secretary of UNP's appointed parliamentarian and SL Minister of Resettlement, Reconstruction and Hindu Affairs, D.M. Swaminathan, has admitted that a scheduled announcement of releasing more lands has been delayed, as the SL military commanders were yet to utilise her ministry with the list of new slots, civil officers who attended the meeting told TamilNet. The ITAK Leader and TNA parliamentarian Mavai Senathiraja, who hails from Valikaamam North, was disappointed with the progress.
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SL Minister, backed by CBK, appropriates Tamils’ lands in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 May 2015, 22:56 GMT]
Sri Lankan Deputy Minister of Housing and Samurdhi Amir Ali Sahabdeen, who became a minister during the regime of Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (CBK) in 2004, is again stepping up the appropriation of lands at Kirimichchi, located 62 km north of Batticaloa. The lands belong to Eezham Tamils who are still uprooted and refused access to these lands, civil sources at Koara’laip-pattu North (Vaakarai) division of Batticaloa told TamilNet on Thursday. The land grab, schemed under CBK regime, aims to annex more lands to the Muslim-dominated division of Koara’laip-pattu Central (Vaazhaich-cheanai) by involving a section of wealthy businessmen from Kaaththaan-kudi, Oadda-maavadi and Ea’raavoor after Amir Ali became a non-cabinet minister in the ‘new’ regime with the backing of CBK, the sources further said.
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Why no Gazette notification on release of lands, asks retired Land Commissioner

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 May 2015, 23:18 GMT]
It's not merely enough to allow the people to resettle in the lands that were seized from them by the previous regime, which applied the proviso to 38(A) of the Land Acquisition Act (LAA) under the guise of ‘public use’ in permanently converting the lands for the use of Colombo's military. The new regime should issue fresh Gazette notifications of the lands, which it claims to release back to the people. Only then the people will have legal ownership to their lands, says retired Land Commissioner of the Eastern Province, Karthirgamathamby Kurunathan, in an in-depth video interview to TamilNet this week. Why are the Tamil politicians not demanding the new regime to issue such Gazette notifications to revoke the land grabs that were carried out with the obvious agenda of Sinhala chauvinism by the previous regime, he asked.
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Bath-gam-pattuwa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 May 2015, 23:24 GMT]
The division of the rice-producing village or endowment village
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TNPF rejects ‘domestic investigations’ upheld by USA

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 May 2015, 21:49 GMT]
The fact that the United States and the US Secretary of State John Kerry would consider the post January 08th 2015 situation in Sri Lanka, with the new government favourable, is understandable. But, for him to suggest that there is a favourable condition for the Tamils, is stretching too far, said Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF) Leader Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, responding to a question from TamilNet on the subject on Tuesday. Pointing out that the new regime is not only maintaining the status quo of the occupying military, which is primarily being accused in the crimes, but both the major parties in the South have claimed complete allegiance to the military and have in fact vouched that the military would be protected, the former parliamentarian said.
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Sivaram uplifted standard of journalists in North-East: SLM Hanifa

[TamilNet, Monday, 04 May 2015, 21:25 GMT]
Sivaram, through his contributions to the field of journalism, raised the standards of Tamil-speaking reporters in the North-East. The work of the reporters in the North-East was taken seriously by Colombo-based editors only after the arrival of Sivaram to the field of journalism, the veteran Muslim writer said while delivering a memorial address, held in Batticaloa last Wednesday, marking the 10th anniversary of the assassination of Sivaram.
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16 Batticaloa Tamils arrested within last 100 days at Colombo airport

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 May 2015, 17:36 GMT]
The Sri Lankan ‘Terrorist’ investigation division has arrested at least 16 Tamil men from Batticaloa district at Katunayake International Airport within the past 100 days of the so-called good governance of the new SL regime in Colombo, Tamil rights activists in Batticaloa said. The arrests have been made under the notorious Emergency Regulations. But, the visiting foreign diplomats like the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, have been blindly appreciating the Sri Lankan government for ‘good governance’ in the island, the activists said. The detentions were isolated events without any relationship to each other, they said.
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Netti-pola-gedara

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 May 2015, 17:18 GMT]
The house and premises on the high open ground or corner open ground
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Gajendrakumar urges Tamils not to succumb to invisible designs of genocide

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 May 2015, 13:39 GMT]
The Sri Lankan State wants Tamils to leave the island as part of its sophisticated genocidal project. While Sinhala colonisation, taking place in accelerated phase after the end of war, during the last five years, is visible to everyone, the real extent of the genocidal project, which is being schemed through the widespread militarisation, is invisible to many, TNPF leader Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam said in his May Day address at Point Pedro in Jaffna on Friday. All the main pillars of the Tamil Nation are being systematically destroyed. The Tamil people are still forced to leave the island as they are kept under poverty line. The SL State wants them economically deprived of livelihood as it thinks that Tamils, when kept without social and economic empowerment, would not be waging a struggle for political rights, he said.
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Kerry implies allowing time for genocidal Colombo

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 May 2015, 16:37 GMT]
"Peace has come but true reconciliation will take time," said the visiting US Secretary of State John Kerry in Colombo, praising the “enormous progress Sri Lanka has made in just a few months”, AFP reported on Saturday. By declaring so at a time when the Colombo regime and its military are systematically involved in the structural genocide of the nation of Eezham Tamils in the island, the US Secretary of State implies giving more time and space for the regime in Colombo so that the genocide will be complete and there will be no question of reconciliation, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island.
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Sivaram, Wigneswaran saw futility in convincing Sinhala polity: senior editor

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 May 2015, 01:58 GMT]
My friend Mr. Sivaram, who earlier took a non-partisan and neutral stand on the national question in the island, thought that he could convince the South on the justifiable aspirations of Tamils by his writings. But the hawkish military minds in the South and the foreign diplomats in the island took his writings in English only as valuable information in planning and countering the struggle of Tamils. Disillusioned after ten years, Sivaram wrote in Tamil that it was futile to convince the Sinhala nation on the question of Tamils. The failure of Sivaram and his transfer into a staunch Tamil nationalist is analogical to the political course and current stand of the NPC Chief Minister, Mr C.V. Wigneswaran, said veteran Tamil journalist and editor, Mr. V. Thevaraj, addressing the 10th assassination anniversary meet of Sivaram held in Batticaloa on Wednesday.
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New generation of organic intellectuals needed to continue Sivaram’s work

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 May 2015, 12:08 GMT]
“Only a new generation of organic Tamil intellectuals, who have a clear understanding of changing global paradigms and who are able to create paradigm shifts in Tamil political discourse, can preserve and take forward Sivaram’s legacy” writes research scholar RM Karthick. In an article written on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the assassination of ‘Taraki’ Sivaram Dharmeratnam, Mr. Karthick argues that the current Tamil intelligentsia needs to live up to its historical responsibility in exposing the designs of the powers, be it in Oslo, Geneva or Singapore. Criticizing mainstream Tamil intellectuals for their apathy and for failing to keep up with important changes in South Asian geo-politics, he further says that “a nation’s ability to spring back to its feet politically depends on how soon it is able to organize itself intellectually.”
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Sivaram commemorated in Tamil Nadu on 10th anniversary of his assassination

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2015, 10:29 GMT]
The 10th death anniversary of assassination of Senior Editor at TamilNet, an Eezham Tamil intellectual, journalist, political analyst and activist Dharmeratnam Sivaram (Taraki) was marked on Tuesday in Chennai. Sivaram, beside his profound love for his people, was a genuine internationalist who dedicated his life and writing- to quote him in his own words, “…to create a body of knowledge to help oppressed people all over the world help themselves to get out from under oppression; to disseminate this body of knowledge.” A decade after his assassination by the hands of the Sri Lankan state, Eelam and much of the oppressed nations of the world which he espoused solidarity with and desired to aid are still beleaguered and subjected to counter-insurgency perpetuated by their respective oppressor states aided by world powers.
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