TESO misrepresents Tamil cause by harping on UNHRC resolution

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 January 2013, 16:51 GMT]
By calling for pressure on Colombo to immediately implement the 2012 UNHRC resolution as solution, TESO is misrepresenting the cause as well as plight of Eezham Tamils, and is misleading the world in lines with the agenda of New Delhi and Washington, Tamil activists in the island and in the diaspora commented. The UNHRC resolution harping on the implementation of LLRC recommendations of Colombo is actually ‘international legitimisation’ of the structural genocide and annihilation of the territoriality of the nation of Eezham Tamils in the island. This only serves the agenda of New Delhi and Washington that uphold the genocidal Sinhala State in the island for their geopolitical and imperialistic purposes. TESO has to urge the International Community of Establishments to revise the resolution, the activists further said.
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US team meets TNA first: Sampanthan tells TamilNet

[TamilNet, Saturday, 26 January 2013, 22:42 GMT]
A Tamil National Alliance (TNA) delegation led by its parliamentary group leader R.Sampanthan on Saturday noon met the US delegation comprising three US officials, James Moore, Jane Zimmerman and Vikram Singh, at the US Embassy in Colombo, Mr.Sampanthan told TamilNet adding that the USA team met the TNA delegation before meeting others during their stay in Colombo. Talking to TamilNet, Mr. Sampanthan said that the TNA had briefed the US delegation about the Tamil problem “since the country gained independence sixty five years ago.”
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Soul searching in India, Obama wipes out tears

[TamilNet, Friday, 25 January 2013, 17:55 GMT]
If peoples of the USA and India care to scrutinize what their governments are doing to the country of Eezham Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka, they will realize that from which system certain disorders they face in their own countries originate. Both the Establishments that were in complicity in the genocide, and have tacitly approved a structural genocide to take place in the island, are engaged in another round of their machinations at Geneva in March. Once again, the USA is architecting a formula for the completion of the annihilation of the nation of Eezham Tamils – this time with specific steps of instructions to be fulfilled by the agent state in Colombo – and India, the Strategic Partner, is given with the task of designing and managing the implementation infrastructure, informed sources say.
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Turkish ambassador to Colombo welcomes ‘Sri Lanka model’ to deal with ‘terrorism’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 24 January 2013, 07:47 GMT]
Despite the currently ongoing peace process between the PKK and the Turkey government, the Turkish ambassador to Sri Lanka, Iskender Okyay has welcomed the Sri Lanka model of counterinsurgency (COIN) to deal with ‘terrorism’, stating that “Sri Lanka's experience in fighting against terrorism could be a good example for Turkey” and adding that “the relationship between the countries could be deepened over the terrorism issue,” the Turkish nationalist news agency Today’s Zaman reported on Wednesday. Commenting on this, Kurdish activists in Europe told TamilNet that the Turkish diplomat’s endorsement of Sri Lanka’s genocidal model of COIN at a time when the Kurdish political movement was having faith in a peaceful settlement shows the insincerity of Turkey towards the peace process, besides being an tacit approval of the genocide of the Eezham Tamil nation.
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Sinhala, Muslim divisions carved in Ampaa’rai depriving territoriality to Tamils

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 23 January 2013, 06:43 GMT]
Genocidal Sri Lanka plans to create a new Sinhala division in the Ampaa’rai district of Eastern Province that will be including the localities of the Oluvil port and a Buddhist temple constructed at Deegavaapi, news sources in the East said. Meanwhile, backed by SL minister Mr. ALM Athaullah, new Pradeasa Sapais (PS: civic bodies) and municipalities are carved out for the Muslims at Akkaraippattu and I’rakkaamam. But, the ancient Tamil villages in the district at Kalmunai, Paa’ndiruppu, Natpiddi-munai, Periya-neelaava’nai etc. don’t have their own PS or divisions. When the Sinhalese grab the lands of Muslims and Tamils and create enclaves, the Muslims in turn grab the lands of Tamils and totally marginalize them in the district, where Tamils have come only as the third ethnicity now.
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Eighth Indo-Lanka Commission ends with no innovation

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 23 January 2013, 06:36 GMT]
The Eighth meeting of the Indo-Sri Lanka Joint Commission held in New Delhi on Tuesday and was co-chaired by the External Affairs Ministers of the two Establishments, ended with nothing new either to the pressing issues of the genocide-facing island or to its bilateral issues with India, political analysts in the island commented. A Foreign Secretary level meeting on Monday preceded the ministerial meeting. Perhaps the only new programme found mentioned in the joint commission press statement was that both sides agreed to jointly celebrate the 150th birth anniversaries of Swami Vivekananda in 2013-14, and of Anagarika Dharmapala in 2014-15.
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Gotabhaya exonerates US-refused SL general

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 January 2013, 16:48 GMT]
Genocidal Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary and presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa on Sunday tried to exonerate a Sinhala military general, Maj. Gen. Sudantha Ranasinghe, who was refused admission into a US military training programme on grounds that he had served the war-crimes-accused 53 Division of the SL military. The said general, recently appointed as SL Military Secretary, had not commanded the 53 Division or any other fighting formations, but he was only ‘Commissioner General of Rehabilitation’ taking over a state-run project to ‘rehabilitate’ ex-LTTE cadres in Feb 2010, Gotabhaya said, accusing the US for its blunder in the denial of opportunity to a senior officer of a friendly country to enhance his knowledge, Colombo defence writers reported on Monday.
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TID squad searches Sritharan MPs office for second time

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 January 2013, 15:31 GMT]
A 6-member team of Sri Lankan ‘Terrorist’ Investigation Department on Tuesday searched the Ki'linochchi office of Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian Sivagnanam Sritharan for three hours. The TID squad, led by a Inspector ranked officer, Sarach Chandra, was searching the office inch-by-inch and were looking for computers that belonged to the parliamentarian, news sources in Ki'linochchi told TamilNet. When Mr Jeevanayagam Singarasa, who was in charge of the office on Tuesday, questioned the procedure of the TID, he was subjected to ‘interrogation’ for two hours inside the office. The TID inspector, when contacted by Mr Sritharan over telephone told the MP that the search operation was being conducted under the Sri Lankan Prevention of Terrorism Act.
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Sri Lanka ex-Military Commander barred from visiting U.S for training

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 January 2013, 12:29 GMT]
United States Department of State rejected the application for militiary training in the U.S. for Maj. Gen. Sudantha Ranasinghe alleging that Ranasinghe was likely complicit in commanding one of the military divisions, speculated to be the notorious 53rd, which is alleged to have been responsible for killing Tamil civilians numbering more than 80,000 according to the Petrie report, during the last phases of war in Sri Lanka. The paper did not say if other Sri Lanka military personnel have been admitted to undergo training in the U.S. Sri Lanka's Defence Secretary said that "nothing could be as foolish as rejecting an officer on the basis of him being in command of the 53 Division or any other fighting formation during the conflict," according to a report in the Island.
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Two students of Jaffna University released in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 January 2013, 10:42 GMT]
Amidst continued boycott of classes by the students of Jaffna University, two of the four detained student activists of the Jaffna University Student Union (JUSU) have been released on Tuesday in Vavuniyaa. The release comes following the exposure of reports that the SL Defence establishment and the Secretary of Education did not keep their ‘secret’ promise to the Colombo-appointed Vice Chancellor of the University of Jaffna Ms Vasanthi Arasaratnam. The President of JUSU, Mr V Pavananthan and student activist S. Solomon of the Science Faculty were released in front of the Vice Chancellor and Deans who were on their way to Welikande to visit the students, who were subjected to SL ‘military rehabilitation’. In the meantime, the SL military in Jaffna is on a ‘search operation’ threatening the families of two students who are in hiding.
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SL defence takes Jaffna University administration for a ride

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 January 2013, 01:26 GMT]
Genocidal Sri Lanka’s defence establishment and education secretary have secretly promised the Colombo-appointed Vice Chancellor of the Jaffna University that two of the detained students would be released before 14 January and the other two would be released after that, in order to persuade the VC and other members of the university administration to pressurize the students to drop the boycott and resume classes by the first week of January. This made the VC to go to the extent of her resignation threat and other threats to prevail upon the student representatives to agree to the reopening on 08 January. But so far there are no signs for the release of the detained students. The case is a good example for the futility of collaborationism entering into secret agreements with SL State and regime, political observers in Jaffna said.
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Accountability delayed by Politics, ill-prepared institutions, says Prof. Ratner

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 January 2013, 01:10 GMT]
Professor Steven Ratner, a member of the Panel of Experts appointed to advice United Nations Secretary General (UNSG), Ban Ki Moon, on the issue of accountability with regard to alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the conflict in Sri Lanka, in a recent U.S. Law journal, writes that, in the case of Sri Lanka, "despite an impressive set of legal norms in place to deal with atrocities such as those committed in this conflict, the infusion of politics and the limitations of unprepared institutions can seriously delay prospects for accountability."
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Colombo’s UPFA allies further accelerate divide in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 January 2013, 23:37 GMT]
While Muslim politicians of Batticaloa, aligned with Rajapaksa regime in Colombo seek to annex Tamil villages with Muslim-dominated divisions of Batticaloa, Tamil paramilitary elements operated by Colombo attempt to woo Tamil voters by staging shutdown protests against Muslims, capitalizing from the lack of a broader political mobilization from the part of the TNA. The line of collaboration politics with Colombo, adopted by the SLMC, has made it easier for Colombo to deploy the divide and rule tactic, setting Tamils and Muslims against each other, providing necessary time and space to the occupying Sinhala military to scheme Sinhalicisation of resourceful interior villages of Batticaloa.
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French ambassador concerned about fishermen encroachment, Tamil - Muslim relations

[TamilNet, Sunday, 20 January 2013, 12:28 GMT]
The French ambassador in Colombo, Christine Robichon, visiting Jaffna and Mannaar between 07 and 12 of this month, was able to “assess the damages of the trespassing of Indian trawlers on the livelihoods of local fishermen, and the consequences of the use of banned methods of fishing on the environment and natural resources,” said a press release of the French embassy in Colombo on Sunday. In her meetings with resettled people, she paid particular attention to the relations between Tamil and Muslim communities. “It is encouraging to see that Tamil and Muslim work together to provide support to all the war affected people in some organizations but it is worrying to perceive signs of communal tensions particularly in Mannar,” the press release said citing the ambassador.
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China card becomes ‘license’ for genocidal order

[TamilNet, Sunday, 20 January 2013, 10:27 GMT]
With the seemingly blackmailing speech of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, reported in Colombo media on Friday that if the USA withdraws its military training programmes to Sri Lanka, China would replace them, it becomes very explicit that the China card is now openly used for justifying a genocidal State order in the world, Tamil political analysts in the island said. Gotabhaya’s stand reported in Colombo media as “We don’t need you, we got China, Gotabhaya tells US,” is not taken seriously by Tamil political analysts, since Gotabhaya would have thrown away his US pass port if he was that ‘Sri Lankan’ and the US policy analysts and groups would not have been engaged in ‘reaching out’ Sri Lanka and engineering the integrity of the genocidal State, if Gota’s speech really means anything, the analysts said.
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US State Department, Defence officials to visit Sri Lanka, Maldives

[TamilNet, Sunday, 20 January 2013, 10:15 GMT]
Three Deputy Assistant Secretaries of the US State Department and Defence Department, one of them a person of Indian origin, Mr. Vikram Singh of the Pentagon, and the other two, Mr. James Moore and Ms Jane Zimmerman of the State Department will be visiting Sri Lanka and the Maldives between 26 January and 01 February. They are scheduled to meet officials, politicians and members of the civil society to discuss issues including LLRC implementation in Colombo, and officials and politicians in Male to discuss about Maldivian democratic institutions, news reports said on Saturday.
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Sri Lanka’s ‘Basha Mandiraya’ calls for mother tongue promotion

[TamilNet, Sunday, 20 January 2013, 09:48 GMT]
Genocidal Sri Lanka’s ‘Basha Mandiraya’ (Languages Ministry), marking International Mother Language Day, has called for an essay competition at school level “to sensitise public opinion towards the mother tongue.” The organisers, saying that another aim of this competition is “promoting mutual respect based on the love for one’s mother tongue,” want the participating school children to address their essays to ‘Basha Mandiraya’, said an advertisement in the SL government-run Sunday Observer. The SL ministry should first learn to respect the right of the school children to address the name of the ministry in their mother tongue, commented Tamil education circles in Colombo. Mr. Vasudeva Nanayakkara is Sri Lanka’s Minister of ‘National Languages and Social Integration’.
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US Court to hear oral argument on war-crime case against Rajapakase

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 January 2013, 02:35 GMT]
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit has scheduled March 8th, 9:30 am for the oral argument in the appeal case against Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse for civil damages on war-crimes charges filed by three Tamil plaintiffs whose relatives were extra-judicially executed or unlawfully killed under the "command responsibility" of Rajapakse. "The key legal issue in this case is whether the U.S.'s Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA) deputed the Executive Branch with authority to extinguish TVPA claims against sitting heads of state based on professed foreign policy concerns," plaintiff-appellants' attorney, Bruce Fein, said. Judges Merrick Garland, Janice Brown, and Brett Kavanaugh have been assigned to hear the case, according to Court papers.
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India’s blunder on Eezham Tamils brings in domino effect in Indian Ocean

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 January 2013, 02:24 GMT]
The historic blunder committed by New Delhi in not boldly checking the genocidal State and regime in Colombo, and New Delhi’s continued complicity in the genocide of Eezham Tamils –all said to be due to a competition with China in wooing the criminal State– have seriously eroded all credibility of India in the neighbourhood, and one by one all the small Indian Ocean countries have started playing the game of Colombo, political analysts in Jaffna said, citing the recent developments in the Maldives, Seychelles and Mauritius. Indian analysts and sections of India’s so-called national media that see only the money of China playing the culprit, fail to see India’s loss of credibility being the fundamental reason. Only a bold Indian action on genocidal Sri Lanka could course-correct all the others in the region, the Jaffna analysts said.
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SL military deployed ex-LTTE member, EPDP-journalist to frame Sritharan MP

[TamilNet, Friday, 18 January 2013, 23:41 GMT]

A former LTTE member, known as Premraj Vasanthan, allegedly recruited by the SL military intelligence for covert operations in the post-Mu’l’livaaykkal times, had visited the office of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP Mr Sivagnanam Sritharan after a long time last Friday and was wandering around inside the office. On the following day, the SL “Terrorist” Investigation Department (TID) operatives raided the office of the TNA parliamentarian in Ki’linochchi, with Mr Vasanthan in their ‘custody’. The intelligence operative “located” explosives, while the SL military “discovered” pornography material and the EPDP journalist planted condoms in an apparent move to discredit and frame Mr Sritharan, who has been gaining public support from the people of Vanni.
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