Time for diaspora to stand up for homeland Tamils: Father S.J. Emmanuel

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 July 2009, 14:44 GMT]
Former Vicar General of the Catholic diocese of Jaffna, Rev. Dr. S.J. Emmanuel, in an open appeal issued from Germany on Monday urged the diaspora Tamils to hasten to help the Tamils suffering in the island Sri Lanka. "Neither the Tamils who are suffering in silence have the strength to stand up or speak up for themselves nor the few Sinhalese are able to give their voice for the Tamils because these are quickly labelled as non-patriots, if not, traitors. The only people who can help them in some way or other are the Diaspora Tamils," he writes in his first part of the article. The second part will deal with the need to unite and organise the diaspora for further Struggle.
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34 Vanni IDPs die in 3 months due to brain fever

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 July 2009, 11:48 GMT]
Brain fever has been on the increase among Vanni Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) held in internment centres located in Vavuniyaa, according to medical sources in the district hospital. Thirty-four Vanni IDPs of the sixty-four afflicted by brain fever have died in three months. Majority of them who succumbed to brain fever were less than 24 years of age, medical sources said.
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Mullaiththeevu town declared HSZ: GA

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 July 2009, 10:31 GMT]
The Government Agent of Mullaiththeevu, Imelda Sukumar, on Sunday reportedly told a section of the uprooted Tamils of Vanni sheltered at the internment camp situated at "Sahanagama" in Pulmoaddai that the town of Mullaiththeevu has been declared High Security Zone by the Sri Lankan military, dashing any hope of resettlement in the coastal township of Vanni.
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SL Attorney General conducts workshop in Jaffna for trainees

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 July 2009, 05:28 GMT]
“Sri Lanka’s Attorney General (AG) stressing on building up confidence among residents of Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lanka’s legal and judicial systems sounds not only discordant but also ridiculous when he has conspicuously failed to comment on or discuss the fate of more than a hundred civilians languishing in Jaffna Prison and in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Special Rehabilitation Camps in the peninsula without being brought to trial,” one of the magistrates in Jaffna peninsula who attended the meeting held by Attorney General, Mohan Peiris, at Palaali SLA Head Quarters Sunday around 9:30 a.m, said.
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5000 Vanni IDPs from internment camps moved to Anuradhapura

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 July 2009, 13:23 GMT]
The Sri Lankan military has relocated nearly 5000 Tamil civilians from Vavuniyaa and Cheddiku'lam internment camps and resetteld them in pre dominant Sinhala village Tharmapuram in Anuradhapu on Tuesday and Wednesday, civil sources said. The SL military officials had told the Tamil civilians that they would be re-settled in their native villages in Ki'linochchi or Mullaiththeevu within 14 days, but the Rajapaksa government, at an all party meeting in Colombo on Thursday, said that it needed time to clear the mines before any resettlement.
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Sri Lanka turning Manik Farm camp into permanent ‘city’ - report

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 July 2009, 12:11 GMT]
Despite assuring the international community that most Tamils interned in militarized detention camps would be resettled by the end 2009, the Sri Lankan government is turning Manik Farm, the largest barbed-wire ringed site, into a permanent detention centre, The Times newspaper reported Friday. Tamil refugees are being used as forced labour, UN sources told the paper. Aid workers say the site was fast becoming Sri Lanka’s second biggest city after the capital, Colombo. Whilst Sri Lanka blames mines for preventing resettlement, foreign demining agencies say that they have been given access so far to only about 30 sq km of the former Vanni conflict zone.
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SLA opens Special Rehabilitation Camp in Kaithadi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 July 2009, 17:38 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Jaffna has placed youngsters over 14 years of age, suspected to have been trained to handle weapons by Liberation Tigers in Vanni, in its newly opened Special Rehabilitation Camp (SRC) located in Kaithadi Saiva Children Home, sources in Jaffna said. Some young people who were held along with their families in Kaithadi Saiva Children Home, converted into an internment centre earlier, had been taken away by SLA to its Thellippazhai Special Rehabiltation Camp and no information about them is available, the sources said.
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A "rolling" genocide?

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 July 2009, 11:56 GMT]
"The continuing concentration of over 250,000 people in the camps both blocks the search for answers to these questions, and itself constitutes a most serious crime. If the doors are not opened quickly, this will raise questions of whether the government seriously intends a restoration of Tamil society in the conquered zone. This would indeed pose a question of genocide, in the sense of the deliberate destruction of a population group in its home territory," writes Dr. Martin Shaw, professor of International Relations at UK's University of Sussex, and a historical sociologist of war and global politics.
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Ploy of Buddhism in nullifying Tamil nationalism

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 June 2009, 01:53 GMT]
The North and East of the island of Sri Lanka should first be subjected to ‘archaeological’ investigation to prove the land’s Sinhala ownership, before its ‘resettlement’, is the demand of the National Front of Buddhist monks of Sri Lanka, reported Virakesari a few days ago. If archaeology has any say, the entire island having microlithic sites of prehistoric period has to be resettled by Veddas, and if enough Veddas are not found in the island they could still be found among their next of kin outside, ranging from the Austro-Asiatic tribes of the South Asian subcontinent to aborigines of Borneo, Papua New Guinea and Australia, commented an academic of ethnic studies in the island.
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Jaffna Muslim IDPs should be resettled soon – Muslim contestant in JMC election

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 June 2009, 15:34 GMT]
“While welcoming the government’s interest in resettling the displaced Vanni civilians in their original places we request that it should also take action to resettle the Muslims displaced from Jaffna soon,” Ahamed Sulthan Subiyan, the president of Jaffna Muslim IDPs Association and the independent contestant in the forthcoming Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) election, said in a press meet held Monday in his newly opened election office in Jaffna town.
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Mervin Silva abuses Sirasa journalists

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 June 2009, 04:30 GMT]
Sri Lanka Minister of Labour Mervin Silva grabbed the microphone from Sirasa TV station reporters and threw it on the ground at an event held in Bandaranayake Memorial International Conference Hall (BMICH), alleging that Sirasa TV station and its journalists are traitors of the country, media sources in Colombo said. The event was organized to felicitate the journalists who covered the Vanni battle along with Sri Lanka Army.
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UN Jaffna officials accused of misreporting in favour of GOSL, SLA

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 June 2009, 17:23 GMT]
Civil society sources in Jaffna raised accusations against United Nation (UN) Jaffna officials for releasing facts and statistics, related to the detainees held in the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camps, provided by Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and SLA, instead of the true situation prevailing in the camps, to the outer world. For instance, the UN officials in their June 15 report said that only four detainees had died in the past six months in Jaffna camps where as many have died including a woman due to septicemia, in a meeting held in Jaffna town Thursday, participants in the meeting said.
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Children in Manik Farm camps suffer due to malnutrition: Sarvodaya

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 June 2009, 12:20 GMT]
“About thirty thousand to thirty five thousand children are sheltered in Manik Farm. Many of them are suffering from diseases and some still suffer from injuries sustained in the military operations. Fifteen to twenty percent of them are also suffering from acute malnutrition,” media reports in Colombo said quoting Dr. Vinya Ariyaratne, the executive director of Colombo based NGO Sarvodaya Shramadana Sangamaya.
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9,247 Vanni elderly IDPs handed over to Social Welfare Ministry

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 June 2009, 02:15 GMT]
The Ministry of Social Welfare Monday took over the maintenance and care of nine thousand two hundred and forty seven elderly internally displaced persons of over sixty years of age from Vanni from the internment camps in Vavuniyaa. The lists of names of these elderly IDPs are now exhibited in the offices of the Ministry of Social Offices located in Mannaar and Vavuniyaa, media reports said.
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Sri Lanka’s hidden agenda in JMC election - Manickasothy

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 June 2009, 17:48 GMT]
”Tamils struggle for their rights began at a time even when there were four train services a day from Jaffna to Colombo, hundreds of lorries and busses plying on the A9 road and a continuous electricity supply from Laxapahana was available to the people of the North; the claim to restore these by the government is but an obvious propaganda ploy to lure votes for the ruling United Peoples’ Freedom Alliance (UPFA), in an effort to show the world that the Tamils are not opposed to a unified Sri Lanka but whole heartedly support it, by securing victory in Jaffna Municipality Council (JMC) election,” Abimanasingham Manickasothy, the principal candidate of the Independent group contesting JMC election, told the media in a press meet held Wednesday in Bastion Hotel in Jaffna, sources in Jaffna said.
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Task of legal war vested with diaspora

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 June 2009, 22:32 GMT]
When serious action is needed against Colombo and the Sri Lankan state in order to uphold human dignity and world civilisation, some world leaders pathetically believe in not penalising Colombo and in a ‘carrot and stick’ approach. The Eezham Tamils have seen enough of carrots always going to Colombo and stick always coming to them, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo. "The legal system and procedural governments of the liberal democracies have enough space to indict these leaders and governments in their own countries to remind them of their crime and responsibilities. Unless humanitarian organizations and the Eezham Tamil diaspora take up this matter seriously, these leaders will not only go on conning but will also dare to abet Colombo’s agenda of structural genocide."
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TNA MP Kanagaretnam ordered further detention in Colombo court

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 June 2009, 09:37 GMT]
The Colombo Chief Magistrate and Additional District Judge Mr. Nishantha Kappurarachchi Monday instructed the Criminal Investigation Department of the Sri Lanka Police to further detain the suspect Mr.Sathasivam Kanagaretnam, Vanni district Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian, conduct investigations and submit a comprehensive report to court on the next date, July 26.
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Foreign banks looking for profit in "Bloodbath Bonds," says Inner City Press

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 June 2009, 03:06 GMT]
While human rights groups called for investigations of tens of thousands of [Tamil] civilians killed by the Sri Lanka Government, and urged Colombo to release more than 300,000 Tamils including UN staff members held in internment camps, Citybank and Deutsche Bank are looking to make profits on "bloodbath bonds," said Inner City Press which covers the U.N. activities in New York.
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Lessons to be learnt about China

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 June 2009, 20:04 GMT]
The ‘Himalayan’ blunder committed by Nehru and Krishna Menon in their China policy has been re-enacted by their descendants in the Indian Establishment nearly half a century later. A couple of years ago, writing on the crisis in the island of Sri Lanka, a TamilNet article quoted a saying in Tamil about the dog that allowed the squirrel to climb the tree (A’nil ea’ravidda naay). Now it seems that it isn’t just one but many in that situation, after allowing the ethnic question in the island to be hijacked by China. India has to realise at least now that a united Sri Lanka, that too an enforced one, at the cost of its natural ally – and at the cost of ruining its leverage with it – is no guarantee to prevent China’s ambitions in South Asia.
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Fate of young detainees in Thellippazhai SLA Rehabilitation camp bleak

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 June 2009, 11:58 GMT]
The fate of nearly 300 young women and more than 500 young men from Vanni held in Thellippazhai Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Special Rehabilitation Camp (SRC) continues to remain unceratin and bleak, local NGO sources expressed concern. Education officials who had visited SRC said that there are more than a hundred youngsters between 14 to 18 ages whose educational needs are ignored by SLA authorities in charge of SRC. Neither UNICEF nor any other international organization has been permitted to visit these young detainees, sources in Jaffna said.
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