Colombo answers Indian political visit by simultaneously inviting Pak defence visit

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 April 2013, 12:00 GMT]
While representatives of a section of Indian political parties were on a fact finding mission to the island, meeting various Tamil political, civil society, chamber of commerce and former civil members in Jaffna on Tuesday and Wednesday under the aegis of the Indian High Commission and the Indian Consulate in Jaffna, the SL government in Colombo is engaging with a high level Pakistani Defence delegation comprising 19 members who are on a one-week visit to the island. The visit by Pakistani defence delegation follows the visit of the Chinese Deputy Minister of Intelligence last week.
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CHOGM heats up, Rae calls Sri Lanka a "Rogue Member"

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 April 2013, 00:34 GMT]
As the members of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group [CMAG] meeting in London scheduled to be held on April 26 draws close, the CHOGM [Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting] boycott call has increased, with DMK chief M. Karunanidhi sending his emissaries to meet the CMAG envoys to demand shifting of the CHOGM venue out of Sri Lanka, Indian media reported. Meanwhile, Canada's Liberal party leader, Bob Rae, urged Commonwealth states to boycott the meeting if held in Colombo, and said "[t]he Commonwealth is too important to allow its business to be disrupted by a single rogue member’s violation of the association’s beliefs and values."
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Don’t be spectators to attack on Muslims sharing language and homeland: Sampanthan

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 April 2013, 22:49 GMT]
"When our Muslim brothers and sisters are harmed on the street; or attacked by mobs; or have their Mosques vandalized; we cannot be unconcerned spectators,” declared Mr.R.Sampanthan, leader of the Tamil National Alliance and the Trincomalee district parliamentarian while making a statement in the parliament on Tuesday afternoon. The Muslim people have been historical inhabitants of this island. The bonds of a common language and home that hold us together cannot be broken easily, Sampanthan further said in voicing for the plight of Muslims who are predominantly Tamil-speaking in the island.
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‘TN student movement opens possibilities of new political futures’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 April 2013, 22:41 GMT]
The Tamil Nadu student movement that has “thrown up a new young leadership” that is unaffiliated to any political party and is challenging the US-sponsored UNHRC resolution on conceptually firm grounds “clearly shows that here is a new generation of Tamils which is imagining new political futures,” write Prof MSS Pandian and PhD scholar A. Kalaiarasan in a commentary published on the April 13 issue of the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW). In the article titled ‘A Tamil Spring?’ making a concise sociological analysis of the evolution of the student protests, the authors show how the student uprising, besides affecting the mass sentiments of the TN public and effecting greater awareness on the nuances of the Tamil Eelam struggle, is also influencing, challenging and changing the political discourse of parliamentary parties in Tamil Nadu.
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Wild elephants deployed by Colombo's forest department claim lives of Tamils in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 April 2013, 09:12 GMT]
Sri Lankan Forest Department, in recent weeks, has brought in a number of wild elephants from Sinhala areas into the jungles adjacent to Koa'ra'laip-pattu South Division of the Batticaloa district, where uprooted Tamil people have resettled after the end of war. The Divisional Secretary of Koa'ra'laippattu South, Mr Thanabalasundaram, when contacted by reporters in Batticaloa, admitted that two Tamil civilians have been killed within the last 30 days by the wild elephants that have gone amok on the villagers and their properties. The lives and the livelihood of 3,000 Tamil villagers are threatened by the presence of more than 50 wild elephants of the Sinhala forest department.
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Explosion claims life of de-mining worker in Mukamaalai

[TamilNet, Monday, 08 April 2013, 14:09 GMT]
A Halo Trust worker lost his life in a landmine explosion Monday morning, while he was engaged in de-mining at Mukamaalai, a former Forward Defence Line (FDL). The tragic incident, comes at a time when the occupying Colombo is bent on expelling all independent de-mining NGOs and the SL military is poised to take control of even the last-phase quality assurance being carried out by the UN agencies.
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‘Tamil Nadu, diaspora youth brook no compromise on Tamil Eelam’

[TamilNet, Monday, 08 April 2013, 04:31 GMT]
Tamil students and activists in Tamil Nadu and the Eezham Tamil diaspora have firmly voiced for the creation of a sovereign Tamil Eelam in their recent protests. The trend set by the student upsurge in TN has inspired the diaspora youth to conceptually challenge the International Community of Establishments. A strong realization of the necessity of a struggle addressing the ICE and to course correct pro-establishment elements is being strongly felt among second-generation activists in the diaspora. This understanding was reflected by Tamil youth and grassroots activists from Tamil Nadu, Canada and UK.
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Trichy gathering condemns “US–Indian betrayal” of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Monday, 08 April 2013, 02:05 GMT]
Addressing a mass gathering of students and common people in Trichy (Thiruchchi) district, Tamil Nadu, student leaders, youth activists, and veteran political activists condemned the betrayal of the Eezham Tamil nation by the US-Indian axis, further accusing them of abetting the genocidal Sri Lankan state, on Sunday. Not only India, but the entire world has turned its attention on the mass struggle waged by our students in Tamil Nadu over the last month, said the organisers of the gathering. If the Indian government does not pay heed to the just demands put forth by the student protestors across Tamil Nadu, the students will begin and intensify civil disobedience campaigns, student activists from Thiruchchi told TamilNet.
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Student uprising becomes theme of cultural event in Canada

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 April 2013, 19:16 GMT]
The recent student upsurge demanding Tamil Eelam as the solution to the national question of Eezham Tamils became the main theme of a live show staged by the second-generation diaspora students in Canada last Sunday. The programme, titled “I’lantha’lir – Discover Your Roots”, through multiple stage-acts, offered a live narration of the history of the Tamil liberation struggle, divided into notable time periods within the history.
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Colombo, Shuler, new US lobby firm, cozy alliance rumored

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 April 2013, 00:02 GMT]
Colombo has inked a lobbying and government affairs contract with the US-based "The Majority Group," after the previous lobby firm, Patton Boggs, terminated its representation of Sri Lanka in early February, sources in Washington said. While the diplomatic performance of Jaliya Wickremesuriya, Sri Lanka's President's relative and the current Ambassador to Sri Lanka in Washington, has been lackluster, Wickremasuriya-mooted relationship with North Carolina Congressman, Heath Shuler, is rumored to have played a role in the selection of the lobby firm, even while the Congressman's nexus to the Majority group has raised questions on the "revolving door" ambitions of Shuler, political sources in Washington said.
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Sri Lanka is Sinhala to Colombo film industry, media and academics

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 April 2013, 19:57 GMT]
Responding to the protest waged by the Actor’s Guild of the Tamil Nadu Film industry in Chennai against the genocide of Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka, a Colombo media Ceylon Today on Thursday came out with a feature written by a “special Correspondent,” titled “A friend turned foe.” The feature detailed the long and two-way connections between the film industries of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. The implied message, against the backdrop of ‘economic embrace’ contemplated in the corporate circles of India, is that ‘business should not be affected.’ Whether India’s economic embrace of the Sinhala State should take place over the annihilation of the nation of Eezham Tamils, and whether the Indian Establishment and corporatism are unable to conceive anything alternative, are the questions righteously raised by the protest coming from the Tamil artists, writes an academic in Jaffna.
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UAE Tamil deportees face torture, HRW raises alarm

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 April 2013, 14:51 GMT]
United Arab Emirates (UAE) authorities should not deport 19 Tamil refugees to Sri Lanka because they would be at serious risk of torture and persecution upon return. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has recognized all 19 as refugees, but the UAE authorities have told the group they must leave the country by April 11, 2013, Human Rights Watch (HRW), the US-based rights organization said. “For the UAE to return recognized Tamil refugees to a grave risk of torture in Sri Lanka would signal a total disregard for their well-being – and the most basic principle of international refugee and human rights law,” HRW said.
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Casteism, genocide, work hand in hand in Sinhala mind-set

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 April 2013, 23:49 GMT]
Casteist terms used in derogatory ways by Sinhalese in their references towards Tamils reveal the sociological nature of the genocidal mind-set of Sinhalese in the island of Sri Lanka. "How many people outside of Sri Lanka know that 'Sakkiliya' is a Sinhala term used to refer to a Tamil person [...],” asks Christopher Tuckwood, who has introduced a new Internet-based tool, named Hatebase, to study hate language in predicting and preventing genocide. Tuckwood is the Executive Director and Co-founder of The Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention, a Canada-based non-profit organisation dedicated to detecting and averting genocide throughout the globe.
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5,000 Tamils marching in London reject LLRC, demand Tamil Eelam

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 April 2013, 19:45 GMT]
More than 5,000 Eezham Tamils, from all walks of life, took to the streets in London on Friday, demanding a UN referendum to determine the creation of Tamil Eelam. “We want action, not words,” the protesters said rejecting any solution based on Sri Lanka's LLRC. Demanding the United Nations not to support the genocidal Sri Lanka, the Tamils in the UK said they are with the students of Tamil Nadu and thanked the Tamil Nadu State Assembly for passing a historic resolution demanding a UN referendum on separate Eezham. Earlier, in a referendum initiated by an independent group of British Tamils, held two years ago, 99.33% of 64,692 Eezham Tamils had voted in favour of the formation of independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam in the contiguous north and east of the island of Sri Lanka.
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Aanai-vizhunthaan-ku’lam, Aliyaa-wætuna-wæwa

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 April 2013, 01:44 GMT]
The tank where an elephant fell
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China's vice minister of intelligence finds Jaffna a place to visit

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 April 2013, 23:41 GMT]
Following US, UK, Indian, Japanese, Australian and Canadian diplomats, a vice minister at China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) too finds Jaffna a ‘must to be visited’ place, political observers in Jaffna commented on the visit of the Chinese Vice Minister Zhou Qing, on Wednesday. The Chinese deputy minister's visit was marked by intense security arrangement to him by the occupying genocidal military of Sri Lanka. China's assistance to the Sinhala military in building permanent cantonments and camps in the country of Eezham Tamils is well known. The MSS is China's primary agency for internal and external intelligence.
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Relatives of detainees expecting post-Geneva release get no answer

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 April 2013, 23:35 GMT]
Following the recent UNHRC process in Geneva, hundreds of kith and kin of the missing people in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils have again started visiting the Sri Lankan military camps, the so-called human rights commission offices and the offices of the Tamil politicians to locate the details of their loved ones. Some reports that appeared in the Tamil press in recent days, citing information obtained in Geneva by the Colombo-based Committee for Investigation of Disappeared, provided a list of 35 names saying that a section of Tamil prisoners, whose whereabouts were hitherto unknown, were to be produced in the courts by the Sri Lankan authorities. However, none of the relatives of the 35 names leaked in the report have managed to locate details of their missed ones, human rights activists in Jaffna told TamilNet.
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SL military prevents Moothoor Tamil farmers from gaining back their lands

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 April 2013, 15:28 GMT]
Resettled Tamil farmers of Kangkuve'li and Paddith-thidal in the Moothoor DS division are being prevented from cultivating their paddy fields located in Muthalai-madu and Padukaadu areas by Sinhala encroachers, who are backed by the occupying Sri Lanka Army soldiers camped in the area, say Tamil civil sources in Moothoor. The affected farmers have made complaints to the Moothoor Divisional Secretary with valid legal documents and to the Seruwila Police as well as to the Moothoor Police urging immediate action to retrieve their paddy fields in the extent of 750 acres for doing cultivation. However, no action has been taken, the farmers complain.
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Prof Gamlath passes away

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 April 2013, 21:57 GMT]
Veteran Professor of Sinhala, Dr Sucharitha Gamlath passed away at the age of 79 in Colombo on Saturday and the funeral took place on Monday. Prof Gamlath was righteously anti-Establishment throughout his career and for nearly 15 years, the governments in Colombo kept him unemployed, which he faced heroically without compromising on his principles and convictions. To the end he steadfastly stood for the Tamil right to self-determination in the island of Sri Lanka. He was the first Professor of Sinhala at the University of Jaffna, appointed in 1975 (then the Jaffna Campus of the University of Sri Lanka) and his penalisation by the JR Jayawardane government took place in 1980 while he was serving at the University of Jaffna. TamilNet pays tribute to the scholar of a rare genre and expresses condolences to bereaving family members, friends and comrades.
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SL military machinates caste, anti-diaspora violence in Jaffna villages

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 April 2013, 07:39 GMT]
An SL Military intelligence backed attack that took place in a Marriage Hall at Aavarangkaal in Puththoor, Jaffna, on last Wednesday and Thursday, shows to what extent the occupying Sinhala military has determined to engineer caste and anti-diaspora violence in select rural areas of Jaffna Peninsula to ultimately make Eezham Tamils weakened as a nation in the island, news sources in Jaffna said. The Marriage Hall that was preparing for a marriage function and its manager who is a retired Village Officer, were brutally attacked by a gang of youth organized by the occupying Sinhala military and its collaborators in Jaffna. The reason for the attack is said to be a publication coming from the diaspora in the UK that was stocked at the Marriage Hall for release. The publication was interpreted as a talk on caste and false accusation against SL military.
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