Karuna alleges Pillaiyan TMVP corrupt

[TamilNet, Saturday, 12 March 2011, 14:38 GMT]
"The Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Puligal (TMVP) party led by the Chief Minister of the Eastern Provincial Council Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan is a political party full of corruption and deceit. Pilliayan has no support from the government," said Resettlement Deputy Minister Vinayagamoorthy Muralidharan alias Karuna. "Pilliayan became the Chief Minister due to votes of Tamils. He is now hanging on the government to show Tamils that he has the support of the government. He cannot act alone," said Karuna who has been spreading Mahinda Chinthanaya in Ampaarai district. Both are leaders of two Para military groups in the east.
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TNA MPs dropped from DDC meeting with Basil Rajapakse

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 February 2011, 17:13 GMT]
Batticaloa district Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians P.Selvarasa, C.Yogeswaran and P.Ariyanethran have not been invited for the District Development Committee (DDC) meeting that was scheduled to be held on Sunday morning with Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapakse. The meeting was summoned to review the progress of the ongoing development activities and to decide on the future development projects in the district.
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Tamil Nadu needs non-political movement for Eezham liberation: Sathyaraj

[TamilNet, Thursday, 24 February 2011, 04:45 GMT]
Sathyaraj, a popular film actor from Tamil Nadu state of India, while addressing the gathering in Chennai on Monday on the occasion of paying tribute to the late Parvathi Amma, the mother of LTTE leader Pirapaharan, urged the leaders and activists supporting the Eezham cause to forge a non-political movement with the sole aim of taking forward the cause of Eezham Tamils. Calling the leaders and activists to put an end to rhetoric, the artist, who played the award-winning role of Periyar E.V. Ramasamy in the documentary film, Periyar, said the cause of Eezham Tamils is beyond any identity of sectarian politics, castes or groups in Tamil Nadu and addressed Pirapaharan as the leader of World Tamils.
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TNA challenges Pilliayan to resign, hold election to EPC

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 February 2011, 12:47 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Batticaloa District TNA Parliamentarian, Mr.C.Yogeswaran, addressing an election meeting in Kaaraitheivu, challenged the Chief Minister of the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC), Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, to dissolve the EPC and to stand for re-election to prove his popularity instead of criticizing the TNA, sources in Batticaloa said.
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Parvathi Amma passes away

[TamilNet, Sunday, 20 February 2011, 01:47 GMT]
Mrs. Vallipuram Parvathi, the mother of LTTE leader Velupillai Pirapaharan, passed away Sunday morning at Valveddiththu'rai hospital in Jaffna around 6:30 a.m., Dr. A. Maylerumperumal, District Medical Officer (DMO) of Valveddiththu'rai told media. Her husband, Thiruvengadam Velupillai, had passed away in Sri Lanka Army detention at Panagoda in January 2010. After the demise of her husband, Mrs. Parvathi was released and was later allowed to go to Malaysia for medical treatment in March 2010. However, she was denied entry to Tamil Nadu and deported back to Malaysia last year. Later, she was brought to her home village of Valveddiththu'rai and was taken care of the doctors and the staff at Valveddiththu'rai hospital till her last breath.
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Seizure of Indian trawlers, a token action: fishermen representatives

[TamilNet, Friday, 18 February 2011, 00:15 GMT]
Around 500 Eezham Tamil fishing society representatives who gathered at Point Pedro in Vadamarradchi refused Thursday to hand over the poaching Indian trawlers, which they had seized from the intruding Indian fishermen on Tuesday. Declaring that their action against Indian poaching was a token one, the representatives urged immediate action from the Indian authorities. The fishermen representatives also refused to hand over the vessels to Sri Lankan military, urging the concerned authorities to resolve the dispute by civil means.
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Plan to “Sinhalacise” Eastern University discussed

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 February 2011, 04:32 GMT]
A plan to appoint Sinhalese academicians as the Vice Chancellor, Registrar and Dean of Faculties to the Eastern University of Sri Lanka (EUSL) was seriously considered at a meeting held to discuss the development of EUSL presided by Minister of Higher Education Mr.S.Dissanayake, education sources in Batticaloa said. The meeting was held amid protests made by the Batticaloa district Tamil parliamentarians against the appointment of Sinhalese as the Competent Authority to the EUSL.
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Hague's WikiLeaks admission spells legal danger to Sri Lanka war-criminals

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 February 2011, 12:11 GMT]
The Sierra Leone war crimes tribunal in The Hague has granted Charles G. Taylor, 62, the former Liberian president, who has been on trial charged with 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the right to use two leaked American diplomatic cables as evidence to challenge the court’s impartiality. While the leaked information in the Taylor case was used by Taylor's lawyer to raise doubts on the courts independence and suggested the prosecution was political, Sri Lanka's leaked cables from the US Embassy contain incriminating information on the complicity of Rajapakse family, Ex-SLA Commander Sarath Fonseka, and Tamil paramilitaries in war-crimes and crimes against humanity on Tamil civilians, legal sources in Washington said.
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TNA MP protests against ethnic subjugation of Eastern University

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 February 2011, 00:36 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s University Grants Commission (UGC) has recently appointed a Sinhala officer with powers above the rank of Vice Chancellor in the Eastern University under the pretext of eliminating irregularities and corruption. “The real agenda of the move is subjecting the overwhelmingly Tamil-speaking Eastern University to the insinuations of Mahinda Chintana based ethnic subjugation,” blamed Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP for Batticaloa District C. Yogeswaran, talking to Tamil journalists.
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Flood victims express anger on public servants for lack of relief in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 30 January 2011, 20:07 GMT]
Civilians in Batticaloa district have started to show their anger on government servants for the failure to provide relief as promised by Colombo authority. The latest attack on a Village Officer of Makizhadith-theevu in Paddipazhai DS division in Batticaloa district took place Friday while he was in the act of distributing relief items donated by a non-governmental organization. Over five hundred thousand flood affected people in Poaratheevup-pattu, Paddippazhai, Vavu'na-theevu, Ea'raavoor-pattu, and Chengkaladi in Paduvaankarai DS division have not been provided with relief materials properly. Meanwhile, the district has started to experience another round heavy torrential rain since last week. Hence the spill gates of Unnichchai and U'rukaamam irrigation tanks have been opened to allow excess water.
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Solheim without ‘appetite’ envisages further involvement

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 January 2011, 12:19 GMT]
How could the Norwegian ‘peace’ broker Erik Solheim claim that he was not biased towards one party in the national conflict in the island of Sri Lanka, when he had approached the issue with a preconception that there had been no appetite in the world for separations, asked Stephen Pushparajah, a well-recognized Eezham Tamil in Norway, responding to Mr. Solheim’s reiteration Wednesday that there is “no international support for a separate Tamil state” and his envisagement on behalf of Norway to play a further “role as a dialogue partner both with the government and peoples of Sri Lanka, including exile communities.” It was this closed mind of the peace facilitators and the powers behind them that encouraged Rajapaksa to end the war with genocide and to continue the genocide even after the war, he further said.
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EUSL becomes playground for Karuna politics

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 January 2011, 21:25 GMT]
Paramilitary leader and a Deputy Minister of Colombo, Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, has been blamed by the students and the administration of the EUSL for intervening into the affairs of the EUSL by entering the premises escorted by Ea'raavoor Police and claiming to resolve a dispute between the students and the administration of the Arts Faculty for pursuing his politics, sources at the EUSL said. Mr. Muralitharan entered the premises on Tuesday when Art Faculty students were in discussions with the Vice Chancellor and the Faculty Dean following a protest by students over 6 months delay in announcing their examination results
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People turn against paramilitary groups in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 January 2011, 18:22 GMT]
Batticaloa residents have shown their anger against Karuna, Pillayan paramilitary groups by organizing demonstrations against the factions of the groups, one led by a deputy minister of Rajapaksa-government Muralitharan (Karuna) and the other by Colombo-installed chief minister S. Chandrakanthan (Pillayan). On Tuesday, an spontaneous street-demonstration condemned attacks by Pillayan group on divisional secretary and village officer attached to Ma'nmunaippattu DS office.
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SLN firing on fishermen: Delhi protests, Colombo denies

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 January 2011, 18:31 GMT]
India registered a ‘strong protest’ Thursday over the Sri Lanka Navy’s firing on Tamil Nadu fishermen, killing one, but Colombo flatly denied the accusation. Three fishermen, who put out to sea from Puthukkoaddai, came under indiscriminate fire from Sri Lankan Navy about 14 miles off the hamlet, Indian fisheries officials said. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Karunanidhi sent a telegraph to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, reports said.
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Batticaloa flood relief diverted to Kudumpimalai SLA camps

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 January 2011, 13:46 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Army (SLA) is reported to have appropriated the flood relief materials intended for flood affected villagers in the Batticaloa district, and has distributed the materials to soldiers in SLA camps located in Kudumpimalai, civil sources in Batticaloa said. The Deputy Resettlement Minister in the Mahinda Rajapakse government, Vinayagamoorthy Muralidharan alias Karuna, claimed that he had allocated two tonnes of relief materials for the distribution among affected families in the Batticaloa. Now it has come to light that the assistance had been handed over to the Batticaloa Headquarters of the Sri Lanka Army and not to the civil authority in the district.
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'Only China and Pakistan could prod New Delhi'

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 December 2010, 00:58 GMT]
Paying tribute at the memorial for the IPKF that killed more than 6000 Eezham Tamils in the late 1980s, the visiting Defence Secretary of the New Delhi establishment offered training programme for 1400 personnel of the genocidal military of Sri Lanka in the Indian defence academies. Indian Express on Sunday reported that a key outcome of Russian president recently meeting New Delhi’s prime minister was India helping Colombo’s nuclear power generation, to counter Chinese power hold in South Asia. Meanwhile, the thrust of a recent article by India’s former envoy in UK, Kuldip Nayar implies that rather than the merit of the national question of Eezham Tamils attracting Indian attention, only the involvement of China and Pakistan may prod it to do something.
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NLF leader complains to HRCSL on attack at airport

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 December 2010, 14:15 GMT]
Dr.Wickremabahu Karunaratne, Leader of the New Left Front (NLF), Tuesday registered a complaint with the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (SLRCL) regarding the attack on him and his party supporters at the Katunayake International Airport (KIA) during the first week of December on his arrival of London, human rights sources in Colombo said.
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Forced prostitution, sex slavery with GoSL complicity – US cable

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 December 2010, 02:39 GMT]
Forced prostitution and trafficking abroad for sex of Tamil children are amongst the organized criminal activities being undertaken with the knowledge of the Sri Lankan government by its troops and allied Tamil paramilitary groups, according to another Wikileaked US embassy cable from May 2007. The cable says these practices, which constitute war crimes, were raised “repeatedly” with Sri Lanka’s top leadership, including the President and top ministers. “The preponderance of [accounts] and the extent to which they independently corroborate each other points to a pattern of GSL complicity with paramilitary groups on multiple levels,” the then US Ambassador Robert Blake wrote.
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WikiLeaks: Gotabaya sanctioned extra-judicial killings by Paramilitaries

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 December 2010, 01:08 GMT]
A WikiLeaks cable, dated 18th May 2007 from US embassy in Colombo, accuses Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse of giving orders to Sri Lanka Army (SLA) commanders in Jaffna not to interfere with Tamil paramilitaries who are "doing "work" that the military cannot do because of international scrutiny. The work referred to in the cable includes extra-judicial killings, extortion, abduction and prostitution by the Tamil paramilitary groups EPDP and Karuna Group. Both groups are led by Ministers in the present ruling Government in Sri Lanka.
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War crimes ignored in East, focus urged on ‘killings’ at Eastern University

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 December 2010, 07:09 GMT]
While the war raged in Vanni war front, Sri Lanka Army deployed paramilitary operatives with close link to Rajapaksa quarters in Colombo, killing a female hostel warden and two female Tamil students from Vanni at the Eastern University in February and March 2009, journalists from Batticaloa said citing information from ex-paramilitary personnel and naming a key operative in Vaazhaichcheanai in Batticaloa with close links to Rajapaksa's cabinet as the man who carried out the orders from the top. In the meantime, a 54-year-old man from Paa'ndiruppu linked to Iniyapaarathi, the most feared operative of Karuna group, was found dead Friday hanging inside a building used by the group earlier.
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