Rajapakse immune from war crime charges while in office, rules US Court

[TamilNet, Sunday, 31 March 2013, 12:04 GMT]
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit in the opinion delivered this week on the appeal case against Sri Lanka's President Rajpakse filed by three Tamil plaintiffs claiming civil damages on war-crimes charges ruled that "as a consequence of the [U.S.] State Department’s suggestion of immunity, the defendant [Rajapakse] is entitled to head of state immunity under the common law while he remains in office...," and affirmed the judgment of the district court dismissing the plaintiffs’ complaint. The plaintiffs' attorney Bruce Fein told TamilNet that he will advise his clients and the sponsoring organization if they should consider filing a writ of certiorari keep the option open to move the case further forward to the Supreme Court.
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TN resolution needs to be legally and politically binding: SP Udayakumar

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 March 2013, 02:53 GMT]
Recognizing the significance of the resolution passed in Tamil Nadu state assembly recently calling for a UN referendum among the Eezham Tamils, TN grassroots activist SP Udayakumar emphasised that the resolution needs to be made politically and legally binding. “Tamil Nadu resolutions are only resolutions right now. We need to make them legally binding,” he said in a video interview to TamilNet from Idinthakarai. Likewise, speaking on the student protests in Tamil Nadu, Mr. Udayakumar, who is at the heart of the peaceful struggle against the nuclear reactor in Koodangku’lam, further said that it was too early for the students to give up the protests unless “the Tamil Nadu resolution is accepted by the Indian parliament and if the India government is willing to act on it”.
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Tamil Nadu Assembly resolves for UN referendum on separate Eelam

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 March 2013, 10:03 GMT]
In a historic move, the Tamil Nadu State Assembly on Wednesday, unanimously passed a resolution for bringing in arrangements at the level of the UN Security Council to conduct a referendum among Eezham Tamils in the island as well as in the diaspora on the question of Separate Eelam. In addition, the resolution passed at the Tamil Nadu Assembly demanded the Government of India to stop calling Sri Lanka a friendly country. The resolution also included the earlier demands ie., Independent International Investigations on Genocide and War Crimes as well as imposition of economic sanctions on Sri Lanka. The resolution, unanimously passed, was moved by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms Jayalalithaa.
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Sinhala military takes over UN demining following Geneva resolution

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 March 2013, 07:10 GMT]
One of the immediate results of the US-resolution at Geneva “welcoming and acknowledging the progress” of genocidal Sri Lanka in various avenues, including in demining the country of Tamils, is the UN entirely handing over demining and supervision of demining to the occupying Sinhala military. This will pave way for the genocidal SL military to make money, Sinhalicize even demining and to come out with excuses for years in handing back lands, news sources in Jaffna said. The last international organisation involved in demining the country of Eezham Tamils and has an office in Jaffna, i.e., a UN outfit of Tamil staff that was supervising, monitoring and issuing certificates on demining, will be closed down in June. The work will be handed over to the SL military and its Sinhala staff.
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Ambassador Blake cannot reverse Tamil genocide: Prof. Boyle

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 March 2013, 00:43 GMT]
Responding to the statements made during the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, Robert Blake's, interview with the BBC, where Blake appears to characterize the "GOSL’s mass extermination of over 100,000 Tamils in Vanni in 2009" as nothing more than “some of the negative trends that have occurred with respect to rule of law and human rights in Sri Lanka," that needs to be "reversed," Professor Francis A. Boyle, an expert in international law, said, while Blake cannot reverse the genocide, the "start of “revers{ing}” them is to establish an International Investigative Commission in order to prosecute them." Blake also denies in the interview that he [and the international community] had any knowledge of the magnitude of the casualties during the final months of the war.
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Tamils should resist being taken into current western agenda: N Malathy

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 March 2013, 12:36 GMT]
Tamils should be wary of the intentions of the Western Establishments that are pricking Sri Lanka with this or that war crimes evidence released year after year. They hold possession of a lot more hard evidence of Sri Lankan atrocities, but still do not address the question of genocide of the Eezham Tamil nation, opines N. Malathy, arguing that, “the best option for the Tamils world all over is to use the insights they have gained in recent years and refuse to be taken into the Western fold. Tamils should firmly stand their ground about the genocide of Eelam Tamils and the necessity of the creation of independent Tamil Eelam.” In an article to TamilNet, Dr. Malathy, a key member of the NESoHR and the author of ‘A Fleeting Moment in my County’, gives a concise outline of how the West was playing the human rights card to bring both Sri Lanka and the Eezham Tamils into its fold.
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SL Forest Department lets loose wild elephants on resettled Tamils in Ampaa'rai

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 March 2013, 12:28 GMT]
Wild elephants in large numbers are systematically driven into villages where Tamils predominantly live in the Ampaa'rai district by a section of Sinhalese connected to the Sri Lankan Forest Department, presumably to prevent the uprooted Eezham Tamils from returning and resettling in their places of origin, sources in Ampaa'rai said. The Colombo government that exploits the poverty status of these people, while not providing them with the basic amenities, sponsors Sinhala colonisation schemes that also include settlement of SL military men in the area. So far, after 2009, seven new Sri Lanka Army camps have been established in Ampaa'rai district.
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Colombo's land appropriation to be accelerated in North

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 March 2013, 00:09 GMT]
Aiming to alienate lands from the people of North and East and to enable the colonial governors and SL government agents to abet an accelerated land appropriation, circumventing even the legal challenges posed by Tamil activists and NGOs, the Sri Lankan Minister of Lands and Land Development, Janaka Bandara Tennakoon, has set forth parameters for a land programme with the participation of the Sri Lankan military in the North this month. But, the projection given to the world during the Geneva session was that the SL State was establishing two offices in Jaffna and Ki'linochchi, to hand over thousands of acres of lands back to civilians. When questioned where these lands are situated and under which GS areas they come in, the minister or the military commander had no specific answer to provide, news sources in Ki'linochchi and Jaffna said.
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‘US resolution annihilates aspiration of Eezham Tamils’: Tamil Nadu writer

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 March 2013, 00:43 GMT]
Criticizing the pro-LLRC US resolution passed at Geneva, Tamil Nadu based writer, activist and poet, Meena Kandasamy argues that “Carrying out the diktats of such a document will only annihilate the genuine aspirations and right to self-determination of the Eelam Tamils” basing her argument on the fact that the LLRC categorically denies the existence of a Tamil homeland in the North and East of the island of Sri Lanka. Criticizing both the US and India for abetting the genocide of the Eezham Tamil nation, she further states “Justice in this unipolar world revolves around the UN and the imperialist powers that it serves. Even though the Eelam Tamils have historical sovereignty and earned sovereignty, if they believe that separation alone can guarantee them safety, their last recourse to save themselves from complete extermination is to stake a claim to remedial sovereignty before the UN.”
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Geneva resolution will impede progress: NYT

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 March 2013, 20:42 GMT]
The Human Rights Council voted once again to urge the Sri Lankan government to investigate “alleged violations of human rights” for the growing evidence that government soldiers killed tens of thousands of civilians in their bloody campaign to crush the LTTE. "But as with last year’s resolution, this year’s Council vote offers little more than hand-wringing," an opinion column in the New York Times said, adding, "[w]hile they carry symbolic weight, such resolutions may, in fact, be impeding progress rather than facilitating it."
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New US Secretary of State responsible for Geneva injustice: Boyle

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 March 2013, 15:15 GMT]
The New US Secretary of State John Kerry, who assumed office on 1 Feb 2013, was the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations in 2009 that brought out a report advising the USA to help Sri Lanka’s military without insisting on political solutions. Finding a clear link between the 2009 Kerry Report and Kerry’s State Department, US Professor of Law, Francis A Boyle said, "The callous and callow Kerry Report came right after the GOSL genocidal massacre of about 100,000 Tamils in Vanni, recommending that the United States government abandon all principles and instead aid and abet the continued GOSL repression and persecution of the Tamils. That is precisely the policy we now see in operation with Kerry as U.S. Secretary of State. This latest UNHRC Resolution sponsored by Kerry’s State Department and acting pursuant to his instructions proves it. Kerry should be fired," said Boyle.
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Australia's vote at Geneva raises questions

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 March 2013, 19:53 GMT]
While rights group and Tamils dismissed the US resolution passed in the UNHRC sessions in Geneva as toothless and as allowing space to Colombo to continue with the structural genocide of Tamils, Australia was reluctant to endorse even this resolution, and voted at the last minute because of "concerns it would offend the ruling Rajapaksa brothers," Australia's ABC news reported quoting executive director of the New York based rights group Human Rights Watch [HRW], Kenneth Roth. "It is pretty clear Australia's policy toward Sri Lanka is the asylum seeker tail wagging the bilateral dog," Roth said.
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Tamil protest in Italy draws support of rights group

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 March 2013, 13:46 GMT]
At a protest organised by the Tamil organisations in the city of Palermo in Italy on Friday, Marco Farina, the head of Human Rights Youth Organisation (HRYO), a youth group that studies about non-violence, pacifism, and tolerance for change and voices for the civil and human rights, pledged his organization's support for the self-determination of the Eezham Tamils.
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Time to wage next stage of struggle

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 March 2013, 07:13 GMT]
The Eezham Tamil grassroot may have to bring in new leadership that has faith in people’s power; that has the ability to mobilise people’s power; that gets its power from the people and that invites the ‘diplomats’ to come to it rather than going to them. Never forget that non-cooperation is an effective way of democratic struggle, especially in struggles facing imperialism. With confidence coming from the Tamil Nadu upsurge to embark on a new genre of struggle, Eezham Tamils should know converting the solidarity into a joint people’s power rather than detracting it or hijacking it. The Tamil Nadu upsurge cannot be silenced like the defeatists silencing the diaspora uprising. New Delhi and Washington may brush aside the upsurge by adamantly passing an empty resolution. But the effects of the upsurge are already showing and it depends on how the struggle is going to be led further.
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Australian Greens Senator criticizes support to empty US resolution

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 March 2013, 03:44 GMT]
Responding to a motion passed in the Australian Federal Parliament on Thursday which welcomed the Australian government’s decision to support the US resolution at Geneva, Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon said “the Australian Greens cannot congratulate the government in supporting the empty US-initiated resolution on Sri Lanka, tabled at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. It is weak because it urges the Sri Lankan government to implement its own investigation into the war crimes that it is accused of committing.” The motion, which is not binding but is significant as a statement of position, that was tabled by Senators Madigan and Xenophon was passed by the senate. In a separate statement, Ms. Rhiannon also called for an independent international investigation on Sri Lanka, referring to the demands of the Tamil Nadu student protestors.
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Genocidal double talk by India, US - Prof. Boyle

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 March 2013, 01:46 GMT]
Professor Francis A. Boyle, an expert in international law, called the statements made by the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, and by India's ambassador to the U.N., Dilip Sinha, after the adoption of the US resolution on Sri Lanka in the Geneva sessions of the UNHCR, as "genocidal double-talk," pointing out the "blatant hypocrisy" in praising a resolution that looked at Colombo to implement the recommendation of its local "truth" commission. While rights groups and Tamils demanded an "international" investigation into the killings in Mu'l'l'vaaykkaal, leaked U.S. State Department memos had earlier revealed US officials acknowledging the futility of local investigations when culpability for the war-crimes pointed at Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse and his siblings.
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TN upsurge transcending establishments inspires NZ Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 March 2013, 01:12 GMT]
In a demonstration held in Auckland in New Zealand on Wednesday, the demonstrators profusely thanked the students of Tamils Nadu for internationally highlighting the genocide issue of Eezham Tamils at a most wanted time and for taking the issue beyond the party politics of India in convincing the world that creation of Tamil Eelam is the only solution. “Our struggle begins here and a hard road is ahead,” said one of the speakers at the demonstration, participated by professionals, university students and a large number of women. New Zealand Tamils were one of the first to openly caution the entire diaspora last month itself on the dangers portended by the ‘doing nothing’ approach of the USA towards the question of Eezham Tamils.
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Diaspora youth join Tamil Nadu students in protest

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 March 2013, 03:46 GMT]
In a demonstration of solidarity with the demands of the Tamil Nadu students’ uprising, Eezham Tamil diaspora youth across several western countries have come out in protest against the pro-LLRC US resolution tabled at Geneva and pushing for a just political solution for the Eezham Tamil nation facing genocidal oppression in its occupied homeland. The protesters were unanimous in rejecting any resolution that binds the Eezham Tamil nation to unitary Sri Lanka. A copy of the US resolution was also burnt in Toronto, where solidarity groups had also participated in protests. While student protests occurred in London, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Toronto, Copenhagen and Oslo on Wednesday, a hunger strike was initiated by students in Sydney on Thursday, and further protests are scheduled in the coming days in major cities in western countries.
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Unprecedented demonstration in Tamil Nadu denounces empty resolution at Geneva

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 March 2013, 03:29 GMT]
Several hundreds of thousands people across Tamil Nadu took to streets on Wednesday in a students-led demonstration unprecedented in recent decades in Tamil Nadu, denouncing the US-tabled empty resolution further diluted by New Delhi at Geneva, and demanding international investigations and plebiscite on the question of Eezham Tamils. Peaceful demonstrations took place at every part of Tamil Nadu, including all the major cities. Conservative estimates put the total number of participants, mostly students, at a million. The positions taken by Washington and New Delhi, the leading architects and abetters to the genocidal war in the island, in bringing out a deceptive resolution at Geneva have contributed immensely to the confirmed awareness among the people of Tamil Nadu that Tamil Eelam is the only solution to the genocide-affected Eezham Tamils, political observers in Chennai commented.
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Adopting draft resolution will violate Genocide Convention, says Boyle

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 March 2013, 00:01 GMT]
Commenting on the draft resolution being circulated by the United States at the the Geneva sessions of the UNHRC, Francis Boyle, Professor at the School of Law, University of Illinois and an expert in international law said that UNHRC and its member states, by adopting the draft resolution (3rd draft) will be abetting the on-going systematic structural genocide in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The vote on Sri Lanka resolution is likely to take place as early as Thursday, according to sources in Geneva.
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