Tamil Nadu boils - WSJ

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 March 2013, 04:26 GMT]
Thousands of students across Tamil Nadu have launched protests urging India to move a resolution in the UNHCR meeting in Geneva against Sri Lanka's war crimes, Wall Street Jounal, Indian edition, reported. Nearly 500 students have been arrested across Tamil Nadu in the past three days "for fasting, picketing and boycotting classes," according to the State's Police Commissioner. Meanwhile, New York Times commented that "[t]he recent upheaval in Tamil Nadu has been sparked by the recent release of disturbing photographs of the body of the former Tamil rebel leader’s 12-year old son, who appeared to have been shot at close range in the chest, and a report on the continued abuse of Tamils in Sri Lanka."
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Indian intelligentsia led by The Hindu, CPI-M, failed Tamils: Thirumurugan

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 March 2013, 04:23 GMT]
Talking about the two sides of Indian intelligentsia, and from where the struggle in Tamil Nadu is gaining its ideological support, Mr Thirumurugan Gandhi of the May 17 Movement said, the Indian intelligentsia that is mostly Left-orientated and goes with the CPI-M has failed Tamils in the past. The CPI-M, for its information, depends on The Hindu or NGOs like the Observer Research Foundation that is liaising between the Establishments in Colombo and New Delhi, said Mr Thirumurugan in an exclusive interview to TamilNet in last November.
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German Left youth group conveys solidarity with Tamil Nadu protesters

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 March 2013, 03:31 GMT]
The North Rhine-Westphalia youth wing of the Die Linke leftist political party in Germany conveyed its solidarity with the student upsurge in Tamil Nadu in a statement released on Tuesday. Criticizing the US administration for supporting Sri Lanka owing to “geo-strategic interests in the region”, the statement further called on the German federal government “to push for an international, independent investigation of the genocide, as well as to support a referendum on an independent Tamil state.” Speaking to TamilNet, Balakrishnan Koculan, a leftist Eezham Tamil youth activist from the same party, criticized those sections of diaspora organizations that compromised principled Tamil politics unwilling to criticize the US, urging the diaspora youth to join in protest along with the Tamil Nadu students.
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Conscious inequity: The Hindu’s “Mindless solidarity”

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 March 2013, 01:28 GMT]
As the peoples’ mobilisation in Tamil Nadu is surging up to question the junta of the Establishments that was ultimately responsible for the genocide and on-going genocide of Eezham Tamils, The Hindu that played a leading part in the media game seems to be ‘missing’ the LTTE. “With the terrorist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam no longer in the picture, large sections of the people in Tamil Nadu have begun to openly sympathise with the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka,” said the editorial of The Hindu titled “Mindless solidarity” on Tuesday. The Hindu, perhaps because of its base in Chennai and perhaps because it represents the interests of a particular class (not exactly caste) suffers from the defect of cat’s eye view when it comes to the question of Eezham Tamils, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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Karunanidhi pulls out from New Delhi Establishment

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 19 March 2013, 13:52 GMT]
DMK chief Mr M Karunanidhi in a press meet in Chennai on Tuesday announced the decision of his party pulling out from the ruling Congress coalition and cabinet at New Delhi. Continuing any further in the Indian Central Government is committing great evil to Tamil people, after the Indian Government has largely diluted the US resolution and didn’t consider the suggestions made by the DMK, and as there is a situation created that is not going to help the Eezham Tamils in any way, Mr. Karunanidhi told media. There could be no ambiguity in opinion that Rajapakse regime committed genocide in Tamil Eelam, Mr Karunanidhi said. Paying heroes’ homage (Veera Va’nakkam) to the Tamil fighters and their families who laid down their lives in the Eezham War, Mr Karunanidhi said they fought for idealistic victory, while people lacking Tamil feeling ridiculed at them.
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Rape and murder of Tamil women by Sri Lankan forces aims at genocide: NZ Tamils

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 March 2013, 23:56 GMT]
In a letter addressed to Ms. Navaneetham Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, on Sunday, the Tamil Action Front of New Zealand (TAFNZ), citing established cases of the rape and murder of Tamil Women by the Sinhala military of Sri Lanka, said that there is a pattern of structural genocide being meticulously executed by Sri Lanka, irrespective of who is in power. What is new is the openly declared policy of the Rajapaksa regime to complete the genocide with tacit international support and by calculated false propaganda materialized through wine, women, diamonds and dollars, the TAFNZ letter signed by its coordinator, Mr. A. Theva Rajan, accused.
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Jayalalithaa urging international investigation cum interim setup slips in solution

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 March 2013, 23:28 GMT]
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms. Jayalalithaa in a letter addressed to Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh on Monday, demanded India to “strengthen” the US resolution tabled at Geneva by including an “unequivocal call for a credible, independent, international mechanism to prosecute genocide, war crimes and war criminals.” She wanted the process, including bringing the responsible for trial before an International Court, to be completed within six months for reporting at UNHRC next March. The CM, implying an international interim setup, has also urged India to modify the resolution so that Sri Lanka has to accept an international institution to act on reconciliation coupled with “a pragmatic political package,” making Tamils equal citizens on par with Sinhalese. However, her outlook for solutions was based on a ‘Sri Lankan Tamil minority’ framework.
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TN readies biers for US resolution, demands genocide acceptance, interim set-up, referendum

[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 March 2013, 23:19 GMT]
Declare genocide, announce international investigations on Sri Lanka, bring forth interim administration and conduct UN referendum to do justice to the question of Eezham Tamils, demanded thousands of protestors, who gathered at Marina Beach in Chennai in Tamil Nadu on Sunday. Meanwhile, students of the Indian Institute of Technology in Chennai (IIT), an internationally renowned all-India institute, came out in solidarity with the student upsurge, by observing a day-long fast. Despite the attempt of Tamil Nadu state to deter the upsurge by closing a section of government colleges, the student movement gained momentum during the weekend. In the struggle demanding justice, the students' movement prepares biers to take the US resolution to ‘cremation’ on Monday, news sources in Tamil Nadu said.
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Kapila Jeyasekara, alleged killer of Trinco-5 students, appointed Vanni DIG

[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 March 2013, 10:16 GMT]
H.D.K.S. Kapila Jeyasekera, who rose in ranks as the Superintendent of Police (SP) from the Special Task Force (STF), and who was alleged to have been responsible for the extra-judicial execution of five Trincomalee students in 2006, and other killings in Trincomalee during 2006, including the ACF-17 killings, has been appointed as the Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) to the Ki'linochchi and Mullaiththeevu district, Jaffna Tamil daily Uthayan reported. Mr Jeyasekara is also a close ally of Sri Lanka's Defense Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, and has been kept out of visible public presence after Jeyasekera was accused of a serious security lapse involving India's Prime Minister during his visit to Colombo in 2008.
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Commonwealth's quandary over CHOGM in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 March 2013, 21:25 GMT]
If the Commmonwealth Head of States Meeting (CHOGM) were held in Colombo this November, "what’s at stake is the reputation of the Commonwealth...," and, as the host, "it [Commonwealth] will be led by a country that committed war crimes on a scale that the UN says, "represented a grave assault on the entire regime of international law,"" says Francis Harrison, a former reporter for the BBC in Colombo. Canada’s Harper has said he will not attend a Colombo meeting, UK's key foreign affairs committee has recommended the Prime Minister not to attend, and there is wide speculation that the Queen will not attend.
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US resolution burnt in front of US Embassy in London

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 March 2013, 12:26 GMT]
Hundreds of Eezham Tamils gathered in front of the US Embassy in London on Friday evening, burnt the copy of the US resolution tabled at the UNHRC session in Geneva and the copy of the LLRC recommendations of Sri Lanka, based on which the USA has tabled the resolution. All the speakers at the protest welcomed the student uprising in Tamil Nadu opposing the US designs as an inspiration to global Tamils in continuing the struggle of Eezham Tamils. Viewing the US resolution as one that is facilitating the agenda of the genocidal State and regime of Sri Lanka in the annihilation of the nation of Eezham Tamils, the demonstrators demanded protection and solutions based on identity, territoriality and sovereignty of Eezham Tamils as a nation in the island. The protestors who gathered at a short notice braved rains and detractors pinning hopes on the USA.
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Gajendrakumar at UN calls for transitional administration to safeguard Tamil Nation

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 March 2013, 15:48 GMT]
Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the president of Tamil National Peoples' Front (TNPF), who addressed the UPR Review session in Geneva on Friday, has called for an internationally supervised transitional administration of the Tamil homeland in the North and East of the island of Sri Lanka. Noting that the genuine grievances and aspirations of Eezham Tamils are reduced to “mere individual human rights problems” rather than the “destruction of their Nation”, Mr. Gajendrakumar, who represented the NGO, International Education Development (IED), at the UN forum called for independent international investigation on Sri Lanka. In a carefully drafted statement, he further said that the UPR is “de-Tamilized” to the point that, anyone not fully cognizant of the facts of the 65 year long Tamil-Sinhala conflict would not even know who is to be a party to “reconciliation.”
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Colombo executing structural genocide, not reconciliation - Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 March 2013, 11:54 GMT]
Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the President of the Tamil National People's Front, in a discussion with Phil Miller of "Open Democracy" in Geneva, criticized the language of "reconciliation" promoted by British officials and asserts that “structural genocide, not reconciliation, is the phrase which most accurately describes what is going on,” and adds that “[t]he land grab is not peculiar to this [Rajapakse] regime. It has been happening for the last 65 years. The only time it stopped was during the armed struggle of the LTTE, because then Sinhalese people were not willing to settle in the north and east, where a de-facto Tamil state existed."
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Tamil Nadu student upsurge gains momentum overcoming manipulations

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 March 2013, 06:03 GMT]
The Tamil Nadu student protests against the pro-LLRC US resolution being tabled at Geneva has intensified in all major towns and cities even despite attempts by certain sections of the Indian media and certain political elements to twist the purpose of the protest, Thanjavur based sources told TamilNet. A protest involving over 5000 students took place on Wednesday at Thanjavur, a city of great historical and cultural importance to Tamils. Speaking to TamilNet, the sources said that while the student protests across Tamil Nadu were all about rejecting the US resolution as it did not meet any of the just expectations of the Eezham Tamils, some sections of the media and political circles were trying to give a false image that the students were urging India to support this hollow resolution.
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U.S. Congressman calls for International Investigation into war-crimes

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 March 2013, 01:13 GMT]
U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a letter to Secretary Kerry on Wednesday, expressed serious concern regarding the deterioration of democracy and the lack of progress on reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka, and added that "now is the time for the State Department to support calls for an Independent International Investigation into allegations of war crimes in Sri Lanka." The Congressman's call answers those who argue among Tamils that the tabled resolution already has provisions for international investigation.
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Kurdish leadership accuses imperialist powers for Eezham Tamil tragedy

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 March 2013, 19:14 GMT]
In a solidarity message to the Eezham Tamils’ liberation struggle sent to TamilNet, the Executive Council of the Koma Civaken Kurdistan (KCK), condemned “the massacre and humanitarian tragedy that were executed by the occupying army of Sri Lanka with the support of imperialist powers”, accusing the UN and the world powers of their complicity in this mass atrocity on the Eezham Tamils. The KCK, or the Union of Communities in Kurdistan, an organization founded by the leader of the Kurdish liberation struggle Abdullah Ocalan, drawing parallels with the internationally-abetted oppression of the Kurdish nation and the Eezham Tamil nation, further emphasised the need for a continued solidarity and exchange of ideas between the two national liberation struggles.
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UNHRC, CHOGM, Regime Change: people’s power has no substitute

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 March 2013, 07:26 GMT]
A drama has been carefully executed by all in the game ultimately guilty of crimes and detract the question of Eezham Tamils: first by giving hope and by deploying agents among Tamils that something serious in ‘procedure’ is going to take place, so that any righteous Tamil mobilisation in the island and in the diaspora could be diffused; then by pointing to New Delhi competing in the crime so that the political parties fixed and the gullible in Tamil Nadu would be facilitators, and finally by tabling a mischievous resolution so that whether it is passed or not passed it would favour the genocidal State and regime in Sri Lanka, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo, welcoming the youth uprising in Tamil Nadu and adding that there is no substitute to people’s power in altering the machinations.
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Protest in Australia rejects LLRC-based US resolution, demands Tamil Eelam

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 March 2013, 05:32 GMT]
Hundreds of Tamils and several non-Tamil protesters gathered at Canberra, Australia in front of the Parliament House, denouncing a LLRC based political solution as a farce and demanding the creation of Tamil Eelam. The Eezham Tamil protesters, who conveyed their admiration for and solidarity with the students’ upsurge in Tamil Nadu, were also of the opinion that the impact of the Tamil Nadu protests had reached Australia, a representative of the Campaign for Tamil Justice told TamilNet. The demonstrators marched to the embassies of the US, India, UK and the EU and submitted their demands to the respective embassies. Speaking to TamilNet, Trevor Grant, former chief sports writer at the Age opined that the proposed US resolution at Geneva would only encourage “the Rajapaksa regime to continue its carefully-planned genocide of Tamils.”
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Rajapaksa ad says Tamils are happy about IA at Hambantota

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 March 2013, 16:26 GMT]
While even the flights to India from the Palaali airport became non-operational for the last 35 years, a newspaper advertisement of Colombo government in Sinhala this week showed a person dressed as a Tamil father, standing against a background of palmyra palms, telling that he is ‘happy’ about the Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport at Hambantota, since his son has found a job there. When the Sinhalese workforce brought from the South are grabbing every single job in new infrastructure projects in the North-East and while the Tamil lands are kept under military occupation, the state propaganda paints a picture of a 'Happy Tamil' who even manages to get jobs at the development projects in the deep south, commented media sources in the island.
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Tamil Nadu students burn US draft resolution

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 March 2013, 00:28 GMT]
Protest started by the Loyola College students in Chennai against an empty US resolution on Sri Lanka at Geneva and the Tamil Nadu State Government action against the protest, have triggered spontaneous statewide student uprising that is not depending on any political party, news sources in Tamil Nadu said. Students of instituions such as the Annamalai University in Chithamparam and St. Xavier’s College, an autonomous university institution at Paa’laiyang-koaddai in Thirunelveali, have burnt the copies of the US draft resolution tabled at Geneva for discussion on Friday, saying that the draft only bails out the genocide-accused Sri Lankan State. Meanwhile, student protests took place in every part of Tamil Nadu and All Colleges Students Federation for the Liberation of Tamil Eelam has come out with a 9-point demand.
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